Honey Bear

The days get darker quicker now, and I walk or ride my bike across brown-hued leaves strewn across the streets of my neighborhood, aptly named Friendship. Cool air whips my face, and with hands in my pocket I breath in the air of a new winter.

Last night I fell asleep three times.

Sharing a pile of soft red and brown pillows we hid from the last ray of sun beneath an afghan warmed by our energies. Shoulders pressed to chests and noses nuzzled with cheeks, I drifted. I thought I was following a hanging bulb over my head. It kept flickering as I fell deeper in to a cat, or perhaps wolf, nap. Knowing she was there kept me safe, and when I awoke she said she also slipped into a space where tangled legs and arms allowed for freedom of the mind.

Hours after the sun went beyond Pittsburgh hills, guitar music filled the room as my pen etched anxiety on to a piece of graph paper. Little squares like boxes holding my feelings. She strummed and sang with eyes closed and a small smile. Gummy worm kisses. Words weren't needed as we both watched fingers reaching and plucking at the strings. Toni Morrison says that language is what we make it, and it is resilient and rebellious and can used for fear or love; to capture a moment or to hold someone down. It doesn't live our experiences though - those are for us, the language reminds us, and pushes us and pulls us in to areas where we analyze and discriminate and scream in ecstasy or pain. My mind drifted as her words came through small speakers on a table shared with a one-eared mouse, and bills needing to be paid. Sometimes the lack of language, sitting in silence, is just as powerful. No matter what the language, I keep falling in love, and my breath is still trying to catch up to my heartbeat, and wanting to mirror the shooting sensation of happiness that tingles in my toes and awakes the butterflies in my nourished stomach.

A teenage boys angst written in short passages comes alive in her arms. A visionary who appreciates and questions life and death and connections to literature and language, Charlie scribbles words about love, family, celebrities and a person named Nothing. I didn't need a pillow in the crook of a body next to mine who continues to welcome me to the world - how is your heart, your soul; what are your thoughts, experiences; how do you move and what/who moves you. I absorb the narrative like a child clutching a favorite bear. A honey bear. As the early morning light trickled through the windows at the bottom of our bed - the trees' branches ambiguous and gray through my sleep-filled eyes - I didn't feel her leave. In fact, I don't believe she ever did. Soy milk messages confirmed my belief: "I am still lying warm in bed with you. XOXO."

Today I feel more rested than I have in a while. Maybe this is what rebirth feels like - a second or third or millionth chance to see through new filters. My eyes are wide and open on this brisk morning where my missed grampy's sweatpants hang loosely from my waist, and where blue smoke rises to the ceiling of this space. It's so light in here.

Genderized Baptism

Black t-shirt peeled over my head and on to the floor.
White and silver athletic shorts pulled down across my thighs and on
to the floor.
Bike riders abs barely noticeable in the stained glass window reflection.
Lavendar sports bra holding my body tight like a second skin tugged
over my strong neck and on to the floor.
You ok with this?
Yes.
Are you?
Yes.
I will turn my eyes.
No. Don't make it uncomfortable for me.
Ok. Get in here.
Black boxer-briefs unveiling my full body whisked down my legs and on
to the floor.
I lay behind her in a porcelin tub.
A red light dangeled above us.
I held her from behind.
I hid my body from her.
She began to sing.
"Hello Seattle, I am the crescent moon, shining down on your face."
My knees covered by hands, her knees outstretched as her legs lay on
the bathtub interior.
Warm water caressing our bodies, in and out of skin folds and in
between our hands.
She turned to me.
Slow.
Motion.
Kisses that were as delicate as crunching fall leaves outside of the window.
Bodies melting in the warmth of our breath and the warmth of the tub.
As my head dropped and my eyes closed, and shook.
Tears spilling out.
I apologized in to her own deep eyes.
Is this ok.
Yes, I whispered.
Clutching the sides of our indoor pond I let myself go.
Vulnerability.
Love.
Trust.
Deep emotions that exist in parallel with my body.
A long-standing hate for parts of my being are being lifted as she
kisses my chest.
Tangled together and feeling separate from my body as my mind searches
for ways to be ok with this nakedness.
I didn't ask for these accessories.
I sleep at night without my protection, but awake as gingerly as
possible and slide it over my head, and on to my body.
It feels good to be held, even if by too-tight lyrca.
We laugh and spill saline water over one another's heads.
Healing.
She said we are now baptized.
New beings.
New connections.
New acceptance.
New new new.

Balance

Crouched like a fetus next to my breathing body you covered your face.
I knew, again, that I love you.
In your deepest place where fear creeps like ivy in to your soul.
Your eyes reveal so much.
And you shift to the glowing screen where your hurt and love and
exploration pour through letters and your lips.
Enveloped in your sounds, like a calming lullaby hummed by a mother in
small ears.
I knew, again, that I love you.
Like the foundation of our connection the tree's roots wrap down a
near-empty wine bottle.
Mouths tinged a dark red-purple we electrified our energy.
Exploring every element with touch - not even needing to open my eyes.
Feeling.
Behind my ears and under my arms you seek truths that make me me.
Hands grip your feathered body as the wolf snarl is lost way beneath
our whispers.
My wholeness accepted and sought out, asked to shine.
Like the red light.
Like your vision of red balloons.
With wind whipping across you flannel checks we race down through a
city where water laps its shores.
I watch your legs turn bicycle cycles, and your face slightly turned
to see that I am still there.
I am still here.
Take a drag of a place where my lips quivered only seconds before.
Sip from a place where my lips began the process of nourishment only
moments before.
Share the steaming bowl of love with two spoons.
It feels like fall in here.
Leaves dancing off of the branches, while the tree remains strong in the ground.
I am grounded.
Sitting on tattered bar room stools we pull close and the sounds disappear.
Your hands in mine, and the softness is all I hear.
Protecting them I push goodness out of a green bottle in to your fingers.
You say don't stop.
I will never stop holding them. Loving you through them. Becoming
whole with them.
Songs echo off of the walls surrounding your watery heaven, and I sit
in the cool air smiling.
With droplets on your skin we melt in a space where faces meet bellybuttons.
Time slips in to a new morning and dreams illustrate the ways we lay close.
Tell me more about why you cried laying on your side and absorbing the
moving images on the screen - sun cascading through the windows as we
warm our hearts through stories.
There is no "go slow". No "wait". No waiting for others to tell us when.
Operating on our timeline and boundaries.
Being present never felt so future-oriented.
Like red paint juxtaposed with the yellow, there is a complementary
offspring energy.
Wanting to scream thank you, but instead I hold you.
Body and mind.
Smiles and tears.
Balance.
Reciprocal balance.
And you told me that you can make it through the cold, sad winter with
me at your side.
And I tell you that I love the adventure of love, and that it is just
a word that we are giving deep, interconnecting meaning to.
And we say we are not really at the places our bodies exist in;
instead, we are with one another on a fog-covered mountain top where
we met in the middle with hands grazing.
You gave me your keys.
I gave you my smile and bashful eyes that are old as they are curious.
Like our owl glowing on the windowsill the love and light is as
tangible as it is mystical.
Magical.

Internal and outward expression of gender

Great article, especially because it is In the NYT, which is important because principles and parents and youth and queer folks and straight folks may absorb this mainstream news coverage. I only wish that the writer would have focused more on gender fluidity where the binary is challenged. Here we see that, again, roles in these folks lives are cycling through male and female personas; an, often, unfair and stifling path for many of us. Genderqueer does not solely mean no gender, and bringing this variance up could free the mind from assumptions about biological boys in lipstick and girls in baseball hats (although I heart that look!). There is a lot in between those poles, and as a person who wears skinny jeans with boxer briefs, and small t-shirts with a body hugging sports bra, I may sit in this unapproachable gray that still gets stares, glares, and questioned accusations of what I am "trying" to be. More articles expressing the realness of identity - something very challenging to describe - would be greatly beneficial to those of us who also say (like the blog) that labels are for jars.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/fashion/08cross.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1257753645-C8S3cfqMsayreE0IH5f6eg#

Bags packed.

If you were leaving home to start a new life, what would you take with you?
-Collaboration
-Splendid Isolation
-Communication
-Participation
-Face Time
-Love Monster

Fog covered hands.

All of this commotion in my head, but the silence bumps into the isolation outside of my lips. I open my mouth – ready to kiss, to scream, to lick, to feel, to whisper - out rolls a tiny bee – wet with saliva – look how beautiful it glistens on its wings. It pollinates my soul, and allows my being to flower, or maybe de-flower. Like a plant waiting for the reciprocal importance of carbon and oxygen giving and taking, I wait for that hand to pull me off the ground, and throw me back on that soapbox of which I dream about. It’s mad tall – high as the clouds, or at least taller than you, and you, and you, and you.

Ripped from the pages of that conformity nothing, family and friend oriented, and creative comic book my character is born. Dusty five-pocket jeans with that red belt that doesn’t quite hold the waist above the top of my privacy, and those paint splatter high-top Chucks that are just raggedy enough to be hot as ever to every fine thing that walks past me; the red in my cap pulling on the color of my eyes, begging the browns to shine through the sadness.

I bang that confidence out, even if meekly, or weakly, or in bad taste as I cuss…shit, fuck, damn…or wear the fashion oh-no(!) when I wear that rad black a-line with that beat-up belt, because I didn’t start on this journey simply to get hijacked by a wolf in a puppy costume.

It’s interesting how when climbing the mountain we are jazzed as hell to have that fanny pack around our waists – filled with life’s most precious items: a Band-Aid to fix, a picture of special someone’s; a mint, just in case we get lucky, and a swig of ginger tea so that we can smooth the cobwebs in our throats and scream at the top of our lungs when need be – and we have those argyle wool socks, a stick to support us, and a flashlight and map to guide us through the winding difficulties. And then, just when we get comfortable with the heat on the back of the neck, and the cold running across nighttime faces, we arrive at the clearing.

Oh snap!! Look at that view; it’s glorious. We worked up to this point, where panting and breathing our eyes lock and I feel so filled. So beautiful, so loved, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a boy t-shirt or a young woman’s teeny bopper tiger-striped tank top that I have strewn across the floor right before I stared at that forgiving and accepting face and allowed the tears to roll down my cheeks. Like a garden hose dripping on the rose buses. I can still taste that rubbery, metallic aroma on my palette – it scares me to remember, and it is impossible to forget.

Then the climax of the hike, the berry-picking, bear-lookout, cashew-chomping adventure is over. Sweet and salty. What else is there to crave if I am standing here with only my heart to comfort me on the top of this mountain where half of my hand is covered in fog? But like a ghost’s shadow, I feel the eyes of something staring me down – waiting to swoop down like an eagle to a mouse. Fight it! My journey is so far from being over; I turn around only to see an endless mountain chain waiting to be explored. This is just a hill.

Lovely Paint Splatters

Green, orange and purple paint cover the soles of my Chucks, and the soul of my being.
Thirteen weeks of design, direction, community, youth, art, love.
Breathing it in, soaking it up, adoring the pulsating energy of the way it moves across the concrete and fills in space that is both metaphoric and tangible.
I woke up this morning and drank soy-filled coffee and danced to music in my head.
The sun streamed through the window of my sublet and the butterflies started up again.
Don’t get me wrong, the wings of those critters make me move, get up and embrace the challenges that stop me in my tracks. I want to run and hide, but I am better than that lost child I may have been years ago. But, oh, sometimes it could be rad to sit on a soft window seat in an old house in the woods.
That’s what camping trips are for.
My calling is here, and there and anywhere where I can give and take, a place where reciprocation is real and being a mentee and a mentor create sparks all around me.
I dreamt of this day.
She is sleeping beside me, and as the burrito shell rises and falls, I fall deeper in like.
They pull on their beat-up t-shirts below me as I rise above the world on the scaffolding.
We are all the same – young beings wanting to share our moments with those who make us giggle and build walls of trust that stick harder than mud and honey.
A handful of queer youth represent themselves with smiles and shy eyes on the site as we carry canvas and near empty paint cans around the lot littered with slushee cups and beehives. They see us modeling the behavior of love and kindness, helping one another with a squeeze here, a drink of water there.
“Let me clean your brushes,” I say, as our eyes linger longer than 1, 2, 3, 4…small shoulders waiting to be brushed by a hard-working hand that only hours before filled in an abstract design created from the depths of her inner heart chamber.
It’s beautiful.
They know. All of them. We didn’t say a word – or at least not with our vocal cords.
“If you have the shorter hair does that mean you are the boy?”
With a slight headshake, discussions ensue about gender and the societal ways pearl earrings and baseball hats have pre- disposed body types to cover.
We smash that.
No jabs or sneers, all people have respect on the site, and I don’t think I have ever been so proud of the young hearts in my community.
Like parents of a large family, we move through the days with advice and questions and care. They fight, they drink, they smoke, they cuddle with their mom or their partners, and we talk about it.
Double their age and they look up with appreciative eyes – we are doing what they may have never seen before: being self-aware and self-loved, while also playing a committed role of oohs and ahhs to the person who sits across from each other as we eat peas with parmesan.
Like fireworks. It works.
No roles assigned – you be in front of me, and then I will be in front of you. You wear my shirt, and I will do the laundry this week. You teach me how to do that trick and I will hold your hand as we sip wine from plastic cups.
They see us. All of them.
What a gift for us, for them, for the movement towards Yes; Acceptance!
I have been moved before, but this is not the same. It shoots through my veins like a rocket. “What comes is better than what came before.”
The most natural light to penetrate my skin in my lifetime. So good. So right. Thank you.

Shampoo. Rinse. Condition. Rinse.

Shampoo. Rinse. Condition. Rinse.
Blowdry. Curl. Pull it back. Use a headband. Clip bangs to the left. Clip bangs to the right.
Hide behind it.
Flaunt around it.
Chop it, I said.
But, you will look like a boy.
I won’t look like a boy; I will look like me with short hair.
She struggled. I struggled. I paid and then repaid and finally paid again to own my own clippers.
It's almost like they scream at me. Ahhh. Your hair. It's so short. You are so bold. I want to roll my eyes and say why are you ok with accepting the binary, with perpetuating this idea of woman equals long hair, or pretty or feminine or weak.
That comment is not a compliment to me.
Hyper boy to hyper girl to hyper boy-girl. Gender fluidity. Variance. Queerness.
Pulling the dress over my head, and pulling the tights up to my waist no longer felt right. I no longer felt safe. I no longer wanted the attention that I allowed people to give me. It was early, I was waiting, there was a breeze through the vent, down my shirt. Cleavage. I was exposed. I ran. I changed. That was the last time, and I felt empowered. I felt in control of stares and acceptance or not.
Ha.
The other day I stood baseball hat cocked to the side (hmm interesting word choice), jeans slung low, t-shirt hanging somewhere between clutching and floating; one hand around a cold beer, and the other in my pocket. She grabbed the handkerchief around my neck and said, "it must be hard to get all of this attention by being genderqueer." What was that look in her eye? I avoided. I shifted. I thought it about much later, in the comfort of my own head. I am still getting the attention that I don't know that I want. I am a woman. I am masculine in dress. I am feminine in thought.
And I hate these labels.
The idea of a box makes me gag and reach and scream for air. Yet, I am lucky. I can work this body and spirit in ways that others can not. I am privileged.
He waited in the lobby for me to come and save his day. I said hello and he followed me to the back room where we sat. Daniel. His name is Daniel. Nine years ago he begged and pleaded with his family to understand where he was coming from - the male perspective. They didn’t. He begged and pleaded with the medical world to hear him and transition him. They did. Today he yearns and begs and pleads with the inner psyche to allow Diana to come back. He is a transman who no longer wants the body he thought would make him happy. He passes. To me. To the world. I didn’t know there was a Diana hiding beneath Daniels eyes until it spilled from this person's lips. Daniel's pronoun preference, for the first time in nine years, as this individual sat across from me in the stark white counseling room, was female. She was enlightened and ready to face the world, but testosterone effects are nearly irreversible.
As my body changes I make alterations that feel safe to me - clothing, demeanor, exercise, a slow in my eating so that I can appear more like a young boy, and less like a voluptuous woman.
I am privileged.
I am moving through the world as a passing, dykey lesbian.
Weird.
I fulfill expectations, and I also break the mold of what people expect of me - I don't bind. I don't take T. Under my clothes I sometimes wear a-line tanks and boxer-briefs. In a few short months I will wear a suit to job interviews. In the summer I will wear a two-piece bathing suit. I will bike. I will cuss. I will tell my partner that I love her. I will still feel vulnerable naked. I will be a vegetarian and choose salad over steak. I will pay for dates and allow the door to be opened for me. I won't grow my hair out again, except under my arms. I will sing and I will laugh, and I will be non-gendered, and all-gendered, and a hater of gender.
I'm proud to be a gender fucker. I am proud to be accepted and loved and questioned. I enjoy the challenge of stopping heterosexist and genderphobic perpetuations, and yet, I also am aware of the ways I facilitate these cycles.
Gender and orientation are so complicated, and so beautiful at the same time. As a social worker I am learning to be respectful of self-determinating individuals, while also moving through my own, ever changing me.

Queer Discrimination

A new report states that queer families are living with less than their hetero counterparts. It is estimated that:

One in five children living in a same-sex household is poor compared to one in 10 for children in opposite-sex married families.

Nationally, 24 percent of lesbians and bisexual women are poor compared to 19 percent of heterosexual women.

15 percent of gay and bisexual men nationally are poor compared to 13 percent of heterosexual

Discrimination is the hypothesized reason for the differences. In a world where so many people think that with the passing of many bills and legislation that the world is unmarginalizing, these statistics smash the utopian image of equality.

Last week President Obama signed the United Nation's Statement of Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity document, which serves to "reaffirm the principle of human rights...that everyone is entitled to the enjoyment of human rights without distinction of any kind...that non-discrimination requires that human rights apply equally to every human being regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity...and that (the UN) is disturbed that violence, discrimination, exclusion, stimatization and prejudice are directed against persons in all countries in the world because of sexual orientation or gender identity, and these practices undermine the integrity and dignity of those subjected to these abuses..."

And while the president's signature doesn't make it illegal to oppress, it does finally add us to the list of countries who defend this human right (the U.S. was the last of all Western nations to sign it, thanks in part to the consistent refusal by former President Bush to recognize the importance of engaging in identity politics). There is hope, and we are lucky to be a part of such a strong administration, who may just bring the humanity back to humans and our rights.

Genderphobia is unproductive.

Recently it seems that gender has been the underpinning of many conversations. The concept of gender, and the need to mark the irrelevance of a binary that is not based on realities for so much of the population, is simply too hard for people to wrap their brains around. The other night, for example, I was at a talk about transgender individuals and a person in the audience was attempting to pick apart the issue of gender and gender identification. First, it should be said that education is a beautiful thing, and if people are asking questions, that can only be powerful and positive in the long run. Still, it amazes me that these questions exist.

For example, a question about surgery was asked: (which, of course, erroneously implies that actual reconstruction is the only way one would identify as a way to name their gender) "so, if a person is born a male and then only dressed the part of a 'female', are they just pretending to be a 'female' then?" The thought process of people - me included of course because I am also a product of our genderphobic society - fails to break free of the binary. It seems super hard for folks to just be comfortable with an individualized expression of self. Even people who are enrolled in my social work program exist in a bubble of norms where many don't even question why it is that they feel uncomfortable with removing gender identity disorder from the DSM, or ripping the labels off of the restroom doors that determine who is allowed to come in and pee. What is that really makes someone a man or a woman? Is it a dress or a beard, or a way of thinking, the desire to have children, a career in construction? How did we lose ourselves in these stereotypes in which we are now mostly blind to, and therefore cannot disentangle?

A co-student of mine said that someone in her class talked about the non-acceptance to trans folks at an all-women college. The concern was that a trans woman was accepted, and the general feeling around the campus was that this person used their male privilege to get in to the school and change the ways the administration operates. Clearly, there is a serious disregard for a holistic view of someone - this student was being judged only on what anatomy was between their legs, and not on how they truly identify. In the clause for acceptance at this all-women's college, I wonder what is written. Is the word vagina actually spelled out? And even if this was so, how does the school feel about trans men; how do they conceptualize what it means to embody the energy of a female student?

At the end of the day, it appears that genderphobia hurts those who are gender non-conforming, AND those who can't see beyond the binary because perpetuating a norm means the perpetrator also has to absorb the norms...everyone stuck in a pre-designed box doesn't seem like something that a society that fights against the idea of dictatorship in other countries, while asking its citizens here to carry their own weight as individuals, would uphold. But it does. Feels ironic to me.