Daydream Drivin'

Do you have an enduring daydream? One that gets you to sleep on the hardest nights, that fills the longest lines at the bank, through the ride on the crowded train, that pulls at your heart every time?

I want a red pick-up truck -- small, Toyota, standard transmission. I want it to grumble to life every morning after I crawl out of the back, where I keep my bedroll and my stash of books. I want to cradle a mug of coffee between my hands in a backwater diner, be asked where I'm headed and answer "Where the road leads me." I want to drive out of the closed New England valleys of my childhood to where the mountains are big and the sky is bigger. Where everything looks like this out my rearview mirror. I want to drive across the country by myself. I want to do by coming to each intersection and flipping a coin. I want to avoid highways and metropolitan areas, revel in the rural.

I lie down, trying to sleep, searching for something to soothe my crazy mind, and I come to this picture above all others. It's the freedom and the aloneness I crave, and also the exploration. It's my East-Coast-Manifest-Destiny-Neurosis. I first had it while I was still in high school and wanted out of that gray closed valley, and gray closed high school, more than I could describe to anyone, least of all my mother. Since then whenever my life feels like more than I can handle -- when commitments, relationships, and deadlines crowd my brain -- this is what I escape too. Someday I might actually get the balls to pick up and go -- but for now it's what gets me to sleep.

Ok, How does everyone feel about "Gertrude"?

Sisters, Quilts, and Self-Induced Angst

Tonight I finished the sqares for my sister's wedding quilt -- they are imperfect, beautiful, and done; there are still major design pieces that need to be worked out, but the squares are pieced and tomorrow I can start to size them and put them together, and have something to actually give the lovely women on their wedding day. If I can borrow my mother's digital camera you all might be able to see them, because really, I'm pretty proud.

But, of course, being me, I combined this process with a fair dose of emotional turmoil by watching Little Women while quilting. Other than the fact that we are only three sisters, and not four; that our mother was a single parent; no one has died of scarlet fever; and that it isn't the late nineteenth century -- I grew up in this book.

And it just *resonated* a little too fucking much tonight. Me and my handful of chocolate chips are going to bed!

Countdown to matrimony: 13 days (after midnight, damn, I need to go to bed)

New Name Contest

So, I'm going to get a new computer. I will probably order it this week, and the weekend of my sister's wedding my mother, who in this context can be referred to as TechGoddess, will transfer all the stuff from my old computer to my new computer.

My old computer is an Apple iBook that came out in the summer of 2001, and she served me well through my undergraduate days. But in this new day of dual platforms and wireless, and the possibility that at some point in the near future I will want to play with data on my computer -- it's time for an upgrade (with help from the last of my money from my maternal grandmother).

So, I'm taking suggestions for names for the new computer. Suggest things in the comments, at some point I might let people vote.

Some background and ground rules: My current computer is named Miriam, my flashdrive is Esperanza, and my iPod is named Stella (yes, I know this makes me sound *totally* nuts). It's important that the name not belong to anyone in my immediate aquaintance and not be a name that I would think about giving to a potential child or pet (I do give priority to things that *actually* emote -- they get different names). I don't have a gender preference. Also if it matters in your name considerations, I'm getting the new mid-grade white MacBook. Take a peek here.

Have at it!

Thursday if For Lists -- According to the Rules I've Just Made Up

1. You wouldn't think that adding five hours to your work week would make it that much longer -- but this week has been long, and I'm so ready for the weekend.
2. Sister Esq. is getting married in 16 days. That is two times eight. Four less than twenty, and two days and two weeks from now. HOLY SHIT. Let me be clear -- I love her partner and think she's fantastic, and the wedding itself will be fun and incredibly stressful, but the whole **idea** of it makes me.... I can't even describe the emotion - sad, nervous, anxious, overwhelmed... I just don't know.
   
3. I love going to workshop, right now writing there is the most exciting part of my life, and I have to admit that I don't know what to do with that, except feel vaguely guilty and relish it every week when I get to go.
4. Blueberry sorbet, walnuts, and a gingersnap = perfection.
5. Tonight a good friend of mine played me some of her songs on her guitar and I read her some of poems, and it was a swap that we were both nervous about, and had planned for months, and it was wonderful. We need to do that again sometime.
   
6. Today I was walking home from said friends house, enjoying the fact that I was wearing a cardigan, carrying produce fresh from her mother's garden, humming along to a song I'd just heard for the first time, and wishing that TP was going to be home when I got there. It's funny, but sometimes it's when we wouldn't be spending time together that I miss hir the most -- when I long for the ways that we would find independence and be each other's touchstones in a shared life.
7. This weekend I'm going to the beach which will give me an opportunity to wear my Wonder Woman bikini -- with it's bright red top and blue bottoms with white stars and red trim -- Yup, it makes me pretty happy.
   
8. I need to make sourdough this weekend to remind my starter that I love her.
9. I'm thinking about buying a new computer -- which means getting rid of my computer that I've had for six years. This makes me really excited and also a little nostalgic. This will mean needing to name a new computer -- this will be a big event.
10. It's midnight, I've only accomplished half of the tasks I set out for myself to do this evening, and I'm sleepy and I still definitely need to shower before bed.
    

back roads*

you kick up dust on the rutted road of my body.
i let you run over me, fast, like a kid in a pickup
music blaring. and i like it, your wheels rolling
hard, pushing me against the mattress, letting you
ride over me, but i will make you bottom out
'til your undercarriage shakes and trembles
for my top, my touch, 'til i flip your pickup, your wheels
spinning and the dust of this road licks
and curls around your screaming engine.


*because who doesn't need a (racy) poem on a Tuesday evening?


Also if you haven't read any good news lately, click on over to any of these places.
I also rescind MWMF related snarkiness, but am too lazy to edit, besides the sun is filtering through green, green leaves, and I might die if I don't go run around the pond RIGHT now.

That NYT Article that Everyone Keeps Talking About

So, there has been much hubbub in the last 24 hours about the NYTimes article [not linked because of that whole pesky TimesSelect thing] about transmen, that was in the Sunday Style section [because queerness is the new black], and how the lesbian and queer communities respond to their existence, both in intimate relationships and as a political issue. There has been hubbub in the blogosphere and there has been SO much hubbub on the "partners of transmen listserv" that I'm on.

My thoughts on the issue are as follows, first the things that were good about the article:

• That guy is hot. Shane -- the lawyer -- he's a hottie. Sure the pictures fetishize him a lot, but who could resist?
  
• It is good that these articles exist -- it isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it does get people thinking and I'm glad that they talked about the fact that the Census doesn't try to count transfolk, because people need to realize the ways that these statistical gaps affect people (but this is a side-point).
• Feministe has a very good write-up on this. Take a look, she says many things that I would say if I had time.

Here are my problems with it, from my citadel of privileged knowledge that I come across by loving and staking my life on a wonderful person who isn't a woman or a man and on a bi-weekly basis sticks hirself with a needle and shoots a powerful hormone into hir body.

• They conflate. I'm anti-conflation. Issue #1: the challenges faced by lesbians who are partnered with transmen before they transition and have to reconcile themselves with the transition or leave the relationship. Issue #2: the bizarre nationalistic concerns that lesbians have that their category is "emptying out"* and the ways in which they allow that to tear a community apart [see Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and, oh right, any other place they get their panties in a knot]. Nationalism and balkanization don't work -- particularly when they are this petty and allow organizations to cut people off from the communities that nurture them and allow them to feel empowered enough to transition
• Issue#1 = Issue #2? -- Um, NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can be a lesbian who is not transphobic and still not be able to be with someone through a transition. I know that they didn't exactly, explicitly say these were the same -- but something about the rhetoric of it all got under my skin.
  
• 'Young women who call themselves "gender queer"' -- um, TP is genderqueer, and not a woman, many of the genderqueers I know are men, some are women, some are neither -- Please use terms with some subtlety and idea of what you are saying.
• Also, once and for all, sex IS NOT gender IS NOT sexual orientation!

Ok. I'm done.
*I think that Halberstam may have been taken out of context here, but I think that the phrase encapsulates many of the concerns.

[I apologize if this is snarky and off the cuff, all snarkiness is directed toward the NY Times Style section of the Sunday paper. No actual lesbians were harmed in the writing of this post]

Femme-and-inity

So, I've been meaning to write a post for a long time about femininity and femme identity. Tonight is the night for things that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I drove back from CoastalNewEngland today in the rain and gloom, in stop and go traffic. It is just so sad to be in first gear on the highway. I was up there for a wedding party, which was fun. I got home, and after about ten minutes tore my room apart because I realized that tonight was the night to polyurethane my bed, a task I've been putting off for six months. Then I got polyurethane all over my hands, and have spent the last two hours going to buy paint thinner (which meant getting back in my car which smells like dead cheese) and worrying about the toxicity of the things on my hands.

Finally, my roommate, B., told me to stop freaking out and to come eat her experimental stir-fry -- which was a good call since the last and only thing I'd had to eat was a v. good and bucolic diner breakfast with LOTS of coffee.

Ok. Down to business.

I think that one reason I've been putting off writing this series of posts on femme is that I think that so much of gender and gender identity is about performance and when I talk about this with people in my life it is in the context of my own performances, which you don't have access to, and so I worry that you'll get some warped view of me. Weirdness of the blogosphere.

So all of this started with Jackadandy's post and me saying that it got me thinking and also reading Katia's interview with Elizabeth Stark. So, if you want background reading for this start there.

In high school I would wear a skirt one day and three piece suit the next. I loved the double takes that I got from people. I still really enjoy the ways in which my gender performance counters expectations -- no one expects me to be smart and sexy, or butch and an economist, and I like being able to push back against people's expectations of me, or of women in general. My sisters are both fairly feminine -- Sister Esq. is pretty urban hipster, funky attorney feminine, and Sister M.D. is more posh and put together. Both of them put significant pressure on me in my teens to be more femme, and it's a blessing that I've never tried to compete with them on the femme-front, because for the most part it still feels like a tune I'm supposed to be dancing to, and find kind of catchy, but can only sort of hum along to when I'm not too distracted.
It's a role that I enjoy, and yet, in part because I don't really commit to it -- I always feel vaguely like a failure, or like a small child wearing her mother's makeup. I don't (and have never) shaved my legs, I invariably screw up my makeup or laugh too hard or my hair is crazy or something, something is wrong with my femme performance.

Which is why I found the following Stark quote so fascinating (stolen from Jackadandy):

"Femmes know how to make love to other women, to butches, to transmen. In my opinion, this is an art and should not be overlooked. Femmes know how to fail and succeed at femininity at the same time. We use our flaws, our fat, our hairiness, our loud mouths, our oversized brains and our excessive accessorizing to celebrate ourselves and those we love and to foment revolution."

To know how to "fail and succeed" at something simultaneously. This sounds like fun. I think it is also the failures and fractures within femme that lend it some of its queerness and I think that this is particularly attractive to me. One of my main problems with being mainstream feminine is that I end up feeling like my queerness is not recognized by the outside world and I want people to have to reconcile me with the me they think they see.

I also love the powerful sexual imagery of femme. The way that she has power over her lover and with her lover and the acknowledgement within queer communities of the art of femme lovemaking. When I wear a dress and walk around with TP, it is this power that I'm tapping into and bathing in. To identify as femme is also one of the only ways to identify oneself as desiring butches and transmen and to extent that gender identity/performance is all about performing desire, well it's in my best interests to be femme. I also love the ways I'm desired, the particular escutcheons and performances of desire, when I'm femme and the person desiring me is playing with some version of masculinity.

Chris (of Jackadandy, who I sometimes, probably incorrectly, call Jack) in hys post also noted however, the differences between role, identity, and label. In general, I agree with hys analysis. I would add however that the slippage between identity and label is very significant and happens quickly. It is far to easy for things that one identifies with to become "citadels of limitation", and I'm anti-that so I've also been reluctant to take on the identity of femme. On the other hand, I recognize that it is an identity and don't want to trivialize it by calling it a "role" that I take on from time to time. I'm also not entirely ready to never be able to able to identify as butch. Here are some ways that I am butch:

• I can and like to fix things.
  
• I love men's clothes, on me, and on others.
  
• I can open jars that are hard to open.
• I have broad shoulders, lift weights, and love my body best when it's jacked.
  
• I am a sometimes top, with a desire to unlock the pleasures and desires of my sexual partners.
  

So, I have no idea where this leaves me. Except that maybe I should go back to my high school ways, where I was either femme or butch and stayed away from middle ground. Of course the middle ground is also a pretty comfortable place at this point. In the end, I don't know what I'm wearing when I'm not in drag. The problem with this scenario is that it runs me smack dab into that "role" problem. My gender performance is, for me, a series of roles, but it also plays with other people's identities, and I don't want to "play butch" or "play femme" because that seems to undermine folks who identify with that. I think I mainly undermine that by being able to avoid the hard parts of butchness or femme identity because it's not what I'm doing full time.

I know that this is long and I've rambled horribly, and if you've read this far I'm impressed. Now, I'm tired and this might be the first in a series and I'll be able to hash this out some more - hopefully with questions/thoughts from y'all so I don't get lost in my own head.

Queer Books For Queer Kids

Ok, kids. Here's the deal. There is a homeless shelter for LGBTQI [henceforth queer] youth in HarborCity, thing is they don't have a library that reflects this at all. So, in response, some folks from QueerOpenMic and the Workshop are collecting books to donate to their library (and potentially donate to other like-minded shelters nationwide).

Growing up queer is hard enough, growing up queer and homeless -- well, I can't write about that, I'm too blessed to be able to imagine it fully. But if you have any books, 'zines, movies, chapbooks ETC. that are lying around your abode that you aren't still reading/watching-- please consider sending them.

How do you send them?

Well, first you email me at corinneblogger@gmail.com. Then I perform some test wherein I determine whether you are an ax murderer and in which I ask you to protect my pseudonymity (sp?) -- then I email you my snail mail address and you mail them to me. I know that postage is expensive, but hey, they created media mail for a reason.

Think about it.

Oh, and the only guideline is that you can't send anything that is explicitly and solely erotica.

(Now, if you want to just send that to me, I'm not saying I wouldn't be grateful).

Life in the Passing Lane

For some reason, for the last month, life has been swamping me. I would say that it's been life in the fast lane, but really it's been more like trying to drive a car you've never driven before in rush hour traffic where everyone is going somewhere in a huge hurry, but moving pretty slowly, and you have to keep looking around into mirrors and blind spots to make sure that you aren't fucking up royally, or denting anyone's fender.

Tonight I have a reprieve: Sister, M.D. called to cancel our dinner date; Roomie L. is at her family's house on the gorgeous New England Coast; and Roomie B. is playing frisbee. So, I'm home -- drinking a beer, listening to Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, doing laundry, treating the **new** wooden countertop, and blogging for the first time in an age.

NewJob is going well. I like the people I'm working for and even more I like having work that I like. I spend a lot of time thinking about graduate school, where I'll go and what I'll do. But really, I'm not applying until next fall (so matriculating in Fall 2008) and so for now I can enjoy having a job that I want to go to about 90% of the time. And for a 45 minute commute that's a pretty good percentage.

One of the major positive externalities to me of the job is that I'm thinking again -- thinking about future projects I want to do, thinking about things I want to explore, critiquing other people's work, etc, etc.. In this vein, I had coffee with my former thesis advisor and friend this afternoon. She just moved to HarborCity, and I'm overjoyed that she's here -- she's smart and supportive, and knows my econ-academic brain better than anyone else in the whole wide world.

I wrote a hard piece about AbusiveCollegeGirlfriend (henceforth ACG) in writing workshop a couple of weeks ago and last week at Queer OpenMic I performed it. I don't think that I was fully aware of the impact that that would have on me. I felt like I was bearing witness to my own pain and anger in ways that I never had before and telling the truth in very basic ways that also felt like I hadn't before. As I was nervously gearing up to read, I talked to the guy who runs the workshop A., and he was saying that I just needed to be prepared for people
to be sympathetic, and said that I could always say that it was a work of fiction, and I realized in that moment how much it *wasn't* and *couldn't* be a work of fiction in their eyes. Also, for the first time, I had friends at the Queer Open Mic and went out with them afterwards, and hung out with a different set of them beforehand. It was awesome, and new and felt so right and so queer I can't even describe it.

In the past ten days I've also cut about 8 inches of hair off my ponytail and "revised" my bangs several times.

That is the update from my life. I'll blog more soon, maybe, no promises, I swear I'm more reliable in real life than I am here.

Workshop Piece I

So, Sly has a post up about rings, since he is now wearing one that used to belong to the boy. I commented over there, and it got me thinking about rings, weddings, and the like. So I thought I would post a piece from the writing workshop. Just so you know, the prompt was a slinky. Generally things are good on the homefront, though this week is a little insane, a party to celebrate a dear friend being in town tomorrow -- complete with planned sleepover (I'm packing my PretentiousToteBag when I'm finished with this), and then the the writing workshop on Wednesday, and oh, yeah, work and the gym and stuff too.

****************

I remember this, this slip of synchronized metal between my fingers, from hand to hand, one big enough to flop-glide down the stairs in the old house. Inevitably tangling, and I would spend so much time trying to untangle it, make it perfect and smooth again. The twisted wires were permanently scarred they remembered each fall and gyration, and forevermore had unsteady hips. That old house was never finished and was born scarred. It’s funny that I call it the old house since technically it was really quite young, built the year before my sister was born, my mother laying stone for the fireplace while pregnant. Those warm stones were for children and cats, both not yet made. What an act of faith to build a home together, in truly the middle of nowhere. What the hell was she thinking? But she must have been thinking, the slinky of her brain tracing down all the steps without tangling. and what does twelve years from now mean? Twelve years from that fireplace we were all sitting around a cold empty pizza box, drinking cranberry juice and wondering what was next, leaving the old house. Her plan inevitably tangled, incredibly tangled. We are all, each of us, incredibly tangled. Our desire to flop-glide through life means nothing. We walk with unsteady hips, or lie curled and still. Slinkies extend and fall – that is where the tangling happens at the tipping point where the world collapses down on itself until I’m standing alone at the door on a warm day with a cup of hot coffee watching you leave. Just for a while, just for school, no comment on me or cats and children not yet made.

Since then my mother has laid down other stones, pregnant with a vision. Her garden falls gently to the brook, or grows up to the house. Either way there is less of a plan. Those steps are the ones we’ll use in September, guiding a cadre of unsteady hips and heads through a wedding. What a strange and novel idea. When was the last time we did one of those? The 70s.

I talked to my sister today about her wedding, my planned time off, the role she will want for me to play in that week. Going for long walks, keeping her calm, serving as the all important buffer zone between her and my mother. Helping everyone navigate tricky waters, hold the unsteady hearts close and help them slide-glide over steps. Your job will be to hold my own unsteady hips in the night.

Beep-Beep-Ba-Beep

We interrupt our normal broadcast to bring you: Racism Today in HarborCity (and the US)

First, you have to understand that I ride the train to work every day for 45 minutes in each direction, in this time I eavesdrop, read, read newspapers over people's shoulders, drink my coffee, and sleep. Over this past week, I've been keen on the reading over people's shoulders.

In the little newspaper that they hand out for free they have this column called "The Debate" where they ask three people off the street their opinion on something and write it up with cute little pictures of the poor fools. On Wednesday the question was: "How do you feel about violence in the city?" This is a totally valid question HarborCity has a homicide problem, particularly in poor communities of color where folks are poor, desperate, etc. So here is my beef with the piece.

All three respondents were white, two were students and the third was a business analyst (also all from comp. safe neighborhoods, and under 30) their three responses were:

"I've never felt threatened or intimidated. You just need to be smart about where you go and what time you go there"

"It's not as bad as people make it out to be"

"It's terrible that such a thing can happen in a city where you feel safe. It seems to be centralized in certain neighborhoods"

Ask people from the affected communities. If you don't it's a sham. Oh, those poor people in those poor neighborhoods, I guess they just made a bad choice to live there. This is such a lie. We don't choose where we live, for the most part that is decided the urban geo-econo-politics that surround, envelope, and drown us. Further, do not claim that something you simply don't experience isn't that bad. I think I'm more angry with the choice of people than any one thing they said -- but if you want to start a dialogue about the role of violence in our community, you're shutting it down by printing bullshit like that.

Also, Bush signed the Voting Rights Act this week, to make it effective through a few more shitty elections. The headline I saw was "Bush OKs Voting Rights". This made me laugh, and it made me really sad that that is all he did. He didn't celebrate the Voting Rights Act, or commemorate it, or do anything more than put his rubber stamp on and have some people take some pretty pictures. This is an outrage. If he *actually* cared about the principles of democracy there would have been..... well, nevermind.... I guess democracy was just a dream we had once.


PS. If you can't tell, I'm moving out of my funk, I've got my snarky on, and I'm in steamy, steamy, BigCity hangin' with SIster, Esq. and her partner. These things make me very happy.

Calculations of Self Worth

I know I've been MIA, and it's because I've been in a funk. My insides churning with reformulations, and my mouth tightly shut. I've been disengaging from the world, pulling into myself and trying to figure some stuff out.

So, in the past month, I've picked up my running program again, sent a loved one thousands of miles away, started a new job, and started doing creative writing with some intention. All of these things have made me wonder who I am, what I'm doing, what I'm worth. Not without some anxiety and self-deprecation. I think that all of us have these demons gnawing at us, and I am trying very hard to keep them at bay in my own head.

NewJob is going well. I haven't screwed up royally yet, though I'm inclined to think that it could happen any day. The whole idea of this job, for those who missed the memo, is to figure out whether I like research and economics enough to pursue a Phd in that accursed discipline. The trouble is with the word enough. I feel like I've chosen a path, but I think that I might define anything as 'enough' to not have to admit that academia isn't what I want, because if it isn't that I have no idea what is.

TP left about a week ago. The visit was wonderful -- not without disagreements or hard days, but each of those led to growth, and I miss hir everyday, more than I can quite admit to. There is more to say, but the wheels of my brain are still spinning desperately trying to make sense of my heart.

I went to a writing workshop last week, and wrote and read what I had written. It was wonderful and intense. The format was to receive a fairly open prompt, my favorite was a miniature slinky passed around the group, and then write for 20-30 minutes, and then read. In three hours we did three prompts, and I wrote about: marriage/committment/divorce, body issues, and my own contested and conflicted gender identity. I left feeling like I'd voluntarily slammed myself against a concrete wall, but it was a cool wall, and the day was so warm... I'll be going back there. Plus, it's an explicitly queer space, and I need more of those. (I might post some workshop pieces if it seems worthwhile -- any votes?)

And then there is the running. I think that the above three things have been enough to throw my sense of self a little out of whack. Especially some combination of the career apprehensions and the renewed interest in creative writing, something that 8 years ago would have been at the top of my life goals.

So how do I handle these waves? I take them out on my body. When my other measures of self-worth are failing, I fall back on crappy societal standards of body image. So, I'm back to old tricks (that aren't quite mine) -- logging 20 mile weeks, and counting calories. I bought a heart-rate-monitor yesterday, and was running at 6am. The thing is that running is good for me: it lets me clear my head, and enables me to feel okay about my body, and is a way to be outside. But it slips far too easily into a scary terrain I've always kept myself on the edge of, and I'm still there on the edge, just this side of the numbers.

There are so many measures of self-worth -- intellect, integrity, compassion, work ethic. I've used each of these models. But there is also a way in which I was taught to gauge my self-worth off of my grades and my body. It was never that explicit, but I did grow up in an imperfect radical feminist household where grades were posted on the fridge and everyone went around the table at night and said how many grams of fat they'd had in the day.

Is it any wonder that I don't know what to think of myself?

(PS: I'd find a better ending, but I want to go watch the sunset with my gin n' juice, and who can deny me such a simple pleasure)

Sliding Scales

On Thursday TP and I went to a QueerOpenMic which is one of my favorite queer spaces in HarborCity, hands down. I read Good (Almost) Man and it was well received. I think that on Wednesdays I'm going to start going to a workshop run by one of the folks there to work on my writing more, because, while economics is cool and all there is a part of me that will always want to write poetry. And God knows I need more fun queer community in my life.

Both of these places, and many others I go to, operate on a sliding scale/pay what you can system. In the past I have depended on that policy to be able to go to these events, and I honor the diversity that policy allows and engenders. So, here is the story, NewJob pays me well, better than OldJob and includes benefits that make me feel a little bit like EliteU doesn't know what to do with all its money and so throughs it at its employees in the form of really cheap gyms and incredible healthcare. I can no longer pretend that I have anything but a middle class paycheck. So I'm a radical queer with a middle class paycheck, who spends a lot of time in fringe cultural spaces. This is new to me. On Thursday for the first time, I paid the upper end of the sliding scale at the open mic. On Wednesday I will need to decide how much to spend on this workshop that I'm going to.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to negotiate this income shift. Sure, I'm putting more money in my savings account. Generally I think that I am the most radical investment I can make. The world will benefit from me being able to afford graduate school, and the books I want to read, but probably not all the books I want to read, and certainly not the cute clothes that I sometimes want to buy. And none of it will mean much at all if the community organizations that I depend on crumble due to lack of funds. From an economics standpoint it's an interesting model -- it would be better if I had the energy to actually create/find a graph for y'all to see. But basically you pay a price for something, and some people want it, but are only able/willing to pay less for it than the price, and so they don't get it and some people are willing to pay more for it, but don't and sort of get their cake and eat it too. The sliding scale/pay what you can system asks everyone to pay what they can and what the "service" is worth to you, eliminating that eat your cake and eat it too phenomenon, but also providing access. So what I should do is ask myself this question: How much would it need to cost for me not to go? One dollar below that is the amount that I should pay... hard to do in practice.

But this doesn't even scratch the surface of how uncomfortable people are with differences in wealth and the ways that having money are connected to being inauthentic. When I pay more money I am sincerely thinking about investing in spaces, and holding them dear and trying to help them balance their books. Yet, I also don't want to distance myself from people by paying more money. Keep in mind that these are small communities where 'nigh on nothin' stays private. Privilege is best when it is easiest to abdicate, to cast off and spread around, like so much shit (compost metaphor), and I think this is one of those cases where that can happen, if there weren't so much angst around it.

But, for real, bottomline:
I hate money.

P.S. It's Saturday night, tonight TP and I grilled veggies, and walked up to the pond in the sunset, and now we are listening to Louis Armstrong, I'm blogging and ze is reading the latest Harry Potter book. Totally priceless.

Queer Theater

On Saturday night TP and I went out to a play put on by a queer theater group in HarborCity.

For us, going out is an excuse for TP to be charming, dark, and handsome, if not tall, and an excuse for me to be a flirty femme, who is sometimes fatale. Really, for us, the theater started far before we made it to the actual location of the event, and the costume designers were the stars. I was wearing a v. low cut wraparound black dress with a lace hem, my new heels, and my new red dangly earrings. TP was wearing a nice shirt and tie that I love, and, in the interest of full disclosure, was a present from me. We looked nice. Hot, even.

There was some drama about getting to the theater (that pun was not intentional). But we got there and got our tickets and watched a play set in a pink motel room, that was very queer and highly, highly surreal. Now, as we walked in, there was a lady, who was maybe 70, and had a nice white bun of hair on her head, and a nice husband at her side. She smiled and winked at me. She was starting to flirt. As we sat down and looked through the programs, she caught TP's eye and gave hir an approving look, and then looked me up and down, as if to say, "Nice catch". It was hilarious.

After the show there was a little gathering with wine, cheese, and disgusting Mike Hard Iced Tea. It was fun, the cast and crew were maybe 10 people, and the audience was only 15, so it was an intimate crowd. Or at least that's what the little old lady thought. She flirted with everyone, could talk to anyone. It was amazing, the thing is that it was this very funny mix between the somewhat standard old-lady-nice and the classic somewhat bawdy flirt. I loved it.

We talked to one of the troupe founders about potentially touring one of their shows to ELAC and URedState. We mingled. We never mingle -- we are both shy and sometimes awkward, but somehow that husk started to fall away in that setting. I love being queer out in the world. Being femme, holding TP's hand, having people recognize us for who we are -- so often we get read as something other than how we think about ourselves, even, and most painfully, within GLB communities. But in that theater our performances were respected.

That was a big part of what made it such a lovely evening. There was also the moon, the booze, and the sweetness of any moment spent with TP. Ze is flying home next Wednesday, and I'm very sad about it. But that is a whole 'nother story. I want to find more places where I can feel recognized in a sexy black dress as the radical queer I am, and I also want those places to be comfortable with me being in carhartts and a button-down shirt. Do you think I'm asking too much?

Requisite Update

Some things you should be aware of:

• This was my first week at NewJob. It was exciting and challenging and a little mundane. Basically I am ResearchGirl for two economists who do fascinating work and each see their role in my life as very different. A communication challenge, let's say. It'll work out
• TP has been here for several weeks now and is leaving in about ten days. It's been good and complicated, and I will be very sad when there isn't someone to come home to, and talk to, and kiss, and all those nice things that TP does in my life.
  
• NewRoomie arrived on Monday and thus far has been fabulous introducing a nonchalant attitude about food, making yummy bread and dinner, going for runs with us, and practicing her violin beautifully. She's a keeper. Her initial is B.
  
• I just made the most orgasmic Rosemary Olive Sourdough, and it might be what I have for dinner along with the Hit the Trail Ale from Vermont, which is a lovely state with incredible beer.
  
• **** Nubian "features" some of the most fucked up shit I've seen in a while. ****
  
• I have a long list of blogables in my brain. They'll be "uploaded" soon enough. Hang tight, kids.
  

Fun on the Monkey Bars

File this in the "Every Day I Live in the Patriarchy" Section of your lives.

So today I went for a long run, and along my run I came across some bars upon which to do pull-ups, so I was doing my routine of tricep-dips, pull-up negatives, chin ups and push ups. This list makes me seem much more cut than I actually am.

As I was doing my routine, I heard a child's voice behind me saying "Look at HER!" I turned around and saw a little girl pointing at me. She was walking with her brother and father, and her father looking up and seeing me said, directly to his son, said, "Do you want to try that?" The boy, who never responded to anything in the interaction, didn't respond the question at which point the man came over the bars and sort of winked/smiled at me and did a few pull-ups and went on his way with his children.

What the F?

A. Girls, when they express interest in being strong, should be allowed to be f-ing strong.
B. Dude, you have issues with strong women if you're so scared of:
1. Your child becoming one.
2. Needing to assert your physical dominance over the one that you see, or bizarrely attempt to hit on her.

BUH.

I love my life in the patriarchy.

P.S. Did Title IX actually exist, or was it a good dream I had once?

An Honest Day's Work

The federal government redefined work yesterday, or, rather it redefined it for the 53 million families who received TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) in 2005 (calendar year). There is, naturally, at least one snarky comment to be made about whether a body that does so little work, and work of such poor quality has the right to define what is work for 53 million families that are struggling to make ends meet? That is an important question, but there are other axes I want to grind with their decisions.

Work and Values
The ideology that underpins this provision of welfare reform from 1996 to the present is that work is valuable for work's sake. The idea is that children learn important lessons from having their parents be part of the workforce, they learn about the value of money, the self-esteem and feelings of self worth that can come from work. Maybe, maybe, but I don't know how much you learn about those things if you never see your parent because ze is working ten hour days and multiple jobs. I also don't know how many low-wage workers would say that they got their self-esteem and self-worth from their jobs. I don't want to deny that possibility though, since I've had minimum wage jobs that I've loved and living wage jobs that killed my soul.

There are problems with this ideology, it privileges wage labor over home production and education. This came out strongly in the regulations put out by the Feds yesterday. It is no longer considered work to care for a disabled relative. What values does that teach our children? Do you think these people have the resources to ensure that their relatives are cared for properly by someone else? But apparently caregiving is lazy. If the federal government said that about middle and upper class stay-at-home parents there would be a media war (oh wait, that's already happened).

Another highlight of the new regulations is that homework time for job training programs only counts if it's in a supervised study hall. What? These are people with kids, do you think that they can pay for another hour of childcare so that they can go to bloody study-hall? Do they need bathroom passes?

Doing More Work?
All of the statistics point to the fact that TANF caseloads have decreased over the last ten years, and that more people are in wage earning jobs. However this might also mean that there are many families who don't bother to apply for welfare because they know that they will be shut out or who are "saving" their TANF months for a time when things are even worse. Also it's not entirely clear that they are better off when they are working than when they were collecting welfare. These rules also don't ensure that more work will happen, even if we agree with them that that is a goal which makes sense. If anything I think it makes it likely that people will leave the programs because they can't make those studyhalls or just have to take care of that sick family member. Which means that the caseloads will continue to go down and things will continue to look good, while the fruit rots under the skin.

The people who it will mean more work for is the people working in welfare offices across the nation, because they Feds also issued new guidelines for tracking the work activities. This tracking will be a near impossible task, taking up resources that could be devoted elsewhere... if we actually wanted things to change.

I know a lot of people who did an honest day's work yesterday -- but they sure weren't the people writing these rules.

(Full Disclosure -- I haven't read the new rules yet, just the NPR story and the I can't find them right now, but I will read them soon and get back to y'all if they have any redeeming value)

Ten (Tipsy) Confessions

1. I'm starting to think that living as a couple might be something I could do after all, after years of saying that community living was all I would ever want.
2. Oral sex, as a blogging topic, bores me - I haven't read the posts, I haven't read the posts in response to posts or the comments. (Sorry y'all).
   
3. I've found the *actual* oral sex in my life delicious, boring, hot, gross, and confusing in turns... fortunately, now we are on an upswing.
4. I hate it when TP talks on hir cellphone for long periods of time.
5. Who am I? I got tipsy after one beer (granted I hadn't had dinner yet).
   
6. I'm really looking forward to starting NewJob next week, I love vacation, but I get fiesty and stircrazy.
7. I drank a beer today while my two roommates went for a run -- this will catch up with me eventually.
8. I've been wearing shorts that are shorter than any I've worn since childhood, but it's fecking hot up here. In my defense, I think they are average femme-woman length, but they aren't my norm.
   
9. I'm painting new roommate's room and walked all over town covered in paint today, in the short-shorts; no one seemed to mind.
10. I'm so pathetic at thinking of interesting confessions that I've asked TP for help, ze is feeling equally unoriginal.
    

Mix(ed) Tapes and Marriage

So, the car that L and I just bought dates from the mid-nineties, which is fine. It's a Toyota and so I have perfect faith that it will continue to drive along in its understated loveliness for some time. On the music front, it's a little sad. I think that I need to find some way to adapt my iPod to the tapedeck, for now, I and anyone who rides in my car is stuck in my seventh grade life.

Now, there are some great mixed tapes (Is there a standard here, mix or mixed? What should that modifier be?) from that era, it was the period of my first eposure to the Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco, but they remind me of being desperate, bitter, angsty and in the closet. Not a scene I wish to revisit. I think that the music you listen to makes a difference. As the main character in one of my favorite movies says:

"People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" (Rob, High Fidelity)

So, driving back from Idyllic Ancestral Home, I listened to one of the mixed tapes that my sisters made for me that winter of 7th grade. Who were they at this moment in time? Sister, Esq. had just finished her first semester at Women's College and was coming out as a lesbian, Sister, MD was a sophmore in high school and struggling with her body, her brain, and her peer group. On it there are a surprising number of song that sort of mock marriage -- Liz Phair's "Divorce Song", Mary Chapin-Carpenter "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", the song about a "matchmaker" from some musical I've never seen -- those were the songs both about straight people, and about long term pair bonding. Sure the songs on that mix about queer relationships depicted plenty of torture and anguish, but then I was 12 I wanted anguish, I wanted to experience everything. This mix was very much my older sisters teaching me, picking out these very specific cultural productions and showing me what was "cool". Marriage wasn't cool, at best it was empty and conformist, at worst it was a painful trap. At the same time I was listening to these bitter songs, I was also watching about three romantic comedies a week, the really fluffy kind. "Pretty Woman" was my favorite movie for a very long time. I have no idea how I incorporated these saccharine fairy tales with the bitterness of Ani DiFranco and Liz Phair, but I did. I wanted to fall in love just like that.

I'm not saying that I think that listening to this music turned me into the radical queer anti-ish marriage person that I am, or that the romantic comedies provided me with faith in humankind, but I did learn from them. The things I learned were not always true -- queer relationships can be abusive and stifling (I've been in them), and straight ones can be amazing, and either way, regardless of the sex of the individuals involved marriage is a mixed bag on a personal level. Politically, well, I promise to write about that this week. Maybe this is all about role models. I didn't have very many role models for stable long term happy pair bonding. My parents were divorced, and most of my mother's friends were either lesbians, with quasi-rotating lovers, or not also divorced. My father sort of remarried, but I didn't know enough about their relationship to feel like it was something I would want mine to mimic. So, it was up to pop culture. And really, bottom line is that you should never let pop culture teach your children about something -- not race or gender, not sex, and apparently, not marriage either.

We'll leave it there for now, theory will come soon, promise. Right now, I'm feeling very in love, and listening to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack... not that that really gives me faith or anything.