The Squeaky Wheel

My sister was a squeaky wheel, literally. She had a growth on her voice box that made her voice higher pitched than normal. She would ask for the most outlandish things and get them.

The best thing she ever asked, though, in her squeaky little voice was this:

We were laying in our bunk beds in our low rent apartment. We were Catholic School kids, and though, presumably, we hadn't worn our uniforms to bed, our world was full of grey wool plaid. I remember a year when a thread-thin vertical green and horizontal 0yellow stripe made their way into the standard-issued jumpers and I thought, consciously, what a fine thing color was.

Our teachers, the nuns, spouted the gospel of Jesus, or as it is known in school, the gospel of hope/love and forced us to give them awkward hugs as we entered and left each day as a begining and an end to the day's degredation:

(Me)
"Divorce is a sin, you're mother is going to hell."
"All the girls where jumpers. Take off those pants."
"What makes you think you're so special?"
"You will never go to college with a mouth like that."
"How will you ever get married in a church if you don't act more like a lady"

(My Sister)
"Take off that lip gloss, you look like a whore."
"Do you know what happens to girls who try to get the boys to notice them?"
"Oh, you, you don't need to worry about college. Find a nice husband."

Our favorite time of the day was when my mom would sit with us at night. Because my sister was younger she had the bottom bunk and my mom would lay with her and read or tell us stories. I would lay there looking up at the ceiling, listening, trying to imagine the pictures in the book.

I was in one such daze, when my sister's squeaky, miniature voice called up to me, "Beth . . . are you awake?"

(Beth was my childhood nickname.)

"Yes?"
"(Timidly) Do you . . . love me?"

This is probably the seminal moment in my life, the moment I understood what it meant to have another living person's feeling in your hands.

"Yes. I do."
"I love you, too."

So, in a way, I understand why my sister got a lot. She was the baby, and a baby with a growth in her throat who said great things at the most unexpected moments.

The Price of Sneakers

It was a dreary day. I had left work in a haze of boredom and headed out to the wall of strip malls to feed my capitalistic glut, if you have nothing to do then go shopping.

I ended up at the shoe store in search of some brown work shoes, or so I told myself. But I spent the bulk of my time in the casual section trying on converse colors.

A boy of 12 or 13 walked by with a man in tow. He looked past every pair to the price tag. He did not want to see the shoe until he knew what it would cost him, or more accurately, his father.

Father: Do you see any you like?
Boy: They are all so expensive.
Father: Well, son, sneakers are expensive.

The boy looked disheartened.

Boy: They don't have any track shoes.
Father: I know, son, these will be for practice and for gym.

The boy looked sick and the father pulled his long fists from the pocket of his soiled jeans which hugged his hips below a pot belly that was covered by a second-hand muscle shirt and a raggedy, unbuttoned flannel. The father put his arm around his son. The two of them were completely out of place in something as swanky as a new shoe store where the other sons were jocularly negotiating to goad their parents into buying the most expensive shoes possible, like it was a sport. Daughters made a show over a pump or a Puma, buckling in the knees, promising bored parents they would be happy, finally, if they just had this one last thing.

This family looked as if they hadn't had anything new in their lives.

Father: Don't worry, son, we will find a way to get you track shoes, but for now you need a pair of nice sneakers.

And the boy timidly began trying on the least expensive pairs he could find.

I flashed back to a day in the early 90s. It was the week of my first soccer game. My single mother sat gaping at the price of cleats. Already she had a basketful of socks and shin guards - one pair each for my sister and I.

Mom: I didn't know cleats were so expensive.
Salesman: Oh yes, mam, these are the top of the line. Imagine how many goals your son, er, daughter could score in these.

He looked me up and down, then saw my sister.

Salesman: We have some pretty ladies cleats.
Mom: Well, girls, pick out the ones you like.

The cleats were on a wall. The kids cleats were a little lower than the adult ones. I picked up every pair and turned it over and pretended to be looking at them. But, really, I was trying to see inside to the price to find the pair that was the most affordable. The last pair I picked up was a pair of black Mitres, $15. They were all the wrong shape for scoring goals. And ugly, sinfully ugly. I knew the other kids were going to tease me.

Me: These ones, I want to try on these ones.
Mom: Hold on, put on these socks and shin guards first so we know they will fit.

I squeezed my foot into the shoe. It rubbed on my heel. It pinched my toes, it was hard to balance.

Me: They are perfect!

They were, if fact, bad enough to stunt my development as a player, but still, I scored my first goal in those shoes. I played my first half as a goalkeeper in those shoes. I fell in love with the sport I went on to play in college in those shoes. And they are still hanging on a hook in my mom's garage, waiting for me to come home to them.

She Should Have Been Mine

I took my name from my grandfather. Most of what I remember about my grandfather happened in a hospital, but then again much of my childhood happened in a hospital. In fact, even in high school, if you asked me what my favorite food was it probably came from the hospital’s cafeteria; hours old burgers, rested to perfection in tinfoil bags, mounds of curly fries, rehydrogenated broccoli soup. My sister and I once laughed for a good 30 minutes when we discovered a curly fry in the shape of an embryo. We loved curly fries and we loved embryos, but the combination wasn't so hot. And we debated after all the other fries were gone whether we should eat the embryo fry, or save it to show to our mother, the midwife. The mixed feeling of dread and exhilaration I had when I bit the head off the embryo has stayed with me all this time.

My single mother was the head nurse of three women's health units in the largest hospital in our city. My sister and I would sit in the family waiting room or in her pea-sized office with a fine hair of a window listening to the radio that was turned down to near zero, doing homework, or inventing games that didn’t require space or noise.

We were ever aware of the suffering of others and the hardship our exuberance could bring to bear upon their suffering. Even in my mom’s office, which was located in the happiest unit in the hospital, labor and delivery, we were aware that while many families were celebrating a joyous occasion, some families were lamenting a great loss, and still other families were having children that they did not or could not care for.

The room next to my mom’s office was a circumcision room. A closet, really, with a tray much like a gurney, with straps on it. We could hear, over our math problems and the barely audible college radio programming, the screams of young boys, inconsolable screaming, as they were submitted to an ancient and unnecessary surgery with no anesthetic and no mother to hold them.

More than once I walked out of the office to a nurse attending to the smallest human being imaginable, red faced, jaw unhinged, suffering and bleeding and screaming. The doctor would leave while his young body was still tied down and bloody. The nurse would methodically clean, medicate and wrap the baby’s wound. She would talk to him with the confidence and indifference of one who has seen a tragedy play out a million times over. She knew how to get through this with professionalism. More than once I hid my face in a school-issued textbook and cried from the look of absolute horror in those babes' faces.

It was, at times, stifling, but it made us both love the outdoors and we were avid athletes, like my grandfather.

When my grandfather got ill the world changed. My mother, naturally, was the one to take care of him. I found her one night on the toilet, crying. I immediately assumed she was sick, very sick, and hadn’t told us. I ran to her. I began to cry. I pulled her head into my little teenage breast. We stood there like that for some time. And she looked up at me, her blue, crystal clear eyes covered in tears and in a voice I had never heard before, the voice of a 5-year-old, she said, “I am going to be an orphan, now, I will never have a parent, again.”

Oh, how I wanted to tell her I would always take care of her, that I would be her parent, but I couldn’t speak. I knew what she meant, and I realized that no matter how old I got, I too would some day be an orphan and then I would be profoundly and fundamentally alone. (Years later I read the Illiad, "You are father to me and mother, and brother, and husband also. Have pity on me, and stay here upon the wall, lest you leave me a widow and your child an orphan." I sat stunned in class, reduced from college scholar to a babbling, blushing child.)

My sister and I set up shop in my grandfather’s basement. There was a pull-out bed and an old TV with a knob you could turn to get channels. Channel 1 on the dial was the playboy channel, which was scrambled, and when my sister fell asleep I would silently turn it on and watch between the lines of static for the brief moments when one could see naked men with surgically sculpted penises and women with surgically enhanced breasts touching each other.

My grandfather’s health deteriorated and we decided to move into my mother’s childhood home, which was directly across the street from grandpa's then current house. After school we would spend all of our time with my grandpa and my step grandma. We would watch Wheel of Fortune, then Jeopardy. They were impressed with the questions I knew the answers to. I was impressed with the questions they knew the answers to.

We began to tell stories.

My grandfather needed help getting up from his chair, then he needed help walking to the bathroom, and finally he needed help sitting down to pee. His penis had disappeared, as far as I could tell, and he seemed to me like an old woman, and I was embarrassed to have noticed and he was embarrassed to need my help with such things. One time I didn’t move fast enough to help him up. He had been so polite when he asked that I didn’t realize it was urgent. He peed himself and the chair. His chair. I got some soap and water and cleaned his leg and got him fresh pajama pants and then I cleaned the chair.

Later after he went to the hospital I would sit in the chair, it was leather and it smelled like his aftershave. I would touch the chording around the arms with my fingers the way he did when he was thinking and I would fall asleep.

I was a natural at the hospital. I knew where to go to be out of the way and I would sit and watch him while he slept.

He had the most amazing fingers. I would watch them all the time. They had large knuckles, they were tan, and large. The tips were flat as if he had been squeezing something for a great many years. He would pinch his bed sheets as though he was checking to be sure they were still there, then he would pat them smooth again, over and over. He must have done that a million times.

One night when they let him come back home to die, my mom found him crying. It was the first time she had ever seen him cry. He was curled up in his bed. He had had a nightmare. He kept saying, “He is coming, he is coming, don’t let him find me, mom. Don’t let him hurt me.” I knew that my great grandfather was not a nice man. He had gone to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl. But it hadn’t occurred to me that he might have assaulted my grandfather, or that my grandfather had ever been a helpless boy. He was so self-sufficient and he had power, not just because he was a white, male, business owner, but more over because he was good to people. And not just his friends and family, he was good to strangers and to people he didn’t like. It was hard for me to think that even the strongest, kindest man, was once a boy who was alternately loved and tortured. He begged my mom not to leave him, and she slept next to him every night afterwards until he died.

One night he asked me to read to him from a little prayer book his priest had brought him. I opened to a random page and began to read, I wanted to show him what a good reader I was, this was ridiculous, since I was 15 and an excellent reader at that point, but it seemed important, somehow. I read the first paragraph, began the second and stumbled, there in print were all the giant elephants in the room we had politely agreed for all of our lives to ignore.

“I will treat all people with the love of Christ and recognize they are equal in the eyes of the lord, including those who are different from me, men, women, children, people of all races, religions and nationalities, poor and rich . . . “

There was a time, before my grandfather got ill, that he took my sister and I to a Wendy’s for an after school treat. We were sitting at a booth near the windows, and an elderly black gentleman who was roughly the same age as my grandfather, though noticeably less mobile, walked by. He saw my grandfather sitting at the booth with us and he stopped and leaned a hand on the window and lifted an old wooden cane up with his other hand and tapped on the glass. He put his cane back down and tipped his hat, as if to say, “Hey, old-timer, we both made it, we are both still ticking.” My grandfather began fingering the edge of the table, nervously, he looked at us, watching him for a reaction, and he broke down and saluted his new friend, then under his breath he whispered, “You old black python.” The man on the other side of the window motioned towards my sister and me and mouthed the words, “Congratulations on your beautiful grandchildren.”

I stumbled again, trying to decide without him noticing which passages of the prayer were best to skip for this reading. He popped open an eye and took me in. I realized, suddenly, that he might have memorized this prayer by now and that he might know what I was doing and why. I jumped to the last paragraph and read it quickly then excused myself to the bathroom.

When I returned my grandfather was asleep. I brushed his hair and cleaned up the area around his bed. I read the cards on the flowers and the notes. “Thank you for helping me buy my house.” “Thank you for the money you lent me when my husband was ill.” They went on like that.

A nurse came in to empty the bin at the bottom of his bed. There was a tube that went into his chest to his lungs. A steady stream of blood and mucus ran from his lungs down into the bin. We are not sure how he got sick, or what exactly he suffered from. It appears to have been an unusual lung disease. There is a chance it was something he contracted a half a century before when he was in the war or that had developed over time from years of working with inks and paper fiber in his paper box factory. But, it didn’t matter. He was dying.

As I stood beside him I was aware of the greatest tragedies of my mother's life. Her mother had died when she was younger than me and my grandfather, in his bereavement abandoned his children and took refuge in the woman across the street, my step grandmother.

And yet he died with his entire family and all his friends around him. We each spent some time with him alone, a whole house full of people, then we gathered around his bed and locked arms and held each other and him, in silence. The next morning I went to school and my mom gave him the morphine that the hospice nurse had left for him. He went to sleep. She and her two sisters and her two brothers lifted his body and cleaned it and perfumed it. They dressed him in his best suit then called for an ambulance. It bothered me that I wasn’t allowed to be there when he passed, to see him simple and dead before he was embalmed, but I understand why they sent us to school there are some things that are hard enough to handle without questions.

I met so many people at his funeral. The church was packed. There were people waiting outside. A man walked into his wake, with the newspaper in hand, obituaries circled. I was standing at the entrance to the viewing room, too afraid to go inside. This old man walked up to me and said, “Is this old Billy-boy’s funeral?” I said it was and we introduced ourselves. He said, “I was a buddy of your grandfathers way back in his ball playing days. The best pitcher you ever saw. In fact, I was with him the day he met your grandmother, god rest her soul. We were two young and single bachelors and neither of us had a girlfriend. We got some pennies together and went through the phone book calling women’s names, waiting for a young voice. When it was my turn to call, I got your grandmother and I asked her to meet me on the bridge for a walk on Sunday after Mass. Well, your grandfather, that old scoundrel, got there before me, and I saw the two of them walking off together. She should have been mine.” And he went in the room.

I watched him make the rounds telling his stories about my grandfather, the closest thing to a dad I ever had, the nicest man I knew, and the most intolerant. I was overcome with a desire to have everyone know how much he meant to me and how much our relationship was frought with differing viewpoints. My grandfather never knew, for example, that the wife he stole from his buddy and his children were Natve American, he grew up in an era where the Irish were still treated like second-class citizens and given a mock holiday. My grandfather only ever met one of my friends. He liked her instantly, her name was Kim and we were co-captains of the basketball team. Kim was a very nice person, nice to a fault in high school terms. I remember my grandfather telling me after she had left that a person should hold on to a friend like her. Sage advice, that I unfortunately didn't heed. I would like to say I was bigger than this, but the girls on the team started to call us lesbians, despite the fact that Kim had a boyfriend, and, well, I I tried to distance myself from that perception mostly because I was so afraid it was true.

I saw Kim's mom a while back in the building I worked at for few months in my home town. I had returned home to regroup. My family is all pretty much gone from that place now. I drove up to the Catholic cemetary one day. I didn't have a key to the building with my grandfather's coffin is in. I looked in vain for my grandmother's grave, and my step grandmother's grave and my friends' graves and then, finally, I remembered that there were graves there, tiny graves, that belonged to the three brothers my mother had had that didn't make it past infancy. But I didn't find a one of them. In the car I was listening to a poem by Galway Kinnell:

In the Twentieth Century of my trespass on earth,
having exterminated one billion heathens,
heretics, Jews, Moslems, witches, mystical seekers,
black men, Asians, and Christian brothers,
every one of them for his own good,

a whole continent of red men for living in unnatural community
and at the same time having relations with the land,
one billion species of animals for being sub-human,
and ready to take on the bloodthirsty creatures from the other
planets,
I, Christian man, groan out this testament of my last will.

I give my blood fifty parts polystyrene,
twenty-five parts benzene, twenty-five parts good old gasoline,
to the last bomber pilot aloft, that there shall be one acre
in the dull world where the kissing flower may bloom,
which kisses you so long your bones explode under its lips.

My tongue goes to the Secretary of the Dead
to tell the corpses, "I'm sorry, fellows,
the killing was just one of those things
difficult to pre-visualize-like a cow,
say, getting hit by lightning."

My stomach, which has digested
four hundred treaties giving the Indians
eternal right to their land, I give to the Indians,
I throw in my lungs which have spent four hundred years
sucking in good faith on peace pipes.

My soul I leave to the bee
that he may sting it and die, my brain
to the fly, his back the hysterical green color of slime,
that he may suck on it and die, my flesh to the advertising man,
the anti-prostitute, who loathes human flesh for money.

I assign my crooked backbone
to the dice maker, to chop up into dice,
for casting lots as to who shall see his own blood
on his shirt front and who his brother's,
for the race isn't to the swift but to the crooked.

To the last man surviving on earth
I give my eyelids worn out by fear, to wear
in his long nights of radiation and silence,
so that his eyes can't close, for regret
is like tears seeping through closed eyelids.

I give the emptiness my hand: the pinkie picks no more noses,
slag clings to the black stick of the ring finger,
a bit of flame jets from the tip of the fuck-you finger,
the first finger accuses the heart, which has vanished,
on the thumb stump wisps of smoke ask a ride into the emptiness.

In the Twentieth Century of my nightmare
on earth, I swear on my chromium testicles
to this testament
and last will
of my iron will,
my fear of love, my itch for money, and my
madness.

And I drove home alone, happy my grandfather was equal parts scoundrel, bigot and philathropist, happy that love is as imperfect as we are, happy to be alive in all the complexities of living, and to have known a man, no better or worse than myself, but of a different time and place.

What does a lesbian* bring on the second date?

I am moving in with my girlfriend. It is incredibly soon. We have only been dating for four months. None of our friends - who mostly consist of barely-employed social justice workers, mega-conglomerate greeting card company lackeys, university administrivia and a handful of lingering students - can keep their eyebrows in the correct place when we tell them. They either scowl or go wide-eyed. It doesn't inspire confidence.

My family, shockingly, is happy about it. They met my girlfriend back in December and , more shocking news, they really like her. This has been a weird adjustment for me because it was the first time I felt like they made an effort to like something just because it was important to me. Not that they had to make the effort, The Activist is very likable.

Also, I think they have seen the toll the last few months of my life have had on me:

1. I left a person I was with for seven years and who I have since decided is a crazy psycho, but apparently only towards me. Recently, we tried 'being friends' which ended abruptly 2 hours after it started with her telling me to "get the fuck out of my car and out of my life." The word 'telling' is a nice way of saying that she screamed it so loud the diggery-do boys from the downstairs apartment came out to see what all the commotion was. What provoked her into yelling at me was the incredible sense of angry disdain that washed over her when I told her that I am happy . . . er, happier.

2. I was told I was inappropriate to work with children because of my sexual identity and gender expression (ie because I am a big faggy queer dyke role model) and I am now involved in the tricky and exhausting process of slowly getting more and more powerful people involved in a conversation about sensitivity and awareness that is really pissing off two former co-workers, heck two former friends, who thought I would just go away quietly, apparently, with the due amount of shame and fear an unnatural, immoral abortion like me should have. (I refuse to spend another day of my life internalizing other people's lack of understanding.)

3. My intermediary girlfriend asked me over to her apartment, flirtatiously. When I got there she was packing her stuff. "I am moving to Buffalo," she said, "to give it another go with my ex." When I got up to leave, she seemed shocked, "Well, we can still fool around." I said no thanks and let myself out the back door. They broke up what felt like two weeks after she left town. She called me a while later to say that her ex was extremely jealous of me (me?) and that, "She thinks I am going to pick up and leave Buffalo and move to Kansas just to be with you." Then came the awkward silence part where, I couldn't be sure, but I thought she was hoping I would say, "Oh, yes, pleeeease, come save me." (Fuck that.) I laughed, politely, "Doesn't she know I am dating someone else now."

4. I moved back to Lawrence, to do my old job again, the one I didn't find rewarding, but at least I wasn't actively persecuted. Now I am trying to recover financially and professionally from my woeful and apparently dangerous hormone-induced unprofessionalism.

5. I got an apartment in Lawrence (the only one, BTW, without mouse shit, unfinished drywall, exposed plumbing or missing floorboards) only to move in and find that the furnace wasn't up to code (this was in November, brrr) and that neither aquilla nor westar would connect my services. So, I had no heat, no hot water, no lights, no internet . . . need I say more than no internet?

6. An unnamed person in an unnamed position of power sorta offered me a sexy job and then took it off the table.

7. I was sick for two months. The cause appears to have been mold. I won't say where the mold was, for good reasons, but I was sick a lot between 9 am and 5 pm.

But none of this has really gotten to me since I started dating The Activist. She is just my buddy, my little secret source of acceptance and love. (Along with my circus dog.)

So, we are moving in together. After trolling backpage and craigslist and every other newspaper, student newspaper, etc around we found an amazing house for rent. I made that sound a lot easier than it was. In addition to all the usual hoopla surrounding renting a house, there are few awkward steps in every encounter I have with landlords. There is the moment on the phone when they ask my name and in the nicest, most innocent feminine voice possible I say, "Billy," and they say, "B-I-L-L-I-E," and I say, "No, with a Y." Then there is the moment when we actually meet and their eyes jump from the page with my name on it (with a Y) to my shaved head to my D-sized breasts to the slight bulge in my pants. And then finally there is the moment when I explain that I don't have rental references because I owned a house with my ex-partner, no my domestic ex-partner, but my name was never on the deed.

But, I made a vow to myself recently that I would never again take a place just because it came a long at the right time or because it wasn't awful or because someone I know used to live there. I wanted to be proactive. It paid off.

When we went to look at our new home I nearly giggled and skipped around like the school girl I never was. All hardwood floors - three stories of them, 2,200 square feet of them. All original, 1910s woodwork, unpainted. A courtyard. Primo location. A restaurant-style sink. A porch swing. Perfect. And half the price of the place I am renting now.

This means no more impromptu band practice beneath my feet (and ears) no more shitty neighbors period (with all their other passive-aggressive habits). No more living half the time at her house half the time at mine. No more worrying about keeping the shitty carpet in my current place immaculate. I am moving. Sianara, crappy duplex. Hello, hardwood megaplex.

Oh, wait, did I mention the catch, huhem, I mean the lease. I was following everything just fine until the last page, "House Rules." "Uh-oh," I thought. Rules are really not my forte. The first few rules were fine- no cumbistable material, yaddee yaddee, no drug use, yaddee yaddee. It was the opening sentence to the last paragraph that caught me off guard, "No illegal, vulgar, lewd or immoral activity.”

Uhm.

I sat there for a minute. I contemplated asking my new leasing office for the list of vulgar, lewd and/or immoral activities I should avoid. But, I swallowed that little part of my soul that was shouting out, "I AM TIRED OF WORRYING THAT EVERYTHING I DO IN BED IS GOING TO GET ME BEATEN UP, THROWN OUT, JUMPED, FIRED, HELD BACK, LAUGHED AT, THREATENED, HATED, LIED TO, PANDERED TO, TOKEN-IZED and BLEED DRY again."

And I signed the fucking lease. These are the breaks when you are trying to put a roof over your bed.

*Just as a point of clarification: I don't identify as a lesbian. I identify as genderqueer or, if you prefer, genderfucked. But, the joke seemed like a fitting intro into the story.

Twinged: The 2007 Gay Straight Youth Empowerment Summit

The drive to Kansas City is frustrating. It feels like losing to a farm. But that doesn't make the flash-frozen flats of nappy wheat dotted with old bare-black cotton wood trees any less beautiful. They are the forgotten surprises of loss.

My girlfriend and I had stayed up late, typing.

We drifted out of bed, early, making mandatory doggy concessions: puffs of white breath standing in the back yard. Then I cooed in a haze of hurried encouragement when the new puppy came side-trotting my way.

Then the drive. And silence. The news. A singer had died. Odd election time reparations. The low, blinding Eastern sun and smokestacks with clouds like icicles - frozen in place.

At the summit the breakfast hall was all color. Young people armed in periwinkle, robin's egg, fuscia, tangerine and sunshine mingled beneath UMKCs bending murals by Thomas Hart Benton. One young person sat stitching an ancient wintertime panacea: a rainbow scarf. He sheathed his knitting needle in his large natural hair to shake hands with a new friend then again to take a sip off his purple juice box.

The group, crazy-haired and gender-fucked moved to the next building. The first speaker was my friend Wick, who is 20 years old. When he was in high school his parents found a photograph of him kissing his boyfriend. They threw him out of his home. It was when he was living off the streets of his small hometown in Missouri at 16 with only a part-time job for money and a high school as a guarantee of shelter that he decided to brave death threats and form a Gay-Straight Alliance at his school.

"We love you," shouted a girl in a snap-pea green sweater and dark glasses. She is the leader of his fan club.

When I first met Wick he told me, laughing, that when he is walking home at night men stop their cars and call to him. They think he is a woman. More accurately, they think he is a female prostitute. And those of us who listened and know the danger in passing for the other sex shifted a little in our shoes.

"What do you do?" I finally asked.
"I keep walking." He said.

He has weighed the choices. It is safer to be a female prostitute and ignore a John than to be a gender-bending fag that has had the audacity to turn on a straight man.

After Wick's speech we broke into groups. Our mission: design the ideal high school and draw an icon of what we bring to the school to make it a better place. In my group one youth brought ears, to listen to others with, one brought arms, to hold people in, one brought a "really big fucking mouth," to speak up for the people who couldn't speak for themselves. Our school had a lot of windows and an atrium in the middle. The center-piece of the atrium was a fountain in the shape of a peace sign with a giant disco ball. We added a library organized by the LGBTqIQA (and XYZ) decimal system. We added a free expression art and music room, a theatre, a truth in history department, a free-trade coffee stand, a public bath house and a 24-hour safe house. We decided to let "old people" attend our school as well.

Our group presented first, then we sat. And group after group got up and showed their schools all resplendent in glorious peace signs, rainbows, theatre and art departments, outdoor class rooms and more peace signs. This is what the youth at the 2007 Gay Straight Youth Empowerment Summit wanted: peace, acceptance, truth and art in their educations. ("And sex," says The Activist, raising her eyebrows.)

If only we could give it to them.

Crazies in Law

-{ Just a snippet of a phone call between The Activist and her mother }-

“MOM. You got hit by your OWN car! Daddy’s insurance is going to go up if you file a claim for that. MY insurance is going to go up. Are you in the bedroom. Is there going to be an insurance claim in the bedroom. I KNOW he hit you mom, but you two are taking this to a new level. You need to take a warm bath. If you still feel icky about it tomorrow go to the doctor. We have health insurance now. Oh Hell no. For someone who doesn’t drive and doesn’t use public transportation you can’t have a doctor across town. Why you want an old doctor who is about to die. Find a nice young doctor to take care of you. You like Jewish doctors? What does that mean? Jewish and Chinese doctors? Why? Jewish doctors really care about you? What does that mean? You like to call your doctor lieutenant? Why? Because she’s tough? Was she in the military? Oh, so you think she is lesbian. What do you mean you are okay with that? Lieutenant at the free clinic. Wow. That is kind of hot. What is her name? So, she wears her military uniform while she is giving you an exam? And you say she is a black lesbian. Wow. I found my doctor. Is she cute? Mom, is she cute? I am asking you a question. She’s tough. What’s a boogabear? She wears her hair short, short as in how – is it a fade or a tiny weenie afro? A precision cut? What does that mean? Mmhmm. Okay. Did you go to the estate sale? Uhm, that’s what your husband is for. Mmhmm. That van has so many problems. I am sick of hearing about that damn van, running people over breaking down . . . I don’t want to buy a mattress over ebay. Look, ebay is not the solution to all of your problems okay. Every time I ask you about something your answer is ebay. I don’t know what my rating is. What did you get? Your happy hooker book. Okay, mom. I keep meaning to like buy A Fiddler on the Roof, seven dollars. Your shopping at the wrong places for DVDs. Actually, best buy has some good deals. I buy used DVDs. I don’t order them online. Huh. Right. The whole DVD thing is scarring me. Do you have what? Beauty and the Beast on DVD. You got the hook-up? For Beauty and the Beast? Who is this Kathy person in Chicago and why is she sending you Christmas flowers? Who is this lady? Why is she sending you all these gifts? SHE is a LESBIAN. Who is this group? Who are these people? How do you not see the difference between that and your son having online friends? He is thirteen he can make friends too. You can’t see your friends either. I don’t think you can discount his online friendships. He has their pictures and addresses too. That scares you? How do you go from that to Target has furniture for %15 off? Let’s go back to the other thing. Her daughter’s name is Izzy or the cat’s name is Izzy? Oh, the cat’s name is Zoe. You don’t even have a picture of me why do you have a picture of someone else’s daughter? I am going to send them a picture of me. They don’t know your black? You don’t want them to know that your black? It’s against the law? How can that be against the law. Mom, do you think that it matters to them that you are black? What do you mean that is like telling your sexual orientation? What website are you chatting at that you can’t tell your race or your sexual orientation? Mom, they won’t care that you are black. You’re in an online clique. (Whispered: I’m terrified.) MMM. Or your race or your sexual orientation. Okay, well, uhm, I’ll . . . Oh they said derogatory things about black people . . . what did they say? Ugly black men. Hmm. You’re weeding them out. That’s a smart rule. Never reply to a post if you don’t know what you are talking about. Yeah, I know, India has a lot of call centers. I’m not saying that you’re wrong mom. There is a lot of, you know, out sourcing right now. No mom. Go buy you a queen-sized mattress. I don’t know what to tell you but to go buy a cheapo mattress from Nebraska. And buy me a platform bed frame. Yeah, I’d like a pillow top mattress too. Well, if you see it really cheap let me know, because I could sell mine really fast since it’s the first week of school. I tried to buy a used one, they all just smelled really funny. I was like I want one that smells good. Or they live in a studio and cook a lot of curry. I don’t want a curry mattress. I don’t want people’s cheap ugly mattresses. I want my own mattress. Day beds are only twin sized. Trust me I know or I would have a day bed already. Oh, its cherry. I can’t FIT on a twin sized-bed. Have daddy take you to the estate sale. Have daddy take you. Daddy will have the money I wont. Just go. Just go. Just go. I gotta go. Because I am naked. Mom, she has seen me naked before. No my titties are covered up. Mom, you have known that my titties are pierced for a while. No, you are not going to pull them out. You want your butt pierced? Oh your belly button. You’re an inny? Yeah, most people ARE innies, mom. You have boy’s hips? What does that mean? Ew. You should have that checked out. Have you been checked for osteoporosis. Mom, you don’t have to be white and short to have osteoporosis. Get it checked out. You have been loosing your butt. So have I. What’s up with that? How do you get a bigger butt? I’m just like you, I’m a fighter, a rebel and I intend to stay that way. I’m a bitch, a good bitch."

Diggery-Don't

I have lived with a lot of different folks over the years. For a while when I was in college in South Carolina my roommates and I referred to ourselves as the four D's: The Debutant, The Dwarf, The Dirty Whore and The Dyke (that's me). We were all self-described D's except for The Debutant, who preferred "high society" or "classy" or the worst, "normal."

My second roommate ever was named Laureli and she had a 1.0 GPA, wore her ROTC fatigues 24/7 and once attacked me in her sleep while I was crawling into the upper bunk of our bed. Her boyfriend was an engineering nerd and had programmed every electronic device in the room to be operated by my graphing calculator. He did this without telling me.

I have lived with all kinds of other queer folk, drug users, exhibitionists, radicals, conservatives, lovers, partners, men, women and everything in between. But no one has ever pissed me off quite like my new downstairs neighbors.

My current troubles started one morning when I was home from work. I heard a few thuds and the crash of symbols. A tinny beat started up and bam-ta-tin-tinned it's way up to my coffee mug. Then came the electronic whom-whom-whomp of an amped bass guitar. I had been living in the apartment for about two weeks and this was the first time I had heard my downstairs neighbors jam. I was thankful that they had been mindful enough to practice during the day while I was at work because, to be blunt, the music is really bad. It is worse than modern jazz.

Do you know the scene in the first Starwars trilogy where Hans, Luke and Obi-one go down into the nightclub and some funny-looking aliens are playing weird music? Yeah, it is just like that.

I was content to let bygones be bygones, I mean I don’t want to begrudge anyone their right to artistic expression. But, eventually, they stopped limiting themselves to playing while I was at work. It is not unusual now for me to come home, make dinner, sit down to eat and then loose my appetite when I hear the drummer warm up with a few high-hats.

I HATE THIS MUSIC.

The two of them know and play ONE song together. It is a horrible song. It should be stricken from the face of the earth. Additionally, one of them owns a ukulele. Yes, a ukulele. When they have finished their little impromptu set, which always sounds just as bad as the set before, one of them picks up the damn ukulele and plays the exact same song, every time. ERRR.

After one week of being serenaded by the two of them every other evening at increasingly later hours of the night I finally resorted to something I had never imagined myself doing: pounding on the floor. After I stomped my feet hard in a ridiculous frustration dance akin to the rapid feet flurries my mom did to her Jane Fonda video when I was a kid the music fuddered, faded and paused for about 2 beats. Then without listening for a second thumping the drummer did a little stick-stick-stick to re-establish the beat and on again they fucking went. I thudded again but there was no more pausing.

Two Wednesday's ago at 11:30 PM I finally called the landlord. I had been home sick all day and had to work the next morning. They were throwing a party and playing shitty music. After talking to the landlord they turned it down, but not off.

The last straw: last Saturday I was lounging in bed in the early afternoon when I heard a low ddddddrrrrr sound. I thought to myself, "Ah, someone is running a power tool somewhere." And I envisioned my neighborhood alive with weekend home repair projects. It made me think of families and how I might have my have house and family some day.

But the ddddrrrrrr-ddddddrrrrr-dddddddddddddrrrrr-dr-dr-dr kept on. Then it got louder and more confident.

I thought to myself, "Man, that sounds like a diggery-do." Then a few notes later, "Fuck, that IS a diggery-do." Finally, outloud, "Those fuckers bought a goddamn, motherfucking diggery-do.”

While I laid in bed and listened to the diggery-do I was overcome with the urge to cut a hole in the floor of my apartment and take a shit down into their apartment. I fantasized my poop-bomb landing on their bong, or smashing into a high-hat and dripping down the side of the amp. I thought of how fun it would be to shit on their stuff every time they left the house, then close the little hole back up so that no one would really know where the shit had come from.

This maybe the grossest thing I have ever fantasized doing to someone. But, I figure, they have claimed their right to shit music so, I am claiming my right to shit fantasies.

Our Second Snow

My one arm flung off the bed. She kissed it gently, doe-eyed, ears back, almost apologetic asking me gently to wake up. I cocked one eye loaded with blur and shot her a look of dazed compassion.

This morning we awoke to a warm blanket of snow. After rolling over to find proof in the form of flake-laden branches just inches from my new bedroom window. Can I tell you I have always been overcome by the contrast of dark branches and white snow? I jettisoned years of reason and felt myself laying in my childhood bed in the north country where it is winter half the year long, fall for three glorious weeks and mud and mosquitoes the rest of the time. I made tunnels in that snow that sometimes came up to my chest. I n my sleepy pubescent joy I wrapped my arms around my puppy’s neck and stepped into my shoes while wiping sleep from my eyes and cooing “outside, outside, oh Pippa, wait until you see what is outside.”

On the other side of my front door the world was brighter and quieter. I watched her confused frame navigate feet sinking into snow, snow, snow. Running, kicking, biting snow. I stood and watched her until it was clear it didn’t matter that I was there, then I headed back upstairs to make a warm drink.

From the window I watched her pounce and claw and circle and skid. Everything is new to her. Everything is exciting. I longed suddenly for a family and a child, then three children.

Life is fleeting. It is a fleeting collection of more fleeting moments. It is a miracle to share them. There is no greater meaning than this: to stand at the back window with your lover, caretaker, partner watching the creatures you care for experience the world as if it was all brand new, as if it had always been here.

I dreamed up a massive pile of fluffy waffles with hot drizzling fruit and powdered sugar. My family and I could be eating big Belgium waffles while sipping hot cocoa and planning our sledding exploits and smiling, laughing and touching before throwing on thick layers to protect us from the cold, wet nature of fun.

But no, I stood at the window alone. I turned the coffee off and made plans for the day as I watched my puppy play. Buy a shovel. Shovel driveway. Go to gym. Lift weights. Go to store. Buy blender. Make a protein fruit shake. Take shower. Work. Return movies. Feed dog. Wash car. Scrub tub. Read book. Text message girlfriend. Fall asleep watching new movie rentals. Wake up, repeat.

my little BIG TIME

Hey y'll,

My little blog has been discovered thanks to a real nice gal in Lawrence who recomended it to the folks who run Lawrence.com.

I am now publishing there under the blog title "my punk heart."

Check it out.

The Luckiest Fag on the Face of the Earth

I rented the Electric Edwardians from Liberty Hall last night. It is fabulous. The DVD is a series of moving images recorded by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon of normal folks in Edwardian England going about their Edwardian lives.

I was so excited that I sent a message off to The Activist (my girlfriend).

Me: You have got to see this movie.
Her: Sounds cool.
Me: Edwardians are amazing.
Her: Yes, they have amazing corsetry.
Me: I can imagine based on the petticoats.
Her: Yeah, I have been thinking of getting back into corsetry. Just need to find the time.

It was then that I realized that I might possibly be the luckiest fag on the face of the earth. I mean, really, who is into Edwardian Corsetry? It is so great it makes my toes tingle. I love her.

Checking Out

On my bi-weekly excursion to the local discount grocery wharehouse I overheard the following exchange while sacking my own food:

Her: So then she said to him, "YOU can cook?!"
Him: Wow.
Her: Yeah, like, hello. Squirrel, he can cook squirrel. That didn't matter, just that he can cook.

I couldn't help but look up from my bagging. They were a new couple both in their late forties or early fifties. They handn't worked out the little couple things like who pays for the groceries, who bags, who pushes the cart, who carries the sacks to the car. They were both wearing blue jeans and they smiled at each other a whole lot.

I realized they were at that place in a young romance when ridiculous stories about your lover's family are still fun because, well, it isn't YOUR family, yet. It is incredibly liberating, actually, to see your squirrel-cooking uncle through the stranger in your bedroom's smile.

As I left the store behind them they argued over the sack and finally settled on carrying it together, each grabbing a side, the way two people will walk with their child and swing him forwards off his feet.

Funny Little Whore

Sonja (1928) by Christian Schad

There are statistics. They tell us things about . . . the numbers of casualties in war, the amount of time the average person spends standing in front of the average painting in the average museum, the number of slaves that fit on a triangular trade ship. Statistics. They provide some type of comfort. But they tell us nothing about the way any of these things feel or what they mean. We invent that part or intuit it because we are rarely told.

I am not an expert in the subject area I am about to embark upon. It is weird that I am not an expert because I have been hearing about it my entire life. I don't feel as though I know many of the facts. It would be comfortable to frame my suppositions in numbers and rely on mathmatics as if 'math' was the same thing as 'truth,' but I am going to do something much more radical than that. I am going to tell a story about the world through art and direct observation.

Before I get started I need to provide some context to the reader. I am a United States citizen writing in the year 2007. I am 27 years of age. I am queer.

Recently my lover and I went to a show at the Metropolitain Museum of Art entitled "Glitter and Doom: German Portraits From the 1920s." The show features t ten Weimar German artists doing portrait work between the world wars. I had studied the artist that recieved the bulk of the focus at the show, Otto Dix, in school. Without digging out my notebooks for specifics, I remember feeling indifferent towards his work and, if forced to choose, I guess I would say I had felt more positively than negatively about it.

I had a professor in art school who tried to make the argument once that Diane Arbus' photographs were "funny." I found it infuriating that he read her work as humorous. My teacher said she was, "allowing us to laugh at all the freaks of nature." I felt very differently. I think Diane Arbus purposely sought out the biggest freaks she could find, the most stereotypically marginalized individuals to show us their humanity: the old, overweight drag queen with a bored little dog nestled in the crook of her elbow, the porn star overwhelmed by the graphic prints in her ultra-modern apartment, the beautiful woman in a bikini top with the marks from her outdoor chair pressed into the flesh of her back.

At any rate, I think my teacher was much more accurately describing the work of Otto Dix. His work is all bored contempt, disgust, bigotry and hatred. The paintings are described as veristic, but really they go beyond verism into chariacature. And they are mean chariacatures. As we walked from room to room I became more and more disgusted with Otto Dix. Maxine Gerber was shown as an old snobbish ghost, black jazz musician were painted with pure black pigment and their features were distorted until they looked subhuman.

Finally my girlfriend, The Activist, and I stopped in front of a recently rediscovered Dix painting, Woman with a Mink (1920).


Woman with Mink (1920) by Otto Dix

I grunted. The Activist grunted back. She said, "I am really sick of this Dix shit." I said, "Me too. His work lacks all compassion."

Just then I heard a squeal over my shoulder, "OOOOhhh, I LIKE that one." A thirty-something, well-to-do former sorrority sister came breezing by us, smelling like *rich people and dripping in well weighted, yet understated fabrics (supple leather, natural hemp, linen, etc). "Just look at the funny little whore. Hahaha. This makes me laugh."

In shock I reached for my notebook.

The picture shows, cruelly, a woman who has been ravaged by poverty, hunger, brutality and unsafe sex. It is mean. It is accusatory. It is savage. I was struck by how incredibly dumb this woman was and how it was quite likely that she offended people all day long, taxi drivers, door men, checkout clerks. It was hard to stand there and have a person with money, power and good looks laugh cooly at an image of a person who had nothing but a vagina to get her through the world.

I have a number of friends who have been involved in the sex industry to one degree or another. Most of them are women. Most of them did sex work because they were poor. None of them were professional prostitutes. But for all of them, it seems like it started as the most casual of things. One friend was dating a drug dealer, she would give him head in exchange for coke. One friend would blow her ex for rent and grocery money. To me these relationships don't seem any different than marriage with the exception that the bartering is much more open and honest and each person has the option of looking elsewhere.

I could tell, though, that the woman with the fabric didn't know too many "whores." She probably thinks all the sex she had with frat boys in college was concesual. She probably doesn't think that her sexual prowess or lack there of was a bartering point in her marrying rich. She may even feel a little trampy, now, when she has sex without the express purpose of having children. And that little kinkiness, sex for sex sake, really turns her into a wild woman. She sometimes wears red silk underwear and waits for her husband at the door in a little black robe. When he arives she pushes the leather briefcase from his hand and puts her arms inside of his full-length double-breasted winter coat. He smells the $300 perfume he bought her. He looks at her $10,000 face, bought from the best plastics man on Manhatten. He touches her $400 haircut. She grabs him by his strong, round back muscles bought by a $1000 gym membership and 400 hours of hard labor. He loosens his $250 necktie. She scratches him with her $150 manicure and presses her $8000 breasts against his manly pink designer $200 shirt. They move to the bedroom, she is wild with excitement. Her eyes flash. He unzips his gold-plated fly and unleashes his priceless cock. She get on all fours on their $200 sheets. She is moaning and clutching the Egyptian sateen. He pushes into her, "You like that, whore? You want me to give it to you?" She squeezes her eyes shut in anticipation, "Oh, yes, daddy, give it to me hard."

Okay, maybe there is some truth in the numbers.

We were tired when we left the museum. It was New Years Eve. We had walked there 25 blocks from our hotel because no trains were running uptown on the East side of Manhatten. We walked to the nearest downtown train and stuffed ourselves, literally into the car with all the folks looking for a wild time.

As we sat and listened to some opinionated prick go on about all the different express/local train combinations that might be better or faster than tthe one we were on I started to think about Weimar Germany. I wonder if Hitler, too, had been disgusted by Otto Dix. I had heard he was a self-proclaimed artist and that he wanted to paint the world with beautiful people. I wondered if it might have been German Verism that threw him over the edge.

Later, in our hotel room The Activist and I had a bitch-slap fight. It was the kind of fight you have with your siblings when you are home alone. I think she won, as evidenced by the fact that I went for the face first and by the large bruise I had for a week in the place on my left leg where she managed to land 4 or 5 blows in a row because I was giggling too hard to pdefend myself. Afterwards we snuggled.

I would never call her a whore. Not even in play. I just like her too much. It doesn't turn me on to degrade her. Don't get me wrong, I will tie her up and paddle her, or tickle her with feathers on a waterbed or do whatever she asks me to do, but I don't want to hurt her. I don't want to hurt anyone.

Anyway, there was an artist in the show that I liked a lot. His name is Christian Schad. His paintings were of quiet, pained and ghostly people. They were feminist in their emotional quality. They showed women who were liberated not so much through will as necessity. Afterall, we all simply need freedom. We need justice. They aren't ideals, they simply are.

* My sister bought me an expensive face cream for the holidays. When she went to cash out it was quite a bit more expensive than she realized, but she felt pressured into buying it. I actually love it a lot. It smells divine, or as I have taken to saying, "It smells like rich people."

The world according to me

The Activist had a brilliant idea this morning. She suggested that I start adding words from my personal lexicon to Wikipedia and attributing the sayings to myself. So this morning I officially coined my first term. Check it out.

Poor Little Rich Boy

Just before Christmas The Activist and I paused outside of a bookstore located on The Plaza in Kansas City. As we stood taking in the swelling crowds rushing to purchase over-priced presents in the ridiculously faux-ritzy Plaza at stores like Armani Exchange and FAO Schwartz where men stand pinching fabric between their fingers and frowning and women delight over ridiculously useless cutting-edge gadgets I took notice of one man in particular. He was wearing an all black outfit topped with glints of metal and leather. He was pacing the area in front of the bookstore talking on a fancy cellular phone.

I guessed that the sum total of things he was wearing or carrying on his person was somewhere in the range of $2000-$3000 and my disdain for this young, pompus rich man deepened the more I watched him. I say he was pompus because he had the air of owning the sidewalk. The way he paced unaware of the flow of traffic, expecting others to adjust, and the way he talked, loudly, not caring who overheard.

"You are staring." Chimed The Activist from the side of her mouth.
"I know." I say, "It is a new thing. I stare now."

As he paced he shifted his supple leather bag to his other shoulder and threw his full-length wool coat over the bag. He placed his sleek little phone back to his ear and said, "I mean I have never even MET my neice. She is three. They haven't come to Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years in the past two years. So, I sit there and talk to no one and no one talks to me."

Boohoo, poor little rich boy.

"So I got them all little things. Even the maid. But I am not going to visit this year."

Imagine the sad tear running down my face.

"I mean they told me not to bring my boyfriend. I haven't even told them he is Asian. Can you imagine my family eating with two gays, one of them Asian?"

He set his bag down.

"Could you be a little less obvious?" asked The Activist.

Fifteen feet away on the same curb a man played a horn. He was spouting out Christmas joy. I had the distinct impression he was there more for the playing than the tips. He was dressed up in a nice outfit, though it paled next to the poor little gay rich boy's.

The rich boy caught a private cab. We went in the book store. When we came back out the musician placed his horn in a richly lined box. The street, reclaimed by the bored, wealthy, heteronormative capitalists kept on being as faux-snooty as ever.

Oh, Joanna

I have recently gotten really into Joanna Newsom. She performs the most literate music I have ever heard:

from Emily

Let us go! Though we know it's a hopeless endeavor
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
There is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning

Come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
Peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
Hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up at their brow

And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
The butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
Come on home, now! All my bones are dolorous with vines

Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
The way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light
Squint skyward and listen -
Loving him, we move within his borders:
Just asterisms in the stars' set order

We could stand for a century
Starin'
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don't keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don't be
Told; take this
Eat this

Told, the meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

Notice the references to The Love Song of J ALfred Prufrock (Let us go then you and I . . . ), The Lotus Eaters (Sailing and poppies) and Leda and the Swan (The father, all things with wings). There are some just brilliant things going on in this song. Navigating a fatalist world being the most obvious and heartwrenching.

Joanna was in Lawrence a few weeks ago. Her concert was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I told My Little Activist yesterday that listening to her music I am struck with how magical it must have been to visit a medieval court and hear epic lyrical music for the first time, or in ancient Greece to hear the Illiad performed. She makes suspends my disbelief in magic. I can't understand how her songs can be without magic, they are that brilliant, enchanted.

If you want to hear one of the most gifted stroy-tellers I have ever encountered check out Joanna Newsom. Her latest album is called Y's. It is unbelievably good.

Senior Minus A

I like my burgeoning mustache. That is all I have to say. I think it suits me.

Newson Nuisance

I just saw Joanna Newsom live at The Granada in Lawrence, KS. She is the second act I have seen there in the past month, the first being Jolie Holland. Both acts are very well trained musicians and singers performing a range of music. Both times I was frustrated beyond belief when the folks at the bar literally ruined a song or a set by talking through the music. I wish the owners of The Granada would be a bit more sensitive to the type of act they were bringing in and would close the bar inside the concert hall (there is another one 20 feet away outside the actual listening area) when non-rock acts are performing. I also wish people wouldn't go to concerts if they plan on fucking talking through the whole thing.

Anyhow, Joanna Newsom is fucking unreal. I felt like I was transported back to a medieval court. It made me want to believe in magic and witches.

Idiotgrams

Recently my girlfriend, The Activist, and I were sitting in one of my favorite eateries, The Blue Koi in Kansas City. Actually, both of us hail it as our favorite restaurant in Kansas City. This, however, was the first time we went there together to eat.

I should tell you that I have a thing for food. I have always enjoyed cooking. KC, my ex, turned me on to a lot of food that I had never had before when we started living together. For that I am eternally grateful.

The reason I love The Blue Koi so much is that the food is amazing. It is overwhelmingly vegetarian. It is mostly healthy. The menu is incredibly adaptable. There is a panoply of affordable appetizers. When I go with friends we will frequently order only appetizers and share everything. They also have unbelievable noodle dishes. These are a little awkward to share but they are wonderful. There are some dinner dishes that are a bit more pricy, but delicious. Then there is the most amazing pho and other broth-based soups I have ever had.

Every dish has something special and delightful about it. Appetizers come with 'Amazing Sauce'. My favorite pho comes with floating tofu tied into bows. Even the bubble tea has some unexpected and wonderful twists such as my favorite, red bean bubble tea.

The Activist and I practically jogged from the parking lot to the front door in excitement. And, as we sat and tittered and cooed and debated about which things to get and how many of them like doubloon-laden wizards on the Hogwarts Express we became awkwardly aware of the conversation at the next table.

Before I continue I should also tell you that in addition to having amazing food The Blue Koi also has an amazing atmosphere. It is friendly, stylish without being posh and it has the air of fun food. The wait staff always have some little punk outfits or funky hairdos. They sometimes skip to the tables and they are genuine when they compliment your food choice and your sweater. The place oozes smartness, queerness and fluidity. In short, it is downright sexy.

I guess that may be why the conversation we overheard was so troubling. Next to us sat two young adults, probably between twenty-five and thirty years of age. They were medical students, I am embarrassed to say, at the major public university I work for. As our excited humming and clucking faded their beguiled banter picked up. The two of them were lamenting the struggle they had as fundamentalist Christian medical students in finding professors and fellow students in medical school who shared their creationist beliefs.

A hush fell over the two of us. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed gal went on about how disappointed she was in medical school on the whole. According to her everyone was unduly preoccupied with evolutionism. I looked at The Activist who, without lifting her eyes from her menu, sensed my gaze and let out a tell-tale ideogram, "oohm."

It is important that I stop and explain the exact sound of this ideogram. I am not a linguist, so please excuse my layman terminology. It was short sound. The noise comes from the deep part of the throat and never rises past the base of the tongue. It chatters the teeth slightly which adds to the feeling of making it and which one, I think, senses when they hear it, but this vibration doesn't produce an audible sound. The noise has a dropping feeling. When it is done in reaction to something you have said it releases a lever in your abdomen that holds your intestines in place thereby plunging you into regret. The ending comes fast, shockingly fast. The muscular stopping action at the end of the sound squeezes the noise, chokes it really. When this sound is made in your company about someone else, it makes you feel as though you are the cohort of the oppressed and then almost by definition you too feel oppressed.

The Activist and I have been discussing ideograms, or more specifically, "mmm's." The Activist has some theories about ideograms. She has thrown around the idea of making a video about various sounds that black Americans make and the meaning of those sounds. Sitting at the table it became clear to me why this particular subset of ideograms exist: there is some really obvious shit that you can't say out loud.

My response to her "oohm," was, "I see what you are saying, now."

I proposed that instead of continuing to eavesdrop, moan and get frustrated until our food arrived that we start our own, proactive, counter-idiocy conversation. So, I asked my cute little activist to describe the harness she was planning on buying. She said, "Oh, I will show it to you later, it takes to long to describe it." I said. "No, I would really like it if you described it to me, in detail."

By this time the fundamentalists had started talking about how often they go to church. The girl went 4 or 5 times a week, but she had a young child to care for. The guy, also blonde with blue eyes went everyday. He was younger than her and by their conversation appeared to be a new med student. She offered him this sage advise:

"I learned this: the church never kicks anyone out. When you need to study, I suggest you go do it at church. They will keep it up as late as you need. And, that way you can pray and avoid your drunken roommates. I had a real drunkard as a roommate when I lived in the dorms. She would drink all the time. She was a real sinner. But, I kept at her. I used to play this one particular song, the lyrics go, "God will always love you." She went away to Europe. Some bad stuff happened over there. When she came back she started to straighten her affairs out. She told me, "I just kept thinking of that song and it made me feel good." We can do great things, but seriously, study at church."

Our food came. We ate. We discussed a friend of ours, a super nice guy. Specifically, I wondered what he would have thought of my counter-idiocy policy. His name is Wick. In light of our accidental eating company I coined the phrase: What would Wick do? I am thinking of getting a bracelet.

I told this to Wick a week or so later. He asked in earnest, "So, am I like the gay Jesus?" I said, "No, unless . . . Do you want to be the gay Jesus?" We made crude jokes like, "nail me to the bed post," and "second cumming."

The Activist asked me if I was, "An atheist with a capital A." I guess I am. I mean, I feel strongly about my atheism. For reasons that are too long and involved to go into right here I also feel that religion is an important cultural phenomenon that is rarely looked at seriously or criticized openly.

Later we decided to play a little game. We each wrote a personal ad. It had to be above all else completely and totally honest. We were supposed to address what we are like, what we want in a partner, what turns us on and what turns us off. We had one hour to do this and then post our ads on Craig's list.

The ads are very different from what I think we normally would have posted. The responces to my ad have been really short. But Sam, he really liked my post. He was moved deeply and said he should like to take the time to write for hours about his feelings. He ended his multi-page note by saying, "your ad has defiantly peaked my interest."

The Activist has gotten similarly grammatically-challenged responses and propositions, mostly via MySpace.com:

"hWat' sup ,i'm Jonhny. I just asw your profil ean dthouhgt yuo seemed coo.k Ify ou wa ntto eb rfiends or chat, I would lik ehatt. b"

"Pretty baby,
How u doin?Am terry by name. I´m a cool and gentle breathtaking young man.I live in spain and i´m a soccer player. was just surfing through the net when i came across something that really captivated and drew back my attention, and dat happens 2 be your pix.U look so charming and captivating, as d going says that BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, you are such a pretty, attractive and charming lady and i must confess that i really want to know u more and better and it will be my graet and pleasant joy if by next time i get back 2 my page and fing your reply lying sweet and charm in my inbox. You can as well add me 2 ur yahoo or hotmail chating list so we can get 2 chat online also... [ censored ] @yahoo.co.uk,,, and [ censored ] @hotmail.com. So till then pretty, take very gud care of urself and av a pleasant day."

Perhaps The Activist summed up the feeling one gets from these type of notes best, "What is it about me, my images, my writing that attracts folks that can't write a sentence?"

I lamented to a friend once, "I feel like I have come so far along this road of figuring out who I am and what is important to me that I just don't find many people who get me anymore. Muchless people I want to date." I used to be a lot more lax in my feelings about grammar. But, in light of recent messages I have come to be a bit more of a grammar snob. It isn't that I don't like the sentiment of Sam's note, or even the notes The Activist recieved, I just have a hard time believing any of them actually understood either of us.

The drive home

I am a subconscious driver.

I drive by your car. It has a distictive spot in my mind's parking lot. I feel as though I have had an out of body experience. Who's car am I driving?

I have to tell myself to go down a level when I see it. Don't park in eyesight.

It is usually ridiculously late when I realize that I have taken the wrong highway to get home and that I am headed to our place, I mean your place, instead of my place. And the frozen dinners in the trunk or only for me.

There are a lot of things that used to be ours. It's not so much that I miss them. I just miss sharing them.

I feel guilty when I go to the park and I don't take you. I wake up sometimes and it's 1:20 and I worry that I missed your call, again. I get up to pace the streets looking for you, worrying you will think I don't care for your safety.

Sometimes I pace the streets anyway. No place to go home to except a freezer box of cardboard boxes.

After I left you I sat in my sister's apartment and accidentally knocked a glass of water over. I jumped up. I was terror stricken. "I will fix it." I rushed to the kitchen, ran back paper towels streaming behind me. I sopped it up, not caring for my own driness, kneeling in water and glass. When I stood up I realized it was something in me that had broken.

My sister sensed it too. She told me everything would be all right. It was only water.

I am human, a creature of habit. When I locked myself out of my car. I thought you might help. I walked to your house. As I reached the steps I saw that you sat with your new, better friends. Through the new wood blinds I saw the warm glow of the living room. The big plush furniture. The dogs, our dogs, your dogs sleeping by all of you all's feet. I turned on my heel, popped my collar, hunched my shoulders forwards and went to an acquaintance's house and slept on the porch.

When I woke I counted jumbo jets. Tracing the same route by number as the flight just before them. They would follow the fading exhaust of a copy of themselves.

I realized at some point that you had done incalcuable damage to me. I dont think it was intentional, fully. It is like smoking. I can't really blame the cigarette. It didn't mean to kill me. I had a choice. Once.

But as I sat and cried in my new lover's car yesterday I wished I had never met you. There are so many things to be unlearned. So many habits to break. It hurts the people around me as they watch me struggle with this addiction. I hurt the people I love with secret associations. I stash pieces of you deep in my psyche. There is this thing in that compartment. This road that leads to that place. This spot that is only for you.

Damn you for your piss and vinegar love.

Damn me for my puppy dog consciousness.

What You Talking 'Bout, Willus

People say great things. They do it all the time. Now, I don't know if I ellicit this behavior or if I just happen to be more attuned to it on account of the little notebook I carry everywhere, but I seem to get more than my fair share of wonderful quotes.

Just this morning (it is only 11:30) I have encountered the following:

"The university could use more ass appeal."
When discussing an upcoming movie starring Jessica Simpson as a graduate of our fine school a coworker noted that it was likely to have more draw than About Schmidt which also referenced our school. My coworker went on to say we could use more "ass appeal" as a play on the saying 'mass appeal.'

"Celebrate you infuencers."
Another coworker said this while we talked about the problem with always trying to be original or best in class. He told me that his porfessor in college, the Aaron Siskind, told his students that they should celebrate their influencers and not be afraid to get ideas from other people.

"We squander the opportunity to appeal to our audience's higher self."
This same coworked lamented a certain PR attitude that dictates a focus on damage control and plajoritive plattitudes because they ultimately say nothing, especially to the people we most desperately want to make meaningful connections with.

"The ONLY way to spin things is to embrace them."
Along those same lines, I was shocked when these words came out of my mouth. I was making the argument that in the world of GradeMyProfessor.com and YouTube.com the only way to stay above the fray is to embrace the process, learn from it and make institutional adjustments. We cannot keep 'bad' news from getting out. Instead we should focus on fixing problems, promoting good news and honestly confronting bad news.

"Listening to Peach Plum Pear while sucking back cherry laughing gas is one of the strangest experiences I have ever had."
The Activist said that. I asked her to clarify. She responded, "I could feel myself getting high and there was this inspirational poster directly in front of me: Courage doesnt always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says 'I'll try again tomorrow.' It took all of my self control to not bust out laughing. 'I am blue and unwell.' (Lyrics from the song Peach Plum Pear.) I thought of you and dancing with Pip."

Anyhow, if you would like to peruse some even better overheard quotes check out this site: OverheardoOncCampus.com