The light returns

VAGINAL STATUS: creaky

Today's snapshot: an email I just sent to my ladyfriend's priest. He's a mensch.

Hi Jonathan!

I'm not able to come to the Solstice service, and I'm real sad about it. I've been looking forward to it for months, told my mama all about it a month ago...and it's just at the wrong moment. I had to chose between it and the ritual at womyn's bookstore (the next installment of the ritual from Halloween), which is at the same time. I really feel wrapped up in swinging with my own faith legacy and deepening connection with the local witchery, they seem my flavor so far. I hope it's going to help me get some work done.

What a weird spectrum of faith traditions I'm touring this weekend! Tomorrow a.m.we pickup SHARE food from Pennsylvania Ave. AME; we're attending a friend's Yoruban Ileke cermony -- no idea, but I'mpleased to wear a light-colored skirt and wrap my head; the Dianic Wiccan ritual in womyn's only space where the Amazons conceive what they will bring forth this coming year; gentle, heart-centered Anusura Yoga with a former stripper friend/luminous being; rehearsal directing girls to make out for the porn theme show with the fringe queers' theatre collective; finish it with Lessons and Carols, my Protestant clergy family tradition, at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

That was fun to write, I hope I'm still enthusiastic when it's all over. But it's a charmed life, surely.

Anyway, I would have enjoyed ya'lls vibe very much in this mix. I will miss singing songs and feeling lighter at the end; my ladies are heavy duty, which is a mixed blessing in such a literal way. I like you folks so much in general, and you and I in particular seem to connect about the turning of the wheel. Did you notice that? Easter, Midsummer, Halloween, Yule...we've seen us a year, my friend. I will miss you, I really will.

Kiss the sun for me, I will for you.

Starla

also, p.s., this thing where your email is the congregation's email? That's a problem, dude.

Forgive Us Our Sins

And now we shred him.

Another way in which Barak Obama is the American Jesus: he is our sacrifice. He is going to pay dearly for all of our sins. He is a young man with an old soul; serious, but the champion of hope; brillant but not yet wise. Here is what wisdom looks like -- Lincoln at the beginning of his presidency, and at the end:

Hard times. Impossible choices. Law versus justice. War. Miserable mothers wrote letters, lamenting their dead sons lost in battle. The righteous path, ending slavery, required dismantling the economic foundation of half of our nation. A lawyer who suspended habeas corpus and tried civilians in military court. A father who lost his son. A husband whose wife drifted away from her sanity. And all the while, the sins of our people poisoned him from the inside. Our nation hemmoraged, blood saturated the landscape. We pleaded with him, our best surgeon, just to cut off the mangled limb and let us be free of this terrible pain. He risked our life to save us, and we shot him in the head.

Barak Obama. What a kind face. His family. Those sweet little girls, that smart pretty wife. These hard times will eat them, I fear. Unfathomable secrets have already been told to him, he's dragging the weight of them. The decisions he will make are ones no one should have to live with. The entire world, every breathing soul, will fail or prosper due to his judgment.

I know he can do it. I chose him to do it. He knows he can and therefore must.

But the price hurts my heart.

The deepest gift of this surrender -- he already knows what it will cost.

Lady Beware

Got an email from a coworker first thing this morning -- it was addressed to women in general to help us protect ourselves from rape. The premise was that someone had interviewed a group of “rapists and date-rapists” in prison about the techniques they’d used to prey on victims – it sounded like selected excerpts from Urban Legend Reader. The call is coming from inside the house, ladies, be more cautious!
Except wait, it’s not our work to stop ourselves from getting raped. Only rapists can stop rape. Sorry girls! Bummer about that!
It was lurid, really. There was a whole section on how serial killers often use a recording of a baby crying to try and get women to open the front door so that the baby won't get out onto the street and be run over. Hmmph. Here is a conversation regarding this fervent warning with Pashmina over email.

The first time I got this email was about 10 years ago, it goes around from time to time. I appreciate the spirit in which Joan offered it, but ultimately I think it’s dangerous to put this stuff out there. Sure, stranger rapes definitely happen, but they are the tiny minority of sexual assaults and this kind of scary advice perpetuates the myth that you are vulnerable in public and safe at home.
I also think that, though of course it’s good to be cautious, warnings that just raise the general fear level are bad for our gun-loving culture. Makes me think of the part of Bowling for Columbine where he shows a montage of evening news clips and they are all about how you should be afraid, be afraid, be afraid. It’s a very sensational email, full of murky tension like a murder mystery. Read it again with an eye for the dramatic pacing and emphasis on painting a vivid picture of brutality.
The damage of this kind of fear-poke is that it acts as a social control mechanism for women. This is all about how you are always in danger when you step outside your door and should expect to be tracked and targeted. So many of us just decide it might be better not to go out at all. And it lends weight to the “rape PREVENTION” model rather than the “rape risk-reduction” model, which really puts the blame on the victim. Like for example: The first thing men look for in a potential victim is hairstyle. They are most likely to go after a woman with a ponytail, bun, braid or other hairstyle that can easily be grabbed . They are also likely to go after a woman with long hair . Women with short hair are not common targets.
So if, heaven forefend, you are raped in the street by a stranger, it was probably because you were too stupid to cut your hair, you whore.
Do you dig me?

That’s an interesting point of view, I totally didn’t notice any of that, probably because I was getting so distracted by being scared. Except I did notice the stupid hair comment, that was just lame and similar to the whole “she was wearing a short skirt so she deserved it.” But I get what you mean about perpetuating fear in women and sort of “keeping them in the house” etc.

This is a clue that this email is sent to scintillate and scare you, and in turn to keep you safely and timidly at home: Even whole families of females on vacation without a man and very vulnerable to attack by some clever ruse. They just disappear.
Really? Really. Exactly how many whole families of women have disappeared on vacation? This is what really threatens us, what we really need to be focused on when we are trying to protect women from rape? Women in every single war end up in rape camps – American soldiers are not above the rest of the world in using rape as a tool to break down the morale of the nation they are trying to take over -- except those are third world women, they aren’t real people, and they don’t get an email.
What is the actual likelihood that if I travel with other women only we will all be abducted? Will bringing a dude along work like a magic charm to protect us? That kind of statement is itself a part of rape culture. The message is transparent: You need a man. If you don’t spend your life under male supervision you will probably be raped and killed. Your own fault, should have known better.
A lot more women are raped on vacation by their male supervision then by roving gangs of thugs.

Wait a second. I think I stopped reading the email before I got to that line. Now that is just PLAIN RIDICULOUS. Whole families of females LOL LOL LOL LOL.

Seriously! I feel like I’m being too strident, but I’m compelled. I wonder who wrote this and why. It’s always wise to question the source, right? This mythical group of “rapists in prison” has been talked about for years, was it like two guys or was it twenty? What kind of rapes did they commit? This whole serial killer summit set up sounds suspect to me.
Also wise? Look at who benefits from this information being passed around. Did this really ever save a life? I think that this sounds like a very clever dispatch from the Patriarchy to control our movement through fear.

I had a feminist weekend and I think it’s bleeding through my workday. But I’m also not wrong.

And the Day After

VAGINAL STATUS: Grateful
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
-- Maya Angelou
North Carolina voters waiting

Oh, ooooh. Oh, America! Oh my people, my home, my shame and conceit and my heartbeat, AMERICA. Blessed be, my Love, blessed be.

I woke up today in a new America.
And I am a new American.

Yes we Can became yes we Will became yes we DID. And incredulous, blessed, cracked out and sanctified, bleary and jubilant, we rise. One people. We rise.

It’s not like it’s over, not even a little. I have much to say and process and analyze, don’t we all, doesn’t History? We have turmoil snapping at our next breath after this exhale, struggle like nothing this nation has seen before.

But PAUSE. Stop drop and marvel. Because, oh my countrymen, we don’t know from this moment. This is moment is NEW, fresh, immaculate. Because the world only spins forward. And life demands our lives.

With ludicrous, profound, unstoppable tears; with the swollen red heart of a patriot; with the earnest, radiant conviction of an apostle who lived among miracles;
I say
to you

(my people!)


Good Morning.

A New Dawn

VAGINAL STATUS: Blessed
The line at Central Library was around the block when I joined it at 7 a.m. and it looked like America. All kinda folks, Baltimore is indeed multi-layered and everyone represented. I felt like I was waiting in line for a ride at Kennywood I was so EXCITED. The girl in front of me was voting for the first time, she was 19. I tried to get her to bounce up and down about it like me, but she chose a dignified restraint.

I wanted to cackle and cry. Looking at those people, America – old folks and people in wheelchairs and gay boys and suits and young moms with kids in tow and lots of people in scrubs and middle aged women in a sensible hat for warmth. And wrinkled brown grandfathers who have seen Presidents come and gone since the Depression, grinning ear to ear at the chance to vote for a Black man for the very first time long overdue. And all of us, the urban heart of blue-state Maryland, had come to the altar from our warm beds, called to petition for this one very special man.

Yep, I think Barack Obama is pretty much an American Jesus.

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I’m sure he has personal flaws we’ll hear about in 30 years, and I know he can’t get his whole agenda accomplished. I think he will inevitably disappoint me. His platform does not measure itself by my radical agenda. He has assumed my vote, and can afford to take me for granted – Duh, I’m a queer feminist with most of my work history inside abortion clinics. If my people are not so far left that they see voting as playing into the government’s evil plan to placate us, we reliably vote Dems.

But every time I see him on TV I well up with the deep, dear promise of my patriotic childhood, old soldiers beaming and firetrucks tossing candy in the Memorial Day parade. He makes me dream and trust, two indulgent confections I swore I’d never fall for again after the terrible day when the Court chose Bush, the bitter anguish when we chose him again all on our own. I wasn’t right for more than a year after 2004, none of us were.

But he’s charmed me, I believe in him. Tears rolling down my cheeks while he tells me the story of America I’ve so longed to hear. The kernel of decency I believe is still aching to swell within us; he is the champion for it. He makes me think this time is History, this time is different, and this is THE MOMENT when we finally rise. I said a little spell to help him out when I pushed the button.

He HAS to win. It’s impossible that he won’t win. I know I said impossible before, and I was kicked in the stomach for it. But please, Please. Please, America, the Universe, the Goddess and all the ancestors, please Xenu and Jehovah and Allah and the first star I see tonight, please Electoral College and youth voters and poor country white folks and the wasted souls we have lost in this war, PLEASE.

Please let him win.

Totally Rad Event Update

VAGINAL STATUS: Achy


This weekend, my friend and comrade MarilynJean threw her baby shower for Bristol Palin that got some attention from BUST magazine (at the same bar in Cleveland where Princess and I had our gaywedding reception). 100 of my friends showed up, they made a giant and delicious art installation of cupcakes laid out like birth control pills in 28-day cycle packs, Lounge Kitty (a social worker and absurdly big-hair wearing jazz-singing sensation who is the toast of Cleveland) performed, people reveled in their good will toward the Palin family.

And they raised $1000 for Planned Parenthood of Alaska. Sarah Palin will get the thank-you cards, because she really started it all.

Ah, my people, how I adore your twisted little minds. Congratulations to MarilynJean and her crew, and many happy returns to Bristol. Bless her heart.

God Shopping

VAGINAL STATUS: Holy

This is my theory about how religion works: You go to the showroom and you pick one out.

Since no one knows the whole truth about the Bigness, we all conjure a version that suits our needs. It seems that trust in a larger Plan/ner is a basic human drive, and faith meets emotional and social needs as well as spiritual ones. I do believe faith generally helps people, that it’s good for us. But whether inspired or delusional every culture through all of history has come up with divine explanations to make meaning. Though some individuals always opt out of these explanations, building a cosmology is among the first tasks any emerging civilization completes; forming communal belief systems is what we DO.

So find the one that fits you. You want something reliable, not too flashy and not too expensive? Most American Protestant sects will help you out, I had a shine for Methodists. Need something to accommodate a big family? Mormons offer the mini-van of religions. Looking for an infinite number of chances to wreck and try again? Hinduism. Something fast and flashy for the social climber? Scientology. You want a classic, populist vehicle with a very strict instruction manual in 6,793 languages? You are a Catholic, my friend.

Most folks seek a religion that has a standard Home Culture feature and a built-in Family Tradition attachment. We almost always choose to be whatever our parents were, or upgrade into something that is at least a recognizable cousin. This is sensible and has a noble purity to it. We learn about the Bigness as children through the filter our People offer us, and that lens will always have the same magic to you that your threadbare Blankie does. We seek guidance and comfort from our Creator with a child’s heart. In hard times, in grief, in tenderness, in pain, we connect to the Spirit most sincerely through the first prayers we knew.

My Mama agreed (walking me to work the other morning) that we’re making it all up, though her Christian tradition is centrally important to her and she’s never driven anything else. She says it‘s important to feel connected to her roots and her family, and the hymns are special to her. Plus she likes the focal picture she has of God and Jesus, they seem like kind and protective caretakers.

But it is a choice, of course. And – just to stretch a metaphor a little bit more -- plenty of us do find that the vehicle our family used doesn’t go where we need to travel. Some folks really do start from scratch, lay out all the contenders, try the rites and read the scriptures of several faiths. For lots of us, though, we get called toward a faith by some need that our family’s tradition did not meet.

I needed a religion that was about women, because that’s the primary way I filter the world. I chose the path most attached to the untold history of women, a celebration of female power dark and graceful and holy, practiced by women for millennia in service to their communities, a faith that values transformation, justice, balance, healing, and compassion. Something earthy, sexy, shameless, pulsing and POWERful.

So that’s how I became a Witch.

But I’m in a mixed marriage, doncha know. Princess has chosen herself a path over this past year or two, and it’s a lovely group of people who I think are very good for her. She’d never have believed it her old self, but she’s in total NRE* about a RELIGION.
And the winner iiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssss:

Independent Catholic!

It’s gay Catholic, in practice, how hot is that? They are dead fucking serious about reclaiming the traditions and she is soaking up the holy revolution of it, it lights her up. She feels finally at home. It’s lovely.

She’s decided to get baptized.
And that’s another post.

*NRE = New Relationship Energy...common term among poly folks that acknowledges the time when you first get together with someone/thing new and you are kinda psycho because of how into them you are. You are sweet and annoying, no way around it. Just FYI.

Three Wise Men

VAGINAL STATUS: Smartypants


I heard Salman Rushdie speak last year – megawatt smartie, he. He spoke to the conflicts going on around our world these days. There is a misconception, he said, that we are engaged in a holy war; Christians versus Muslims. East versus West. Actually, says he, these are not separable factions, let alone polar opposites, these “sides” are an illusion.

East and West are inextricably intertwined, and have been since the Crusades. Christians and Muslims are both the children on Abraham; they dance, taking turns leading and following, their diaspora link together somewhere in every family, the tracks of these ancestors cross and cross back through millennia.

The conflict, says very smart Salman Rushdie, is between reason and fundamentalism.

And he is right. Two other smart men have also come to this conclusion. Mouse is a student of History, actually, literally, and a teacher to his core. He tells me this is all about the Age of the Enlightenment. There was a time when God was the only Mover, and human lives were short and brutal, and a Better World was the thin comfort that kept the peasants from revolt. Then the Enlightenment dawned, the Revolutions rolled over tyranny and superstition, and the world r/evolved forward.

We built our nation on reason, on logical fairness compelled via laws written and interpreted by Reasonable people. Certainly the system runs good people over from time to time, is full of the flaws that come with humans – our cradle-mates, fear and stupidity – but the basic tenant is that we will try to uncover truth and live by what it says. During the Enlightenment science was at the pinnacle of regard, a web of discovery and excavation expanding our self-knowledge through deciphering the codes manifested in the natural world. Truth IS discernable, our earnest nation thought; we have to make ourselves wise enough to REAL-ize it.

And now this third smart man, Barak Obama, he is telling us that our reasonable selves are needed by our country. He talks to us as though we are capable of critical thinking. He does not refuse to acknowledge complexity, nor does he see complexity as an impossible barrier. He tells us the solutions to our headaches of Now are still possible, but that they will require much work and these hard times are realistically likely to last a long while yet.

Sarah Palin and John McCain are the poster kids for fundamentalism, for because-I-said-so logic, for the theory of fake science that the world was Intelligently Designed for us to consume, for the comforting binary of Us vs. Them. They are rumor-sowers, conjuring up the dragons we ignorant serfs both dread and worship. The bogeymen of that dark side have cultivated our savagery until we’ve almost eaten ourselves right up.

Obama is about nuance and negotiation, wisdom and justice and restraint and the daily work of citizenship, asking us to vote our better selves in a cool, low-pitched lullaby tone. He’s literally the Voice of Reason. Blessed be his name, may he deliver us from evil.

Baby Shower for Bristol

VAGINAL STATUS: Expectant

This is such an awesome idea, my friend MarilynJean is a superwoman. She's been working for choice in innovative ways for many years, and this party is a grand example thereof, it's inspired! It reminds me of the Pledge-A-Picketer program they are running at Preterm, where I used to work -- for every hour that Protestor X spends screaming at women going into the abortion clinic, a pro-choice supporter gives a donation. If the screamer shows up, s/he is just giving the clinic cash to pay the baby killers. Sweet!

Anyway, CleveLanders, try to make it if you can. There will also be clothes to purchase from my favorite fat fashionista, Rachel Catherine!

Baby Shower for Bristol - Celebrating Comprehensive Sex Education

Host: MarilynJean
Location: Prosperity Social Club
1109 Starkweather, Cleveland, OH 44113
When: Sunday, October 19, 3:30PM
Phone: 216-926-8819

While Bristol Palin's pregnancy is a personal family matter, it has re-energized a national discussion about abstinence-only education and its failure to be effective. Along with movies like Juno, the baby craze sweeping Hollywood, the hyper-sexualization of teen starlets, Jamie Lynn Spears and the rise in sexually transmitted infection cases in NE Ohio, comprehensive sex education is needed now more than ever.

Join me and other snarky change agents on Sunday, October 19 at 3:30pm at Prosperity Social Club in Tremont to celebrate the benefits of comprehensive sex education and take action on the Ohio Prevention First Act.

The Ohio Prevention First Act focuses on the prevention of unintended pregnancies through comprehensive sex education for teens, including abstinence, and affordable, accessible birth control. The Ohio Prevention First Act will reduce unintended pregnancies through: Realistic sexuality education and teen pregnancy prevention programs, Funding for family planning programs, Guaranteed access to birth control prescriptions, contraceptive equity, and emergency contraception access and education.

In lieu of gifts for Bristol and Levi, I ask that donations be made to Planned Parenthood of Alaska in honor of Sarah Palin. Donors will be invited to sign a letter that will be sent to the Governor's office in Alaska, as well as the McCain-Palin HQ thanking Gov. Palin for her generous support of sex education programming. There's no minimum or maximum on donations and donations are not required to attend.

Can't make it? You can send donations to:
(address deleted for confidentiality -- email Starla and I will pass your contact info on to MarilynJean)

Bonnie, owner of Prosperity Social Club, is being generous and opening early just for us AND offering a special on her house Sangria. Prosperity has a full menu and seasonal drafts on tap. There will also be homemade Cupcakes for Choice and baby shower games and prizes!

NOTE ON ATTIRE: I know its autumn, but pastel-colored attire is strongly encouraged!
Can't make it or send a donation, the please share invite with your (cool) friends.

Love Sarah times infinity plus one?
Check out: The Palin Effect

REAL BABIES WELCOME!

Disclaimer: This fake baby shower is supported by many cool women and men, but not endorsed by any candidate, political party or organization. So if you gotta problem, come see me.

Where Ya Been?

It's so sad, I don't even have a dozen posts yet and I can't keep up with my blog! I expect my rate to dwindle over time, sure. I have good "starting energy", a euphemism that means I get really quite obsessive about new projects until I abruptly quit mid-sentence, mid-puzzle, mid-skein, mid-chopping, whathaveu. So that will likely happen again, I fear. My couple-of-posts-a-week goal will become links-once-a-month, and that will be that. I mean, probably. We all have infinite capacity for change (I am a social worker, it's the mantra of my profession), but let's do just acknowledge my habits and their near inevitability.

But anyway, this is not that. I been a BUSY beaver, yes yes! Here's what's up with me: the Charm City Kitty Club (www.charmcitykittyclub.com) (and can I just take a second to be annoyed that making a link in html is not working for me? Just cut and paste already, bitches) show is this weekend -- we have three a year and those weeks are always pretty up-for-three-days crazy. Princess would like to especially invite all you folks (the three or four Clevelanders that read this) to join us -- she directed the "Pussycat Players" (the skits we do in between the performers we bring in and showcase) this time and she is busting her buttons with kinda bashful pride.

So there's that. I'm in the show (well, my voice is), I'm "in charge" (total figurehead) of our Merch Team and am selling the folkses my own crafts, I'm baking cookies for the bake sale, making props, finding costumes, frantically emailing details, on and on and on, it eats life in the crunch time.
And, happily, I'm helping to get our house together (though, let's be honest, it's 15% my work and 85% Princess') because one of those three fine Clevelanders IS coming down to see the show. It's Sparkle (Hi Sparkle!), Princess' BFF and a very close friend to me as well -- I can't can't CAN'T wait to spend some time with him, he's a mensch.

Aside from Kitty Club, CubeCity is swinging into its busy fundraising season and eating us all alive along the way. I'm coordinating our department's cook-off day. This is a-lot-by-a-mile more work than that little sentence would convey. It's on Monday. The day after Kitty Show weekend. I'm making sure we have enough crockpots (5), Foreman grills (4) and blenders (3) to get the job of feeding our floor tempting treats to raise cash accomplished. It's basically a details-and-chatter job, not the sort I'm suited to at all, and it's at a time when the JOB part of my job is pretty heavy as well. But, obviously, I'm sorta proud of myself as well, it will be a swell event and I'll get a lot of feel-good strokes off of it.

I'm also doing this and that -- house parties and play parties, day trips and head trips, busy and dizzy, helping and counseling and teaching and settling, the flotsam of laundry and jetsam of bills...you know, life. I don't have a weekend with a free day until after Halloween.

I'm overstimulated and grateful and, today, really pleased with how beat my drum in the world. I'll see ya when I see ya, ok?

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.