LEZ give 'em something to talk about...

Stickel, Out!

2011-03-13T17:00:00.007-04:00

It might be more than obvious to the six people who have (graciously) stuck with me over the last year and a half, but this blog, which was once an integral part of my life, is no longer a central point in my existence. There are many reasons as to why my literary absence prevailed over my literary diligence, but I assure you that it is (was) not without intention.

"Start at the beginning." says the March Hare to Alice as she stumbles into the Mad Hatter's unbirthday party...and who is to argue with such genius.

Growing up, my life was one of emotional abandonment. It was a rarity that I found company in my corner. People didn't go out of their way to believe in me.* In reality, I was passively viewed as inanimate to the people who cared about me most. (There are some who believe this to be a mere representation of my perspective, that it is not a genuine fact of validity, but those people are self-preservingly mistaken; I stood alone when I stood up for myself.) While a childhood riddled with emotional abandonment could have lead to many things; for me, it lead to early-onset individuality. Almost wondrously, and certainly through no intention of my own, I learned how to emotionally and externally believe in myself. And I did so through self-created channels in which I found refuge and fortitude.

When I created "LEZ give 'em something to talk about..." nearly four years ago, it was for a lot of reasons. I wanted to feel a connection to something outside of myself, I believed that I had something important to offer, and I, egocentrically, needed to create something that provided me with a sense of routine and grounding. Yet, beyond all the catalystic intentions that brought me to this blog, there was something more essential. After an excruciatingly dark time in my life, I found refuge in myself, and as that refuge turned into fortitude, that fortitude brought about the realization that I was (am) a homosexual. It was through this blog that my sapphic realization became something I could believe in, something that I could affirmatively stand behind, or stand for.

The ritual of this blog's intellectual intercourse became a stronghold for me, but I'm no longer that same person, and thus the return to this specific domain became fraudulent and imitation-like. (Two things I am not willing to be.)

This last week, Stephanie Stickel ceased to exist. There are many reasons as to why I choose to remove the patriarchal surname that I have possessed for the past twenty-six years and replace it was another; none of which are extraordinary, nor particularly enlightened. Suffice it to say, a new chapter has begun and thus a new blog. You can find me at "Homocidal Tendencies" from now on.**

Good Riddance Stephanie Stickel. Welcome Stephanie Shollenburg.

*I do not wish to invalidate the few: a youth pastor, a creative writing teacher, a dance instructor. The strength those few exerted onto me was introspectively priceless.
**This blog will still exist on the interwebs, for I am egotistically proud of what has been written here.

Causal Impotence

2011-01-11T13:45:00.011-05:00

"It is known that Whistler [the famous British painter] when asked how long it took him to paint one of his "nocturnes" answered: "All of my life." With the same rigor he could have said that all of the centuries that preceded the moment when he painted were necessary. From that correct application of the law of causality it follows that the slightest event presupposes the inconceivable universe and, conversely, that the universe needs even the slightest of events." -Jorge Luis Borges

There is a premise in the theory of ethics that asserts that there are some actions that an individual takes that have no extended relevance in the world; that there are some things you do that have no impact. In other words, what you do doesn't matter. Philosophers refer to this theory as 'causal impotence'; situations in which the cause of something produces nothing except sterility. For instance, it has been argued that utility-based vegetarianism, while nice and all, is essentially ineffectual. Peter Singer, the leading philosopher on animal liberation, once wrote, "All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals." Many people have attached this ideal to the reasoning and rhetoric of vegetarianism, arguing that the compassion-motivated ideology of vegetarianism is essential to ceasing animal suffering. However, many people have also attacked this ideal by arguing that the sole abstinence of eating meat is impotent to a solution. (There is a solid argument to be made that the industry surrounding animal products isn't nearly sensitive enough to be swayed solely by an individual's choice to renounce meat, but does that mean that the individual's choice produces absolutely no results in the world?) This is, in essence, the debate around causal impotence. Can you perform (motivated) actions without any form of consequence?

How you answer the above question depends, I think, upon your personal worldview. Do you view the world vertically or horizontally? Do you think of the world like a time-line, where events are related, yet not reliant, upon one another? (The horizontal worldview isn't completely without a reliance factor though; it can (does) apply the analogy of dominoes, but I don't find that analogy particularly productive, mostly because it exudes feelings of predetermination that I find vapid. Once a domino falls, the entire set of dominoes is destined to fall as well. Where's the free will in that?) -OR- do you think of the world as a giant game of Jenga, where events are entirely reliant upon the previous events and entirely effect the subsequent ones? In a Jenga world-view, you are certainly free to make whatever move you choose, but that move directly effects any future moves. Everything builds upon everything else and there isn't anything that doesn't have some sort of power.

There are people that go through life certain that they are causally impotent; that what they do doesn't have an impact on the people around them. People that make choices and are then shocked when future events begin presenting themselves. (I'm this way about food: I eat cookies and am shocked when my pants no longer fit.)

I have recently come to the epiphany that my father is this way about our once-was relationship. He's the one that choose not to stand up for me as a kid. He's the one that kicked me out because I stood up for myself and voiced my perspective. He's the one that choose not to respect what I had to say. And when he came waltzing back into my life as if nothing had happened, he acted shocked and hurt that I wasn't eternally grateful for a second chance?! He's the one that decided that I wasn't good enough and there is nothing impotent about that.

I do not find the argument for causal impotence compelling. I believe that for every action there is an equal and necessary reaction. In the case of utility-based vegetarianism, I take the perspective that, if nothing else, the extension of compassion does good for our world. Abstaining from animal products might not have an immediate response in the food industry, but I refuse to believe that valuing compassion or striving to reduce suffering in the world (whatever form of suffering that might be) doesn't make some kind of difference. Actions aren't impotent. What you do matters. When people reject who you are or what you stand for, it's not unreasonable to move on with your life and its not unreasonable to refuse to cater to their shock when the residual events begin presenting themselves.

There's a place for forgiveness, of course, but at what point do I get to forgive and then forget without everyone jumping down my throat?

Birthday Apologies

2010-05-26T10:35:00.000-04:00

Today is my 25th birthday...

I know that my absence might make you believe otherwise, but this blog is important to me. I'll tell you all about the last few months in the next few weeks, but I thought that first I'd give you a quick recap and tell you about my goals for my 25th year of life.

A quick recap:
1. I changed my career path from journalism to political philosophy. I'm planning on going to law school after I'm done and I'm very excited.
2. I have absolutely no love life and I am, actually, perfectly content with that for the time being. (Though I do wish I was having more sex!)
3. I have a new kick-ass apartment blocks from Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Did I mention that it's kick-ass?
4. These last few months have provided me with the opportunity to believe in myself in ways I never have before. I'm stoked to tell you all about it.

My goals:
1. Be fearless. I'm no chicken, but sometimes I allow my fearful nature to be my catalyst. I don't want to make choices only because its the safer choice any longer.
2. BLOG! This place is important to me and my decision to take a break from it was authentic; however, I want to start making it a priority again.
3. Increase my global awareness. I never realized how self-centered my life was until I moved to New York City. Not that I'm selfish, just that I've never really looked beyond what I see with my own two eyes.
4. Be happy. I've never been this happy my whole life and that is something I'd like to hold onto.

I do apologize for my absence and I'm excited to get back to blogging again! Thanks for sticking with me.

Peace and Love,
Steph

Music Meme

2010-02-04T23:38:00.000-05:00

Alphafemme posted this meme. It was fun!

Figure it out:

Pick Your Favorite Artist: The Police

Are you male or female: Demolition Man
Describe yourself: Bombs Away
How do you feel about yourself: Does Everyone Stare
Describe where you currently live: One World
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Walking on the Moon
Your favorite form of transportation: Behind My Camel
Your best friend is: Roxanne
What’s the weather like: Shadows in the Rain
Favorite time of day: Darkness
If your life was a tv show, what would it be called: Secret Journey
What is life to you: a Message In A Bottle
What is the best advice you have to give: When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around OR Rehumanize Yourself (I couldn't decide)
If you could change your name, what would it be: Sally
Your favorite food is: Peanuts
Thought for the Day: Don't Stand So Close To Me
How I would like to die: Wrapped Around Your Finger
My soul’s present condition: The Bed's Too Big Without You
My motto: Be My Girl

Now YOU take YOUR favorite musician … GO!

Back In Business

2010-01-30T11:13:00.001-05:00

It is well known that many of the great writers of our past (and present) were also great drinkers. Ernest Hemingway had the mojito, John Mortimer had champagne, and F. Scott Fitzgerald had gin (and lots of it). Mark Twain once said, "sometimes too much to drink is barely enough" and Tennessee Williams hardly ever sat down to write without first consuming a martini and a bottle of red wine. Kingsley Amis notoriously claimed that a glass of scotch was the perfect artistic icebreaker and A.J. Liebling, an American journalist from the New Yorker, once fled a burning restaurant but not without snagging a bottle of brandy first. Suffice it to say that most writers can hold down a glass or two...

And I think that the motive is quite simple...it is the job, or the responsibility, of a writer to make the mere arrangement of words mean something that can exist beyond the two dimensional boundaries of a binding. Thus, writers live in their pain. Writers savor the sorrow. Writers reside and settle and exist in a space that feeds off of the severe, and often times diligent, emotions that contribute to great writing. And sometimes all of that emotion can get to be too much. Sometimes you can delve too deep and feel like survival is forever beyond the bounds of possibility...

But what if you, as a writer, also want to be happy? What if you also want to be productive beyond the margin of words?...

I had an incredibly shitty holiday and the writer in me dwelt in those emotions in the hopes that they would manifest themselves into some kind of creative genius. And the writer in me used an excellent bottle of bourbon to alleviate the anxiety around those emotions. And perhaps I created genius, who knows, but what I do know is that I wasn't particularly proud of the kind of person I was during that time. Maybe great writers don't make that distinction. Maybe great writers are great because they don't separate themselves from their work and if their work is something to be proud of, then it doesn't matter that they aren't something to be proud of...

Well, I am proud of the person that I have become; I am proud of the things that I strive for everyday and the things that I stand up for everyday and if that means that I am not the next Ernest Hemingway or Tennessee Williams, I think that I am finally okay with that...

Λυπάμαι

2009-12-21T19:44:00.000-05:00

pronounced Li-pam-e...
...it means "I am sorry" in Greek...

I am truly sorry for the deserted appearance this blog has taken on over the last few weeks.

Watch this video and then I'll explain...
(Start watching at 0:45 to 1:52)

I feel a little bit like that...if writing was like eating pussy.

It's not that I haven't had the time to write - no matter how busy you are you can make the time for things that are important to you. And it's not that I don't have anything to write about - I just moved to the most stressful/exciting city in the country and I changed my career path for the eighteen hundredth time; I have plenty of angst to work out. And it's not that I'm questioning my sexuality - I strive to challenge myself everyday, so questions don't intimidate me and it was just a straight crush, just like every straight girl has a gay crush. It's that ALL I do is write; which, don't get me wrong, is fantastic, (I'm already learning so much) but sometimes when I come home, the last thing I want to do is worry about sentence structure.

I had my last final today and my next semester doesn't start for another 5 weeks. I was offered a month long internship at a fairly recognized magazine that would occupy my time during those weeks and I decided not to take it. It was the first time in my life where I made a decision that didn't service my resume. (Funny how a city so motivated by appearances and achievements taught me the value in relaxation.) I'm going to chill in the city during my break from school and I'm going to figure out how I can better balance my life when the next semester approaches.

I hope that everyone has a fantastic holiday season and a safe New Years!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Peace,
Stephanie

A Sexual Viewpoint

2009-11-19T00:26:00.000-05:00

There are three ways to look at sexuality...

1.) You can look at sexuality as if it were a box -

This is the mainstream, cultural normative way to view sexuality. You fit into the straight box or the gay box (or if you're really liberal, you can add the bi box) and you're exclusively characterized by the boundary-driven terminology prescribed to the box in which you exist. It's generally accepted among the queer community (and the majority of its allies or any left-leaning person) that this ideology is outdated and unproductive. It creates limitations on the acceptable behavior for a person, but the whole point of sexual advocacy is to tear down those limitations. If your natural inclinations don't fit perfectly into the box that best suits your preference, then you're obligated to reshape or dial back those sexual inclinations. It is becoming more and more accepted that sexuality is complicated and messy and that, by adhering to the precepts of a box, you display an ideology that is both unproductive and harmful.

2.) You can look at sexuality as if it were a scale or a continuum -

This ideal most resembles the ever popular "Kinsey Scale," which claims that sexuality, much like the categorization of nature in general, does not exist in the binary, but rather in a continuum. This viewpoint allows for an incredible increase in sexual fluidity, as well as establishes a credibility for those that exist in the in between. The diminishing quality of this ideal, however, is that it still places homosexuality in an amount comparative to heterosexuality. My discontent with this viewpoint is that it still holds onto the desire to equalize sexuality; as someone's sexual behavior pushes the scale to full-on homosexuality, it equalizes itself by removing the correlative amount of heterosexuality...and while that might be the experience for some, it still places sexuality inside an equation.

3.) You can look at sexuality as if it were a bar graph -

You can also look at sexuality as if it were a bar graph. In this ideal, homosexuality and heterosexuality are no longer reliant on one another, but rather function as separate entities. Each sexual behavior exists on its own scope, so that your homosexual behavior doesn't diminish or lessen your heterosexuality, or vice-versa. The thing I find the most productive about this viewpoint is that it embraces the pure ideal of sexual fluidity, which I think is the key to sexual acceptance. If you allow your own sexual thought process to fluctuate from the cultural normative thought process, then you can step into the sexuality that best fits your inclinations...and if you can embrace a sexual viewpoint that allows for fluidity without forfeiting your current sexual identity, then you've blasted open the door to sexual acceptance.

I am really really REALLY gay (sexually and politically) and there is this boy. I can't tell you if he's cute, because frankly I don't really know, but I am very much enticed by him. He has a radiant smile and a fantastic laugh. He's insanely witty and incredibly smart. He has this sweet, but not saccharine-y, way of looking at the world that I find unparalleled. Occasionally, I think about what it would be like to be in a relationship with him and sometimes those thoughts are fairly pleasant. (Now, whenever I think about a relationship with this boy, I synonymously think about how 1-there would have to be room for Sapphic activities outside the relationship, 2-he would have to find someone else to give him a blow job cause I'm not putting a cock in my mouth, 3-I would probably still desire to identify as a lesbian, though it wouldn't be a lesbian relationship, and so-on-and-so-on...so it's highly unlikely that these thoughts will ever actualize themselves.) I guess what I'm trying to say is that my current heterosexual thoughts don't intimidate me and they don't make me less of a homosexual. Sexuality isn't a math equation and one plus one doesn't have to equal two.

Never Lonely

2009-10-21T13:07:00.000-04:00

I am an independent person; I always have been. I learned how to tie my shoes in the back of the closet while my mother did chores in the kitchen. I learned how to do my own laundry when I was left home alone one day. I choose what college(S) I would attend without advice from anyone. I've been to a countless number of movies by myself, ate at a countless number of restaurants by myself. I've never been someone who felt scared or vulnerable if I didn't have someone to talk to, and the fear of ending up without a partner isn't so strong as to allow me to settle for anything but that "moves mountains" kind of love. I like walking alone. I like reading alone. I like being alone. This isn't to say that I don't play nice with others, I very much enjoy the company of people; however, I rarely feel the relentless need for it.

I have lived in New York City for three months...and I have never been alone. (It's not a surprising fact, as New York City has 8+ million people jammed into 469 square miles, and the place I currently call home has 60+ people jammed into 1900 square feet.) Even when I strive to be alone, I feel like I am endlessly tethered to other human beings. When I walk home from work, I'm thinking about what stranger is walking behind me. When I go to the cafe, I'm thinking about the people that just walked in and want my table or I'm thinking about the employee at the counter and if I need to buy something more. When I take a shower, I'm thinking about how many other people are sitting outside that door waiting to brush their teeth or to shower themselves; even in the times when I'm technically the only person in the room, I'm still not truly alone.

I have noticed that my writing (for this blog, or for school, or for my own personal pursuits) has been a real struggle lately. At first I thought that it was solely because my life was in upheaval, and it made sense to me that my writing would reflect that state of upheaval; however, I've come to realize that it has a lot more to do with my recent incapability to be lonely. I need to have moments were I am completely alone to be completely myself.

On November 1st I move into a kick-ass apartment, where I will have my own room and I will finally be able to be completely alone. New York City has taught me a ceaseless number of lessons already, but beyond all those lessons, I'm still me! and the me that I know (and love) needs to have moments of solidarity. While I have a great desire to learn and grow here, I have an even greater desire to not forget about, or sacrifice, the woman that I've worked so hard to become. I really like that I am independent and I can't wait til I get to accommodate that independent part of myself. Hopefully, this blog will get back to its regularly scheduled programming - sorry for its sporadic, if not absent, presence as of late!

But Love

2009-10-04T20:00:00.000-04:00

Occasionally, my father emails me. When these emails find their way into my inbox, they always look the same; the subject line says something like "how are you?" or "how's the job" and then there is nothing in the actual email. I rarely respond because I'm fairly certain that these emails are only constructed because people are asking about me and he doesn't have anything to say, and that doesn't boast so well for his picture perfect image.

Recently, I've received a lot of chastisement over the blatant lack of communication that I have with my father and since he's the one that initiates the emails, the communication controversy is apparently my fault, but I'm not about to participate in small talk with a man that I don't know just because it's what everyone else thinks I should be doing or because it's the thing that will aid in my father's ability to appear perfect. Does he actually or honestly want to be a part of my life? Blank emails aren't really an indication of genuine concern...blank emails are an indication that he checked me off his daily to-do list.

I am not going to be someone's inconvenience and that's what his emails feel like; a means to control the inconvenience of not appearing perfect.

I grew up in a "But Love" environment, meaning that the only time I ever heard the phrase 'I Love You' is if it was preceded by the word 'but.' I would get myself into trouble, receive a lecture/punishment, and then my parents would ritualistically declare: "but we still love you." But Love is the only context that I had for love, so for most of my life I understood love only as something that was explicitly tied to guilt.

While everyone in my father's life might believe that I'm wrong in refusing to respond to his subject line correspondence, I'm not replying because I'm done feeling guilty. My father has made it clear that he doesn't approve of my "lifestyle choice" or most of the other choices that I've made in my life, so the only thing that he has left to offer me his But Love... but I am NOT a child! I'm not going to feel guilty that the kind of love I've chosen to participate in (the lesbian kind) inconveniences his life. I'm not going to feel guilty that I dropped out of school at the exact moment that my mother chose to drop out of their marriage. I'm not going to feel guilty that I moved to the other side of the country without waving goodbye. The choices that I've made were, and are, mine and I've taken responsibility for them. If he only wants to offer me his But Love, he can keep it, because I am going to feel guilty no longer.

The City

2009-09-28T11:34:00.000-04:00

There have been few times in my life were I have struggled with words in the way that I have over the last few weeks. Every time that I sit down to write something genuine, it becomes an insincere collection of misplaced thoughts...probably because my life currently feels like an insincere collection of misplaced thoughts.

In my High School English class, I learned that if someone has already said what you would like say, and they say it better, it's best that you just allow them to say it for you. So, allow me to share with you these beautiful words from Sara Bareilles...I could not say it better.

What do you call cheese that's not yours?

2009-09-20T09:44:00.000-04:00

NA-CHO CHEESE!

What do you call a person that puts poison in a person's cornflakes?
A cereal killer.

Why don't African animals play games?
There are too many cheetas.

Why did the house go to the doctor?
It had window pains.

What is round and really violent?
A vicious circle.

If you drop a yellow hat in the red sea, what does it become?
Wet.

Two cannibals are eating a clown.
One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

'Deja Moo': The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that:
You can't have your kayak and heat it too.

A Short Rant

2009-09-14T20:20:00.000-04:00

**Allow me this short rant...I promise that a full and fulfilling post is on its way!**

I live in a hostel.

I live in a hostel in the heart of the ghetto in Brooklyn, NY.

I live in a hostel in the heart of the ghetto in Brooklyn, NY with people I generally can. not. stand.

While living in a hostel isn't the ideal situation, I didn't move to New York City because I wanted to be comfortable, I moved here because I wanted to challenge myself to be better/greater; so, for the time being, I live in a hostel. While there are times when it is stressful and crowded, it's mostly a lot of fun...But there are certainly moments that are infuriating.

Like the other day, I was reading in the "common room" and a girl was casually making a joke about how, since she cut off all her hair, she's always getting hit on by other girls on the subway. I looked up from my book, slightly, offering the rebuttal that it's not so bad to get hit on by girls, when someone eavesdropping on the conversation said, and I quote, "Well, it's not okay if it's not your sexuality."

WHAT?! Are you fucking kidding me? No one stands up in contempt when I get hit on by boys, so why is it acceptable to condemn the inverse? Do people really believe that because my sexuality is the unconventional sexuality that my flirtations should somehow be trepid and/or apprehensive? Now, I am all for being mindful and aware of the situations that you're in, but that does not mean that we, as a sexual minority, should have to cater to ignorance!

This viewpoint, that we, as homosexuals, are expected to extend an indulgence and resignation to those that disagree (what does that even mean? disagree?) with our homosexuality is utter bullshit. I am done sitting around and passively smiling at those that continue to offer ignorance and hatred and contempt to something that is so purely a part of who I am. I am not going to hide behind the rhetoric that it is acceptable to concede to any part of inequality. We deserve all the freedoms that straight people have, and that includes the freedom to flirt with whoever the fuck we want to.

(Yeah, New York has had a confrontational and assertive influence on me...and I quite like it.)

A Random Inspiration

2009-09-05T09:38:00.001-04:00

***I've been working on a post entitled, "Oh...F*CK This!"; however, I recently ran into a bit of unexpected inspiration, so instead of rattling on about my oppugning views on New York City's population, I'd rather share my random moment with you. I'll post my fucking piece later on this week.***

I recently got a job at a sandwich shop in Manhattan; it is fantastically fun and perfectly fits into my overly-ambitious school schedule...but by far, the best part of my job is that it resides on the corner of 15th street and 8th avenue, which is right in the middle of the fabulousity that is Chelsea. And because of its location, the clientele is...well...fabulous.

I also started school this week; the culmination of months and months of preparation, anticipation, and anxiety actualized itself in a matter of moments, in a sequence of classes that were completely un-magical. I’m not sure what I was expecting, fireworks perhaps, but this week left me feeling a bit discontented. And when Friday rolled around, and as the discontent turned to anguish, I felt like nothing could reverse my mood. I begrudgingly went to work, praying that it would go as fast as humanly possible so that I could go home, drink a little, and quickly fall asleep.

Well, who comes into the shop, but the stand-up comedian, Shawn Hollenbach. I was not nearly as witty as I wish had been, but after our interaction I felt excited, I felt inspired, and I remembered why I choose to sell all my shit and move across the country to a place where I know no one. Now, as far as I know, Shawn doesn't possess magical powers, so while he is very funny and charming and engaging and sweet, the inspiration and drive that was resuscitated through our conversation didn't occur because Shawn waved his magical fairy wand...it occurred because I allowed his energy, his story to inspire me.

Random inspirations are glorious and oh-so-relieving, but I don't want to be someone who relies on those random inspirations to get through everyday. I would rather look at inspiration as something that provokes me to jump from place to place, rather than something that drags me up from the place I can't manage to escape. For me, as the magic of the city begins to fade, I want to make it my job to seek that magic out, instead of sitting around complaining about its absence. If I want to be all that I can be in this city, then it's my responsibility to be that person, even on the bad days.

Little Bits

2009-08-23T15:40:00.000-04:00

Linus Pauling, a chemist and noble prize winner from the mid-20th century, once said, "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."

So here's a little bit about a few things...

I laugh a little bit whenever a tourist falls on the subway, it makes me feel like I'm a real New Yorker. Why is it that everything that makes me feel like a real New Yorker has to include something bitchy?

I fell in love...with this new blog, Alphafemme. She makes me want to be more honest, more open, more vulnerable; so here is something a little bit honest and open and vulnerable...sometimes I want to fail, just so my parents don't have anything to boast about to their friends.

Why do we say congratulations when we find out that someone we know gets engaged? Isn't that a little bit like saying, "Whoa. You found someone to look at you every morning for the rest of your life. Way to go!" Is finding someone to love us an accomplishment? Seriously, is it?

I recently met this boy...I don't think I want to kiss him, but I've thought a little bit about it. He's very nice.

If you haven't seen the movie Adam yet, a seemingly stereotypical love story that is anything but stereotypical, you should really see it. It's heartbreaking and empowering and funny, and I might have cried...a little bit.

The New York City Department of Health lists more than 20,000 restaurants on their "Restaurant Inspection Information" web site. You'd think that it wouldn't be so fucking hard to find a job. I'm having a little bit of trouble; though, in all fairness, I'm not really trying that hard.

I joined facebook. I'm a little bit scared that it will drain me of my quirky, nerdy, naive charm; be on the lookout for my next post, "How I was raped by facebook."

Health (we don't) Care

2009-08-14T12:39:00.001-04:00

Maggie Williams, Hilary Clinton’s chief of staff, once said, “Any time you start down the road of messing with people’s money, they have to kill you,”...well that, or they have to threaten to kill grandma.

It's hard to escape the fact that (American) politics is an incredibly ridiculous process, but lately it feels like the debate over health care has exceeded the limits of absurdity and has well entered the realm of perverse deceit and disregard. There's a lot at stake when it comes to health care reform, so it seems obvious, if not completely understandable, that the conversation has become...colorful, but the thing that scares me about this particular debate is that it seems to be as equally jittery as it is hostile. The amount of indignant confusion that is permeating the health care debate has created a dyad of aggression and extreme anxiety, which has resulted in the materialization of contempt; and that has forced this debate to become less and less about health care and more and more about rhetoric.

The further we get into the health care debate, the more heartsick I become. I have faith in humanity and I believe that no matter how we feel or what has happened, we care about one another...but is it becoming increasingly obvious that we don't? Seriously, is anyone even bothering to listen anymore?

Honestly, I'm on the fence about this health care bill...I assuredly think we need reform, things can't just stay the way they are, but, for one, I don't completely understand Obama's plan (and it's not because I'm dense or for lack of trying) and two, what I do understand seems short-sighted, if not naive...but there is one point of contention that is especially infuriating for me; the argument that health care reform is unethical because conservatives don't want to pay for the abortions that they don't believe in.

I think that it's so infuriating for me, because it feels vaguely familiar.

***(Let me first say this: The opposition to health care reform, that has stemmed because of the issue of abortion, argues that this bill will increase abortions. Do people realize or understand that the number one reason that women choose abortion rather than adoption is because of medical bills? So...it seems to reason that if women had the help and support that they needed to pay their medical bills, to see a doctor, to gain emotional support, etc. it would actually decrease the number of abortions. When did it become ethically acceptable to stop using your brain and just spew whatever tactical rhetoric you think will best suite your agenda? This kind of behavior is certainly unacceptable, yet we hold no one accountable?!)***

As a gay woman, I intimately understand what it feels like to have your voice invalidated because of something that you believe in (for me that's being exactly who are without internal or external judgment), and now those same people, that, for the most part, are the ones abating my voice, are the ones crying wolf; but the possibility that those people will now see things from my marginalized viewpoint seems impossible, and the thing that really gets me about all of this, is that it's done under the disguise of patriotism, but that is so NOT what America is all about.

We set sail because we were tired of being told how to live; we created our own declaration because we were tired of playing by other people's rules; we fought back because we were tired of "taxation, without representation"...but now we've become selfish and stubborn and elitist and completely unwilling to look beyond ourselves, and it feels more and more like we've forgotten all about the things that got us here in the first place.

I'm not going to pretend that I have some kind of foolproof solution to health care reform, because I so clearly don't, but what I do have is the basic understanding that we, as a country, aren't going to get anywhere if we don't start listening to each other. Rather than working backwards and talking over one another and making up lies that just further our own personal agendas, let's try to make health care about...oh I don't know...care!

P.S. I can think of one easy way to expand health care without reconstructing the entire system. Repeal DOMA. Enact domestic partner laws in all 50 states. Seriously! We gays make up 10% of the population. That's two fucking birds with one stone.

Men Are Like...

2009-08-09T08:49:00.002-04:00

In my coming out process, I spent very little time in the in between. I was "straight", then one day I had this gay thought, and, literally, three days after that I identified as a lesbian. I had a few moments when I felt embarrassed for myself, but beyond that, I didn't have any sleepless nights or guilt-driven anxiety. (I am a very anxious person, so when I didn't have any anxiety about something that, by all means, allowed for plenty of room for anxiety, I knew that it was the path for me.) As soon as I became aware of that first gay thought, I decided that I would embrace it and be it...and...as self-assured as I was that the lesbian lifestyle was the lifestyle for me, there was still something about men that I was drawn to. I went through all the possibilities: I don't want to kiss him! I don't want to be close to him, touch him, stare at him for long hours into the night, I don't want to share intimate details about my life with him, but still there was something. I came to realize that it was men's clothes that I was drawn to, not the actual man inside the clothes, and forcing myself to discover exactly what was attracting me to men, made me even more certain that I was a big lesbo, because for me, men are like...

1. Cats
You know how cats have six to seven distinct external characteristics, and then after that they all look the same, and you can't tell which cat is which...unless they live in your house. For me, men are like cats. I can tell the generalizing differences between men, but put me in a room full of Abercrombie models and it's as if I'm walking into a screenshot from 101 Dalmatians, it's just not possible that I'll be able to tell one from the other. The only time this 'handicap' becomes a real hindrance for me is when it comes to the movies, especially male-driven drama movies, like Ocean's Eleven or The Departed. I'm always thinking things like, "Who is that again?", "Is this a new character or did he just change clothes?" or "Wait?! Didn't that character just die?" It becomes especially frustrating when the bad guy is pretending to be the good guy or visa versa; there is just no way for me to keep track!

2. Shotguns
Maybe I'm too much of a top, but I can't imagine that making love to a man can be all that exciting. I imagine that men are a lot like shotguns; you pull the trigger, they shoot, you're done. No elaborate sword fights or intricate ass-kicking scenarios, just "Bada Bing, Bada Boom, It's over." But women, ohhhh, women have all of these spots and buttons. Women are versatile and mysterious and often times demanding. I've never shot a gun, nor have I ever made love to a man, but I suspect that both of these things can often feel repetitive and trite, but sex with a woman is anything but commonplace. If men are like shotguns in the sack, women are like complicated math equations, requiring you to submit to ALL the formulas previously taught to you, so that you can adjust and/or refine your approach as you further unravel the equation, leading you closer and closer to that one solution. And much like a complicated math equation, women require concentration, perseverance, intuition, and an unrelenting presence. Anyone can shoot a gun, but not everyone can successfully solve a complicated math equation. ;)

3. The Library of Congress Classification
The English-speaking world has two main systems of cataloging library materials, the Dewey Decimal(DD) Classification and the Library of Congress(LC) Classification. You're probably familiar with the DD Classification, it's the one you learned about in primary school. The LC Classification, however, is the catalog system used by most universities and research libraries...and it makes no fucking sense, at least not to me. Most people, especially those amongst the academic backdrop, suggest that the LC Classification is the more basic, manageable classification and I thoroughly disagree. {**Sidenote: In actuality, the LC Classification is only an enumeration, (like how I used a complicated math term there...see #2) meaning it's really only a way to name things one by one, it's not actually a structural method for organization.**} How are men like this? Theoretically, the Dewey Decimal Classification is the more complex classification, with over 10,000 different subcategories to plot through; however, I find it considerably easier to navigate. Perhaps it shouldn't be, or maybe I've just spent too much time amongst the Dewey Decimal isles to change the classification that works the best for me, but the the DD Classification just makes sense. Much like how I feel about women. Perhaps women shouldn't be easier to understand, and maybe on the surface they seem more complex, but for me, they just make sense. (I don't think that this is like that "if you wanted a monkey when you were little, then you're gay" thing; enjoying the Dewey Decimal System is not a subconscious indication that you're a dyke.)

The Color Gay

2009-08-03T17:50:00.000-04:00

Tim Berners Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web, once said, "We need diversity of thought in the world in order to face new challenges" and I think that the same idea can (and perhaps must?) be applied to individuals. Obviously, when we strive to broaden the circle of people in our lives, we broaden the opportunities that life can present. I choose to surround myself with people who think differently than me, who look differently than me, who fuck differently than me, not because I want to boastfully inflate my contact list, but because I love to learn and the best learning often comes when you step beyond comfort.

And I will honestly admit that sometimes those words come easier than those actions.

I recently moved to an area of Brooklyn, NY that has, quite forcibly, provided me with the opportunity (that's the word I'm choosing to use, though the action feels much more hostile than that) to learn a great deal about diversity. I am clearly the only white girl in my new neighborhood; add to that my colorful wardrobe and my semi-posh computer bag and I more than stand out. Most of the time I don't notice, (it is an intensely fun neighborhood with children dancing in the streets, music blaring from the roofs, and laughter lingering throughout the air) but the other day, while I was on the way to school, I got the feeling that everyone was starring at me...and, for that moment, it made me thankful for the fact that homosexuality isn't a skin color. While I am sure that NOT everyone was starring at me, and assuredly if they were, it wasn't generated from a place of judgment, I felt grateful that as a white, middle-class female, I'm not the minority. I mean, I am the minority, just nobody knows that I am.

I think that there is something about sexuality that offers a bit of convenience. Take, for instance, our vocabulary. More so than any other minority, sexual minorities can adapt their vocabulary to their audience, enabling them to feel a sense of ease while still standing true to who they are. If a homosexual is having a bad day and just doesn't feel like standing up or standing out, then they can choose not to. If a homosexual is just too tired to deal with the bullshit of inequality, then they can head home sans harassment. There is this definite sense of convenience. Think about it, what other minority has a closet? (Perhaps religion does, but our country is more afraid of religion than religion is of our country; so while it might technically be a minority, it will never be a discriminated one. Which, don't get me wrong, I think is great. But what makes the gays scarier than the Lutherans?) And what other minority maintains that you can be in that closet (say you're in the closet when it comes to your family) and yet still be an active part (you go to the clubs, you sleep with people of the same-sex) of that minority? What do you think that Martin Luther King Jr. would have said if black people could choose not to tell anyone they were black?

I will assert that while the closet has its protective and comforting appeal, it is the single biggest thing holding equality back. The closet implies a sense of shame, which is clearly counterproductive; and even if your reasons for being closeted aren't shameful, those fighting against gay rights surely aren't going to strive to make that distinction. In some ways I think this makes us stronger, because we do have to actively and intentionally choose to stand up, but that only applies if we actually choose to stand.

I'm not advocating for a universal forehead tattoo here, but we could at least start by holding hands. That sounds nice. Are there any girls in NYC that want to hold my hand?

New in New York City

2009-08-01T17:34:00.001-04:00

I believe in the power of change. I think that volunteering yourself for change can open doors that remained previously undiscovered and then, consequently, you can discover things about yourself that remained previously unknown; and I think that the more you discover about yourself, the better suited you are to stand true in the face of involuntary change. It's the cycle of change.

Some people, though, use change as an avoidance tactic, as a way to evade life's current circumstances. People change banks as a way to deflect overdraft fees. They change jobs as a way to ditch an unpleasant boss. They change partners as a way to ensure that they aren't the ones dumped. And when change is utilized as a process for escape, it loses its integrity and becomes a vehicle that transports you farther away from your undiscovered self.

I've been thinking a lot about this blog and what changes it will go through as I go through this massive relocation. And the thing is...I'm not interested in turning this blog into a journal about my new life in New York City. I created this blog for a number of reasons. I wanted to create something in my life that would challenge me to be better; a better writer, a better woman, a better lesbian. I wanted to create something that would offer me accountability and routine and a broader sense of connectivity. I wanted to have a collection of writing samples under my belt, so that if someone choose to offer me an avenue into the publishing industry, I'd be prepared. The egotistical reasons abound, but more than anything, I created this blog because I felt like I had something to say to, or for, the lesbian community, and their allies. My desire to reach out and open up to the lesbian community hasn't changed just because I changed my address, which is why I don't want to bog down this blog with all things N.Y.C.

I also can't deny that New York City is at the forefront of my mind nearly everytime that I sit down to write; so...I've decided to expand my repertoire. I will be divulging my tales of New York City in my new blog http://newinnewyorkcity.blogspot.com. Check it out if you want to see all about my crazy and sporadic NYC adventures.

UPDATE: This blog was really more about being lonely than it was about a genuine desire to write about my adventures...turns out I just needed to make some friends...so it is no more.

Which Direction Now?

2009-07-28T15:27:00.000-04:00

Today, someone asked me for directions while I was on my way to Bryant Park. It made my freaking day! Granted, I didn't know the answer, but still, it just goes to show you that attitude is everything.

Speaking of directions...I've been thinking a lot about directions and paths and trajectories lately. Today is the 28th of July and I don't start school until the 28th of August; which means that I have exactly a month to do absolutely nothing. My life hasn't been in this particular position since I was in middle school, and I am trying to remain excited, though if history has anything to say about it, I'm not really very good at doing nothing.

I am a Gemini through and through; meaning, I thrive in the dichotomy of an unquiet nature and a methodical/unrelenting drive. Sometimes I forget to STOP! and just be. I keep thinking that these days should be filled with perfecting my resume and looking for internships and actively working my way through the publishing world. And all of that is assuredly important; I'm not incredibly interested in starving my way through life, but I'm also not incredibly interested in plowing my way through life.

Today I sat in Bryant Park without a book or an IPod or a to-do list; I just sat. I listened to a man in a green costume tell children a story about field mice getting bopped on the head, it really made me smile. I am going to strive to have a month filled with these kinds of anecdotes; reading in central park, running along the waterfront, eating pizza and red-velvet cupcakes, and generally exploring this vast and exciting city. I will continue to look for opportunities into the publishing world and I will continue to challenge myself as a writer and a woman; but all of that doesn't have to come at the cost of enjoying this rare and relaxing moment in my life.

I have a feeling that this blog will really benefit from all this new found free time ;)

Rat Pack

2009-07-26T19:01:00.000-04:00

Last night I saw my first subway rat. I thought that it was exciting...the people that I was with did not, but I mean, come on!, a New York Subway rat isn't just any kind of rat. I tried to take its picture, you know, to document the momentous occasion, but alas, the rat was too quick for my exhausted fingers.

I have decided that subway rats are going to be my NY good luck charm. You know how the crickets are good luck in Asia, I think that the subway rats should be good luck in NY. Though not good luck like the penny or the four-leaf clover, because I think that it would be ill-advised to carry them around in your pocket all day.

New York, New York

2009-07-23T20:39:00.000-04:00

When I was little the only thing I ever dreamed about was working for the church and for most of my life I pursued that dream with great fervor. The technicalities of my dream transformed as I transformed, but the underlining ideal that my life would be committed to the ministry rarely wavered. When I realized that the path that I had so fervently drawn out for myself no longer held any integrity nor was it likely to bring me to any kind of place of righteousness, I decided that it was time for me to leave that dream behind...and I did so with very little guilt and with very little doubt. The ministry was all that I knew, it was my whole life, so when I withdrew from that inclusive environment, I had very little to turn to.

I have spent the last two years rebuilding my life. In many ways, it was like I had to start all over again. It wasn't just my career either; I had to reformat everything. I made myself answer questions like what values/morals could I take ownership of and which values/morals were just mindlessly mimicked? I took career aptitude tests. (They all said that I should be a lawyer; I didn't think that was a very good idea.) I explored new areas of the library. I embraced and acted on what I considered to be uncomfortable thoughts, i.e. I started fucking girls. And then I, unexpectedly, became a woman that I'm really proud of and a woman that I enjoy going home to every night. So...when it became time for me to change my life once again, I did it with the inner assurance that it would be different this time; this time it was about moving forward not starting all over.

I have been an official resident of New York City for three days now! Much of the last few days have been filled with things like standing in the DMV line and getting a new cell phone plan, but none the less, I now live in New York City. There are moments when I feel really sad, I left a lot behind and I don't know anyone here, and there are moments when I've been in total awe. I already feel tired and I'm sure that's not a feeling that's going away any time soon. But more than anything, I feel stoked to get this new chapter of my life going...and it certainly doesn't hurt that there are a ridiculous amount of hot ladies in this city.

P.S. In the spirit of change, I've decided to institute a few new alterations here @ LEZ give 'em something to talk about. You probably already noticed the new layout and I changed my location in the profile. I'm also going to try and post more than once a week; this is the city of innovation and if I want to embrace my new life in the city, I think that means embracing the sorted world of the interwebs.

Peace and Love,
Steph

Daddy's Little Gyrl

2009-07-14T00:53:00.000-04:00

This past weekend my father got remarried.

My dad and I don't have a relationship, or at least we don't have a relationship that extends beyond the world of single syllables. Ever since I can remember, our relationship has been rooted in the conditional acceptance that he has chosen to offer me and because I refuse(d) to comply with his fairytale version of an ideal daughter, he chose not to be a part of my life. I'm proud of the woman that I have become and I'm excited for the places that my life journey will undoubtedly take me and if he doesn't want to share in that...that is his choice and it's his loss.

My father lives his life in a lot of fear. His life is the pragmatized equivalent of a house of cards; a shatterable existence that requires perfection and submissive solidarity to sustain and/or survive. In a house built of cards, not one card can be placed out of line, not one card can stray from the design plan. One misplaced or rebellious card can, and will, ruin the entire house. A house of cards cannot stand successful in the face of adversity, nor is it likely to stand if its creator is not constantly protecting and preserving the fragile piece of work. And when a house of cards begins to tumble, as they often do, the creator runs frantic, striving to maintain a foundation that will inevitably collapse. For my father, nothing, or no one, is more important than keeping his house of cards intact.

Because my father's world is so fragile, there is no room in his world for a girl like me. Last week I wrote about the strength that lies in the frangible and I stand by those words; I believe that there is beauty in the breakable...but, in my opinion, that only applies if you don't let your breakable nature dictate your behavior. The strength and beauty lies not the frangible nature itself, but in the ability to accept that you have vulnerable or breakable moments and yet still you choose to stand and proceed down life's path, no matter how fearful or stumble-driven that path might be. But my father allows fear to be his catalyst and I don't think there's any strength in that.

When I think about my dad and all of the missed opportunities that we had/will continue to have, it makes me feel sad and angry and lonely; but more than anything, when I think about my dad, I feel an overwhelming sense of compassion. I imagine that if your life's priority is to avoid anything that makes you feel uncomfortable and if you live in a constant struggle to maintain something that is essentially unmaintainable...well, I imagine that it can get pretty dark and lonely and paralyzing and I feel sorry that he lives his life in that kind of fear-driven mentality. But no amount of compassion, or love, will make me sacrifice the woman that I've become, the woman that I've become proud of, just because it will make him feel more comfortable. If the only way that I can have a relationship with my father is to adhere to his boundary-forced guidelines, I'm not sure that's the kind of relationship I want to fight for.

I'm not saying all of this to play the victim card, rather quite the opposite. It is true that I had a shitty childhood. I grew up not in a loving, supportive household, but in the equivalent of built-in child support. There was always food on the table, but there was never conversation. I always had the supplies for school work, but never any help for it. My father never took the time to get to know me and my mother was no peach either. (My mom once told me that it would be easier for her to love me if I was skinnier.) My parents openly preferred a daughter that adhered to obligation rather than independence; they never encouraged my spastic, nerdy nature, nor did they ever extend any kind of tangible love towards me...AND...I took responsibility for my life. I stood up and I decided to hold myself accountable. Every value that I have is because I decided to implement that value into my life and I put in the hard work and I strive, every day, to be the kind of woman that I truly want to be.

I hold out hope for my dad and I, I truly do, but not at the sacrifice of the things that I believe in and not at the sacrifice of the things I've chosen to stand for.

Frangible

2009-07-09T14:09:00.001-04:00

As a young and semi-liberal lesbian, I've developed quite the luscious list of strong and empowering female role models. They vary from the women I've known intimately to the women I've read about in books to the women who have graced history and when I'm feeling down or lost about something, I usually turn to one of these women to help inspire me to find some kind of footing. Once, when I was having a bad day and I could feel the anxiety attack approaching, I took an hour between classes and read the end of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." I instantaneously felt better. Somehow the naive and spunky nature of this daydream-driven character helped me see that there is value in the crazy, yet extraordinary moments of life and that obsessive organization doesn't make life inherently better, (a lesson I've been forced to learn time and time again.) It's dorky, I know, but the list of fictional characters who have inspired me to be better is more than extensive.

But there is one woman, a real-life woman, who above all, never ceases to be my all-time inspiration. That woman is Maya Angelou. Maya is the woman that inspired me to become a writer; she is an incredibly strong woman and her writing perfectly exemplifies that strength, but it wasn't until I saw Maya in person that she became a true inspiration for me. Maya's writings do have an undeniable and unparalleled strength, but in person Maya is soft and gentle and quite the vulnerable female and I find that soo inspiring. Her soft, quiet nature doesn't muffle her strength, but rather accentuates it. Our society, so often, puts down women that appear vulnerable or frangible (sidenote: frangible is one of my favorite words, I use it all the time; it means "easily breakable," like as if someone was trying to say 'fragile' and 'breakable' at the same time and it came out as 'frangible' and then they just decided that it would be a word and now it is)...anyways...we put down women that appear frangible, because as a society we uphold strength, which is an admirable value to uphold, but not if it teaches women that being vulnerable and being strong are mutually exclusive, because I think that nothing could be further from the truth.

Lately, I've been putting a lot of effort into striving to be imperfect, which, I know, is an odd way to look at it, but in actuality I think that it's a productive way to look at it. Because perfection is so unattainable; when perfection becomes your ultimate goal, I think that you end up sacrificing a lot in order to get it. I have a very aggressive desire to be a strong woman, but sometimes in my quest to be a strong woman, I end up taking on the facade of strength, rather than actualizing strength; which I think makes me weaker, not stronger. Part of being a strong woman is having the strength to offer yourself compassion; the compassion to know that you don't have to be perfect to be great, that you don't have to hide from your history to move forward. And that part of being a strong woman is having the strength to accept yourself exactly as you are, even if that means embracing your frangible-ness.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned as a gay woman is that embracing exactly who are doesn't mean embracing the things that make you feel comfortable, it means offering yourself the compassion to feel whatever it is you're feeling and to go after whatever it is you want, no matter what (or who) it is you want. That's what makes a strong woman; not the facade of strength, but the actualization of strength. That's something I learned from Maya and I think that it's invaluable.

Faceplace

2009-06-29T14:26:00.000-04:00

At least once a day, and often times it is more than once a day, I am reminded of the fact that I was assuredly born in the wrong decade. Don't get me wrong, as a women, and especially as a gay woman, I'm grateful that I live in a time when I can freely be my hyper, nerdy, independent self...but more often than not I feel out of place and awkward in our current century.

There are lots of things that I don't understand about our modern day times...like why there are four-thousand kinds of shampoo, or why we need an automated machine to open a can of tuna, or how someone thought that casting Jack Black in a movie about the first year on Earth was a good or gainful or entertaining idea. But more than anything, the thing that makes me feel the most out of place in our current century is the technology that permeates our everyday lives. For me, technology has always had that cold and unwelcoming feeling and so I never learned how to use it or to become comfortable with it. Frankly, I find reading the paper on actual paper incredibly simple and sweet. I find that the pictures that I've developed on my own hold more value and invoke a stronger emotion than the ones I developed in Kinkos. I find sitting down for an actual cup of coffee with friends more fulfilling than an acronym-infested conversation over a computer screen.

I don't have any of those twitter/myspace/facebook accounts and I have functioned just fine...until now. In 21 days I'm moving and I'm discovering that being able to have four conversations at once could, perhaps, be productive. One of the positive things about a social networking account is that saying goodbye to your not-so-close acquaintances doesn't have to be such a big deal; you can justify your half-hearted farewell with the somewhat comforting thought that you're still cyberly connected. But because I'm not cyberly connected to my not-so-close acquaintances, I'm going on an excessive amount of one-on-one coffee dates in order to say goodbye. And as much I prefer and love the face-to-face conversations, I have 21 days left in Portland and more than 21 acquaintances.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'm not sure how much time there will be for the blogosphere over the next couple of weeks. I'll try, but my next post might just be from the big city of York.

Ouch...

2009-06-17T13:48:00.000-04:00

Gay marriage has been a major topic of discussion in the blogosphere since Prop8 ads starting appearing on television. It's a topic of discussion that I feel ill equipped for. I'm gay, but nowhere near being married and I have a difficult time finding my footing when it comes to this conversation. Despite my weary feelings, I've thrown my blog into the depths of this discussion here and here, and I'll do it again.

This week the United States Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss in the case Smelt v. United States of America, a legal suit that challenges the Defense of Marriage Act. The plaintiffs, Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, are a gay couple legally married in California that are suing the Government for the entitlement of federal benefits allotted for married couples.

DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, was signed into law in 1996, when the conversation about same-sex marriage was beginning to present itself in the courts. As a means for maintaining status quo, President Clinton signed DOMA into law in order to preserve the already existing definition of marriage. The Defense of Marriage Act ensures that 1) states that do not authorize same-sex marriage do not have to uphold the same-sex marriages of other states (which is contrary to Article IV of the constitution which says that states have to respect the "public acts, records, and judicial proceedings" of other states) and 2) the federal government does not have to treat same-sex "relationships" as marriage for any purpose, even if the couple's state of residence recognizes same-sex marriage. In other words, states hold jurisdiction when it comes to the laws of marriage, but through DOMA, the federal government waved the responsibility of honoring that jurisdiction. **From a legal and unbiased perspective, DOMA, in it's inception, wasn't an unreasonable or inconsistent piece of legislation. Its purpose was to create the opportunity for a "wait-and-see" approach, to allow states the freedom to explore same-sex marriage without the federal government having to get involved or sidetrack their current agenda. It didn't take away the freedom of control that states have when it comes to the laws of marriage, and helped the more conservative states to not feel as threatened by the conversation...the "wait-and-see" approach was understandable, but let's not forget that 1996 was 13 years ago. The dating stage is over, it's time to make a decision: propose or move on.**

Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer are not fighting for the generalized equality of gay marriage, they are fighting for the equality of their already existing marriage. They're not asking the courts to make an ethical, moral, or legal decision on the validity of same-sex marriage, they're asking the courts to validate the federal benefits of their current marriage. The U.S. Government's response to the same-sex suit was to file a 54-page document that 1) calls for a motion to dismiss and 2) defends DOMA as a valid piece of legislation.

The brief reads like a High School speech and debate paper. It's unorganized. It lacks focus. It has no thesis. It's as if the assistant attorney general wrote down every thought that could possibly be construed as an argument and then accidentally submitted it to the courts. Here are some points in the brief that stood out to me...

-The brief constantly uses the word "experimental marriage" when talking about same-sex marriage. Nothing pisses me off more than when people in power label homosexuality as an idea, as if it's something that exists outside of a personal realm. Homosexuality wasn't made in a science lab. Equality for the gay community isn't something that you can test out, altering variables until the laws reach the solution that everyone's happy with. We are hardly an experiment and I don't buy the excuse that the wording is "legal jargon."

-The Justice Department's most legally backed argument is that marriage isn't a fundamental right and therefore denying someone the benefits of marriage isn't unconstitutional. Ummm....like in the same way that eating at a restaurant or drinking from a water fountain isn't a fundamental right? or sitting down on a bus isn't a fundamental right? I don't understand how people don't see that it's the same thing. It might not be a life and death issue, but that doesn't mean that the legislation isn't wrong.

-One of the arguments that Smelt and Hammer use in their case is that DOMA violates their rights under the equal protection law. The U.S. Justice Department's response to that argument is that DOMA doesn't discriminate against the "individuals" and therefore doesn't violate anyone's rights. A gay woman or a gay man can receive federal benefits, but same-sex "relationships" aren't acknowledged as marriage and so those "relationships" don't receive the same benefits. In what world is that valid logic? That it's not the "individuals" that are discriminated against, but the "relationships." Does that make it better? or is it that you can receive the federal benefits of marriage as long as you deny who you are...is that their argument? The brief also argues that gay individuals that get married are allowed the same benefits they received before they got married, "they remain eligible for every benefit they enjoyed beforehand" and therefore DOMA is not a violation of their fundamental rights. So, in other words, because gay "individuals" aren't treated as second-class citizens, we should just be happy with what we have. Stop complaining.

I'm not going to pretend to be politically naive. I understand that until the Obama administration decides, if they decide, to make a change to DOMA, they have to defend the current legislation. Obama ran a seamless campaign and has, assuredly, been aiming to run a seamless presidency, and a top-down change to legislation is a much more credible method of operation than a court battle ruling. I also understand that altering/abolishing DOMA isn't a priority for the administration and I don't fault them for that. But it's one thing to defend the legislation and motion to dismiss a case like this because it's not the right time or it's not how the administration wants to handle the issue. It's a completely different thing to write a 54-page document that explains in excruciating detail that it would be absurd for this new form of experimental marriage to be recognized by the federal government; that in no way does DOMA violate anyone's constitutional rights, and it's ridiculous that anyone would assume that it does. There was no need for that brief to be as vulgar and contemptuous as it was. There aren't very many times in my life when I feel inconsequential and this was one of those times.

P.S. I don't trust people that strive to appear perfect; I think that to actualize the appearance of perfection you have to sacrifice the things that brought you integrity in the first place. And I don't mean to cut down the president, but now might be the time for me to say, "told you so." It's more than likely that our president didn't read this brief before it was submitted, so it's hard to hold too much against him, but if he wants to keep his perfect-esque stature, he might want to send out a memo to get everyone on the same page. Or maybe he could hold one of those meetings in a movie theater. Or make a power-point presentation. Mr. President, I'm throwing out gold here.

The Great Equalizer

2009-06-07T22:41:00.002-04:00

In less than six weeks I move to New York City and recently I realized that I am not anywhere near being ready to pack up my life and head out east. It feels as if my "to do list" has been mysteriously enchanted, because every time I cross an item off that said list, ten more items magically appear. So I decided to take a little trip to The Big Apple in the hopes that I could...
1)get some of the residency paperwork out of the way;
2)get a more accurate, less media-driven sense of what life in NYC will be like, and therefore alleviate some of the relentless anxiety that has been creeping into my packing process;
3)get a sneak-peak of my temporary living situation and, again, alleviate some of that incessant anxiety; and
4)further cement the idea into my mind, that this move IS actually happening.

I flew out for Laguardia on Monday at noon and headed back to Portland on Tuesday at 6:30pm; in other words, I was in New York City for less than 24 hours, half of which were spent in the airport or the hotel room. My momentary trip was so brief mostly because I am in the middle of finals and couldn't afford to miss any school, and while my trip was productive and goal-achieving...it equally blew up in my face.

I'll start with the bad news. My trip was productive, but the remainder of my week back home was not. My glimpse into life in the big city has seemed to put me into a sort-of trance and I can't manage to get anything done. I am more than ready to start the next chapter of my life, but part of the moving process includes creating closure in life's current chapter. I still have six weeks in Portland; I have finals, I have work to wrap-up, I have people to say goodbye to, and more than anything, I want this move to be about creating new things, not running away from old ones. Seeing New York has put me in a new york state of mind and I can't seem to keep my head in Portland, but the couch isn't going to create closure and I refuse to leave with the possibility of regrets.

While my trip did leave me with idle hands, it additionally brought about an unexpected revelation. One of my biggest fears about moving to New York City is the somewhat trivial fear that I'm not fashionable enough to live in New York City. After I had taken care of all the things on my itinerary, I had about an hour or so to kill before I had to head back to the airport. I decided that I'd take a stab at navigating the subway system, so I found stairs leading to a shuttle, which lead me to an express train to midtown, which lead me to 42nd and Broadway. At first I was incredibly intimidated and overwhelmed; you come out from that subway station and you walk right into Macy's (THE Macy's) and you look down Broadway and the Times Square sign is staring you in the face. And then I started walking around. And then I started noticing something.

The city is big. The city is overwhelming. The city is chaotic. All of that is undeniable, but because the city itself is so big, the people in it seem small. Everyone walks amongst the same skyscrapers and stops at the same crosswalk. The enormity of the city encapsulates everyone. It's as if the city is the great equalizer. While I was walking down Broadway, towards Times Square, I noticed people sitting in the middle of the street drinking coffee and I had the thought "I do that. I drink coffee with my friends after work." Maybe not in the middle of the biggest, most notorious street in the country, but none the less, the action is the same. The buildings might be taller and the streets might extend farther, but people are people, and that doesn't change just because you change a location.

P.S. My mother didn't believe that people sit in the middle of the street in midtown (or at least she insisted that it was for a parade, in which I offered the rebuttal that the middle of the street might not be where you'd want to sit during a parade.) In case you also don't believe me, here's the proof.

Promiscuous Girl

2009-05-31T22:00:00.001-04:00

Recently, I got into a heated discussion with a straight friend of mine. She was trying to casually and lackadaisically suggest that it was time for me to grow-up. While probing her ('probing' might be too soft of a term; it was more like a targeted inquest than a casual query) about what she meant, I came to the insight that she was trying to refer to my sex life. (DISCLAIMER: I met this friend at Bible College and am, most likely, her only friend outside of that reclusive-like environment. I love my friend, but I take most of her advice with a grain of clear-headed sensibility. And while she might consider my behavior *slutty*, I refuse to label myself as such.) I can be a tad-bit promiscuous and I feel no shame in admitting that. I don't have a girlfriend or a venereal disease, so I feel no ethical distress in fucking whoever I want, whenever I want.

While I don't agree with my friend's view, I understand where her thought-process originated from. I have been vocal about the fact that I want to be a wife and a mom, and in a rudimentary way of thinking, if those are the things that I value, then promiscuity doesn't tend to be the path that leads to those things. However, in a more all-encompassing picture, I enjoy being single, like REALLY enjoy being single, and while I would love to have a wife and kids someday, that day is certainly not today. My desire to eventually have a family doesn't invalidate my present-day desire to get laid; and I don't think that those two desires contradict themselves.

It's not just my religious friends, either. I feel like there is a double-standard. That because I can name everyone on the Supreme Court or I can draw you a map of Middle Eastern geography, that I'm not supposed to be promiscuous. That it would be totally fine for me to be *easy* if I was a hot, leggy blond in the entertainment business, but because I'm a well-read, witty brunette in the publishing business, I should be able to control myself. OR it would be fine for me to be promiscuous if my promiscuity was the result of something; like heartbreak or mommy issues or religious repression. (Okay...I was religiously repressed, but my promiscuity isn't the result of that repression. I'm sure of it.) But none of those things ring true for me, so my loose views on sex are interpreted as immature behaviors that shouldn't represent who I am as a woman. I say: Bullshit! I say: Who cares if I find women alluring and then decide to act on that allure. (I think that my Post-Prop8 frustration might be reincarnating itself in this topic.)It's just sex and there is nothing wrong with enjoying it...and just because I don't have a steady partner, doesn't mean I should enjoy sex less than the person who does.

My life is often one big anxiety-fest, so when an element of my life becomes reposed or nonchalant, I embrace it for all that it's worth, because that feeling doesn't come around very often for me. Sex has become one of those things. In all honesty, I don't know how it happened; I don't know how I became able to separate sexual attraction from whole attraction or the act of sex from the materialization of love...it kind of just happened. But am I supposed to apologize for it just because people don't understand it or can't actualize it in their own life or because they think that it's a below par way to act as a woman?

Year of the Stumble

2009-05-26T03:01:00.001-04:00

Today is my 24th birthday! and I am officially declaring the year ahead, the "Year of the Indomitable." In many ways I feel like this is my year to conquer and achieve, to actualize the things in my life that previously seemed unreachable, and to relish in the joys that come when you approach life in an unyielding manner.

I think that my 23rd year of life should be most appropriately called the "Year of the Stumble." I truly believe that there is nothing shameful in stumbling; whether you're stumbling out of an extremely difficult time, or you're stumbling because it's dark and you can't find your footing, or you're stumbling simply because you lost your balance. Whatever it might be, or even if there isn't a reason to it, a person who stumbles is a person who doesn't give up; a person who stumbles is a person who fights to gain their balance, even though they know that gravity (or any outward force stronger than ourselves) will most likely take over; a person who stumbles is a person who keeps their feet moving, no matter what obstacles stand in their way. Stumbling should be admired and commended, not hidden and forgotten or worse, treated like a lesser way to live your life. (I'm not saying that I want to aim to stumble through life, but when life gets hard, as it often does, there is nothing paltry or dishonorable in letting go of grace and poise for a moment in order to get your life back on track.)

The above lesson might be one of my favorite lessons learned during the "Year of the Stumble." I am a tiny bit obsessive compulsive (shocker, I'm sure), and my life was beginning to resemble that of a checklist, rather than that of a journey. Checklists can be useful, to take things one at a time can be productive, but I became so rigid in my checklist disposition that I lost sight of the missed opportunities passing me by. I would successfully complete a task on my metaphorical checklist and then move on to the next item, but what I came to realize about that mentality is that it didn't allow for growth; I wasn't allowing myself to reevaluate. If I was walking down a figurative path and then came across a different path, one filled with beautiful flowers that could, perhaps, lead me to an extraordinary view, I would 'tag it' in my mind and then diligently proceed with my current path, forcing myself to believe that I could always come back when I was finished with the current task, but I never actualized that thought. There is nothing wrong with diligence, it is an admirable trait, but I was using diligence as an avoidance tactic...to hide from the fear of advancing down a path that perhaps didn't lead to an extraordinary view. I want my life to be about taking chances and growing into a woman that I'm proud of, not playing it safe and becoming tedious or trite.

This year I also learned to LOVE my sexuality. When I came out, at 22, I embraced my sexuality, but I did not love that I was a homosexual. It was kind of like my feelings on running. I don't love running (I don't hate it, but I don't love it), but I go running because I want to live to see my someday-children grow old. I want to be the best mom I can be and that includes living a long, healthy life...which means getting up and going running. I don't love it, but I do it. In that same fashion, I didn't love realizing that I was gay, but I accepted it, and I even accepted it with open arms, because I wanted to experience the kind of love that moves mountains and I was never going to experience that kind of love if I forced that kind of love with a man. Women make me all tingly inside, men don't; I was well aware of who gave me butterflies and who didn't. I didn't love it, but I embraced it. And then, I started living my life as a gay woman. I came out (read: changed my facebook status...ha, jk, I don't have facebook), I added homosexual "slogan buttons" to my messenger bag, I started reading Portland's gay publication. (Everytime a new issue would come out I would pick one event from the publications calendar and then promise myself I would go to the said event; at first I went to educational events like seminars or book clubs, then I started going to the actual clubs, then I started going to events where you had to have an actual conversation.) I started having gay sex. I started writing a gay blog. And then I started really loving being gay. Having pride is one thing, and I had pride from the very early stages (assuredly because I am so narcissistic), but loving your sexuality is a completely different thing. It is freeing to love who you are. And what I love the most... is that I started loving my sexuality before I loved someone else.

I am not afraid to say that this year has been filled with my fuck-ups. I lost contact with friends I cared deeply about. I closed the door so firmly on Christianity that it will take years upon years to gain any kind of footing back. I spent more than a few Saturday nights at home, only because I, stubbornly, didn't want to hang out with one particular person. I let other people's opinions about my life get the better of me. AND today is a new day! Today starts the "Year of the Indomitable" and with my feet planted assuredly beneath me and a set of values in place to help illuminate my path, I'm ready to get this show on the road. Cheers to what will be a fantastic year!

P.S. Other people with my birthday: John Wayne, the first woman astronaut, and...drum roll please...Stevie Nicks. May 26th is a day that births cool ass motherfuckers.

It's All About Sex(y) Ladies!

2009-05-24T20:25:00.000-04:00

It has been quite the dramatic week; so I thought, as an exercise in relaxation, I'd talk about some of my favorite ladies! What could be more relaxing than beautiful women?

Khloe Kardashian
Khloe is the youngest of the Kardashian sisters, but in many ways she takes on the role of the self-assured, accountable one. She is sarcastic and goofy, and she knows who she is and what she wants. She perfectly exemplifies how women can be strong, yet soft and sexy, yet warm ALL at the same time. Her heart is bigger than her fame or her family or her fashion (which, p.s., is totally killer). Khloe first started appearing in my dreams after I saw her PETA ad, which is the most carnally beautiful picture ever taken. Though sometimes outrageous and inappropriate, she has a smile that would make the sun jealous. Not to mention her fantaaastic boobies.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck
I know. I know! I will forever be further blackboxed from the lesbian community for outing my Hasselbeck crush, but I can't help it...she's hot. I don't agree with 93% of the things that come out of her mouth, but at least she has a viewpoint; at least she comes to her exposition from a grounded perspective (unlike a certain someone who sits to her right). She values Homeland Security and traditionalistic families and her views on politics and life stem from those values; those are NOT things that I value, but that, alone, doesn't make her opinion unfounded or stupid. The truth...is that it takes an incredible amount of strength to say what she says in a time when media is as liberal as it is. And her ratings would go through the roof if she were to wear those glasses more often.

Mary Alice (from "Ace of Cakes")
She is yummy!!! and any girl that works with cake all day is the girl for me. (p.s. she's married...to a man) She says things like "flipped a gasket" and "thank you for being the super dooper double plus awesomest ever." She appeals to my obsessive dorky nature, which sometimes makes me forget that she runs one of the most notable cake shops in the country. Her ability to sit down with a client, understand exactly what it is they want, and then relay that vision to the cake decorators, who then produce an impressively perfect cake; well, it's super dooperly awesome and it's a trait that, I'm sure, is fantastic in a wife. And she rocks the Madonna-inspired headset like the rock star she is.

The Supernanny
She is stunning. She has that accent. She's demanding and bossy...it's nice.

Meghan McCain
Meghan has yet to stay hidden from any of my sexy late-night dreams. She is beyond gorgeous and beyond smart and beyond ballsy. She holds her own when in the company of any news-media giant like Rachel Maddow, Ann Coulter, and even Karl Rove. She is incredibly honest; honest about her opinions, honest about the things she doesn't politically understand, honest about the fact that she has a unique, a more free, platform because she's not running for office (and she's been honest about the fact that she has no intention to). Nepotism assuredly played into her career, but she wouldn't still be around if she wasn't smart enough to play with the big boys. More than her refreshingly moderate viewpoint or her fabulously fashionable closet, the thing that I admire the most about Meghan McCain is her amazing ability to welcome the judgement and criticism; she embraces conversation, which is the first sign of a woman who is assured in who she is, yet constantly striving to be better.

A Family Affair

2009-05-19T05:29:00.000-04:00

I have a little brother. He and I are only two years apart, but in many ways it's as if we were born decades, if not worlds, apart. We know nothing about each other. We don't communicate. We are as opposite as...well, let's just say that night and day probably have more in common. It's not that we don't like each other; it's just that we don't have a connection and we never did.

I don't mean to play myself as a victim, but in many ways I was the outsider in my family. I was this awkward, dorky, nerdy child who was perfectly content to play by her own rules and my parents didn't know how and/or didn't try to connect with/identify with/understand someone who was perfectly happy operating outside of the conventional box they thought was oh-so important. Somehow, I never let my parents’ disapproval alter my behavior and I continued being my awkward, dorky, nerdy self. When I got older and truly started developing my own personality, I detached myself from "the family unit", it was just easier that way, and my little brother became an innocent bystander. It was never my intention to separate from him, it just happened.

This week I received an email from my little brother. (We haven't talked since Christmas) He is currently studying physics in England...he operates only in the world of numbers and hard truths, and in my experience with him, it's only through these things that he perceives the world. Here's what he wrote:

Hey Steph,

I just wanted to say hi,and Um, last week we had the LGBT Christian group on campus come in and talk to us and just share their experiences and everything with us about being gay and Christian and [what] that's meant to them. It was the first time I really think I've felt like I might be able to understand you and some of the things you've gone through with Dad and I. A lot of what they talked about was being rejected from their community and everything and it made me see how hard coming out to Dad and I must have been. I love you Stephanie, I really really do. I'm really glad that you've come out because, from what I heard, being in is so awful, and I don't want you to ever have to go through what I heard them talking about. I really don't expect a response or anything from you, I just wanted you to know this and that I really am glad for you.

I love you Steph,

Andrew

I am still in quite the state of shock; and not so much because of what he wrote, but because of my reaction to what he wrote. I struggle with feeling sad. It's a feeling that I despise, and for most occasions, I do everything I can to avoid that sad feeling...and when I read his email, I, without apology, balled my tiny little eyes out. I am shocked how the words of a seemingly virtual stranger could make such a difference in my life; how his words make me feel free. My sexuality would look the same with or without his approval, yet, knowing that he CAN and DOES love me just as I am...there aren't words.

Love wasn't one of the values that I was raised in. My parents never said it, they never showed it, and I, consequently, became terrified of it. When I choose to embrace my sexuality, and I choose love over obligation, I was certain that I would further add to the list of things that my family would never understand about me. AND that was true at first. Then my mom came around, and then my extended family gradually offered their support, and now my brother. Though I must admit that my brother's support comes bittersweet, because it highlights that my father will never be apart of that list; that his love and support will forever be conditional on the fact that I live my life in a way that he sees best.

All that aside; the support of family members, no matter how disconnected, is something of true beauty. I think I'm finally starting to see that.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Yoga

2009-05-11T00:07:00.000-04:00

Yoga is an incredibly commercialized commodity; with the $20 classes, and the extensive prop list, and the celebrity endorsements...but yoga is WAY more than a commodity. Yoga, in its essence, is a practice that integrates the entire body, from the inner to the outer. And lately I've been noticing that the things I've learned in yoga are starting to creep into my "everyday" life.

1. Create Intention
Before stepping into a pose in yoga, you're taught to create intention, to engage your muscles in order to increase your awareness, and to be mindful of how your body is connected. AND every yoga studio will tell you how important it is to get to class early so that you can be calm and centered before you begin. I once heard an instructor say, "When you find your mind chattering away, strive to focus your intention and direct your mind on something specific, like a person, or an ambition, or something you want to change in the world." I often find that when I take a few moments in the morning to think about what I want my day to look like, I have a much more productive and optimistic day. And when I find my mind chattering away, I try to take a second to concentrate on something specific and when I do, I always find a renewed sense of intention.

2. Relax
When you find difficulty with a pose, they tell you to relax. And then I get more distressed, because I'm a perfectionist and in my stubborn way of thinking, the solution to working through a difficult situation is to try harder...and then I relax, often by accident, and all difficulty melts away, every muscle reclines into itself and you sink into your breathing and it feels like you could hold the pose forever. I am constantly shocked at how productive relaxation can be. How the simple act of breathing and allowing your muscles to unwind for a moment makes a seemingly impossible task seem completely possible.

3. Take Responsibility
The one thing about yoga is that it is very individualistic. The results of yoga might extend outward, but the practice itself is quite egotistical. Instructors offer inspirational words and friends offer encouragement, but ultimately, your yoga practice is about you. YOU carve out the time to go to class, YOU make the commitment to be mindful of your body for that hour, YOU take responsibility. I don't want my life to be one big egotistical party, but that doesn't mean that I can toss aside the responsibilities I have to myself. I have inspirational and supportive people in my life, but at the end of day, I want to hold myself accountable for my own life.

4. Be Kind to Yourself
One of the first things most yoga instructors will tell a beginning student (or an advanced one) is to be kind to yourself when practicing yoga. Yoga isn't a competitive sport, so you can move as slowly or as aggressively as your body allows. In my experience, when I'm more aggressive in class and I know that my body isn't ready for that aggressive nature, class will be a constant struggle, whereas when I'm kind to myself and I listen to my body and I respond in turn, I have a pleasant, enlightened experience and my next class is that much easier. It's like those Chinese finger handcuffs; the more you struggle the tighter they get, but when you stop trying so hard your hands are instantly free. Offering ourselves compassion seems simple and passive, but in reality, it very well might be the key to setting yourself free.

5. Keep Smiling
I have this yoga DVD, mostly for when I'm too lazy to get up and go to class, and in this DVD the instructor is always telling you to smile. At first I thought it was a little ridiculous, but one day I was struggling with a pose and then somehow that made me think of something funny and I laughed and then, instantaneously, I wasn't struggling anymore. People say that when you extend a smile to someone else, especially a stranger, that smile can make all the difference for them and I'm beginning to see that the same rings true when you smile for yourself. Mother Teresa said it best, "Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing."

Into The Woods

2009-04-27T23:50:00.001-04:00

Lately, I've been riding the emotional seesaw of doubt; I've been doubting the life decisions I've chosen to make, doubting what I stand for (as a person, a woman, and a homosexual), doubting myself as being the kind of writer who could possibly make a difference, AND the thing about all of those dubious thoughts is that I've been consciously striving to create stability in my life, something that had been quite lacking until recently. So when I finally acknowledged and/or became aware of the fact that I was tossing the "inner doubt ball" back and forth, I decided to do something about it.

I took the time off of work and I missed a few (read: more than a few) classes and I headed to the woods for a little inner-me vacation. There is something about spending time amongst the fresh air and the beanstalk-sized trees that makes me feel restoratively small; as if the extraordinary beauty of the forest somehow, perhaps magically, edges itself into your mind and positions everything into perspective, and in that smaller-self you can better grasp what your life is all about.

Here's what I learned in the woods:
Thoughts are thoughts, and they have the freedom to come and go as they please; AND we, as active and aware human beings, have the capability to buy into those thoughts, but that's all that it is, a capability. Our thoughts don't have the power to dictate our behavior and they certainly don't have the power to place barricades along our life paths. I am going to adopt a mentality of letting those thoughts be and then letting those thoughts pass, as they choose, and, all the while, continuing in my journey of who I want to be.

Sex-Help

2009-04-08T00:06:00.001-04:00

Portland is home to a lot of great things; the country's greatest doughnut shop, the largest number of microbreweries per capita, the first vegan strip joint, and the world's largest independent bookstore. (Baked goods, beer, boobies, and books...What more could a good homosexual girl ask for?)

Powell's, Portland's famous bookstore, spans an entire city block and boasts to having over 4 million books in their inventory, including a fantastic collection of GLBT publications. I was perusing this particular section of Powell's the other day, in search of a book that would offer a VERY young girl the perspective that it wasn't wrong to welcome same-sex thoughts, when I came to a realization...all the books that offer advice or comfort about the coming out process are about sex, or at least include sex as a prominent part of the sexual identification process. This girl is barely a teenager; she doesn't need to know how to perform cunnilingus, she needs to know that she can be happy passing notes to a girl or holding a girl's hand at the movies.

Recently, I had this discussion with my mother. My mother is dating a man who believes that homosexuality is a choice. In relaying a conversation the two of them had about this topic to me, she very quickly asserted that she "stood up for gay people, without a second thought."

"I told him that you don't get to choose your desires or thoughts. The only thing you get to choose is the action. The action is the only point you get to argue"

"You mean sex?" I replied.

"Well, yeah," she said. "You can choose to be celibate or not."

"So if you're celibate it doesn't count? You're only gay if you're having gay sex?"

It is never my intention to place judgment, on my mom or her boyfriend or anyone for that matter, but I think that it's bananas that, in the dominant thought process, being gay is so directly, almost synonymously, linked with having gay sex. There is a great quote by Boy George that says, "There's this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That's completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved." I love gay sex just as much, if not more, than the next carpet muncher, but gay sex isn't everything. I have certainly gone months upon months without participating in gay sex, and I wasn't less of a homosexual in those months. I came out to my parents before partaking in the joys of lesbian finger banging and I definitely didn't feel the need to re-come out after I had done so. I'll tell you a secret: sex is one of the greatest parts about being gay, but it's not everything...so, why do our bookshelves suggest that it is.

It is beyond fantastic that lesbian literature is about empowering woman with the tools (instructional books), ideas (erotica, real life stories), and comfort (memoirs, lesbian fiction) to know that lesbian sex is just as normal/fulfilling/great as straight sex...but what if you're not ready or want more. What section of the bookstore do you turn to then?

Step-All-Over-Me Stickel

2009-04-01T00:18:00.000-04:00

Yep...this quip of a nickname followed me around the playground, the cluster of lockers, and even the dorm rooms of my first college. In case you didn't catch the supposedly witty wordplay, the people in my life were trying to insinuate that I was a pushover...I can't deny that it was true. I used to approach every situation with the "yes dear" attitude that I was certain stemmed from a place of respect and goodwill. And while my pushover approach might of had the semblance of integrity, in retrospect it came from a place of covert cowardice and not-so-fantastic self esteem.

I believe that everything happens for a reason and that everything serves a purpose; that every experience, no matter how unpleasant, can be looked at as an opportunity to better yourself or to become more of who you want to be. I think that as long as you have an intentionality about your life, there is never a reason to regret or minimize what was.

When I was 19, I got the "call" to full-time ministry and a few months later I changed colleges and headed off to seminary. I had this overwhelming and undeniable desire to change how the church functioned and I was committed to doing everything I could to empower myself to be the best person I could be for that job. For me, achieving that goal meant getting an education in a place that fundamentally disagreed with who I was, what I believed in, and what I stood for as a woman, as a Christian, and as an individual. As a very smart and suave man once said, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere..." and I fully believed that placing myself in such a differing environment was the smartest and most effective mode of action for achieving the kind of results I wanted to see.

The school I choose to go to was conservative, to respectfully say the least, and it was also very small. If you were different, or believed in different ideals, everyone knew it. But I didn't let that stand in my way. I left my "Kerry for 2004" sticker on my car. I took on leadership roles in Campus Ministries and lead Bible Studies that the faculty would have disapproved of, if they had known about. I verbalized that I didn't desire pregnancy. I even served as Student Body President, during my second year of attendance, to a school full of people that believed I was damned to hell. I knew that if I was really going to make a change, or even just survive, that my pushover approach to life wasn't going to fly, and I was going to have to grow some balls. So...I did. And it didn't lead to where I thought it would.

Currently, my interaction with religion is nonexistent and my relationship with God might never be what it used to be, and the majority of all of that assuredly came from the fact that I placed myself in such a conservative environment. My memories and feelings about that time in my life are brutally unhappy, but I don't regret it...because if nothing else, I learned how to stand up for myself and to stand up for the person I want to be. That lesson is invaluable, no matter what classroom I learned it in.

In a little over four months, I am going to leave the safety and comfort of Portland, OR, a city I've lived in for 14+ years, to attend journalism school in Brooklyn, NY. There are very few people in my life that think that this is a good idea ... It's not exactly a great time, economically, to leave a stable and career-building job for a move cross-country and it's not like print media is a thriving industry at the moment. I haven't been saving up for a big move. I know very few people in New York, none of whom are reaching success or financial stability. And I know, with everything that I have in me, that this is my opportunity to be the kind of person, the kind of writer, I want to be; the kind of person who doesn't limit her life merely because some people asked her to. This life decision is just about me STANDING UP for what I want my life to look like.

If You're Happy and You Know It...

2009-03-26T14:31:00.000-04:00

Florence Margaret Smith, a poet from the mid-20th century, once said:

Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy
When I am happy I live and despise writing.

It is so true. It's much easier to write when one is lonely, when one is troubled, when one feels anxious to unravel the feelings of isolation and distress...and it's not just the FREE TIME that makes writing easier; when one feels happy and content and exhaustively satisfied, it's hard to display the tension that is so important to a good piece of writing. Historically, the ideal rings true. Emily Dickinson became a crazy recluse with an incestuous lesbian lover. Sylvia Plath spent time in a psychiatric hospital and at 30 (speculatively) killed herself with gas from the oven. The list of cracked-out and tristful authors is quite extensive.

I recently read an article affirming that sad children perform tasks more effectively and with greater detail than happy children. "Happiness indicates that things are going well, which leads to a global, top-down style of information processing. Sadness indicates that something is amiss, triggering detail-orientated, analytical processing," said lead researcher Simone Schnall, PhD, of the University of Plymouth. The great thing about good writing, or good art in general, is that it offers something different, a unique viewpoint that hasn't already been produced. If happiness leads to conformity, well, conformity doesn't lead to good writing.

I've been really happy lately; I'm feeling healthy, I'm on a good path career-wise, my dating life is really hitting the spot (so to speak), and hence, it is becoming increasingly harder to pound out a good blog entry...but I am unwilling to let myself believe that you have to be unhappy to produce great art. (Is it too narcissistic to assume that a blog about lesbian sex is art?) I think that there's a way to get productivity and happiness on board together; that there's a way to be happy and content and to be the kind of writer that creates tension and unique perspectives...I think that it's just about finding that see-saw balance...what-ever that might be.

Up All Night...Reading

2009-03-15T15:54:00.000-04:00

There is this assumption among the lesbian community, at least the one that I operate in, that there are no good lesbian fiction novels. While it's true that navigating the Lesbian Fiction isle is a lot like trying to pick out lipstick; you never know what is good/bad until you get it home and try it out, looking at it in the store doesn't ever give you an accurate assessment, and like lipstick shades, there are a lot of really crappy lesbian fiction selections on the shelves, there are some really great selections out there...so, let me offer you some of my faves...

Accidental Love by BL Miller.
Rose, a lonely young cashier, is driving home one night when she is severely injured after being hit by a car. Veronica, a beautiful and very rich woman, happens to be driving by and helps Rose to the nearest hospital and whatever else she can offer. Friendship turns into feelings of love as these well-developed characters fall for each other. Deception underlines nearly every page and it still manages to be one of the most severely romantic lesbian novels on my bookshelf. The big downfall: Nothing is sexy about grammatical errors and the grammatical errors/typos are abundant.

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy by Mabel Maney.
James Bond is held in an insane asylum and the secret service needs his help in tackling a plot to overthrow the Queen, so the Secret Service turns to Bond's butch and lazy lesbian twin sister Jane for help. With a little work, they believe that she can pass as James, but Jane's new girlfriend isn't what she appears and things only unravel from there. Um, can we say campy?, but it's the best kind of campy. Jane is a disaster of a character, meaning she's always drunk and doesn't have a job and never remembers the names of the girls she sleeps with, and it's brilliant. It's refreshing to read a lesbian author with some wit and humor and Maney has plenty of it to go around. This book parodies the books by Ian Flemming, not the movies, (which are different) but it's not imperative that you've read the original James Bond books to enjoy this book. This isn't Maney's only James Bond parody and she also has a "Nancy Clue" series.

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters.
In pursuit of dangerous pleasures, Nancy Astley, a young oyster shucker from Witstable in the turn of the 19th century, falls in love with Kitty Butler, a male impersonator. Kitty's cross-dressing show moves to London and Nancy goes with her as her dresser. Nancy's story follows heartbreak, life as a gay boy prostitute, being kept as a rich woman's "plaything", and her relationship with a socialist social worker, and you are truly taken through London's sexual underground. While I think this book is classified more as "lesbian erotica" than "lesbian fiction," the character development, not the steamy plot line, is what moves this story and what makes this book so compelling; not all good erotica has well-developed characters. The best thing about this book is the unsubtlety: the title, the love interest is named kitty, she works with oysters, the pussy willow tree...it's fantastic.

Six of One by Rita Mae Brown.
Rita is most known for her book Rubyfruit Jungle, which is great, but I find this book to be her best. This story isn't explicitly about lesbians, but I'm recommending it here anyways. The story follows two sisters, Julia and Louise, through nearly a century of their life, with ensemble characters like their single mother, Cora, who works as a housekeeper for Celeste (who is a lesbian) and her lover. This book is hilarious! but more than anything it's about relationships.

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith.
Published in 1950, this was the first lesbian novel that didn't end in death/suicide or heterosexuality. While this type of ending is more common now, the book deserves its props. Therese is in desperate need of cash flow for the holiday season, so she takes a job at a department store in Manhattan, where she meets Carol. Both women are in straight relationships when they meet, Carol is married with a daughter and Therese is dating Richard, but feelings blossom anyways. Their love isn't without consequence, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a positive ending. What I love the most about this book is that it is about romance, pure and simple. It takes the women a while to sleep together, which I find refreshing from my 21st century viewpoint, and the only agenda for these two women is an authentic lesbian love story.

Radclyffe.
This is an author, not a novel, because I couldn't pick just one of her books to recommend. Radclyffe, (not to be confused with the 1920's author Radclyffe Hall, who published The Well of Loneliness, which is a lesbian fiction classic) is a current lesbian author who mostly writes lesbian action stories with really hot sex scenes. She penned the honor and justice series, and wrote a collection of stories about Provincetown. She also has a countless number of romantic lesbian fiction novels and just came out with an edited compilation of the best lesbian romance of 2009. She has won the Alice B. award twice and is the president of the independent GLBT publishing house Bold Strokes Books. My favorite thing about this author is that she really strives to show that lesbian love can be powerful; it doesn't have to be weak or hidden or manipulative or complicated, it can be plainly capable and strong.

HAPPY READING!

Fantasize This!

2009-03-03T00:06:00.001-05:00

Would you like it in a house?

Would you like it with a mouse?

Would you eat her in a box?

Would you eat her with a fox?

Okay, I'll grant that Dr. Seuss says "eat it" not "eat her"* but the idea of fantasy is clearly at the forefront of this classic children's book. Sam-I-Am presents his mysterious and moody neighbor with a series of scenarios in the hopes that it will tantalize the unnamed man into trying his "Green Eggs and Ham." The neighbor is rigid in his refusal to try the new treat; however, when he finally submits to Sam's unrelenting pleas, he realizes that he, in actuality, loves green eggs and ham.

I would venture to assume that we have all been in that similar situation...on either side. You/Your partner want to do something, sexually, that you/your partner aren't real keen on, so you/your partner offer sexual ameliorations, like, "Would you do it if we were drinking?" "Would you do it if there was a secure latex barrier?" "Would you want to watch it in a video first?" And often, when we finally surrender to our partners’ desires, we end up enjoying it just as much, if not more. (They say that the average woman that tries fisting goes on to fist at least three more women.)

Fantasies are so important when it comes to developing a fulfilling sex-life. I learned in Psychology 101 that Freud suggests that people who are experiencing sexual fantasies are sexually deprived or frustrated or that they lacked adequate sexual stimulation and satisfaction. I think that nothing could be further from the truth. The ability to fantasize when you are with someone shows a comfort level, a safety zone, it shows that you can fully and confidently be with that person and trust them enough to let your mind wander. The more comfortable I am with someone, the more able I am to indulge my “sexual fantasy life.”

I spent the first 21.5 years of my life immersed in an incredibly religious environment; first in childhood and then by my choice in early adulthood. I was absolutely taught that thinking was sinful; that as long as you focused on what was true, then your mind would be unable to fantasize. I was taught that fantasy was a sign of weakness. As a result, I became a machine. I was so afraid that my thoughts were going to lead to something sinful that I didn't allow myself to have any thoughts, no matter what they were about.

If we teach people that they should limit their thought process, then we are teaching them to limit themselves, and there is nothing more damaging than that. I, so thoroughly, believe that fantasy is a vital part of any meaningful sexual relationship and that if you minimalize any part of your partner, then you are minimalizing them as a person. I don't think that hiding from or limiting your thoughts can ever be useful or productive or healthy. Allowing room for your fantasies, sexual or otherwise, allows you to embrace and indulge in who you are. What's more beautiful than that?

*P.S. I should write that book, "Great Legs and Wham: A Simplistic Guide to Seducing Straight Girls." (Wham, as in, "to hit it"...get it?) The cover would be just like the one pictured here, except it would be a picture of a lady leaning over to look at a table of lesbian sex toys. It would all be done in rhyme and it would use no more than 50 words, just like the original...

Would you? Could you? In a car?
Eat them! Eat them! Here they are!

I would not, could not, in a car.

You may like it. You will see.
You may like it in a tree.

I would not, could not, in a tree.
Not in a car. You let me be.

Stand Up 2 Live

2009-02-24T00:17:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-18T13:47:00.000-05:00

Like every other young adult that lives in Oregon, my eco-friendly messenger bag is covered in clever, if not a little unctuous, buttons, like the one above. Most of my buttons highlight my homosexual lifestyle, offering witty comments like "Sometimes girls who look straight aren't" or "Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians" (I'm not really sure what that means, but I'm game) or a picture of a rainbow-clad ghost accompanied by the phrase "Yes, we ARE scary." I have other ones like "Coffee Slut" or "Make Smores, Not Wars," but the majority of my bag is covered in gay...and here is why...I really love being gay; I'm proud of it and I want everyone (especially the hot ladies) to know it. I thought that in honor of another Valentine's Day passing, I would talk about something I love: lesbianism.

Here are ten things I love about being gay...

1. Sex sans chest hair.
Imagine your kissing someone. Things are getting steamy and clothes are being removed. You slide your hand underneath their shirt and...BAM!...chest hair. Instead of being greeted by silky, smooth skin and boobies, your attacked by a forest of chest hair. And then afterwards, if you want to cuddle, you have to get your face in it; I bet it tickles and gets all up in your ear. Gross!

2. Built-in conversation on a first date.
Talking about your sexuality (your coming out process, people's reactions, how your background played into your sexuality, what being gay means to you) can offer conversation for an entire first date and the opportunity to delve deeper constantly presents itself when discussing this topic. Sharing your coming out story provides a connection, which is ultimately the whole point of dating, without having to try too hard or force too much.

3. You don't have to deal with anything going soft.
Obviously, a huge perk to being gay is the impossibility of getting pregnant, but I think the bigger perk is not having to deal with birth control, namely condoms. I am not, ABSOLUTELY NOT, saying that lesbians shouldn't practice safe-sex, but if it takes longer than five seconds to get a condom wrapper open, your dildo isn't going to go soft and your partner isn't going to be unable to perform. I've never meet a girl that was too drunk to fuck and our biology allows us to go...all...night!

4. Convention is already thrown out the window.
I have never been one to follow blindly in tradition. I have respect for tradition and I think that it has a place; however, I'm not someone that's going to uphold something just because that's the tradition. Being gay lends itself to sidestepping those traditions; planning a wedding, raising a family, all of the things that traditions/conventions are so thoroughly embedded in, I get to live out and actualize however I want. I can choose to follow tradition, and in a lot of situations I most likely will, but it's no longer blindly expected of me.

5. Masturbation = being studious.
Sometimes I think, in those beginning moments, that there are more productive things I could be doing than touching myself, but then I think, well, I am nothing if not studious. When I make a commitment to something, I want to be the best at it. I'm merely striving to be the best lesbian lover I can be...not that masturbation needs a rationalization, it certainly doesn't...but you do get to try new things out completely risk-free.

6. Indulge EVERY fantasy.
I get asked the question, "Why are homosexuals so obsessed with sex?" more often than one would think. Part of the answer has to do with the ignorance that's attached to homosexuality; being gay is about more than wanting to fuck someone of the same sex, and that isn't a perspective that is, all that often, embraced. The other part of the answer, I think, has to do with the inherent nature of the coming out process; internally and externally. Every single person that identifies with a label that falls under the queer umbrella, has gone through the process of identifying feelings, being mindful of thoughts, and then, consequently, embracing those feelings and thoughts; and the majority of those initial feelings and thoughts are about sex. When you come out, to yourself and to those around you, you're taking ownership of your sexual identity. If your feelings about sex run parallel to the normative thought process, if the pieces to your sexual puzzle fit without much effort, then you're not forced to go through the process of sexual identification. I love that I went through that process, because, now, I have an ownership of my sex-life that not all my straight friends have. I have a pride about what turns me on and that, in turn, has allowed me to indulge, perhaps more freely, in my fantasies.

7. Keeps me on my toes.
Nothing makes me feel more alive than dating a difficult woman and I make no apologies for the fact that I like difficult woman. It's never boring with women. Women definitely don't make life any easier; they're demanding and emotional and often irritating...and I wouldn't have it any other way.

8. The intrinsic community.
I love that there is a section of the library just for me. (Did you know that the Dewey Decimal Classification for lesbianism is 306.7? I did...I read a lot.) I love that random strangers will identify with and comment about my messenger bag buttons and we'll be instant best friends for the next three blocks. I love being a part of GLBT history. I love that there is always a dyke bar to go to, especially when traveling. I love the separate sports leagues and activist groups. All faults aside, it's a fantastic community to be a part of.

9. Of course, the cunnilingus.
I'm a fan of this. Need I say more?

10. Look at and experience gender in an atypical way.
I love that I can take on classically feminine roles (cooking, being overly dramatic, I'd love to be a stay-at-home/work-from-home mom some day) and classically masculine roles (initiating sex, picking up checks, fixing utilities); and all in the context of a love-based relationship. In a lesbian relationship, gender has the freedom to be fluid. (I'm not saying that gender can't be fluid in an opposite-sex relationship, but a same-sex relationship offers that fluidity, kind of, intrinsically.) There's space to write the rules and roles; gender can be whatever you want it to be, and it can change daily if you want it to. Nothing is prescribed and I like that. (If you haven't already checked out Diana Cage's VideoPodcasts about Gender and Sexuality on Velvetpark...do it now!)

P.S. I read A World Unseen this week, a story about two women and their unexpected love in South Africa during the apartheid in the 1950's. I never saw the movie when it was playing in Portland and I don't think it's out for rental yet, but the book is really good and the characters are really strong, which is refreshing in and of itself. It is written by Shamim Sarif, who also wrote I Can't Think Straight, which was also turned into a movie and is currently playing on the Here Network. (I heard it wasn't good.)

Simulated Household

2009-02-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

**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

2009-02-08T22:52:00.001-05:00

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

2009-02-01T21:13:00.000-05:00

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.

A Broad Perspective

2009-01-26T05:19:00.000-05:00

**I tried to write something funny this week, but everything I wrote was forced and insincere. There must be something in the air...maybe it's because it's January and all the New Year’s Resolutions are still lingering in the brainwaves, maybe it's the reflection that has come with our historic inauguration of change (aka President Obama), or maybe it's because when it gets cold outside we (I refuse to believe that I'm the only single lesbian that does this) neglect the non-fictional world that sits right outside our front door and cuddle up inside with (liquored-up) coffee and stimulating books. (I have been reading a lot of memoirs lately...reading a story about how other people have lived their life inevitably brings anyone to that unavoidable stage of reflection.) Whatever it might be, the funny just wasn't/isn't there...so, it’s another week of reflective rumination on my lesbian life. (Next weekend I'm being set up with a much older lady by my very straight and conservative friend, who believes that every time she meets a less-than liberal lesbian, the said lesbian must be the perfect lesbian for me...these set-ups are usually disastrous...I will most likely have something funny to write about next week.)**

I love women! I love everything about them. I love how one minute they can be sweet and considerate, then the next minute they're pissed and hostile, and then in the next minute they're witty and playful. I love the glow that you see in a woman's eyes right after she has done something empowering or something that has involved an extraordinary amount of strength. I love how expressive women's mannerisms can be and how when you know a woman really well her mannerisms are all you need to see to understand exactly how she's really feeling. I love the way that women play with their hands when they're nervous. I love the shape a woman's face takes when she's learning something for the first time. I love how when you meet a compassionate woman, you can see that compassion run through every vein in her body. I love that women have the capacity to be gentle and strong at the exact same moment.

I could go on for days, but all of this is not to be confused with my self-declaration for lesbianism; I loved women far before I knew that I was a lesbian. The authentic admiration that I possess for women has little to do with my desire to see them naked.

Nobody was surprised when I came out, and not just because I wear sensible shoes or know how to fix...anything, but because I have always relished in any chance I got to be around a woman. I assumed that my fascination with women stemmed from a place of inspiration and awe, and while I now understand that it was more than that, I don't think that my homosexual realization takes away from the genuineness that I felt towards women. I've always surrounded myself by really strong women, and all in the hopes that their strength would somehow rub off on me. I ate up (hey-oh) any book that I could find about empowered women and when I came across a woman that possessed a personality trait that I, myself, wanted to maintain, I would make sure that I was in her company; I would notice how that woman approached situations, I would ask her questions, and I would emulate all of her movements...thus, I've had really amazing female role models in my life.

Here's comes the reflective rumination that I was talking about earlier. My ability to pick strong and empowering female role models hasn't seemed to translate into an ability to pick strong and empowering girlfriends. When the potential to get to know a woman also involves the potential for an orgasm, all of my sound judgement about women goes out the window. I had good judgement in women before I knew that I was a lesbian and now I'm having a difficult time shifting that judgement into romantic lesbian endeavours. I don't want to be the kind of lesbian that over thinks every dating choice AND I want to be a woman of intention...I usually follow my "go-with-the-flow" behavior, until I wake up a week later and think, "What are you doing? You know that this is not the girl for you."

After twenty-two years of strict sexual repression, sex can become a considerable hang-up in a unseasoned lesbian's life. There's a thin line between having an intentionality about sex and not letting sex become a massive preoccupation to your love life. I'm not really one for rules, I find them limiting and claustrophobic, but I've decided to institute this rule about sex. When I meet a girl that I'm attracted to emotionally and intellectually, I'm going to wait until at least the second date to fuck her; now this isn't to say I'm going to throw out ONSs or women who come into my life for the pure and simple reason of sex, but if it's a woman that engages more than my carnality, then I'm going to wait. At least for now.

P.S. If you're a writer or want to be a writer or like to read about writing, I'm going to recommend a book that I read this week...It's one of the best books I've read about writing and I've read a lot of books about writing. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott...check it out.

What the Fuck Sam Adams?

2009-01-22T02:04:00.000-05:00

I interrupt normal blogging this week to bring you my frustrations about Portland's mayor, Sam Adams. Adams became mayor on New Year's Day this year, making Portland the largest U.S. city ever with an openly gay mayor and Sam Adams is the coolest mayor in the world. The first time I met Sam was at a fashion show I was in called "Junk to Funk", where we wore fashion outfits made out of recycled material and this bad ass man hosted the event in a pair of pants made out of old tires... have you ever seen your mayor in rubber pants? Yeah, that's what I thought. Sam hosted the local drag show competition and sang karaoke at a recent GLBTQ event, he's a cool motherfucker. Portland started to pride itself in the idea that our mayor was a hip, cool dude that cared about the people of his city and had a genuine desire to make it a better place.

After being in office only 20 days, our very gay mayor pulled a Bill Clinton and admitted to lying about a sexual relationship he had with an 18 year old intern. What the fuck Sam Adams? In a press release issued on Tuesday, Adams admitted that he lied to cover up his relationship with a teenage legislative intern because a potential mayoral candidate had spread rumors that Adams had sex with a minor and that he lied because he was afraid voters wouldn't believe that his young lover had turned 18 before they started having sex. The irony around all of this is that the Oregon Constitution has a stipulation in it that prohibits mayoral recall in the first six months that the mayor is in office. (It was put in the constitution nearly 100 years ago so that poor losers couldn't recall their competitors.) All the people that are pissed about having a gay mayor, or a sexually promiscuous mayor, can't do shit about it for another five months and Sam Adams has been adamant about stating that he is going to stay in office, deal with the aftermath of his decisions, and not resign.

Every time that I feel like we make strides as a community to feel and be respected, something fucks it up. I have no problem with Sam Adams dating an 18 year old; what sucks is that we just keep adding to the list of things for straight people to throw back in our faces. Seriously Sam Adams, what the fuck? Couldn't you have just kept your mouth shut? In all fairness to Sam, at least he's going to be a man and stick out the consequences.

Breaking Bread and Bones

2009-01-19T14:54:00.000-05:00

** DISCLAIMER: I’m going to talk about religion. I don’t want to offend/alienate/whatever and I’m not interested in turning this into a religious blog, but it’s what’s on my mind…so I’m going to blog about it; just take it for what it is. **

It has been exactly 21 months, two weeks, and a day since I have had communion. The last time I broke bread was on Maundy Thursday of 2007 and there are days, like the days that I have had lately, where it feels like yesterday. I knew, wholeheartedly and with a very clear and pure intent, that when I took communion on April 2nd 2007, it would be the last time that I would take communion for a very long time. It sounds dramatic, (and as a lesbian I accept that I make situations more dramatic than they sometimes need to be) but the drama was very real for me. My whole life; every thought process, every movement that resulted from my thoughts, and every life decision that I made, was explicitly tied to how I could best serve the church and how I could be the best person FOR the church.

I knew, from a very young age, that I wanted to go into full-time ministry. When I was seven, I wanted to be a monk, but my mom told me that I couldn’t be a monk, because I was a girl and girls couldn’t be monks. (Oh, and I wasn’t Catholic.) When I was ten, I wanted to move to Africa and teach children how to read and write, but my dad told me that it was too dangerous for girls to go to Africa without a husband. (I also knew, from a very young age, that I never wanted to be married; turns out I just didn’t want to marry a man.) When I was fifteen, I wanted to convert to Judaism, learn Hebrew, and travel the world converting Jews into “Jews for Jesus”, but my youth pastor told me that women’s roles in the Jewish faith tradition were much more limiting than those in the Christian faith tradition, and that if I wanted to take on a leadership role, I would have to do it from a Christian platform.

This is what I don’t get; (I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now) if we are to believe that God is limitless, then where did we get the idea that we should limit how people serve? When I chose to go to seminary at eighteen, I did so with the honest purpose of wanting to change that irrational and vain ideal. I did, and still very much do, believe that knowledge is the clearest, most effective, and most integrity-full (I know that’s not a word) way to foster change. My desire to create change was pure and simple… enable people to believe in the church as a tool to support them fully in their relationship with (insert your word of choice here: God, g-d, Jesus, faith, religion, doctrine, each other, scripture, spirituality, etc.), not as a place to pillage them of their dreams and solitary thoughts.

When you graduate with a religious degree and you truly invest yourself in your education, you become one of two things: incredibly strong or incredibly fake. When you spend four years writing papers about the historical reliability of the Gospel of John and you learn how to translate the New Testament for yourself (and you learn that modern day translation is iffy at best), you lose any hope of keeping your childhood faith. That is ultimately the entire point of seminary… to come out stronger on the other side. When I was sitting in the pew on that Maundy Thursday nearly two years ago, I had what people call a light bulb moment. To make a very long story short, I realized that I couldn’t do it anymore, that I couldn’t be the person to make those changes in the church. I wasn't willing to let myself become fake and I wasn't strong enough to keep going. I realized that I was going to have to break off all ties with church, scripture, sacrament, doctrine, and all of those things that come with the structure of faith if I ever wanted the possibility of a relationship with faith in the future.

When you break a bone, you have to leave it alone if you want it to mend. You put it in a cast or a sling and you don’t mess with it because it needs time to heal on its own. Have you ever noticed that bones are the only thing that we follow this kind of procedure for? Why is that? Seriously! Why? (This applies in particular to lesbians...we're not good at leaving things alone.) Well, leaving it alone is how I decided to handle my “break-up” with religion. I put all my church books in a box. I learned how to play secular songs on the piano. I took myself off all the Christian email lists. I didn’t go back for my senior year of school. And I have, completely, left religion alone so that it can heal on its own. I've been treating communion like it was a broken bone and I have the faith that things will heal...I'm just going to leave things to be and let faith repair itself.

P.S. I bought a new razor this week, cause I think that I'm finally ready to get back in the game and a girls got to be prepared, and it rocked my world…The Venus Divine…It is super amazing for those sensitive spots!

Dangerous Crossings

2009-01-12T00:24:00.001-05:00

I love to be inspired and I come across inspiration quite easily. A simple sentence, a sincere sentiment, or a tiny token can toss me into the throws of insight and illumination without a hint of apology or justification. No matter how many times I feel inspired, it never gets old and it never losses its importance. I rarely think twice about letting a book speak to me. I try not to rationalize contradictory inspirations. I strive to follow my own inspirational road and I don't let myself limit who and/or what I'm inspired by.

I've been inspired by the Bible, Seinfeld, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. I've been inspired by Gandhi, Frances McDormand, the preschoolers in the church nursery, the man who gave birth to his families child and the woman who supported and loved him. I've been inspired by the women who came before me, so that I didn't have to fight to learn. I've been inspired by people who think differently than me, so that I get the chance to learn and to fight for what I think is important. I've been inspired by people that I've never meet and by people who know me better than I know myself. Inspiration comes easily for me, and not always in the most conventional ways, but always in an unrelenting way.

I am also somebody that loves to jump. I am no stranger to, nor am I afraid of, jumping off gigantic (life)cliffs or following a sudden idea without excessive (or if I'm honest, it's often with any kind of) processing and/or rehashing. I like to move my feet and I have a genuine desire to do everything, so naturally I welcome the big jumps. I think big, so I move in big ways; and no mental or physical obstruction stops me from jumping down the next life path.

I had no idea, absolutely NO IDEA, that I was gay until I absolutely knew that I was gay. At 21, I decided to leave the church and to truly figure out, for my absolute self, who I wanted to be and what I wanted to stand for. I decided to embrace every thought that came into my head and to not edit my thoughts or worry about what others would think about the actions that came from those thoughts. One day I was shopping in a department store and I saw this woman and I thought, "Damn, I'd like to fuck the shit out of her!" WHOA. STOP. BACK THE BUS UP. WHAT WAS THAT AGAIN? Immediately I thought to myself, "That is an interesting and unique and unexpected thought, I should pay attention to that." I did pay attention to those thoughts....and three days later, I was a lesbian (and accepting, for myself, that I'm gay is the best thing that I've ever done).

I love that I'm somebody that finds big inspiration in the little things and I love that I'm somebody that jumps into exactly who she wants to be; however, when these two personality traits cross at the same time, it can be dangerous...and by "can be dangerous", I mean its a "DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER" "HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM" "DID HE FIRE SIX SHOTS OR ONLY FIVE?" kind of dangerous. When random inspirations and sudden movements meet, then I'm either jumping into something for the sake of jumping or I don't know what I'm really jumping into or I'm leaving behind things that I big-time value. When I am feeling inspired by Alice B., while at the same time I'm feeling the desire to jump into something, then I'm jumping into pot brownies and domesticated chores and a lifestyle that, frankly, I can't afford. Add to this my very Type-B personality and...well...there isn't much room for stability.

I'll be honest and tell you that I used to rationalize all this by telling myself that I wanted (read:needed) to find a partner that could offer me that stability. When I think about that idea now it makes me squirm, because I don't want to be someone who relies on others to exhibit the traits that I want to value. If I value something, I want to have the strength to exhibit it myself. I can't ignore the fact that it's time for me to become a grown-up, but I also don't want to lose the things that I really love about myself. Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking and dreaming about the future and I want it to be a good future. I want to have a fantastic wife and fantastic kids. I want to be a writer that inspires people to be better. I want to be a genuinely good person. I want to be a grown-up that values stability, without losing my quirky, crazy, chaotic, hyper, neurotic self.

I don't have any answers for all of this; I just know that I want my dreams to come true and that something is going to have to change if I want the chance to live out those dreams.

P.S. An author from the mid-1800's, Henry David Thoreau, (he wrote "Civil Disobedience") is one of my favorite authors and I read this quote by him this week that's been making me think a lot lately...I thought I'd share: "Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."...yeah, intense right?!

Dirty Kind of Make-Believe

2009-01-03T16:54:00.000-05:00

The New Year makes me think about fairytales (…and oddly enough, I don’t think it’s just me…every time that I turned the computer on this week, I ran into another blog entry/op-ed piece about Disney Princesses…anyways…) I think that the New Year makes me think about fairytales because the New Year reminds me of what it feels like to dream; to dream like you did when you were little, when there was no understanding of limitation. I was a childhood dreamer, but I was never very interested in or entertained by fairytales. I never dressed up as Cinderella for Halloween. I never made my little brother rescue me from the top of the bookshelf. Frankly, I never really understood why I was supposed to look up to an illiterate, ditzy mermaid.

Before I start ranting and raving about Disney princesses, allow me to back up and offer some context. As a kid, I grew up in an extreme, fundamentalist Christian community in Texas; being openly cynical about fairytales wasn’t really an option for me. I was implicitly taught that the only dreams worth dreaming were the pre-approved dreams offered to me and that those dreams would be mine just as long as I colored in the lines, didn’t cause any trouble, listened in Sunday School, and didn’t question…anything. I had no interest in being a Disney Princess, but I also had no interest in being rebellious, so I played nice and made a really funny make-believe step-sister. At eighteen, I went to college to study to be a minister and I chose to go to the most (“most” might be an exaggeration, but there’s no way to tell) conservative Christian college in the country; where I was the only (this is not an exaggeration, I was the ONLY) female in the Bible department and the only female at this college for the pure reason of getting an education. {My thought process in this situation: If I was really going to make a difference in the church, I wanted to understand where the people who thought differently than I did were coming from (and what better way to understand them than to learn from them) and if I could hold my own in this school, then I could hold my own in any religious setting…suffice it to say that I didn’t hold my own, but this is all for another time} Every female friend I made at that college was unabashedly there for her “M.R.S. Degree” and in this educational environment, it was admirable if a woman’s greatest desire was to become co-dependent and the accomplishment most commended by the college was a wedding certificate. All this to say: I spent a lot of time being force-fed fairytales that I didn’t, personally, want anything to do with.

Far before I recognized that romancing women was an option for me, I had no interest in living out the stories I read when I was younger. Honestly, one of the most comforting things about coming out was the realization that there was no longer any pressure for me to find a Prince Charming. To be perfectly blunt, the Disney Princess stories make me feel dirty and not the good kind of dirty. (Not to mention unsanitary…I am so not a feet person. Do you think that Cinderella made the Prince wash his hands before he kissed her?) The bottom line is that I’m not afraid of a little loneliness and I’m definitely not going to marry Prince Charming just because someone wrote a story about him a long time ago.

So, where does this all lead me? Ironically, it leads me back to the beginning and back to dreaming. As a kid I dreamed about things like being a missionary in Africa or writing the sweetest (sweet as in kind, not cool) book ever written, and it’s about time I remembered what those dreams felt like. I had forgotten how important it was to dream and the New Year has brought about a new admiration for it and has offered me the self-assurance to scream, “I want to write my own damn fairytale!” I know what I want from life and just because it doesn’t look like the Disney princess stories, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as magical. At the end of the day, I am not looking for romantic salvation; I just want to find a girl that likes to read and who can keep up with my hyper-active persona. I am not interested in living in/ruling a kingdom; the city is good enough for me. I am not worried about spending the rest of my life doing dishes or staying home from the Ball; I like hard work and I’d rather meet a girl at the bookstore. My New Years Resolution is to do more dreaming (or self-edit my dreams less) and if all goes well they will involve the good kind of dirty.

P.S. Sara Bareilles wrote a song on this topic called "fairytale." Listen to it.

P.P.S. Anne Neczypor wrote about this topic (this week) as well. Read it.

SciFi and Red Stilettos

2008-12-26T18:49:00.000-05:00

With the Christmas season coming to an end, I thought I would share an anecdote; however, I couldn't pick between just one, so here are my two favorites.

Christmas Anecdote #1:

While attending a holiday party that consisted of, mostly, art school lesbians, I found myself in the middle of a thoroughly in-depth and very serious science fiction conversation. (It was one of those situations where, towards the end of the night, I found myself with a small group of people in a room separate from the majority, and I couldn't just walk away and join another conversation because I was sitting on the opposite side of the room from the door and I'd have to walk through the middle of this serious conversation to reach the exit and I didn't want to be rude.) I'm not a consistent nor studious scifi/fantasy reader, but I can hold my own in conversations on the topic; that is, unless the topic is space. I don't know what it is about space, but I can't get into it...like Star Trek or Star Wars or BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

This science fiction conversation revolved around the heated debate of whether or not a prequel, apparently a spin-off show that starts fifty years before Battlestar and will answer how the cyclons were made(I think that's right, I went from memory), was/is a good idea. With the impending conclusion of season 4, and thus the end of the series, approaching in mid-January, this topic was more impassioned than our Rick Warren or sex sans dental dams conversations. Here's the thing that I have noticed about lesbians and Battlestar Galactica; they either hate it or they're a fanatic, there is NO in-between. NObody understands the general idea behind this television show; you either know it all, inside and out, or the only thing you know is that they use the word "frack" and the word is only included in your vocabulary for the sole purpose of making fun of a space-nerdy lesbian. NObody is casually flipping back and forth between "Will and Grace" and "BSG" and I dare anyone to try this while watching BSG with, again, a space-nerdy lesbian. An exception to this is if you are dating a Battlestar Galactica fan and you watch the show to find out what kind of sex you're going to have, because trust me, if your girlfriend is a BSG addict, it will affect your sex life. (They found earth=best sex ever. That spaceship blew up=I wasn't laid for days.)

Christmas Anecdote #2:

The night after Christmas I went out with some friends to dance off all, or at least some of, the Christmas time indulgences and after dancing we ended up at a dive bar on the east side of town. While I was sitting at the bar, I spotted this girl that I had once been set-up with. (In the spirit of Christmas I'll be courteous and say that...it was simply not good, but this girl was/is crazy-pants crazy.) I was not in the mood for civility, so I hatched a plan. If this girl spotted me, I was going to take off running; like sprint for your life, Mufasa running from the stampede take off running. (Even the craziest girl should get that kind of hint.) Well, she did spot me, our eyes met, and I bolted out of my chair...only...I was wearing this fabulous pair of red stilettos...I got a step and a half away and the back of my heel caught the end of a bar stool. BAM! I face planted right into the floor.

Well, this lesbian nut ran over, straddled me, and stuck her tongue down my throat. (I can't, in good conscious, pass up the sexual pun: I fell face first, but somehow ended up on my back...this is, ironically, how most of my lesbian escapades end...hey-ohh.) If you've ever wondered why you've never seen a lesbian in a pair of heels, now you know why! We make excuses about product durability or throw out bullshit lines about a comfort-level, but lesbians don't wear heels because WOMEN ARE CRAZY and we lesbians need reliable athletic sneakers to run our asses in the other direction. If I had been wearing lesbian approved footwear, my bolting scheme would have worked and I wouldn't of had...rabies-incarnate...stick her tongue down my throat. (OK, I don't think that she actually has rabies, that was harsh, but until I feel some sort of sanitation again, I'm going to keep on gargling hydrogen-peroxide.) All-in-all, it did make the bartender laugh, which is always nice, and now I not only have a great story to tell, but also a solid justification for not wearing heels.

Cheers to a great holiday season and a safe New Years.

P.S. I heard that Jay Mohr was going to legally take his wife's name, which is totally cool, but didn't he marry Nikki Cox? Will that make him Jay Mohr Cox?...get it, like "more cocks"...

Prototype Politics

2008-12-21T19:44:00.000-05:00

In 28 days, President-Elect Barack Obama will make history and become the 44th president of the United States of America; and I must admit that I am a little sick of hearing the phrase "make history" and all of its grammatical variations. I find it quite ironic that Barack Obama is coined as the man to make history, when, for the exception of one thing, I think that he's just repeating it. (Don't get it twisted...I appreciate the gravity of Obama's election and I don't mean to belittle it...I am merely sidelining race for the purposes of making a point.) I didn't vote for Barack Obama, but that doesn't mean that I don't believe in him. He exudes confidence, intelligence, grace, and poise; all things that bring about comfort and no one can deny that we, as a country, could use a little comfort. I know that the word "change" no longer holds leverage, but I authentically believe that we live in a world that needs change and that Barack Obama is the man to bring it about.

In a 2005 issue of Time Magazine, Barack Obama authored an article entitled, "What I See in Lincoln's Eyes." In it, Obama recalls what he admires about the great president and offers the reader undeniable similarities between himself and honest Abe. They were both young and inexperienced, and they were both criticized for it. They both came from humble backgrounds, were raised by women other than their mothers, and came to political power in the State of Illinois, even though they were not from Illinois. They both wrote best-selling books before their presidency and they both were/are eloquent and impassioned speakers; and it looks like Obama has his heart set on delivering a few more similarities.

President-Elect Barack Obama has not been shy in sharing his admiration for Abraham Lincoln, but I can't help but wonder if his admiration is more about a blueprint than it is a genuine desire to learn from this late, great president. From a 2-Dimensional view, Barack is displaying a Lincoln-esque style, but Abraham Lincoln was about more than style. Lincoln was a man who stood for courage; a man who stood UP for what he believed in. He didn't stand for the sake of standing, he stood because he truly had something to stand for. I hate to be skeptical, but I'm not sure the same applies to Obama...at least not yet.

Last week, Barack defended his decision to invite Rick Warren to pray at the inauguration, stating, "it is important for America to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues...this is a part of what my campaign's been all about." I agree that we need discussion. I agree that we need to listen to one another. I even agree that we need to come together (whatever that is supposed to mean). What I don't agree with is this idea of reaching over opposing lines FOR THE SAKE OF reaching over opposing lines. It is true that Lincoln made friends with his enemies and that his cabinet was made up of rivals, but there wasn't a single person in his cabinet that he didn't 100% respect. Abraham Lincoln might have made friends with some Confederates, but he certainly wasn't inviting them over to make policy decisions.

Barack Obama is a man that walks on water. I'm not saying that he's Jesus, but that he exudes an unparalleled amount of poise. He has that quality that allows him to walk into a room without making waves or disrupting any boats, but I don't think that it's enough. There comes a time when you have to dig your heels in. When you have to ground yourself and stand for something, and you can't do that when you're walking on water. I don't mean to cut down our president before he's even started, but it seems like Obama's more interested in applying the motions of our 16th president rather than the ideals. If Barack Obama wants to exemplify the many amazing traits of Abraham Lincoln, he has to figure out what it is he stands for, and then uncompromisingly stand for that.

P.S. Here is my favorite Lincoln story. One day Captain Abraham Lincoln found himself leading a militia company across a field toward a gate. To his dismay, the appropriate command for marching through the gate utterly escaped his mind. "This company is dismissed for two minutes," Lincoln finally shouted in desperation, "and will fall in again on the other side of the gate!"

Sick Thoughts

2008-12-15T13:00:00.002-05:00

There are a lot of things that I don't understand about life, like... When the dog food package says "new and approved taste," does that mean that someone tested it? or How did Tom Cruise get a Golden Globe nomination for that piece of shit "Tropic Thunder" and James Franco get a nomination for "Pineapple Express", but not one for "Milk"? or Why is there a light in the fridge but not in the freezer; if it's dark you're most likely going for ice cream or vodka, not milk and eggs? and Why is the pharmacy always at the back of the store? I am going to assert that the pharmacy is the worst part about being sick. When you are sick enough to need prescription medication, it is hard enough walking from the car to... well the next car and there is nothing worse than sitting in that uncomfortable plastic chair while you wait for the pharmacist to fill your prescription.

I have been (perhaps this is an exaggeration) deathly sick for the last fourteen days. I am also someone that believes that everything happens for a reason; the universe offers us gifts, even if they do come in the form of vomit and diarrhea. See... for the last fourteen days I have been forced to sleep, watch TV (and read if I could manage), sleep some more, let go of all things stressful, and oh yeah, sleep. Here are five things that I learned while being sick...

1.)When I grow up I want to be Claire Huxtable; the gay, white version of Claire Huxtable. (If you flip to the right channels, you can watch "The Cosby Show" almost 24 hours a day and it is impossible to get sick of this classic television show.) Mrs. Huxtable is the ultimate combination of love, support, humor, discipline, and genuine good nature and if I ever find a woman as funny and good willed as Bill Cosby I'm proposing and/or tying her to the bed posts.

2.)It is always the woman. I watched five straight seasons of "NCIS", a crime show about Navy investigations, and I noticed that 80% of the time the guilty party is the female party. I think that this proves that we still live in a chauvinistic society; even if our sexist way of thinking is unintentional, it's programmed in us. Unless the victim's wife found out that her husband was cheating on her, the woman is rarely the one suspected and is almost always trusted. Let's face it, it is more shocking for a woman to commit the crime than a man.

3.)All I want is to be happy. A few days ago a friend came over to offer some much needed company and made a comment along the lines of "at least now you won't have to worry about packing on those holiday pounds." I am going to assume that the forces at hand didn't have my dress size in mind when they forced me to stay in bed for fourteen days. There is a great quote (I don't know who wrote it, but it was someone cooler than me) that says, "Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skin in sideways, chocolate and wine in one hand, body thoroughly used up and totally worn out, all the while screaming "WOO HOO, what a ride!" I think that this is a fantastic way to live my life. Perhaps it would be nice to not have to worry about an extensive January diet plan, but I have no intention of getting out of bed early (especially if there is a pretty lady in it) to go running or eating only one piece of holiday pie.

4.)I don't like food that comes in a can or a box. My first girlfriend was a chef (I always make the joke that she taught me how to cook in and eat out) and she tried to show me that things are always better if you create them for yourself; if you make your own sauce, it can be catered exactly how you like it. I always indulged her, but I never completely believed it; seriously, what poor college student isn't going to eat food out of a can. After eating canned/boxed soup for two weeks, I have a new appreciation for the art of genesis cooking and have, perhaps, resolved to be more creative in the kitchen.

5.)I enjoy the things that happen in bed. Did you know that if you deprive a rat of REM sleep, it, on average, only lives five weeks; whereas a rat who gets REM sleep lives 2-3 years? Did you know that CNN reported that sleep was the #1 health related problem in America? Did you know that a University of Michigan study in 2004 reported that children with sleep problems were twice as likely to abuse drugs and alcohol as teenagers? (Here's the article.) Sleep is Muy Importante. I have that stubborn trait that makes me believe that because I'm young, I'm also invincible; apparently, it's not true. There are only three things to do when in bed; sleep, read, and fuck. Those are three really good things, so I've been asking myself: Why am I not spending more time in bed? I wonder if the world would be a better place if we all made the active effort to spend more time under the covers. Perhaps this will be my New Year's Resolution.

Folks, the next time you get sick, take it as a gift. Life is short and the universe might be trying to tell you that it's time to take a break from all the chaos. Get into bed and milk it for all that it is worth!

P.S. Behind The Scenes Comment: I might still a little loopy...everytime I would read over the part about boxed soup, I would start laughing because I said box...you know like the slang term for pussy...EVERYTIME!!! In all honesty, I would probably laugh at that even if I wasn't drugged up.

A Little Holiday Contentment

2008-11-30T11:40:00.001-05:00

It's the story we tell our generations to corroborate the belief that we are a country based in virtue, generosity, and courage; and if you grew up in the United States public school system you know it well. On September 6, 1620 a group of puritans fleeing religious persecution set sail on a boat called the Mayflower and 65 days later they settled in a town called Plymouth. In that brutal winter, many of the aforementioned Pilgrims lost their lives to the seasonal conditions and when it was time for the harvest, the surrounding Wampanoag Indians aided the colonizing Pilgrims in their new world duties, thus ensuring the Puritans a successful and prosperous autumn. A celebratory dinner was thrown; American Indians and Pilgrims sat together, offering us the perfect portrait of respect and harmony between two divergent cultures.

I am not going to bash Thanksgiving. I am not going to comment on the many ironies that surround this historic holiday. I admire the fact that we, as a country, strive to value gratitude for the things present in our lives; in fact, Thanksgiving is, and always has been, my favorite holiday. In days that are filled with bank statements and war stories, it is more than refreshing to spend a little time accounting for what we have to be thankful for. Even if this holiday has become more about football and retail sales and avoiding family fights, it's grounded in integrity (much thanks to Lincoln) and good will, which is what the holiday season is all about.

This is my first holiday season since coming out to my family; it is also my first holiday season since separating myself from all things religion. Ninety-five percent of my holiday memories are explicitly tied to church and lately I've been feeling a little lost without being able to take part in any of those traditions. (In full disclosure: even if I still wanted to participate in those traditions, I wasn't invited to over half of them.) I wish that I could say that I'm going to embrace the meanings behind the traditions; that I'm going to live out this holiday season with the values of Christmas, even though I'm leaving the sacraments of it behind, but I'm just not strong enough...yet. In all honesty, negativity is quickly making its way into my holiday season and I'm having a hard time enjoying myself.

So... rather than a new years resolution, I am making a holiday season resolution. This holiday season I am not going to dwell on the things that I don't have: traditions, a job, or a girlfriend. I am not going to worry about the things I don't have control over: party invitations, the economy, or what my family members think about my life. I am not going ignore that it's the holiday season, merely because I'm having a hard time mustering up enough strength to enjoy it. I have a lot to be thankful for so I'm going to extend myself contentment this holiday season...and perhaps I'll liquor up my coffee.

P.S. I read the most exceptionally moving book this weekend called, "Are There Closets in Heaven?", which is a beautifully written story about the relationship between a lesbian daughter and her Catholic father. It's unlike any gay memoir I've read and I highly recommend it...oh, and clear some time in your calender to go see "Milk", it's fantastic.

Blind Eye for the Queer Guys

2008-11-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

I am not a crier. Not because I don't have a soul or because I don't care; I just don't cry. I have shed more tears in the last few weeks than, perhaps, I have in my entire lifetime and all because I don't understand. I don't understand how someone can think that my desires are disgusting, when my desire to love a woman is the purest desire that I possess; I don't understand how someone can think that I am incapable of being a loving mother only because I am incapable of loving a man; I don't understand how someone can think that a person as sweet and as honorable as I am could destroy a blessed union; and I don't understand why someone thinks that I am unworthy of whatever it is we are fighting over.

I strive, diligently, to live my life with empathy; to see things from different perspectives; to appreciate where other people are coming from. I can often find some way to succeed at the task, but the last few weeks have been different. No matter how hard I try to provide understanding and compassion towards the anti-gay rights movement, I am having an unfathomable time finding the means to do so. I don't understand their point of view and I don't feel compassionate to where they're coming from. If I am honest with myself I feel marginalized, fearful, annoyed, repulsive, patronized, and most of all I feel invisible.

I am not an idea or a notion of what homosexuality is; I am a homosexual. I am not a painting of two fat girls naked in a castle hallway or an eXplicit movie of two skinny girls faking it in a bed; I am an actual lesbian that has sex with other lesbians. (OK, they're not all lesbians, but you get my point.) I am a real live lesbian. If you supported the passing of proposition eight, then you supported the marginalization of my real life. It's not just a conception that, out there in the world, two girls could possibly fall in love, want to get married, and potentially start a family; it's exactly what I want my life to look like.

The people that I personally interact with that disagree with my "lifestyle choice" all deal with my homosexuality in the same way; they avoid that it is an actual part of who I am. They make an active effort to separate their generalized views of homosexuality from their intimate relationship with me. I doubt that the people who voted to limit the rights of homosexuals on November 4th were thinking about a person that they knew when they filled out that bubble or pulled that lever. I doubt that the people who donated thousands upon millions of dollars to "protect the institution" were thinking about what that money could do for a third world country or an abused woman's shelter. I think that if we were to personalize the fight for same-sex rights, make the fight more about the person who is a homosexual than the idea of homosexuality, people would have a much harder time voting the way that they did.

I refuse to believe that we live in a world where we intentionally limit the people around us. Perhaps I place too much faith in humanity, but I believe that no matter how scared someone might feel, we care about one another. I don't believe that what people are scared of... is me. I think that if we were to remove the idealistic blindfold, the obstruction that is making this fight more about an idea than a person, we'd have the footing to create change. Homosexuality isn't an idea and it's about time that we removed the blinders that say that it is.

P.S. Did you know that in the 4th century Christians practiced the union of "adelphopoiesis", which literally translates into "brother-making", and was the tradition of religiously uniting two people of the same-sex?

Cum-passion

2008-11-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

(There are a lot of other funny cartoons about this topic here.)

Gay marriage, or the lack there of, is on the mind of every lesbian blogger this week, so I thought I would follow suit and share my thoughts. Let me start with a disclaimer. I am 23 and not currently in love; nor have I ever fallen in love with someone I wanted to share the rest of my life with. I spent the first 21.5 years of my life imbibed in the world of conservative Christianity and "traditionalistic" values and where every thought I had was filtered through a machine of scripture, status quo, and religious domination. I am not naive to the fact that I come to this topic without an intimate understanding of what it feels like to want to commit your life to someone else and that I haven't thoroughly broken all the ties to my religious thought process. I, without hesitation, confess that my thoughts on this issue are undeveloped and fragmentary, but I'm going to throw my lesbian blog into the gay marriage ring anyways. ("Gay Marriage Ring"... that would be a fantastic before and after puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.)

I am currently studying journalism and I constantly have my head in a book, which means that the majority of my life revolves around words. I love words. (That's an awkward statement, but it's true.) Words are reliable, they’re personal, they have history, and they have a lot of power. Words can be goofy, words can offend, words can uplift, words can turn people on; and the same word can evoke all of those emotions, plus many more. The one thing that I have learned about words is that words have very little to do with the definition that has been attached to them. I am always shocked when I open a thesaurus* and see that so many words, for all intensive purposes, mean the exact same thing. Why so many words? It is because words have two parts. There is the definition part of a word. This is the way a word functions in a sentence; the definitive … you know, that's how we get the word "definition" … the definitive properties of a word give it meaning.

However; far more important than the definition of a word is the connotation that any word brings along with it. The idea of a word, what a word represents, is considerably more influential than its actual meaning. When you hear a word, you see a picture. That picture is not of a page in a dictionary; it is of a scenario or a feeling or an experience. This is what makes words so powerful. Everything that you have been through, everything that you have felt, everything that you have experienced is rooted inside of you and can be brought to the surface at any moment with any word. The power of a word lies not in it's definition, but in what that word represents.

The fight over same-sex rights, at this moment, revolves around a word and how that word is defined. Opponents to same-sex marriage believe that the word should be re-defined to specify that the union is between a man and a woman. Both sides of the issue have thrown the word "marriage" into the ring as our scapegoat, as a vehicle for contention, but I don't think that we are actually battling over a definition. The proponents of same-sex marriage aren't fighting over a word, we are fighting over what that word represents. Ultimately, if you believe that the union between a man and woman is different than the union between a woman and woman, then you believe that homosexual love is different than heterosexual love. That is the connotation that we are fighting against.

Here is the thing. Congress has control over words. Politicians and religious bodies have the definitive authority to define anything and everything. I say, let them fuck the shit out of definitions; until their toes curl, their checks turn rosy, and they're out of breath. Because nobody can define what you come home to everyday. Nobody can tell you what you have. If you love somebody with more love than you thought you had in you; if you come home to somebody that you have, in your heart, committed to spend the rest of your life to; if you have somebody that you fight with and laugh with and fuck with and sit with, then you have a marriage. You have all the connotations of marriage , even if you don't have that word...yet.

Because this fight over same-sex marriage revolves so much around fear, I don't particularly think that throwing our fists in the air and stomping our feet through the crowds is the way to bring about understanding. I think that there is room here for compassion; not much, but a little bit. I remember feeling scared when I went through the process of identifying my sexual feelings. There was a lot of fear in my life at that time and I got through it because I showed myself a little bit of compassion. Fear is fear; whether it's me being scared to admit that I wanted to fall in love with a girl or if it's a religious group in Idaho being scared of the change in status quo. I think that compassion is our road to progress because compassion brings about trust and trust reduces fear.

Compassion isn't easy in these times, so let me give you some advice. I recently read an article about the correlation between compassion and oxytocin. The research suggests that the more oxytocin your body naturally produces, the more compassionate you feel towards others. In case you didn't know, oxytocin is the hormone that is released during an orgasm. The more orgasms you have, the more compassionate you can be. So fuck away ladies! because if the road to gay marriage is compassion, one of the on-ramps includes gay sex. Now, that's something I can get down with.

P.S. Alternative titles to this blog included "Blind Eye for the Queer Guys" or "Fight...for Your Right...to Maaaaaarry (to the tune of the Beastie Boys)"

*I do not and can not in good conscious advise anyone to use a thesaurus. Stephen King once said, "Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule." and I agree with him.

Lesbian Trump Card

2008-10-24T17:46:00.000-04:00

I often use my lesbianism as an excuse to invalidate my opinion in embarrassing or unsettling situations. I don't like confrontation, nor do I like to look confused, so I blame it on my homosexuality; when in reality, being a lesbian has nothing to do with my bewilderment of the situation. If I am having a difficult time grasping where someone is coming from, yet their opinion is doing no damage to themselves or anyone else, I'll throw down my lesbian trump card and the conversation is over. If I don't agree with someone else's life choice, yet I foresee no arguable reason why it would be the wrong choice for them, I'll keep my thoughts to myself through means of my "dyke-centric thought process" alibi. (I will absolutely speak up if their opinion or life choice is marginalizing, biased, unthoughtful, or just plain stupid; however, if it is harmless, I'll leave it to be.)

When I went to see Sex and the City with a group of girlfriends, I was certain that my friends would have hated the movie as much as I did. I was wrong. They all loved it, and they loved that Carrie ended up with Big. When asked my opinion, I muttered something like "How could anybody be happy marrying someone so hairy?... but I guess that's one more reason why I'm thankful to be a lesbian." When two very manly male study partners of mine asked me who I would pick to date, I said, "I like girls, so I'm going to pick whichever one of you is more girly... Do you still want me to answer that question?" When a straight friend of mine told me that she was moving to Alaska for a job, I said something like "I would never move there cause it's cold and I have a difficult enough time as it is getting girls to take off their clothes when it's not freezing, but boys aren't like that, so I'm sure you'll be fine."

I have a friend that graduated from the prestigious school that is NYU and my said friend never fails to share this fact about his life when trying to validate an argument he's making. Whenever we discuss politics or social issues, he throws his degree on the table as if it is a trump card and his opinion is more sanctioned than my non-degreed opinion. He should be proud of his degree and I don't doubt that he worked hard for it; however, he majored in dance. You can't use your degree to weight a political argument, when your degree is in dance. If we are talking about Martha Graham or where to place your arms in a pirouette, I will absolutely give him free reign to trump the conversation; but when we are talking about Fannie and Freddie or Feminism, his degree doesn't mean shit to me.

I have come to the realization that I do this same thing, just reversed. Being a lesbian doesn't mean shit when it comes to movie reviews and moving locations; yet, I allow it to mean everything. Instead of using my lesbian trump card as a way to validate my thoughts, I use it as a way to invalidate my thoughts, which is way worse. I thought that by always having my lesbian trump card handy, it meant that I was, somehow, more comfortable with my sexuality; in reality, it just shows that I was hiding behind it. It's not that I don't like Big because he's hairy; I don't like Big because he's condescending and doesn't do anything to help Carrie be the best woman she can be. It's not that I thought my friend would have a hard time getting laid in Alaska; it's that I am a bad long-distance friend and she's not a friend I want to lose contact with.

As funny as I might find my lesbian trump card to be, I'm not willing to let humor outrank integrity in my life. I'm not willing to let something that is so important to my identity become a vehicle for avoidance. I cherish being a lesbian; I feel lucky that I get to fall in love with/sleep with girls and that I get to be a part of, what I consider to be, a fantastic community. I consider my homosexuality to be a gift and I would never treat a material gift with that kind of disregard or indifference; so why do I let myself do it with a symbolic gift? There are times when my lesbian trump card is effective; like when two boys want my opinion on who is hotter or when my opinion will do more damage than good. However, when it is used as an avoidance tactic, it drains the moral fiber out of something that I really treasure. I am not willing to let my lesbianism be anything less than it can be, so I am going be more selective when dishing out my lesbian trump card from now on.

P.S. Did you know that the costume designer for Sex and the City, Patricia Field, is a lesbian? Do you know any lesbians that wear those kind of heels?

WHAMMY...

2008-10-19T18:53:00.001-04:00

I recently ran into an old college classmate of mine and in the middle of our stale, half-assed conversation, the inevitable question arose..."Do you have a boyfriend?" I say inevitable, because I went to, perhaps, the most conservative, traditionalistic Christian college in the country, and whenever I run into people from that school and they take note of my vacant ring-finger, they inevitably believe that something is wrong. (I was not out in college, because I had no idea I had anything to be out about...but I'll get to that.) My answer to this question is always the same. "No...I don't like boys." I use this answer because it is concise, witty, and honest and I like that it puts the person on the other end of the conversation in charge of where the discussion goes. If they think that I am going to burn in a fiery pit of hell and they don't want to talk about, I don't want to talk about it either. If they think that my homosexuality is contagious and want to get out of arms length as quickly as possible, it is probably in their best interest for them to do so. If they want to ask questions because they are curious or want to know if I ever had a crush on them, I am happy to answer their questions.

Usually, the response to my clever coming out statement resembles something like "yeah, I had a feeling" or "I'm so happy that you were able to accept what we all knew" or, if you are my mother, "Thank God, I told everybody nothing was wrong with you!" (The very funny out comedian Erin Foley has a joke in her act about this very situation. Watch it!) Though I would rather receive these responses than a chair being thrown at my head or a lecture about Leviticus; it sometimes pisses me off, because I had NO FUCKING IDEA that I was a lesbian. When I was finally able to identify that the awkward, constant, overwhelming, nauseating, confusing, self-conscious feeling I was having was homosexuality, I accepted my lesbian label with open arms and (I must say, surprisingly) with very little religious guilt; however, not a second before my gay revelation did I have any sort of inkling that I was dyke.

The other day I was looking through some old pictures left on the kitchen table and let me tell you .... WHAMMY .... How the fuck did I not know that I was a lesbian? Here, let me show you...

This is when I won the state science fair in the second grade...for making a battery out of random things I found in the garage. WHAMMY.

This is when my family went to southern Oregon for summer vacation...and the only thing I wanted to do was drive giant ATVs across the sand dunes. WHAMMY.

This one doesn't even need an explanation. DOUBLE WHAMMY. (I'm not even that handsy in public at 23.)

I went to my senior prom alone and in a suit. I have never owned a pair of pantyhose, nor was there ever a time that I put on a ruffled dress without serious tears or flailing arms. I have never hesitated to make a situation more dramatic than it needed to be. I have never failed to know how a cord connects two things together or how to fix the television remote... but somehow, I had no idea that I was a lesbian.

Well, I know now and that is good enough for me.

P.S. In my defense, I am allergic to cats...

Reading Rainbows

2008-10-19T17:38:00.000-04:00

“The more you read the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you'll go.” This brilliant quote is from Dr. Seuss’ book, “I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!” and when I was eight I used it to get out of trouble when I got caught reading with a flashlight in the middle of the night.

Like the good lesbian that I am, I love to read. In the past 10 years I have never left the house without a book, nor can I ever remember a time that I have given someone a present that they could not read. (For all you cynics out there, I stand by the opinion that a book is the perfect present; it is practical, cheap, and shows that you put in some thought.) When I came out to my very conservative and fundamental Christian father, I approached the situation prepared with a handful of books, all from different perspectives, and a PFLAG pamphlet. When my way too young, selfish, and financially unstable friend and her husband got pregnant, I sent over baby books and brownies. And when a young teenager asked me for some advice on her new-found-journey through undiscovered lesbian territory I took her on a field trip to the bookstore.

I rarely find myself proficient enough in a subject to give real, tangible, step-by-step advice, so I redirect people to books by means of my extensive literary knowledge. And when ladies approach me for advice on their new or questioning (or whatever word you would like to use) lesbian inclinations I recommend these three books…

1)"Same Sex in the City" by Lauren Levin and Lauren Blitzer.
This book is a collection of anecdotes categorized by different topics/steps in the lesbian lifestyle while at the same time offering witty and very useful advice. In what often is an uncomfortable, uneasy, and stressful situation in a young girl's (or adult woman's) life, the storytelling approach adds a calming and simplistic warmth to their journey. (The L Word achieves this same feeling through identifiable characters and situations that allow for crying and/or laughter; however, drama will naturally come to said lesbian, she doesn't need to be advised to seek it out.)

2)"Is It a Date or Just Coffee?: The Gay Girl's Guide to Dating, Sex, and Romance" by Mo Brownsey.
Finding a humorous and lighthearted book about girl on girl dating is like finding a gay boy that eats cheese. Lesbians, not to be stereotypical, tend to take the world of dating (or, let's be honest, everything) very seriously and Mo Brownsey's humor and lightheartedness is refreshing. This is the book that will answer all of those classic questions like who pays on a homosexual date or what do I do with my hands when I'm going down on a girl. It is brilliant and offers really good, sound advice. (Sexpert Diana Cage's book "Girl Meet Girl" is just as brilliant, but dirtier; make sure that you know your audience.)

3)"Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present" by Neil Miller.
I always recommend that every lesbian, whether you are new to the scene or an old pro, read some sort of gay American history book. It is comforting to know that you get to be a part of a great community and is equally as important to know that people fought HARD and lost a lot. I always recommend this specific book because I respect that he doesn't apologize, rationalize, or downplay the history that the gay community has. (I knew my gay history quite well when I sat down with this book and on more than a few occasions I was shocked and/or nauseated, in the good way, when I read what Neil Miller’s extensive and unique research shows.)

There is a ton of fantastic gay and lesbian literature out there...but, don't take my word for it...

P.S. Did you know that in the original Star Trek:The Next Generation script Geordi LaForge was going to be gay? I read it on IMBD.

Out of Hand

2008-09-11T01:46:00.000-04:00

I am the only lesbian in my inner-circle of friends. This, alone, keeps me out of all sorts of lez trouble that I would most likely be tempted to participate in if I hung out with other lesbians. (IE. fucking/dating ex-girlfriend's ex-girlfriends. I don't get myself into that kind of lesbian trouble, because I don't know who any of my ex-girlfriend's ex-girlfriends are.) On the surface this seems productive and healthy; however, it does prove more difficult than one would think. While the straights in my life try to be supportive of my romantic woes, they simply don't understand the behavior of sappho-ic relationships. My friends and I spend most nights with me either explaining something, or justifying something, or hiding something; all while I look into the eyes of some confused, and often a little frightened, heterosexual.
**This might be why I started blogging**

Perhaps I should preface my story by telling you about my theory on lesbian bed death. Lesbians experience bed death because lesbian sex is hard work. There are lots of hands, lots of tongues, lots of toys, and lots of positions. On top of that (uh-hum), we are a resourceful lot; so, we never run out of ideas, props, or scenes. Once you meet a girl that you click with in the bedroom, it is glorious for weeks on end...until you wake up one morning and can't move your jaw. (If you understand what I'm talking about fantastic for you. If you don't, go out and bang a girl for ten days straight and call me in the morning.)

Here is my story.
I meet a girl that is bananas in bed. Seriously! Bananas! Jackpot, Right?! Well, the other day I woke up and I could not move my hand without some serious pain attached. I spilled coffee in the kitchen, burnt eggs because I couldn't flip them with my left hand, and I think that it is fair to say that my make-up didn't go so well that morning. I am a student, which means that I use my hands all...day...long. By the end of the day I had vowed to never fist a girl again. (I don't drink, so maybe this was my opportunity to experience hangover regret....maybe...and we all know how effective hangover regret is...) Anyways, at an end the day study session, a classmate asked, indiscreetly, how I hurt myself. I am not a good liar and I know this about myself and everyone knows I am gay, so I confessed...

"I meet this girl that is a real beast in bed. Apparently, my metacarpals are a little green when it comes to lesbian finger-banging."

"Did you know that the muscles and the nerves that control your hand actually start in the shoulder?" said the boyfriend of a not-so-close study partner of mine. "Everything in our body is connected. If you sat up straight, it would strengthen all the other muscles in your body, including those in your hand."

OK, the douche-bag comment aside, research showed that he had a point. What's my point? Don't ever stop fisting!!! and when you're finished on your back, turn your vibrator onto it. It might just stop all that post-war pain and forever cease what was once known as LESBIAN BED DEATH.

P.S. Did you know that the blogspot.com spell check doesn't recognize fisting as a legal word?

Passing Pioneer

2008-09-11T00:40:00.000-04:00

Del Martin, the famed lesbian activist, recently passed away at the age of 87. Martin and her girlfriend of 55 years (need me to repeat that... 55 YEARS), Phyllis Lyon, founded the lesbian rights organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, and were the first lesbian couple married in California this year. If you haven't already read what the recent widow wrote about her wife, READ IT NOW...

"Ever since I met Del 55 years ago, I could never imagine a day would come when she wouldn't be by my side. I am so lucky to have known her, loved her and been her partner in all things. I also never imagined there would be a day that we would actually be able to get married. I am devastated, but I take some solace in knowing we were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed."

How fucking sweet is that? If you are a lesbian and you didn't get a little teary reading that, I demand that you fall in love with a girl and move in next door to Sarah Palin.

P.S. I almost titled this blog "Dead Daughter"... Then I realized that, contrary to popular belief, I possess a soul.

Candidates. Campaigns. and Conventions. OH...SHIT!

2008-09-10T20:33:00.000-04:00

Brace yourselves people...It is election season and it is about to get ugly. With only eight weeks left, the race for the presidency is about to get as dramatic as an identifying straight girl engaging in a newly-developed lezzy relationship. I am no patriot, but I do love the election season. I love that convictions and perceptions run rampant with no clear path or destination, but yet filled with passion and fervor. I love that, during this span of time, it is completely acceptable for you to have conversations about topics you know absolutely nothing about with people you care absolutely nothing about. I get excited about the potential conversion of a country I was just on the brink of losing faith in. Then, like a ton of bricks, we reach early September and I remember how quickly it all becomes a GINORMOUS PILE OF BULLSHIT.

From here on out these two modern day primates will cease to exist as two separate citizens fighting for the same cause. (That cause is the betterment of the great country you live in... in case you were confused) John McCain and Barack Obama are no longer real people, rather conceptions of real people. No news article (or funny lesbian blog) will mention one without the other. Everything they say will be dissected by millions and thrown back in their face at a precise, strategic moment. Nothing they do will go unnoticed and I would bet my collection of Harry Potter books that everything they do over the next eight weeks is because someone advises them to do it.

This year I am lobbying for a "none of the above" option. Why is this not an option? Seriously? Do we really need a president?(It's not like the one we have now does anything) Would it be so bad if we spent the next four years as an executive-free country?

In 1787, when our founding fathers assembled for the constitutional convention, more than one-third of those gathered promoted the idea of multiple, single-term executives. And according to my encyclopedia*, if George Washington had not been the great man that he was, the executive seat (as it is today) most likely would never have been created. George Washington advocated powerfully for the new government; yet, did everything in HIS power to stay out of the limelight. It is for this very reason that he was unanimously voted into the seat. His self-doubt on his ability to lead, his fear that his motives for the new government would be misconstrued as motives for personal gain, and his genuine love of peace were the reasons that he became entrusted to be our first president. Interesting side note: The first citizens of the United States trusted George Washington so much that parts of the constitution were intentionally left blank so that George could fill them in later. (Would we trust our modern day George with a task of that kind of historical caliber?)

You give me a candidate today that resembles the traits of our inaugural president, even a little, and I will give you my vote. Until then I am writing in none of the above. Or Jackie Warner.

*(2007) The New Encyclopedia Britannica 15 edition