After Life

I awoke this morning and stole silently out of the house. I left no note or kisses on the cheeks of dogs or you, lover. I left no warm coffee congealing in pot's bottom, no cup with dark ring in the clean sink. TV wasn't set to favorite channel, computer was empty of tabbed windows. Public radio was off. There is no tooth brush spittle on mirror. Towels are perfectly folded and dry. And sleeping dogs still lie.

I worried as I left that you might think I didn't love you, that I was ghost-like, ether-bound, a figment of your imagination - a Sabrina.

I wanted you to awake to a world that was fully your own with no opinionated weight pushing you to do this or do that. For that I burdened you with the feeding of the dogs and the making of dirty dishes.

I sped off to the hum drum half life I have created for my daytime self. The world is full of a sitting gray. It is a small window showing-off over cast skies under a flickering yellow hum and a bleating electric whine. Everyone answers their ringing, blinking boxes the same way, settling into the day seat.

I said I chose this daytime life, but that was a half truth. I was broken into it. I once saw freedom in an open field, full of childhood and yelling, of girls running and spitting into the eye of the sun - of youth. That dream was dashed by two people, men by chance, real men who decided that I had no rights to youth because my face didn't match my vagina. For that offense I have been taught to fear children.

Never-mind that you have told me, repeatedly, that I was built to be a gay man.

I am sure these unappointed arbiters of social graces could think of nothing worse than you fucking me in the ass. Though perhaps had they known that I would have been allowed to keep teaching girls how to kick a ball with their shoelaces instead of their toes. At this my heart leaps and sinks like when I watch the men at the gym pinch their own mass into efficacy as if rolling the world into a ball.

Then again, I have heard people say, accusingly, that gay women have more rights than gay men, I have heard straight men complain that gay women have more rights than them, I have heard gay women complain transgender women have more right than them as if we had stolen something from each other.

And here we all meet at the gym, sculpting ourselves into each other's fantasies.

And I think: They must not know that I have listened to parents say, indignantly, that I am not to talk to their daughters, though having passed background check after tedious background check, though having passed test after test, after proven myself in practice and winning ribbon and trophy after ribbon and trophy. I have listened to men and women in power list reasons, baseless and banal, why the way I look disqualifies me from working with youth, the public, the media, the right, the left, the middle, the happy, the disturbed, the impressionable, the hard-headed. And it has at times made me greedy for the indisputable proof of worth I can never possess. I grew up listening to nuns who claimed to be the wives of Jesus Christ tell me for 14 years that I have no right to love or to be loved in the only way I can. I have sat and listen to lesbians tell me that they are normal and fighting for a natural love, not like those drag queen freaks. I have listened to gay men violently attack women's bodies with their words, I have heard transgender folks call for the expulsion of undocumented workers because they had no natural right to these lands, that they feel they own, unquestionably as second class citizens who have to sell their bodies or their souls to put food on the table. I have heard a whole host of people, bound together by the same injustices rip one another a part like rabid dogs for the pleasure of their masters.

Then again, I have sat with people, gay and straight, of all colors and creeds and enjoyed a meal or a drink and felt alive, though I can count those times on the tips of my pleading fingers - let us give thanks and make it through this meal without destroying each other.

Perhaps, they thought I might agree, all of them, that a master's intoxicating approval is the only meaning in life. Perhaps they thought I would feel some sort of resounding shame, or resentment and find myself reborn, straighter, blonder, tanner, thinner, straighter, happier, straighter, better.

Never-mind what I have told you. It was of a nightmare rooted in traumas I am not allowed to speak of, after-all the two of us have learned decorum demands victimhood be silent to be palatable and I don't think we are the only ones.

Never-mind that you cried last night. Your beautiful face leaking into my bed. Go and forget this half life of fluorescent fear: seeing your dream and then seeing it taken away, trading dreams for Johns for cubicles, a modern revolution.

We feel the unending need to find lines in the shifting sand to stand behind, until we are boxed in, alone, standing on enough cracks to break all our fore-mother's backs.

Go and be freer than I am, please. Know that I love you, all of you, every bit.