Stand Up 2 Live

Henry David Thoreau, an author from the 19th century, once said, "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

This week, I don't have anything to say because this week, I've been busy standing up...or in dirtier and more accurate words, getting laid. Sometimes I forget that I need to take time away from my computer pad in order to be the kind of writer that I want to be; the kind of writer that stands up to live so that I can be inspiring and intentive when I do sit down to write. So, instead of sitting here banging out a blog entry, I'm going to turn off my computer...and you know...bang something else.

Valentine's Gay

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Simulated Household

**After a week of demanding deadlines and disastrous dates, it's already Sunday and inspiration is gone and nowhere to be found...so, this week I'm going to post something that had been previously undisclosed in the depths of my computer archives...the beginning to a piece I wrote for a course on memoir...BUT, the idea of succumbing to any sort of laziness makes my skin crawl, so I promise to post something new and original mid-week.**


Running as fast as my untied shoelaces would take me, I raced the four blocks that separated me from a dinner time curfew. With the pounding echo of the concrete beneath my tiny feet and the opposing wind fighting to slow me down, my dreams of getting home on time were quickly evaporating with every step. As I sprinted closer to my street, I could hear the laughter of rowdy boys coming from the clearing behind the house at the end of the block. It was the kind of house that you only heard about in storybooks, with broken shutters hanging on by a single rusty nail and the exterior walls taking on the image of a kaleidoscope made out of chipped and weather altered paint. I imagined the boys chasing one another with plastic guns, taking on an unscripted ownership of the made-up role each one of them had decided to inhabit that day. I imagined them screaming the kind of obscene words that would get any young kid into trouble. I imagined the complete inverse of what I was running from.

Behind me I left a world of preapproved make-believe, were the parental endorsements of perfection, domesticity, and etiquette were uplifted to a higher standard than individual thought. I left a hung-up heap of princess dresses that held the power to turn any well-behaved little girl into a jealous and devious woman of intention. I left a put away pile of Barbie dolls that were never allowed to wear the same outfit for more than a moment and yet forced to act out the exact same script day after day. I left the credence that imagination was encouraged, but only if it followed the unwritten, pre-ascribed rules of pretend.

The crunching sound that the dead grass of my front lawn and my pristine tennis shoes made when they finally reached a place of conversation brought me back to reality as the front door to my house came into direct view. As I rushed into the house, I got the same sensation I always got when I came home; the sensation that I could run forever and never hit a back wall; like the inverse of a shoebox diorama, where the front image of our house was what was projected outwards and the rest of our house was what hung in that perfect, exposed, and unchangeable moment. I often think, as an adult looking back, that my distaste for make-believe stemmed from the reality that I lived make-believe. I lived in a fortress of outer walls that sheltered our simulated household from the rest of the neighborhood, providing us the cover of paragon under the disguise of shutters and siding.

Our interior walls serviced only as a way to divide our vast space into functionality, allowing every room to find its autonomous purpose. Our kitchen had perfectly matched dishes and utensils and a spotless and unmarked refrigerator that never held pictures or spelling tests. Our living room had a couch that was always perfectly fluffed; a bookshelf that held novels no one ever read; a television that operated purely as a visual means of diversion; and framed pictures that connected to nothing but the monetary subtraction from a bank account. We each had our individual rooms, but our rooms could have been placed beyond the structure of our walls and they would have functioned just the same; as a socially acceptable way to avoid, deflect, and/or hide from one another.

Dinner was ready when I threw my backpack into the hallway and sat down at the table. My mother was ceremoniously washing pots in the sink, her eyes completely glazed over, clearly retreated into her own mental conversation. My father was sitting at a side desk, Bibles and Lexicons spread out one on top of another and a highlighter in hand, clearly trying to puzzle together the plagiarized and unoriginal thoughts he had written on his piece of paper. My little brother was already seated at the dining room table, his legs and fingertips bouncing about, clearly ready to get the ritual over with so that he could go back to his Transformers and Power Rangers.

As my mother brought food over to the table, my father stood behind her chair, in the same manner that an adult stands behind a child while walking through a buffet line; pretending to be helpful, but, in actuality, just assuring that they don’t fuck anything up. This habitual gesture never stemmed from a place of support or chivalry, but rather from the repressed realization that this was the best he could offer her, as if pushing her chair in every night made up for the fact that he didn’t know how to love her.

It was at our dining room table that I learned how to fantasize; tuning everything out, I removed all of the internal protocols of acceptable daydreams for a little girl my age and for that ½ hour, I forced myself to believe that anything was possible. I fantasized about being a boy; in my limited perspective, being a boy meant dreaming without limitation; it meant thinking without boundaries. Boys got to dream about changing the scenery, while girls had to dream about changing who they were; girls had to become someone else, whereas boys got to go somewhere else. I fantasized about being a missionary in Africa; in my idealistic perspective, going to Africa meant being free of structure and obligation, and getting the opportunity to be something without having to be something for someone else.

Every evening, after dishes had been cleared and nightly routines started in their processes, we ceased to exist as a family. We retreated to our own corners of the house, but being under the same roof didn’t make us any closer than if we had retreated to our own corners of the world. We lived out separated portraits of an ideal family, but that’s all that we were; alienated pictures that held no connection to one another. We were the perfect family of pretend.

Kissing Party

This week a random email found its way into my inbox, inviting me to take a quiz about kissing. Needing to further my procrastination for an impending deadline, I took it. After 20+ questions, it told me that I was a "Krafty Kisser", suggesting that my kissing style was "playful and prankish" and that I was the kind of person who was naturally more frisky and maybe even a little bit mischievous.

I heart kissing. There are very few things in life that I enjoy more than kissing. I love how versatile it is; how it can be sweet, or vengeful, or seductive, or playful, or REALLY passionate, or all of those things wrapped up in one big, sloppy kiss. I love how you can kiss someone for hours upon hours, yet it always feels like you just started. I love that anticipatory moment, when her hand is on your neck and you notice her lips starting to part, ever so slightly.

I have only ever kissed two boys; once on a date when I was sixteen and it was horrible, and once in a drunken night in Canada with a boy whose name I don't even know. I wasn't going to be the kind of girl that wasted her time kissing/dating boys that she didn't like; and I never meet a boy that I liked, so I didn't date boys. I thought it meant that I was a mature and ambitious individual; turns out I was just a dyke. (I mean, I am mature and ambitious, but that's not why I don't like kissing boys.) I came out, to myself and to a handful of people, before I started kissing and/or dating girls; when I started having gay thoughts, I knew what they meant and I decided not to hide from them. I thought that I could either embrace it and love it and walk through that door, or I could bang my head against that door for ten years and then be forced to embrace it later in life; I choose the former. But it wasn't until my first girl kiss that I knew, for certain, that I'd never turn back.

I was at an event for an art gallery that a close friend of mine was running. This gorgeous girl, Anna, my said friend's childhood neighbor, came into the event talking on her cell phone and looking quite frantic. She sat down by the front door and I gestured to see if she wanted a drink. She nodded and I handed her a glass of wine. After that initial silent connection, our only form of interaction for most of the night was through playful winks and distanced glances. Though our paths never directly crossed in that small space, our eyes certainly did, almost constantly. Many hours later Anna grabbed my hand and whispered, "Do you want to see if we can get in to see that band?" (The art gallery was a few blocks down from a warehouse venue and in those old buildings you can hear anything that is in close radius.) I squeezed her hand and smiled and she led the way. When we couldn't get in, we walked back to the gallery, stopping short of the front door. We sat on the tiny stoop and talked for at least an hour, until I put my hand behind her neck and leaned in to kiss her. "I just wanted to see..." I said and she put her hand on my knee...we kept kissing and then never did kissed again.

Once I was romancing this very smart, and kind of intimidating, woman. I had invited her over to my apartment for our first "in house" date and had planned this really romantic evening. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I cut myself with the corkscrew; I forgot about food that was in the oven; my loud downstairs neighbor was playing hard-rock music (not exactly the ideal music for a romantic evening). Later in the evening, we were kissing on the couch and I thought, "Whoa, it's getting hot in here, maybe this night is salvageable...and then I thought...wait, it's getting really hot in here..." I had lit these candles that were sitting on my window seal a few minutes earlier and when I opened my eyes I saw my curtains completely up in flames. I put the fire out and took her out for ice cream. (Oh, and then I changed the batteries to my fire alarm!)

On the only night that I've ever worn a tie, I was at a birthday party and I was on the balcony with a pretty lady, who just happened to be the only other lesbian at this party. We were talking and things were going great and bodies were gravitating towards each other and then out of the blue, she grabbed me by the tie to pull me in to kiss her. (Hot, right?!) I was completely taken off guard; one, she was this shy, sweet girl and I never expected her to make such a bold move, and two, this shy, sweet girl was a lot stronger than I had anticipated. I lost my balance and my feet slipped out from underneath me. I hit my head against the railing and then consequently the concrete. After we realized that I wasn't badly hurt, she took me back to her place and she got me some Advil and the biggest drink I'd ever seen, and I spent the night with my head in her lap while we watched episodes of the X-Files. We kissed a week later.

Moral of the story: Kissing, no matter how tragic the story might be, is always worth it. Cheers to girl kisses!

P.S. For a little kissing extra credit, here's a video of, in my opinion, the best girl-on-girl kissing scene from a movie...

Blackboxing

Blackboxing: The lesbian equivalent of blackballing.
(because lesbians don't deal with balls, they deal with boxes...get it?)

Historically, blackballing refers to a voting process concerning the exclusion of prospective members to a secretive gentleman's club. Under the cover of darkness, if an existing member of the secretive club placed a white ball in the "ballot box" it meant that they voted in favor of a prospective applicant joining and if they placed a black ball in the "ballot box" it meant that they voted against the applicant; thus grew the term blackballing, which means "to vote against". Blackballing was also used to vote out established members who had been accused of rule violations or other conduct considered detrimental to the integrity of the organization. In the modern colloquial use of the word, it refers to the intentional and deliberative action of excluding or rejecting someone. (The term is most often used in reference to the workplace.)

Let's face it. The lesbians...not the community most known for a welcoming immigration policy and, therefore, we should not be exempt from adding my made-up term to our canon of vocabulary. If we change the words "cover of darkness" to "cover of drunkenness" and change "ballot box" to "acute text message", the lezzies totally have blackboxing in the bag...or box...or...sorry. Every fresh piece of lesbian literature/media/entertainment is analyzed TO DEATH and every celesbian is put through a ringer that resembles more of a hard limits checklist than a welcoming introduction package. And more than the admission into the lesbian community, is the actuality that everyone is scrutinizing and discussing your every move, all the time.

Do you think that lesbians are so hard on one another because we, subconsciously, feel like we have to make up for the fact that we can't get an actual hard-on? ... I was just kidding when I translated that thought onto my keyboard, but I wonder if we, as a community, really do feel inadequate? As if we have something to prove because we don't have something dangling between our legs? I, personally, choose to think that it's because we put a lot of hard work into accepting/embracing/loving our sexuality, and it's a really intimate and vulnerable part of who we are as human beings, and we don't want someone exploiting that or taking advantage of it. As real and honest as that might be, it does, in turn, sometimes (I'm a glass half-full kind of girl), translate into the image of a cold-hearted bitch with a penis complex.

Well... I will admit that I have been a little blackboxed in the Portland lesbian community lately, and it's not what you're thinking; I didn't sleep with my ex-girlfriends ex-girlfriend or fuck a group of incestuous lesbian friends...I got blackboxed because I'm a happy lesbian. I have found that lesbians find my happiness not only unattractive and unappealing, they find it kind of offensive, as if I'm not taking my lesbianism seriously enough. I guess when you spend your days social-working and eating lentils and tofu and you spend your nights tied to tree (and not in the fun way), there isn't much time to value happiness. I'm joking, but at the same time, finding a happy lesbian is like finding a kid that likes eating mushy vegetables, you have to really look for them. I am somebody that likes getting up in the morning, I am somebody that likes the goofy moments when no one's trying to save the world, I like my life, I like who I am, and I like being happy, and I'm not going to apologize for it. If that means that I get a little blackboxed, then that is okay; and going home to yourself, for a while, isn't so bad if you like who you're going home to.

Sidenote: I'm an old-soul, so I attract older women and older women attract me; maybe this is more problematic than I give it credit, maybe I just need a younger pussy. Or maybe I need to move.

P.S. In honor of this here February, the month of love, I've changed up the colors in order to boost my Valentine's Day karma.