Yesterday was my last official day counseling in the clinic.

I’ll be back once a week or so in around a month to do outreach work and sex education, so it’s not like I’m gone forever, but lordisa, it still was sad. When I got home from grabbing a few drinks with one of my work buds, I came home and mostly sat on the couch is a sort of a dull, heartsick malaise until I fell asleep. I’ll miss my team. I’ll miss my other co-workers. I’ll miss simply doing that work. And bloody hell, will I miss those women who came through my office every day, who for the brief time I had to listen to and speak with all of them, something magical and intimate in the best, most unexpected way happened and so often left me awestruck with a quiet but fiery admiration for all of them.

I think in the next few weeks, I need to carve out some time to bet back to my art and see if I can’t do a series of some sort for them, about them. Those clients have been my sheroes. I’ve kept trying to think of really how to leave the ones I will never meet some sort of gift in honor of those I did, and also better express what they gave to me, and also creatively work through my sense of loss, and I think that’s my best bet.

I will not miss catching my first bus of three before 6 in the morning in order to arrive at work at 8. It may well be that I’ll need to do that again sometimes should things turn around at some point, but I will enjoy the brief respite from it. Several times in that hellacious commute, I found myself feeling a sort of dignity in it, but in hindsight, I think I was just that desperate to find some good in it. I will not miss wearing scrubs. I remember as a child us often having some hospital castoffs from my mother as jammies, and they seemed very comfy then, but that was only because they were eight sizes too big for us, I think, and because we were wearing them to bed, not in the middle of downtown. There’s no stretch to the damn things, and if you’ve hips and breasts, you have to often buy them way larger than you’d like. I reminded myself of MC hammer a few times too many for comfort. It is a good thing not to be working over 60 hours a week during my favorite season, and instead, working only a little bit more each week than your average Jill. And financially, I really will be okay. The clinic manager yesterday also filled me in one a possible route for healthcare in the state I didn’t know about, so there may still be hope on that score. I will not miss….

…yeah, I’m out of items for that list. Ladies and germs, my feeble attempt at glass-half-full.

I am very much looking forward to the new teen outreach/education directorship, though. Doing in-person ed is a very nice bookend to all I do online, so doing more of it is a serious bonus. And I really am looking forward to bringing it into the clinic for our clients. I think too few people realize that information on birth control or getting clients BC methods just isn’t enough to keep women from unwanted pregnancy. If sex is an obligation or duty, if it isn’t really about you as an equal part, if you don’t know how to set limits and boundaries, don’t know where your clitoris is, don’t have a good sense of what a healthy sexual relationship looks like, don’t really feel some bonafide agency in your sexuality and sex life, then there are huge chunks missing which not only are going to be more helps to help limit how often that happens, they’re obviously also integral parts of having sex be a positive in your life, rather than something which, at best, just spares you a negative or unwanted consequence.

Mark has been away for the day job in Nebraska this week, and having one helluva week of his own, and comes back home this afternoon. I see extensive snuggle in our near future. We’re heading to Snoqualmie Falls early tomorrow morning, for a meeting I have for work, and then staying over with the pug so we can take a hike on Sunday. Big mountains, fresh air, green things, human sweetie, small-snorty-canine sweetie: just what the doctor ordered, I’d say.

posted in Heather Corinna, activism, women, travel exhuasts me, heart work, abortion | permalink | comments (1) »

I leave today after an all-day clinic meeting, and this trip couldn’t be better timed. Several times this month — likely in part because sparing this weekend, we still have yet to see any real signs of summer here in the Pacific Northwest — I’ve kept finding myself thinking, “I really wish I was back in Minneapolis right now.” And lo, after clinic tomorrow, I will be, for a week. I have a photo gig to justify the trip’s expense — and thank christ, found yet another used model of my camera, since the repair on the one I had was explained to me as complicated and spendy — but mostly, I’m going to just rest, reconnect and regroup.

It’s still so strange to me that that place, which isn’t and never was my home city, remains the one that feels most like home. When I get homesick, it’s not usually for Chicago, but for freaking Minnesota. When I feel out of place, that’s the place I want to be, even though a lot of time time, I didn’t feel like I belonged there, either. But most of my self-made-family is still there. I know the weather is getting to be just like I like it there. I miss lunch at the Evergreen, not dogs, half-assed smoking lounges and tequila at the Bulldog, biking at twilight around the lakes, sitting on stoops, drag at the Bowl (which blissfully, I will be able to catch this time around). I miss my dentist and his staff, who I will see, and who are wonderfully with the laughing gas. I miss being hot at night, and look forward to Bri’s stuffy apartment, and Becca’s steamy attic room. I miss some freaking semblance of queer community, goddamit. I miss Hidden Beach. I miss Uptown. I miss my Minneapolis family.

Though I remain greatly displeased that our secret gem of a neighborhood is no longer anything close to a secret, and the Sunday market was packed to the gills yesterday, I had a good time doing a present run for the two babes — the Baby Liam (Briana’s kiddo) and Odin the Great (Becca’s newbie) — a culinary school grad gift for Bri, and Elvis the pug, who sadly, will be away on his own vacation the whole time I’m there. I love coming back there all stocked up with goodies for everyone. I got to spend some time last night with my piano and one of my dulcimers, since I will be without the comfort I take a few times a week in sitting alone with a glass of wine, playing and crooning into this echo-ey house. Mark and I got to have a lovely early evening dinner on the porch.

I’m also quite proud of myself. A few weeks ago, on my to-do list, I had all these work contacts I was telling myself to make: to call District 202 and tell them I could do another sex ed session there if they wanted, to grab a quick meeting with Midwest Women’s Health, talk to this bookstore or that one. Last week, I deleted every single one off the list. I don’t need to do more work right now. I do more than my share. What I need is downtime, and it’s really silly how hard it still is for me to give it to myself, even when I’m working more than one demanding job, around 60 hours a week, and know that the very day I get back home, things are about to get even more nuts when it comes to work from here on in. When slacking has become an achievement, something has gone seriously wrong.

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I just got back from doing a morning birth control and safer sex presentation for the clinic at a temporary shelter for teen runaways down in Chinatown. It was all boys, which was unexpected, but I grooved with it and all went well. Still trying to figure out how one of the guys was earnestly convinced that his girlfriend hides needles in her hair in order to puncture his condoms — despite the fact that none of his condoms have ever failed to his knowledge, nor has he ever seen any of these aforementioned needles — and why he felt it was so reasonable to suggest that these are things all women do, but that’s beside the point. I’m exposed to so much paranoia, ignorance and just general weirdness in my line of work that often, what surprises me is the absence of it.

The real hilarity of my morning was that on the bus down there, I was a few rows behind a man who had some mix of OCD and Tourette’s going on. He would count all of us on the bus methodically and with his hands — “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, either, nine…” — getting more vexed the higher he got in his count, and when he got to the end of the list, he’d then shake his hands, and yell with no small measure of frustration, “Sex, sex, SEX!”

It took everything I had not to let him know that I heard him, and I was en route to do the best that I could to handle it, but he was going to have to be a little more patient, for crissakes.

posted in Heather Corinna, activism, seattle, apropos of nothing, travel exhuasts me, workworkwork | permalink | comments (3) »

Not much to see here, but if you’re in Minneapolis, I’ll be back there for a photography project for Elise at Fourth Street between the 17th and 23rd of June.

Because I will have to have at least one of my cameras fixed for the event (and because Yelehneb was awesome enough to give me a coupon for a repair as a birthday present), even though I’m still behind on editing, if anyone local there wants a photo session, I can probably fit one or two in so long as they’re during one of those weekdays and clients have a space for us to work in, rather than something I need to arrange.  As well, while at 4th St. I can do author photos for anyone attending who needs something new, and I’m happy to be flexible with rates.

Suffice it to say, I’ll also email friends this week to set some time up.  I don’t know for the life of me how Minneapolis wound up feeling like home when I only lived there six years, but it did, and I still miss everyone there ferociously.  I am also very much looking forward to some swarthy, muggy Midwest summer.

Whoever said summer actually happens is Seattle was a big ‘ol liar.  Summer is when you SWEAT like nobody’s business, not when it’s okay to go without a sweater.

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Tomorrow, right after clinic, I’m leaving on a jet plane. It is technically — as usual — a work trip, but very much out of the ordinary, I will only have to work for around two hours on Sunday. The rest of that time, we will simply be enjoying the sun and the sand on Shelter Island.

In other words, it really is, however brief, an actual, bonafide vacation — I think if it’s more than 36 hours it’s no longer just a getaway or a day trip — something I have not had in such a long time it’s scary. Something I have needed for years.

The timing is completely brilliant: there could not be a better time for me to be able to just get the hell out of dodge, grab a few books and my sweetheart, and decompress. Now that things are dying down a bit — knock on wood, but so far today I have not gotten even one piece of hate mail — I’m actually feeling pretty okay. Stronger, more resilient than I thought I was. Tired, and certainly a little world-weary, but I’m okay. Thanks to everyone who lent me some support over the last few days: I very much needed it, and it was absolute gold.

My Dad is here now (and we did have That Talk this morning, and it went very well), and will be taking care of my child, otherwise known as my dog. I’ll get to come back to see him for another five days, and while I have to do work from home in that time, I will only need to go to the clinic one day that week. He’ll also be here for my 38th — how do these things happen? — birthday next Friday, which is just awesome.

So, off with me. I still have taxes to try and finish, a Dad to hang out with, a pug to snuggle, a bag to pack and fifty gazillion more things to do. But after 5:00 tomorrow, until Monday morning, I’ll be exceptionally busy harvesting freckles, enjoying a cocktail or twelve, soaking my toes in the pool and thanking the powers that be for that much-needed respite.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing, travel exhuasts me, simple joys | permalink | comments (7) »

…and nearly just as soon as I’m back, I’m off again.

Thanks to the National Sexuality Resource Center and SFSU, I’m heading to San Francisco tomorrow for a few days to accept my Champions of Sexual Literacy award, do a couple events including telling my (beyond undramatic) coming out story on stage and giving a talk at the Center for Sex and Culture on YA sexuality and sex education issues. As an extra bonus, I’ll be fitting in two photo sessions, one with a longtime reader and another with Melissa, catching up with Carol and Robert, who are two of my favorite people in the entire universe, and hopefully also getting a chance to see Anne and Cathy, because it’s been too long, dining at the Millennium, which is basically where vegans go to die when we have been VERY good, and my editor and I will finally get to have all those glasses of wine together that we wanted so badly throughout the process of producing the book.

Of course, I had the best of intentions in the days between coming back from Victoria and leaving for SF when it came to getting a ton of things done. Very, very few of those things are done. My primary interest while back home was staring at the wall, eating, and taking several hot baths.

But this is it, for the most part: after the San Fran trip, I won’t have to do any traveling for a while. The weekend after next, my sweetie was a total peach and arranged for a weekend away for us — and with the dog, no less! — in Port Townsend for us here.

The Victoria trip was fantastic. Sarah is the absolute best, even though I think we both needed ice for our jaws after yapping for three days solid. The events were both very packed and very awesome. And on the ferry home, as it turns out, I found myself seated next to an older couple, and in no time at all, we discovered that we had quite the thing in common: she was a member of the Planned Parenthood board in Long Island, and I do what I do. So, pencil in three more hours of breakneck gabbery.

I’ve made it no secret here that I’m not a fan of public speaking. Really, a big part of the reason why after many juvenile and adolescent years of hardcore musical training, I pretty much ditched it as something I was going to do as work, full-time, was because while I loved (and still do) making music, I never liked performing. It was never awful, but it wasn’t something I enjoyed, either. For a long time that was the same story with the public speaking, until a handful of years ago I became downright phobic about it, for no real rhyme or reason. The mere thought of it would make me nauseated and clammy, and in the actual doing, my voice would never stop shaking, my knees would feel like they were going to fall out from under me, and I was having to keep myself from puking or wetting my pants the whole time. The only thing I looked forward to with it was the talk being over.

It got so bad that a few years ago, I was invited to be featured in this amazingly high-profile feminist conference, and while I was so honored, and so badly wanted to do it, I ended up declining because I was relatively certain I’d just never come out of my hotel room to give the talk. Mind, it didn’t help that I was told half the university and organization REALLY wanted me to talk there and half REALLY did not, but still, my issue, and a really serious case of disappointment-in-self.

However tired I am, and however much I just want to sit in front of my fireplace for several months without leaving, one huge benefit of doing all these book events over the last six months has been that I feel okay about public speaking again. I mean, I’d still rather NOT be doing it, but once the first few minutes are over, I’m okay, and it’s no longer terrifying. That’s a pretty serious boon.

I am still nervous enough that I get babbly.

REALLY babbly.

I’ve come to the conclusion that since everyone listening always looks mighty entertained and very alert, that must be okay, but I still feel like a bit of a dolt about my mouth running five feet ahead of the rest of me most of the time, and seeming to have limited control of what comes out of my big yap. Am I an educator and an activist, or am I a clown? Dunno, but at least no one ever looks bored.

While I was in Victoria, Sarah and I filmed a segment for a documentary that is centered around a male photographer who does vulva photographs in the interest of improving female body image. While I’m not exactly the most excited ever about most projects that are male-led in order to help save us women from our own crappy self-image, the guy’s heart certainly seems to be in the right place, and the photo work is pretty decent.

We watched the current edit of the documentary before going to film, and both were commenting — in good spirits, but still — on some of the level of batty of some of the female experts on there. Betty (Dodson) is always batty, and in such a lovely way, but still, yanno… batty. There was some other woman whose batty was far less charming, and just plain kooky and counterproductive in my view, going on about how you could tell what the inside of a woman’s vagina was like by the appearance of her external vulva.

(Umm, yeah. She didn’t suggest that she made a habit or even an occasional practice of actually putting her hands into women’s vaginas for these theories, personally or professionally, but I was so wishing I had met her in person so I could drop my pants, ask her to take a look and make her prediction, then ask her to lube up, go on in there and find out if there was any truth in her vagina…psychicry? Psychicness? I don’t know what the term is for the act of being a psychic: whatever it is, that word. I also had a moment of feeling incredibly glad I wasn’t dating women at the moment, because I would SO have wanted to make a game out of this and see if I might become a vulva psychic myself. For all I know, that gig just might not leave me broke like this one does. Imagine how many parties you could book! It’s totally better than some guy pulling rabbits out of hats.)

So, we go to film, and one void we noticed in the edit we saw was that there was a lot of talk about poor body image coming from porn. That’s valid, and I certainly think it can be an issue, but if you start and stop there, I think you miss a LOT of other important issues and a big part of the picture. Women suffered with poor body image, and especially poor genital body image, well before mass-produced porn — and with the wide availability of amateur porn, and self-made porn, while I think porn can play a big hand in problems with sexual self-image, sexual gender roles, and with overall body image, I’m not so sure that it’s the right place to pin poor genital image for women on, since if they’re looking at more of the DIY or amateur stuff, most of those performers have not had labiaplasties. Many with breast implants, to be sure, nearly all very femme, and the endless lack of body hair, but to my understanding, labiaplasties? Not so much.

Anyway, we’re gabbing about this, together on screen, and discussing the fact that because the male genitals are so externally visible, that men have the benefit of being able to just walk into a group shower or locker room and see a wide array of penises. Without having a same-sex lover, or other opportunities to see real genitalia that require a lot more intimacy and another person’s permission, men often get to see a pretty wide range of penises and testicles. Because most of the female genitals are hidden, women don’t have that opportunity. Very few women who don’t have same-sex partners or become gynecologists and obstetricians will ever have ANY opportunity to see what a vulva besides theirs looks like in-person, and that lack of genital visibility (and scent, and taste, the works) is one very practical, and really, unfixable, reason why so many women have no idea if their vulvas are “normal,” and what the range of female genital appearance really is.

I’m a talker-with-hands. If my hands aren’t flying wildly everywhere, my mouth is probably shut. So, in discussing this, we both — unaware the other was about to do this — pantomimed what one must do to get a good look at a vulva by making a movement with our hands and fingers in front of our faces, as if we were doing the world’s smallest inverted breaststroke.

It was at that moment that it became quite undeniable that we, too, are those batty ladies.

That’s okay. I mean, I know I am already destined for extreme batty-old-ladyhood. I’m looking forward to it, and I may as well practice now and get good at it so that I can be an Olympic bat later. And when the subject is sex, if you can make people laugh, you can help people feel a lot more comfortable about everything, so it tends to be a help to be weird and goofy. It also makes me feel much better about my spaztastic mouth and my flying hands when I do public talks: if everyone else who does this kind of work for a while eventually becomes pretty loony, it therefore may well just be a job requirement.

See how that amazing logic works? I have just turned my lack of cool eloquence and controlled, professional speaking into a marker of acheivement! Go rationalizing, go!

And with that, I’m off to pack and prepare to go be batty for a few days, with the hope that at the very least, I can pony up and not be a complete loon while accepting my award. Doubtful, sure, but a girl can dream.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, women, sexuality, events, travel exhuasts me | permalink | comments (3) »

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) »