Just flying through here while racing to get ready for an early morning trip to Victoria tomorrow.

(Again, for those of you nearby, I have two events up there, and the 411 — does anyone really say that anymore? — on them can be found here.)

Per usual, everything feels last minute even when it isn’t at all, I am navigating through endless piles of laundry, rushing to get other work done before I go, taking notes in the middle of everything for the workshops, and doing everything I can to be sure I remember all but the one Very Important Thing I will inevitably forget.

Seriously, this much travel was SO much easier back in the day when I had a van that was basically my home on wheels. I miss that stupid metal box more and more as this year wears on. Plus, I am at a point where I expect the teenagers of the world I’ve been flitting all over the place to advocate for to send me a thank you card as big as the Empire State Building.

Or a giant, fluffy Mighty-O donut I can lay my weary head on, munching while I snooze. Whichever.

This frazzled gal is much better speaking with images at the moment than words. See y’all later in the week.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing, events, travel exhuasts me | permalink | comments (1) »

Last night, I was over at the Copper Gate (my new favorite bar) drinking a more-then-generous amount of made-in-Ballard aquavit with my friend Ben, when I stepped outside to have a smoke.

I pulled one out, lit it up, and with my exhale, glanced across the street and saw Jesus Christ waiting for the 18 bus.

That is exactly what happened, in my mind, at that moment, without any question.

As in, “Huh. Well, whaddya know, it’s Jesus. Waiting for the bus. Cool. Hope he knows where he’s going: that route’s a bitch.”

I had a very brief moment, then, of wondering if I was supposed to say something, maybe wave, maybe offer him a smoke. Maybe tell him to get on the bus to freaking Canada, fool, because if he stays in the states, he’s going to get string up by some of his own followers in no time flat, or find himself ministering to his fellow prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. (Maybe, some other part of my mind thought, the sorbet arrived since I stepped out here, and it’s getting mushy right now, which would really suck.) After my initial moment of just being very pragmatic about it, see, I had to wonder if my quiet acceptance wasn’t the proper response, since everything I have ever read or heard from people who felt they had seen Jesus tended to be much more dramatic. The sky wasn’t even cracking open or anything, nor did I feel saved. I felt a little chilly and wished I’d brought my jacket out, and I really wished I could be having my smoke indoors where it was cosy and there was grain alcohol nearby. If I was going to get saved, you’d think I’d at least get to finish my cocktail.

But before I could consider that further, a passing pair of headlights illuminated the figure a bit more, showing me that what had initially looked like a long, muslin gown was really a pair of very loose pants and a very loose shirt, which actually did vary slightly in tone. The John Lennon spectacles weren’t a giveaway, since I’d not have been surprised at all if those were Jesus’ eyewear of choice. The long hair didn’t help, either. But in that moment, I realized that I hadn’t seen Jesus. I’d seen some teenage kid on his way home whose Mom would likely offer him a sandwich when he got there before yet again begging him to get a haircut for the 387th time this week.

Throughout all of this — which, of course, happened very quickly in my head — Ben was standing next to the mute friend I’d become, so when I’d come to, I had a bit of explaining to do.

Here’s the thing: I’m not a cynic about people’s mysticism or religious experiences.

I don’t exactly take many of them at face value, without question and a generous application of reason and logic, but I also do figure that the world’s a weird place where just about anything can happen, and where weird things often to, especially to me, almost daily. So, if it turned out that say, we all found out some day that everyone who had said they saw Jesus or Elvis (including those who conflate the two) really had, I’d be somewhat suprised, but I’d probably accept it pretty quickly. I did an awful lot of LSD in my youth: I am well-practiced in the art of adjusting my reality very quickly, and tend to gladly welcome giant shifts in my universe with a big grin and a wild clapping of hands. I dislike flying largely because it feels so strangely static for so long: I’m the only person I know who hates flying but immediately feels almost 100% about it all when there’s turbulence.

So, the fact — for that brief moment — that I was seeing Jesus didn’t really phase me. Mind, I often tend to have that response with celebrities of any stripe: I always think I’m going to spaz out like a lunatic when I meet them, and lo, I usually just wind up being quite casual, to my great surprise.

(There is a lone exception to this. When I lived with Michael, because he and Pete Seeger worked on books together, Pete called our place with some frequency. And every single time I picked up that phone and it was Pete, I could not even stammer out a single word before passing the phone — and I really, really tried to — not even a “Just a minute, I’ll get him” or even a monotone “Please hold.” It was a god calling the house, for crying out loud, and committed folkie that I was, I could not even for a half a second, feel worthy of speaking to Pete Seeger. I’m sure he thought Michael either lived with someone hearing-impaired or just with the rudest person on the planet.)

Years ago, through a strange confluence of events and a very bizarre connection (which took place with me doing a reading for him on the phone mere minutes after breaking a molar in two, that was fun), I went up to New York to spend a few days with Anton Fier, who was interested in seeing what we might write together at the time, and in me possibly doing some spoken word for him. Long story short, crazy weekend, very intense bonding, but record companies and contractual matters suck eggs. During the daytime of that visit, he went to the studio while I stayed at his place and wrote my little heart out to see what I could come up with for him (it was great stuff, and I’m still pissed we couldn’t do anything with it).

With some reticence, I’d agreed to answer the phone for him and take his messages while he was gone. I’m one of those ADHD types who has the hyperfocus, rather than the distractibility. If I’m in the zone working on something, someone can stand right next to me talking and I will often neither see nor hear them. So, when the phone rang at a point in which I was in the thick of my words, the following happened.

Ring, ring!
Me: Hello.
Them: Is Anton around?
Me: No, he’s in the studio today, leave a message?
Them: Sure, just tell him Iggy called.
Me: You got it.
CLICK.

Grumbling at the interruption, I grab a piece of scrap paper and a pen, and I start to write: Anton: Igg—

At which moment I realize, fuck me, that I was just on the phone with Iggy fucking Pop, and I treated him like a telemarketer. When I gave Anton the message later, I asked if that was THAT Iggy, to which he nodded while I proceeded to kick myself repeatedly.

Now, I elect to think famous people probably prefer this sort of treatment, say, to some woman screaming “HOLY FUCKING CHRIST YOU’RE IGGY FUCKING POP!” Iggy, Jesus, whoever, right? But I do usually tend to wish later that I hadn’t been SO casual or blithe. Or downright rude, as the case may be.

And I’m afraid I have to admit, now, that even if it really had been Jesus, I’d regret not having some good gab with Iggy more than not having same with the son of god. Or maybe, just like some of the Elvis-Jesus conflators, I’m more inclined to think Iggy is Jesus than Jesus himself, which seems plausible enough. But then, I guess a lot of things do to a person who sees Jesus waiting for the bus and worries about her melting dessert.

* * *
Just a quickie for those in the Pacific Northwest: I have a few events coming up soon here in Seattle as well as in Victoria, B.C.

October 1st: S.E.X. Reading/Q&A
7:30pm, The Collard Room, Swans Hotel: 506 Pandora Street at Store Street, Victoria
Free admission, all ages

October 2nd:DIY erotica workshop
7:30pm, Camas Collective Books and Infoshop: 2590 Quadra at Kings, Victoria
Self-identified women only, $10 suggested donation
Advance tickets at: http://www.sexedexchange.org

November 3rd: “Be the Media” panel at the NARAL Youth leadersjip Summit, University of Washington. This is still firming up, but to my understanding I’ll be leading an interactive panel for young women about feminist media critique.

I’ll also be in San Francisco to accept my Champions of Sexual Literacy award on the 11th, but I’ll have a little bit of time in there through the 14th. I have not had any events set up for me in San Fran, so if anyone would LIKE to set something up — a reading/ Q&A with the book, a joint gab session for adults or teens or both, even an afternoon for a photo session (my photo session time has been nabbed already) — please drop me a line soon. I’ll want to see a couple friends while I’m there as well, but I also have time for an event or two, especially since that’ll pretty much be the end of promotional events for me for a while (thank christ… and the bus he rode out on).

posted in Heather Corinna, subconscious life, s.e.x., events | permalink | comments (3) »

So, up to ten miles round-trip now: I spent an hour yesterday afternoon sitting under a highway bridge at my mid-point near UW.

This is goodness. My hamstrings and quads currently disagree, but what the hell do they know?

It’s really good for me to do my daily sitting out of doors, rather than indoors, and attaching it to movement in some way. It always has been, really. In fact, at the first meditiation community I ever went to in Chicago, I had someone next to me complain once that my bouncing on my feet was bothering them. I resisted the urge to tell them that I knew I wasn’t moving the floor, that they weren’t supposed to have their eyes open anyway, so there, and that meditation is supposed to be all about working to tune out outside static and get in harmony with your surroundings, so they should consider me their special helper then, shouldn’t they? SNAP!

I resisted that urge because any of those comments and most certainly the snap would have been even less appropriate than the initial complaint, but also because I didn’t want to be the snappity-snip in the middle of a giant group meditation, which has absolutely zip to do with my spiritual growth and absolutely everything to do with preferring someone else be caught holding the asshole bag, by the by.

I’ve generally done better with walking meditation than seated. I’m not looking forward to the couple of months here where biking isn’t going to be an option often, but hey: it’s at least a shorter period of time to be away from it than it was in the midwest.

I realize, too, that my best meditating in this new ritual happens twice. It happens once when I take my sitting break at a mid-point — especially with things for my eyes to take in and associate, I’m such a visual learner — and the happy lasts the rest of the ride home, but even more so, it happens the first few minutes I get on my bike. I’m not thinking about the challenge of the hills, I’m not thinking about if it rains, I’m not thinking about where I’m going to go, and I’m not worried yet about being hit by a car: I’m just flying down the street feeling the breath in my lungs, the strong force of my body, and the wind on my face. I feel freed. I’m not thinking about anything but those moments for long enough that I can’t determine when they start or they end.

I think doing this is also me making a certain peace with Seattle that’s been slow to grow. I don’t dislike it here, not at all, but it very much doesn’t feel like Home. I’m not sure it ever will, not completely, and that’s okay — the landscape is just so different than the one that registers as home in my head (which is odd, because I feel very at home in Mexico, even without that registry). It’s beautiful all the same, and it’s certainly home for now. Given how slow everything often seems to be to warm here, perhaps that’s as it should be; that I should be as slow to warm to it and it seems to be to me.

(I’m keeping a photo journal of sorts of some of these sessions here for me to have a handful of visual koans for myself — my bike is being my self-portrait stand-in, it seems.)

* * *
So, for the first time I know of as of yet, I missed out on a big opportunity because I’m not someone’s mother. A production company for a big TV studio contacted me about needing a teen expert and wanting me, but that the gig required said expert being a Mom.

I walked out of my office after this brief conversation and into the kitchen, where Mark was hanging out. I very calmly, but with great resignation, voiced that I’d apparently passed the age where I was going to get penalized for BEING someone’s mother, and entered into the one where I was going to get penalized for NOT being someone’s mother.

I had to wonder if at any point there is an age for women where it’s neither considered too early nor too late for to be mothers when it comes to our careers and our market value.

I’m thinking not.

* * *

I talked to my father on the phone yesterday, who I didn’t know had climbed on a group bus to from Chicago to go protest for the Jena 6 two days ago: he’d just gotten home when I called. Not only am I supremely impressed he was able to battle his worsening agoraphobia to do that, it also makes me really happy.

I know, I know, activism is always supposed to be primarily about whatever cause or group or person you’re being active for, and I agree. But in my father’s case, especially since he feels so useless so much of the time, him being able to essentially do something that was like the civil rights movement work he once did, something he feels so strongly about, and something that made him feel so useful, is a really big deal. Him giving up the $50 that’s very little to others, but a big lot of money for him, to go is important. And it was a great experience for him, being able to go and step up, and also just being able to talk to other people on the bus there and back to whom it all matters. He sounded so happy, so energized.

We have had strange conversations about racism, my father and I. Not so strange, all things considered, but they’re sometimes not what one’d expect from a guy who once took fire hoses in the face to combat racism, and who ditched what easily could have been his best romantic relationship to do that work. He’s very anti-affirmative action, for instance, primarily because he feels like it’s asking my generation to “pay” for something that other generations did. I disagree with him on this point, I always have. For starters, I don’t feel like we’re paying for anything, that there is any sort of price I pay for affirmative action at all: while I don’t have a lot of privilege, I am visibly white, and even with things like affirmative action, privileges are and have been extended to me that are not and have not been to those of color. I don’t see anyone of color taking anything away from me with it, and I also feel like any band-aid we can have while the still wide-oepn wound of racism remains fresh and bloody is important. Really, I could care less about it from my vantage-point: it doesn’t hurt me in any way at all, and even if it did, I’m aware enough of the privilege I do have that when my privilege increases someone else’s burden, I want to do what I can to bring that in better balance. I’ve learned this from a lot of people and places in my life, but it’s odd to be pointing this out to a man who may well have been the first person to teach me to do that. Let’s even say that somehow, policies like affirmative action actually made it so that we whiteys were on the bottom of the olde race hierarchy for a time (yeah, I’m laughing, too): we’ll freaking well live. Everyone else has for a damn long time, after all.

Besides, it’s not like people of my generation are not still doing exactly the things that make affirmative action needed. Oh, if only.

My Pop is often of the mind that the playing field is somehow already level.

Mind, the neighborhood he lives in, the one we used to live in together, is over 80% of color. It’s also exceptionally dangerous, being one of the biggest gang neighborhoods in Chicago, and also THE place for metric arseloads of dealing and prostitution (yes, you’d think he’d realize that that alone should be a big, neon sign that the playing field when it comes to race is hardly level, but alas). White people TIPTOE through that neighborhood unless they’re cops, and no one with half a brain is going to be spouting racist bullshit on a regular basis over there, but only because of a fear of being directly hurt for doing so. He VERY infrequently leaves that neighborhood.

By virtue of barely being off-street, my father also looks that part. In other words, many of the same kinds of biases racist people have against people of color come into play with homeless people, so. I was trying to explain to him on the phone that when I find myself in spaces and situations where no one knows who I am, what my background or beliefs are; when all they can see is what sex I am and what color, I hear this crap a’plenty. When Briana and I were at the State fair in MN during my last visit, we got a serious doozy, as an example.

We saw a bathroom where the line wasn’t too bad, and while neither of us had to go, I figured it was best to go in advance so that when I was about to wet my pants, I wasn’t going to have to stand in one of those lines. So, in line we went. In a few minutes, two or three pre-teen black girls stepped out of the line for a minute, and walked past us, pretty clearly to go see what was taking so long and how bad the wait really was. When they turned around, they appeared to be doing that little bob one does when one has to pee like a racehorse. I asked if they had to go pretty bad, and got given the “ohmygodohmygodI’mgoingtopeeonthefloor” look we all get when we’ve hit that point, and so just said they could just take my place in line, since I really didn’t have to go, anyway, and certainly not that bad.

Behind Bri was a perfect blond woman with her perfect blond children in her perfectly shiny stroller and her perfectly shiny clothes, and the moment I did that, I heard her say, quite audibly, “What is this, affirmative action?”

I made a point not to turn around, because I just did not know what would have come out of my mouth if I did. Bri did turn, and shot her a look, because she then said (not at all apologetically), “I’m sorry, I’m a redneck.” Because that justifies everything, you know. Without the look, she likely wouldn’t have said anything at all, and part of saying what she did was based on her presumption that everyone around her was also racist, because most of the people around her were also white. So comfortable is someone like that in that, that they WILL say something like that, loudly, nearly anywhere because they’ve no reason at all to fear that they’ll be unsupported in their sentiments or be harmed in any way for them.

So, I’m telling my Dad this as an example, and explaining that of COURSE she would not have said anything like that if the girls I let go ahead of me were white. Or her kids. She likely wouldn’t have said anything at all, really. I told my Dad about the time Mark and I were at that B&B in Whiterock, right after Katrina, and how the older Canadian woman who owned it with her husband literally asked me, in absolute seriousness, why “those” people ever “chose” to live in that area way back when in the first place. And how I sat there, floored, trying to drop clues about the history of slavery and the legacy of poverty and the boon of being with one’s family in the hopes that with one, two, maybe even three, she’d realize what freaking stupid things she was saying sooner rather than later. I dropped a lot of clues, and some not so hinty-direct statements. She never got it. We excused ourselves from breakfast early and got the hell out of there.

Oh, I have stories, we all have these stories. But I don’t want to sit recounting them: they’re just too maddening, even to me.

My father just kept saying to me, the other day, that he just could not, would not, believe things were still like this in 2007. He finally at least said that he just didn’t want to. I tried to explain that my impression with this generation in particular (high school and college-age right now), was that I’m seeing a lot of hardcore resentment amoung plenty of youth when it comes to racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, the works. Plenty seems to feel like and express that asking them to take stock of their privilege and consider it when dealing with others is something they are entitled NOT to do (yes, I know, it’s such an obvious symptom of the thing that it’s not even ironic: it’s plain old literal), that they should not HAVE to do (because it’s such a strain on them to act and speak with compassion), and that I’m a big old asshole for even suggesting they do. So much of the ugly history of racism isn’t something many even know or care to know, and for those who do, it often seems very far away, when it’s really only-yesterday stuff, and in many ways, still-today stuff. I could go on about this for a solid year, really, it’s one of the toughest parts for me of working with young people right now, but the point is, his awareness of this isn’t so great.

My Dad is also all about everything really boiling down to class issues: I got my first socialism from him, to be sure. In some respect, I agree with him, but in others, I really don’t. (And we’ve had similar discussions about sexism.) Mostly, I don’t think we can untangle all of these things so easily, especially given the ways they intersect, and for whom they intersect most. But perhaps more to the point, I don’t find that most people are sophisticated enough, or maybe more accurately have the desire or the interest in deconstructing and examining all of this enough — because when you do, of course, you have to take more personal responsibility for certain things — to be able to even make those distinctions. Plus, it can be about class all it wants, but we still have to acknowledge that not only are more women and more people of color lower-class, but that the impact of classism is greater when you’re dealing with compounded minority.

I also have to remember, though, that my father was and has been exceptionally depressed that all the activist work he did was for naught in many ways, and that that’s a big driver in these discussions and feelings. The civil rights movement absolutely did some good, but it didn’t erase racism: the friends he had who lost lives or health in doing that didn’t lose them for nothing, but they also didn’t lose them for what they’d hoped for. The anti-war movement with Vietnam was important as hell, and made some difference, but here the hell we basically are again, all that history forgotten or dismissed. He didn’t change the world, and he really, really wanted to: he sacrificed a lot trying. It’s very hard for my father to have to deal with the fact that, for instance, racism is still alive and well and not just living in Lousiana and Alabama but also in Maine, New York and Seattle. It’s hard because of what it means about the world, but it’s also hard because of how it makes him feel about himself.

* * *
I’m finally putting up a few new photo sets today, and making more headway in my backlog. The sets going up later today include a set of photos of a transgender friend currently IDing as genderqueer: I’ve been dying to do some transition photos of someone for a long time.

It was her idea to do a series in which she was in her clothing of choice, nude, and then in old boy-clothes. I thought it was a brilliant idea, and I’m pleased as hell with the results. But I’m very glad she suggested it, because it’s not something I’d have felt at all comfortable in suggesting to her myself, much in the same way that I wouldn’t for a minute feel comfortable suggesting that a cisgendered woman pose in stiletto-heels and corsetry and makeup, even if I had some brilliant creative intent, if dressing that way would make that woman feel terribly uncomfortable and put in a drag she didn’t like (and as far as I’m concerned, it’s drag no matter who’s got it on — some folks just happen to like being in drag). As it was, seeing how Amy looked, mood-wise, in the boy clothes, I was RACING to take those shots: it was earnestly painful for me to watch her face kind of fall.

Per the final results, I hate to talk over artwork, but I think the images are incredibly telling. I did almost wish that I had had an assigned-sex woman who doesn’t dig girl-drag to do a sort of mirror of them — one in her regular clothes, another nude, and another in say, hardcore Victorian garb or, say, head-to-toe fetish latex blah-de-bah. But another day (and again, she’d probably have to volunteer to do it herself: I’d just feel so ooky asking someone to stand around like that who didn’t want to).

Next up, finishing Becca’s pregnancy shots as well as my first shots of baby Odin, who is — of course he is — cute as the freaking dickens.

posted in Heather Corinna, activism, home, family, photography & art | permalink | comments (0) »

Sometimes, I just need something I can tangibly and realistically conquer.

Since I’ve moved here last year, I took my bike out maybe twenty times. That’s very little biking for someone who loves it. I nearly got hit once (by a car, while on a bike trail, no less), and the rest of the rides, I got discouraged every single time because biking does NOT equal anything even vaguely resembling leisure here. These big hills kick my ass, bad, despite my big, muscled legs which I’d like to think can tackle anything.

In Minneapolis, I could do twenty miles at a time, relatively easily. In Chicago, for a couple years I rode my bike to go teach ten miles away daily (in the seasons that I could), and didn’t even arrive sweaty. Smelling like bus fumes, sure, but not sweaty.

Here? I pick the wrong mile to bike and this girl is winded, legs burning, growling in frustration at the innocent earth.

So, I decided that while there are an awful lot of barriers with my work these days that, try as I might, I cannot seem to break through, I most certainly can tackle these damn hills and have the great escape a few times a week which I am in dire need of. I am an adaptable beastie, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and adaptation when it comes to my legs, my bike and this landscape requires nothing but simple persistence and dedication, two things which I ever have in spades. So, the goal at the moment is twofold: to be able to do fifteen miles here in a stretch, without undue struggle, and also to pick a new stopping point every day so that I can sit outside and meditate.

In light of my many current challenges, I decided that I really need to reread the Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings, and the Discourse on Happiness, with Thich Naht Hanh’s analysis and commentary on both. Read them once, read them twice, read them over and over again each day until some aspects of both of them sink back in. Read them with my feet on the grass, feet on the rocks, feet on the sand, feet in the water. Let my legs and my bike make harmony with the hills by having them all bring me to places where I can do this and have a few moments of peace and regrouping.

Yesterday, I swung down to the Burke-Gilman, and rode it up almost to where Pacific St. meets the I-5. Round-trip, that’s between seven and eight miles. And all it felt very good, save for the last mile uphill home. That didn’t feel good at all.

I doubled back to Gasworks Park for a sit before heading back, and settled unto the grass near the water to read my sutras.

I didn’t intend or plan for it to be such an obvious object lesson, but sitting down there, on the green grass, surrounded both by water and the looming, rusty gasification plant, beginning with “The First Realization is the awareness that the world is impermanent. All political regimes are subject to fall; all things composed of the four elementas are empty and contain the seeds of suffering…” was, needless to say, a bit like having the universe reach out a big hand, smack you a little upside the head and say, “Well, DUH!”

The people who built that plant clearly built it to last, and for the purpose it was built for. No doubt, they put an awful lot of effort into building it and working it, but all the same, here it sits, utterly changed, and per its original purpose, utterly useless. But it’s okay: I can sit there now, on the grass, by the water, appreciating it for what it is, not what it was, using it for an entirely different — and from my perspective, in my moment, a very important — purpose. That doesn’t negate the work everyone did in building and maintaining it, nor does it make their efforts unimportant. Even if it were utterly gone, rather than in the state it is now, the same would be true. It’s ridiculous to feel something you or anyone else has done loses import or meaning because its purpose has changed, or its initial purpose is moot; because whatever goal you had for it wasn’t met or fell or had to be abandoned. The work done in that gargantuan construction was meaningful in the doing alone, regardless of the result.

It’s also ridiculous for me to let my frustration or the hills keep me from moments like this. I need them very much these days, clearly.

posted in Heather Corinna | permalink | comments (3) »

Oh, UGH.

Honestly, you know (as if you didn’t already) that gender binaries have gone too freaking far when we have a discussion at the Scarleteen boards where a young female user is informed by another young lesbian user — the former having suggested as much herself — that she couldn’t be straight, but instead must be queer, because she likes pretty, skinny, longhaired emo boys.

When I have to sit and explain that if a man identifies as a man — no matter how he chooses to present — and doesn’t feel HE is cross-dressing himself nor ID’s as a cross-dresser or as trans, he’s not a transvestite (which, FYI, is often defined by youth these days as simply a “feminine,” cisgendered man), and figuring you must be queer or gay because you’re attracted to him, rather than the Brawny man, is pretty messed up…well, bleh.

I mean, sure, I know I was a teen when cisgendered guys — who, stright, gay or otherwise, were all identifying very expressly as male, nor could figure why the way they liked to present even made that a question — wearing eyeliner was all the rage, but from all I can gather, it’s no more or less so, now. Their pop icons are wearing it just like ours were (though they often appear to be usuing much more powder to set their liner, and are awfully handy with the concealer): their emo boys aren’t that different from our punk and new wave guys. The majority? Not hardly, but most of those male-identified pretty dandies then and these boys now tended to argue pretty hard — especially with freaked-out parents — that they were not trying to be women or trying to dress like women: they were expressing themselves, as men. When even with our queer-minded, identifying-as-so-different youth are still coming to gender thinking it’s anyone’s place to decide someone else’s gender identity, things clearly aren’t as improved as we seem to want to think they are.

I do my homework: I’ve seen plenty of sound data that’s made clear that this youth generation overall has some pretty traditional ideas about gender — which often make very lousy bedfellows with a lot of queer theory — but this is just plain SILLY. If our queer youth community starts doing exactly what the status quo and traditionalists do (and I’ve seen this sort of thing more than this once) in terms of second-party gender assignment — he wore a skirt, therefore, he’s not really a guy, nor am I really attracted to men; she wears her hair short, therefore she’s not really a girl, so it’s not like I’m really attracted to women — we are in some SERIOUS trouble, people. And it’s not like it’s the fault of the thirteen-year-old in question for being so confused and so garbled in this: it’s the systems we have set up that are so freaking flawed, as well as the flaws in the systems — based on the existing flawed systems — we have set up to try and make life less uncomfortable for those stuck in them to blame here. Nothing like a barely-teen from Florida to illustrate all of this mess so concretely.

This disgruntled yawp was broadcast to you from the intersection of Queer Theory and Straight Culture, where there’s a 20-car pileup. And apparently some sort of time warp: this conversation feels like one already had in every fifth living room of a Stones or Bowie fan circe 1970.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, body image, gender, the binary blues | permalink | comments (2) »

The good news is that I have come home to a much improved little pug.

The day I left, I had Mark go back to the vet with Sofia, who in taking a next step, put her on some Cortizone tabs. One to cover all of the bases, I let Mark know to keep an eye peeled for sleep disturbances, appetite changes and the like.

But I must confess, I was a little concerned about my wee dog being on the ‘roids. It’s always the innocent looking ones you’ve got to watch out for, after all. I should know: I live with two such creatures, one furry, the other, not so much.

So, I was also sure to tell him to be on the lookout for breast growth, facial shape changes, weight gain, irritability and serious mood swings, hyper-aggression about her lack of treats and desire to eat the cat food, sexual harassment, outright assault (I suggested her perhaps just sleep alone for a bit: I love him too much to see him psychologically scarred by a snorty dog jumping him while calling him Sally) looting, and above all else, made him swear that no matter how aggro she got or what kind of puppy eyes she gave him, he was absolutely not to cave in when she insisted on the purschase of weight training equipment.

But lo, all it has resulted in is the dog finally ceasing the infernal itching and Mark finally getting to sleep through the night, unmolested and all.

Unfortunately, Sofi is currently the only one experiencing any relief from her allergies right now. I got whacked with a full-force attack in Minneapolis, which went from bad to worse with an evening spent in a friend’s house with two male cats.

On the flight back home yesterday afternoon, in a Benadryl-induced haze already, my ears completely plugged up during the last hour of the flight, to the point where I was literally unable to hear anything. Given there were not one but two exceptionally unhappy infants on the plane who didn’t stop screaming for a millisecond, this was something of a blessing, but it’s also pretty disturbing as a normally hearing person to see a wide open screaming face and not hear a sound. I could hear a bit better slowly through the evening, but my ears only finally popped for real this morning. Yeowch.

It was a trip mostly full of babies — Becca’s new son, who is cute as the dickens, and looks like someone put a shrink-ray gun on Becca to make him, and The Baby Liam, who is less baby than certified little big boy at this point. I educated him this time in the fine art of fort-building, living room dance parties, slide-climbing, sidewalk-chalking and other very important survival skills. Then he broke my heart the day I left by being intensely unhappy I was going.

Really, I don’t want to be back in Minneapolis — especially given that my neighborhood there has continued to change so much that I couldn’t afford to live there anymore — but I would very much like it if some of the people I cared about most were not so very far away. Missing my closest friends’ kids every little stage really just freaking sucks: I take my gig as Auntie Extraordinare incredibly seriously, after all, and I’ve made a family of my friends. However, Elise and I made a barter which involves my going back in June. I had initially thought it might be a good year and a half or so until I went out that way again — I am just so wiped from all this travel — but alas, it’ll be a bit sooner.

Mark picked me up last night and, elated about the spices I brought back from him, cooked me up a scrumptious supper, peppered me with wine and bourbon and we then engaged in some very enthusiastic interpretive dance in the dining room as a welcome-home. Since the food, booze and wild gesticulating wore us right out, I had to wait until this morning to jump his bones. There’s always something particularly nice about telling someone you’re so terribly sorry you made them a bit late for work but not truly being sorry for it in the slightest.

So, I’m back in the saddle as of tomorrow, and got a little head start today.

On that note, from now through September 16th, we have an arrangement with the popular Broadway play My First Time for ticket vouchers for Scarleteen donors. I’m doing it blind-auction style, so they’ll go to the 18 donors who give the most, and can be used through the end of October. More details are here for those interested in donating or circulating the information, particularly to New Yorkers and other nearby east-coasters. I’d love it if readers could circulate that info: it remains a bad year for us, and this is a nice opportunity for us and donors. Thanks!

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, family, puggy business | permalink | comments (4) »