Quiver

http://www.quiverfull.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull
http://www.duggarfamily.com/

Just sayin'.

City Haiku – Hopkins Place

Blue sky scraped above
Sightseers, Suits, and strollers --
Feral humans sleep

Our Little Bundle of Joy

Starla and Princess are busting proud to announce a new addition to our little family – BETSY. Betsy is a beautiful, precocious, red and yellow Magna Excitor dirt bike. She weighed in at 43 pounds (she’s a big girl!), with 24” wheels, and was purchased at a yard sale in Remington yesterday for $100. We are ready to make a place for her in our home and take on the responsibility of caring for this precious tot with special needs (it’d be a good idea to get the brakes replaced pretty soon). Best of all, her quick-release seat height adjuster makes it simple for both of us (6 inches apart) to ride comfortably in a snap. We couldn’t be more delighted with our little one! We plan to throw ourselves a Bicycle Shower soon, invitations to follow.
This happy delivery rights a sad chapter from earlier this year. Princess had been longing for a new bike since her beloved dirt-spewing sweetheart from college days was kidnapped shortly after our move to Baltimore. The thieves took her from us while she was chained to a signpost outside our apartment. They were a determined crew. Though the signpost had no sign and they could have simply lifted the bike up over the top, they decided to take the hard way and actually removed the pole from the cement. Really, there was a big crater in the sidewalk, the post was on the ground, and the bike was gone for good.

But our tragedies did not end with that loss. Princess asked for a bike for Christmas from my folks last year, knowing that it was too big a gift to ask for – sort of a joke, like asking for tickets to Panama. I wanted so much for her to have it. It was a big gift, and more than I could afford by tremendous much, but still it seemed such a reasonable dream. My mama, bless her sweet, loving heart, really wanted to help me get it for her. I think it was her goal to try and help Princess have a really special Christmas – it’s the sort of holiday my family excels at making jolly, and Princess’ people aren’t quite that kind of Rockwell family – and she wanted Princess to feel welcomed in our family and loved real hard.
So I saved up as much as I could and got about half. My wonderful mama saved too. She secretly put aside a little extra and a little extra extra, made me promise not to tell Sissty how much she spent on Princess so she wouldn’t be mad, and together we raised $250 for Princess’ dream. I made a special envelope for the money. Dad got her a gift certificate for Dick’s so she could get a helmet and a lock, too.

It was a big deal. Princess was really happy, and I was really proud.

But we were so broke. We weren’t making it last winter, we were really struggling. The selfless embrace of those hard-won dollars, that dear, special, cherished gift – it got spent on the light bill. Broke my heart, it honestly makes me want to cry thinking of it again now.

So Betsy has arrived. And with her, the promise of that Gift of the Magi is made good. We called Mama to let her hear us laugh and coo at our Betsy-girl. Mama tells me lots of lesbians adopt babies from China (she wants me to know she's hip to the ways of my people). “Ride her in good health,” says Mama, the traditional wish that comes with every gift in our family. And the gift certificate is still intact, being useless to trade for food or phone minutes. A happy ending for us and for Betsy too.

She can jump a curb already, can you believe it? She’s getting so big!



One afternote – I did a little research on Magna Excitor bikes. Um, this wasn’t that great a deal, actually. The Magna Excitor is a department-store basic, and Target sells it new for about what we paid. It’s not fabulous quality, the parts may wear out on the quicker side. It’s also seen as a bit heavy and clunky by cyclists.

But you know what? Cyclists are often snobbish about their machines. The reviews from average riders are pretty good, actually. And she’s worth that amount of money to us, surely. We aren’t going for long-distance competitive rides, we just need an extra form of exercise and mid-distance transportation around town.

And Betsy is our sweet baby! She’s already brought us closer as a family. We won’t be sorry we adopted her, she’s PERFECT. Welcome Home, sweetheart!

Brag on my Buddy SarahJ!

Ok, this video is so crazy awesome (not fabulous quality, but it’s definitely worth watching). This is my friend, SarahJ, winning the (coveted?) title of HAMPDEN IDOL 2008!

Hampden Idol is a karaoke contest at HampdenFest-- the winner comes away with a surfeit of Glory and gift certificates!
SarahJ is someone I feel really PROUD to call a friend, like I like to brag to people that I know her. She’s a fireball of energy and always an enormously good time, and she’s a Renaissance Woman if ever there was one. Locally-famous puppeteer, improv performer, emcee, actor, storyteller, occasional mascot, and water ballerina. And get this – aside from being a performer, she’s a professionally trained costume designer and constructrix. She made her own puppets! and they are Guy-Smiley+ quality. My favorite is The Only Gay Eskimo, he’s real cute. Also, she’s a marvelous cook. Envy me that I know her, yes.

Here’s the behind-the-glory tale of her triumph, though. She had planned to do a totally different song, “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood:
I dug my key into the side of his Pretty little souped up four wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seat
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights
Slashed a hole in all four tires…
She had the cowgirl outfit, pissed off dance moves, practiced the words all through, and then built a truck out of foam core that she was going to destroy on stage. Really! Brought spray paint and a baseball bat and everything.

When she got there, they didn’t have the song.

Never discouraged, SarahJ literally ran back to her house, put together a new costume (including making head- and wrist-bands from cutting up her sweat socks), grabbed the hula hoop and baton lying about, and made it work. Dude, seriously – I didn’t even see the show, but she deserved to win.

Happily and to my unceasing astonishment, I have a good number of people in my life that are similarly splendid in their pursuits – folks I feel humble to know and real, real proud to brag on. For two related examples, the emcee you see at the beginning of SarahJ’s video is Mr. Justin Credible, also my excellent friend and Baltimore City Paper’s Best Drag King 2008 (second year in a row, boi!). The whole daggone festival, 21 bands and a day of wonder, was programmed entirely by my friend Dr. Robot.
Not that I did a damn thing for this event, no I didn’t. But how cool are my buds? Awesome!!!

Free to Be (if you're a friend of JC)

This morning my coworker Eunice meekly slipped this on my desk next to my elbow as she passed them around Cube City.

My Dear Co-Workers:
I am putting together a newsletter for my church for our discipleship ministry. I thought it would be a good idea to place in the newsletter how different individuals view and define discipleship. Please help me by giving me your definition of discipleship. I need your definition to come off the top of your head. That means do not use a dictionary, thesaurus, or the internet. Participation is not mandatory but would be greatly appreciated. If you can, please complete and return to me by the end of today. Many thanks to you. (Eunice) Do not attach your name.

Within minutes, this email appears from my workfriend Pashmina: i’m not going to lie: I don’t even understand what discipleship means. I seriously don’t. I’m kind of annoyed that this was passed around.

We had to do a lap around the office to talk about it. ‘Cause, really, what can you do? I’m a Dianic-Wiccan-leaning Pagan, she’s a culturally-Muslim Agnostic. We both figure this woman means no harm, but we’re both offended. It’s not like this is the first time the assumption of Christianity has come up.
Ultimately we decide to just ignore it, not make a fuss but not participate. What’s interesting is how I felt when she gave it to me. My first reaction was to write something for her! Like, say “I’m actually not Christian, Eunice, but this is what I think discipleship probably means”. I could probably give a pretty god definition, actually, I grew up in a Protestant denomination called “Disciples of Christ” and all.

Here’s the really fucked up part: Some part of me feels embarrassed not to be a Christian. I feel like my existence is just sort of rude.

This is the insidious damage the Christian guise of the patriarchy inflicts. I’m swimming in the American national identity, a pollutant in the sea of Christianity, the presumption washing over me until I feel like this is just how well-mannered people conduct themselves; it’s propriety to be part of a church. Like saying “I’m not Christian” is sort of like saying “I watch a lot of porn”. Both of these are true, but it’s not polite to mention either one at work.

So the question I have is the origin of this shame: Am I embarrassed because Cube City is a casually Christian environment that makes me feel like an outsider by omission? Or is this a symptom of growing up Christian and still feeling the tentacles of guilt that come from leaving the Church?
Well, I don’t so much have guilt about leaving the Church, I really, really don’t. It’s more like growing up Christian gives me some insight into how this little memo from Eunice happened and some empathy for her. I’m certain, 100% certain, that she never thought it would offend anyone. She’s just asking, right? She said you don’t have to do it, right?
I can see her good intentions. I can picture the newsletter committee trying to work on their issue, in the windowless church office or the fellowship hall, after the opening prayer, over sugar cookies and Styrofoam cups of grape juice. I can imagine their excitement about Eunice’s great idea to ask her officemates to define “discipleship”, the earnest attempt to incorporate an outsider’s point of view. I don’t want to put her down, she’s trying to create something. She’s part of something that makes her feel special, she’s a contributor. Somehow I’m not able to be annoyed with her, even though this memo is hers alone, not an office-sponsored request.

But here’s my damage: These Christian assumptions feel like an army of termites trying to eat into my identity and make it rickety. Like a casual, even unconscious, but insidious way to break me down, erase me.

The office Christmas party that seems to last the whole month of December, with religious symbols all around, and coworkers (seriously, this happened) are offended when I say “Happy Holidays”. Religious posters on the walls of offices. The pressure to be a Secret Santa. Bible quotes in email signatures. Devotional booklets or Bibles on 5 of the 9 desks in my area. The office closing early the day before Easter. Inviting coworkers to church-sponsored events over email. Church fundraiser order forms in the lunchroom. Everyone here apologizes when they say “Oh my God!” as though it’s a cuss word and says “God Bless You!” when you sneeze. A what’s-your-zodiac-sign conversation where two people at the table said “I don’t believe in that, I’m Christian.” The anti-Halloween “Devil’s Day” discussions I’ll overhear starting soon. Our information and referral operators ask “Do you belong to a church?” when people call looking for help. Every third person wishing me a motherfucking Blessed Day.

Each of these examples seem so petty – it’s harmless, why get all upset because people feel strong in their faith? They didn’t ask if you were Christian when they interviewed you, right?
Ok, true, it’s not like anything illegal is happening here. People are just expressing their personal beliefs. But it’s far from harmless. To me, it just makes it a hostile environment. When I say “I’m not Christian.” I get the startled, scandalized “oh!” And a glare like I have three heads and eat babies.

Which I do, but still.

Bus Trippin'

There are basically three types of folks who ride the bus: Students, commuters, and people who are poor and/or broke.(Ok, add in a few anti-authoritarians and carbon-footprint-shrinkers from time to time as well). I’ve taken a lot of bus, and cycled through each of these categories several times over in my ridership. I’ve noticed that odd events and people tend to pop up among the cross section of humanity on the bus.
It makes sense. Basically, the bus is a rolling incubator wherein hot meat bags with mutually exclusive worldviews are methodically aggravated while being forced to touch one another. We all do our best.
I took an evening bus from Mt. Vernon to Charles Village tonight. That trip is maybe 10 or 12 stops, like probably about 2 city miles. This 20-minute ride is a study in bizarre human interactions, because the bus is inexplicably packed. We pass Penn Station and trade in one batch of commuters for another – the second is the larger group and folks have to stand. We’re all inadvertedly jostling somebody.

Two especially unusual things unfold.
1). When we get to North Avenue the driver puts on the hazards, takes a cell phone call, gets up and says “Ya’ll have to get on the bus behind me” in his inside voice, and leaves the bus (which continues running). The people near the front slowly collect themselves while we in the middle ask each other what he said; we all spill out onto the corner North and Charles, across from New York Chicken. We shuffle onto the #11 that has just pulled bumper to bumper with the, uh...#11, and sift ourselves into new seats. The original driver gets back onto his bus and drives off, #11 TOWSON still burning right on into the night.

2). A few stops past a dude gets on the overpeopled #11 TOWSON SEQUEL with a full size office chair. It barely fits in the aisle by the driver. Bigger than a lot of wheelchairs I see.
A lady greets him, says “You always got somethin’, doncha Sam?” and squeezes up to stand beside him. They chat, he hands her a takeout container, they get off together just past the Safeway.

So there’s the office chair situation, that was weird. I get that, though, I took our Christmas tree home on the bus one year. You ain’t got private transportation, you do what you need to do.

Also puzzling was the sorta mismatched pair they were. Lady was a wide-eyed young white coed with a backpack, bouncy hair, and a cutie tiny tee. Sam was a mid-50s black dude in an oily grey uniform, smile worn out like he’d had a mighty long day, toting that office chair via bus this evening. Looks to me like they have wildly different profiles all around; they strike me as two people unlikely to end up in a conversation by design.
OK, yeah, who do I know myself that might surprise a voyeuristic observer? I can think of twenty people in a heartbeat, and whether we harmonize or clash flickers with each of my/their personas. It made me check my assumptions, which by all standards of decency it should. But then I just made up a story in my head which justified my original guesses. My grandma taught me to play peoplewatch in airports, the story is the payoff of the game. It should be somewhere between measured speculation and reckless fiction, either end of the spectrum can be entertaining. I chose the version that seemed most likely to me.

They were friendly but not casual. I reckon they are neighbors from adjacent blocks in this “transition neighborhood”; It’s pretty mixed-income, multi-racial, mix of houses and apartment low-rises. I say she’s an undergrad from JHU, studying late at the Peabody library -- never left Toledo until last fall, when her folks helped her find her first apartment in a security building near the supermarket. He’s supporting his son and his sister-in-law’s kid on the street where he grew up, running a Greenmount bodega thrift store that the current economy is treating rough.
They wash up, each in the tide of their individual routine, at the same bus stop on the regular. Dude and Lady took the audacious and less-traveled path of acknowledging recognition for each other one day. Now they’re bus friends! Maybe they know the content of each others’ days, a little. Connect in their frustration after a damnable early bus passes them up.

Our tormented city heals itself block by block, between people of good intentions who share a route, who frequently waste the same scrap of empty time standing next to the same sign.

All hail the power of public transportation.

The Lost Weekend

I had to make myself go, seriously, take myself by the ear and March! to yoga today.

I'm "cat-sitting" at Mouse (my BFF)’s house, which is really just an opportunity for me to indulge deeply in every sensual vice I can perform in solitary -- there are more than you might think, I've been fully wanton. No joke, I'm really doing a Lost Weekend style bender. So I feel lousy today, totally slothargetic and fuzzy-headed, as well as a fair portion of shame and self-loathing for my bad behavior.

This is very Starla. My meaning of "relax" has more to do with the type and amount of intoxicants I can consume (including food and T.V.) than with the gentle stretching/read a good book/take a hot bath model. And I do feel powerfully guilty afterward – that’s why I’m happiest to do this level of sobliteration when I can be unobserved. If I found out that this computer (the witness to my wicked binge) had a nanny-cam in it, I would curl up into a shame spiral and implode. My health is not really so good that I can abuse my body for several days without consequence any more. And it's totally lonely, this brand of decadent self-destruction. Also, honestly, I'm too old for this.

The guilt of getting what I wanted despite the fact that it doesn’t serve me reminds me of the first lover I had, a boy who was on the downlow from his official girlfriend (with me and the three other women he was seeing on the side). We’d have sex, and it was big fun, and then he’d go fetal and I’d spend an hour talking him through how guilty he felt for having fucked me.

I always wished he could just give over to the pleasure of it. If you’re going to do it -- and you know you are, you’re kinda built that way – at least have a good time while you’re in it. If you need to think about the choices you make in your life, so be it. Do some soul searching when you’re sober/have your clothes on. In the meantime, don’t fuck up the fun you’re having in the moment.

This shame, while completely warranted in my case, is a deeply WASP reaction.

But today I made myself go to yoga. Because ultimately I really do love myself. And I’m proud because I’ve missed a bunch of classes and it was hard to go. I find the yoga physically enjoyable, even, but I couldn’t face being in my body this morning. I used every trick I could to get myself motivated – I already paid for the class, the teacher (my friend Yogi) will be disappointed, Princess (my wife) will be worried about me, my blood sugar is high and I ate crazy shit for a few days so I’m going to lose my eyesight and my feet if I don’t go to yoga today, TO-DAY!!!!, on and on..I still almost said Fuck It and drove on past.

I told Yogi I was hungover. The other students and she were also pretty chill or tired, so she tailored the class to suit. Very slow, gentle, easy to stomach. I feel so much better.

Let that be a lesson to ye, young one!

God's Vagina

Recently I went to a jobconference where Bishop Desmond Tutu delivered a keynote address. He was speaking to an organization that provides infrastructure for human services delivery; a group that helps people as its primary function. He was rumpled and grandfatherly.
He told the hundreds of helpers there that God needs them, God depends upon them. God must work through people to enter the understandable world, both the help and the gesture of help are God's need and delight. He spoke in a little tiny voice, "God says Help. Help me, children. Be my arms to one another. Be my voice, my comfort, my tenderness. I need your help!
You all here, you are God's hands."
And oh, I wanted to help God! when he asked, like I was a child in Sunday School again, hearing the voice of the Lord asking me a personal favor. A mission (Send Me!) to do a piece of work for Him in the world. Something tiny in the grand Plan, but significant, essential and I'm the one who can do it and who has to. Because of who I am, God saw my troubles and flaws, and they make me dented in just the perfect way for this special quest.
It was really like that for me, I was a pious kid. And am a pious adult as well, but I changed my God when the original didn't speak as clearly to me anymore. My new model is sexy and kind, raw and motherly, She loves us and doesn't give a fuck about us and uses us and ignores us and pleasures us. And, of course, She's too big for the whole monotheism suit. But the surge of longing and compassion, that trippy feeling of wisdom intertwining with surrender and power, those feel the same no matter The Bigness's shape we each prefer.

I am God's Vagina. We're all God's Vagina, yup, but I want to know it. I wear woman through and throughout, this lifetime right here -- my appreciation of the holy wonder of the vagina is fanatic and absolute.
I want to pull all the damaged ladies I've met (oh, Big Mama, I sure have met a lot) into a sweet embrace that soothes and fixes you up all right, safe and warm and healthy. I want to teach people with pussies and those without all about the GLORIOUS majesty of the vagina. I want to draw the power that pulses in roots twisting through soil and starlight beaming through time into my splendid cunt, to push it through my body backwards into a shudder, joy birthed into the world through my pleasure.
So I do these cunt-powered, vagina-loving things. I teach pelvic exams to med students by talking them through giving me a exam, I describe the location of the urethral meatus and the vaginal introitus by using my own home-grown as the model. I did phone sex in grad school, used the authority of seduction to teach basic anatomy, teaching men how to make other women come. I taught pregnant teenagers how to find their clitoris and why that might be fun to do.
And some of the sex that All Things Holy have led my way has been in service of healing the most intimate of needed repairs, mine or theirs. I'm in a 7 years-so-far-long process of connecting to a person and her vagina, an excavation of the depth of human capacity to love and nurture one another. And then there's that other bit...I worship a God that has a VAGINA.
I'm out of practice for this mission now, whew. My day job isn't deep and holy and juicy anymore, and my intensity is fading. My compassion, my libido, my drive to make a better day for women and girls, I'm rusty all around. I feel like I have arthritis of the vagina, yeah, a little. Cobwebs and self-loathing, doubt and apathy, that stuff can clog yer pipes. I need to renovate in here. But I can do this work.

And because I can -- you know it -- I must. God said.