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May 30th, Two Thousand Three: Just a few quickies from me today, as I'm literally in between
houseguests for only about 5 hours. And since it's girlfriends
who have been here staying, it looks like, as Sabrina would say,
the Girl Bus exploded in my house.
Having Mintpink here was wonderful, though. I've decided it may
be the grownup version of anonymous sex: letting people come stay
with you on a whim whose work you're familiar with, but with whom
you've never actually even spoken. Given, you don't get the orgasm,
but you also don't get the awkward silences in the morning and
the sputtering and stammering when you run into someone on the
street who you've clearly slept with, but whose name you can't
remember to save your life, likely because you never knew it in
the first place.
Mintpink and I are both nursing some girl-heartbreak and it was
nice to have someone to commiserate with, who kept me from crying
for a while with laughter and plenty of "Can I get a witness?" This would have been a miserable week otherwise. We lunched,
we shopped, we walked a lot, we sat swooning over Drag Kings online
like little girl groupies. I shot a cool set of her (so nice to
have a model, because I can shoot at outside locations, something
I can't do alone with the self-portraits), hooked her on Buffy, and we ventured out to find the best Margarita in town. Which
was at Margarita Bella, where there was also supposed to be drag
at 9, but by 10:30, there still was none close to ready (girls,
I know it takes work to look that glam, I do, but come on...)
so we walked to Ground Zero and danced it out for a while before
heading back here and passing out.
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While I'm not doing the boy-thing right now, I confess that the
very sweet and grateful boot-kisser there didn't hurt.
She had an early flight this morning, so gave me a groggy wakeup
hug before heading out. The plan is for her to come back up here
for IDKE in October, which should be a gas, and by then we should both
be up to that.
We rued, several times last night to whomever would hear, that
finding the girls in this town is hard as hell, knowing at the
same time that neither of us was in the place to go flirt or dabble
anyway. You get stuck in comparison mode when you're lovelorn
and there's no one who is going to rate, especially if the situation
isn't such that anyone did anything horrible, so you can shake
your fists at the sky shouting "Bastard!"
Yes, I'm being obtuse, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
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Photography: 05.26 (35 photos): samples 1 • 2 • 3 • members • sign up
Poetry: 5.28: members |
My heart feels so terribly bruised right now, which as well as
having the annoying side effect of getting this awful mopey pop
song from the Bridget Jones' Diary soundtrack stuck in my head, makes me feel very uncomfortable
journaling publicly. Fuck, I'm not even all that comfortable expressing
my feelings at the moment with the people closest to me. You just
-- I don't know. It's hard enough to manage your sorrows and your
disappointments all by yourself or with your best friends. Doing
it so publicly, especially when you have a string of them in a
row just gets to be a bit much. Things aren't such that I want
or can handle sympathy, that that's really right here. They certainly
aren't such that I want to hear anyone say someone I gave a bit
more of my heart to than I thought is a jerk or doesn't know what
she's missing, or is being foolish... because not only do I not
think that's so, I don't even fully understand where things stand
right now, save that I'm sad and worried that a really good thing
may be lost to me and I have no idea what to do to circumvent
that, or if it's just selfish and stupid to want to try and alter
that at all.
Writing things down in a state of flux tends to be a bit antithetical,
because words don't express flux well: they carve even the smallest
moments in granite, solidifying them for always. That may feel
more uncomfortable at this moment because I want to convince myself
this is just flux, who knows. If it isn't, well, right now I don't
want to know that. So, my feelings for the time being are far
better suited for poems and photographs in smaller spaces and
for my own head in solace.
I need to hold ice packs to my bruises alone, with the door closed,
where I don't feel like everyone can see them so plainly; where
it's okay for me to sob as loudly as I want when I need to without
feeling more all the more foolish by putting myself on public
display. |
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May 27th, Two Thousand Three: I had the weirdest dreams last night, and slept horribly. They
were scary dreams, but not the kind of scary dreams that keep
you up out of fright or terror.
I'm fairly certain I was in the Mall of America (when I tell folks
that place is the stuff of nightmares, I really am not kidding
-- going there even once was enough to fuel my subconscious phobias
for decades) with J. We had some kids with us I didn't recognize,
but who we were apparently our charges. One was a little older
than the others and wanted to go on her own and be in charge of
the smaller ones; we allowed that without hesitation and went
somewhere else, only to discover shortly thereafter that the smaller
kids were missing. In looking for the kids, we somehow ended up
in this attic-y boiler room space (note: you've watched Buffy for much too long when you keep adding
y's to the end of words) overrun with all kids of smelly birds, who kept advancing and
pecking at my hands, arms and face as I screamed and fought them
off lamely, Tippi Hedren-style. We somehow managed to get out
of there, but then couldn't find the kids, and couldn't find our
way out of the damn behemoth of a place (a likely scenario at
the MOA, I might add). We kept running into all of these scary
women who had been gambling in a casino in there, who were wearing
awful, terrible, much-too-short sequined dresses and cackling
like hyenas.
We went up and down a thousand fucking escalators and still kept
ending up at the same place, the empty bizarre room where the
kids first were, but which was now filled with people shooting
up on lumpy mattresses, some more of the damn birds, and a bunch
of old pinball machines, where we continued to leave the other
kid. Finally some guy came by us and told us to follow the water,
and we noticed this kind of running plastic waterway all through
the place and got in it. It pulled us all through, but the further
we went, the higher the water level got and the faster we went,
and I was freaking out a good bit. At the end of the line, a ceiling
came in and the space kept getting progressively smaller until
we sort of rolled to a dead halt in a cramped, tiny space with
about three inches of opening to the side. I saw street ahead
and over us, and it opened up, folding out into a big cement draw
bridge that appeared to be opening up right on top of us, and
we lay there, unable to move and screaming until it finally banged
unto the street, leaving us in the dark until it unfolded again.
When it opened, it became clear we were in some sort of gutter,
because a motorcyclist drove right over out heads, revving his
engine.
As we both shouted "What the fuck?" I woke up for the 347th time
that evening. It wasn't the first time in that dream we'd said
that in unison: it was basically the whole of our dialogue throughout.
It's one thing when you keep getting woken up by your dreams because
they're just that terrifying. This was pretty creepy, but I didn't
keep waking up because I was scared. Instead, I kept waking up
because I could not obtain the required suspension of disbelief
to sleep through the dreaming.
One moment I'd wake up, sit up and say, "What the hell? Boiler
rooms are in the basement not the attic. And there's no casino
at the mall." The next it'd be "Oh yeah, right. Like we're going
to let an 8-year-old take care of two toddlers alone in the mall
without a thought, and then leave the other one in an outtake
from Trainspotting when the smaller two already went missing. Just be sure to use a clean needle now, luv." Or, "I hate that bloody mall. There's no way I'd go there,"
or "Women in Minnesota over 18 would SO not wear those hemlines,"
or "Umm, J. is so not a screamer, especially in that octave, and
there's no way in hell she'd be caught dead in a t-shirt that
says Porn Star on it, especially in that cut," or, finally, "Fellini is hereby
banned from the set of my dreams -- can I put in for Jarmusch?
Allison Anders? Walt Disney, even?"
I'm okay with having bizarre dreams -- so, so rarely do I recall
dreaming at all, and I always feel like I'm missing out. But.
I would prefer having dreams that my analytical mind can entertain
just enough to allow me to actually sleep through them, at least
for part of the night. My subconscious is due for a remedial writing
seminar, stat. |
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May 26th, Two Thousand Three: Let's talk work and art and bodies today. I have a bunch of
little stuff backed up (pug adventures, some photos of some tremendously
cute goslings, etc.), but I've just hauled ass over the last day
to get a members update up, so I'm more in work-mode than real-life-little-bits
mode.
Things may be transitory in other aspects of my life right now,
but I have to say that as far as creative work goes, I've got
it going on lately in the best way. Most of what I've been doing,
whether we're talking writing or photography has been very candid,
very intimate, very open work. I've been doing less shooting with
props or costuming and more about the fine art nude, simplicity
and a profound lack of artificial adornment. It doesn't actually
feel vulnerable, which I'd expect, and which it has in the past
sometimes: it feels like wide open green spaces I can shout in,
spinning in circles, without worry for who is watching.
I have the change of season to thank for some of that: when the
days get longer, it means I have better natural light to work
with, for longer in the day. Natural light is really my favorite,
especially when I'm working with myself. It suits the vivid and
the delicate parts of my coloring, it is gentle enough that I
don't have to worry about doing makeup save the little touch here
and there, no more than the little bit of lipstick or mascara
than I do during my usual day, and it makes me feel so warm and
open, and me-like. As well, I'm getting into the best physical
shape I may have been in in my life -- I thought when I was working
the markets and doing manual labor all the time was the peak for
that, but I may have been gladly incorrect there. It's been over
six months since I went vegan now by ditching all the dairy, and
it's been over a year since I started boxing. I've been training
hard lately, and the combination of those two things has made
me feel really centered and energetic and just... ding-dong! There's
also that really good sex part. That certainly doesn't hurt, and
you bet your ass I make it a good workout, baby. Reowr. Dancing
around in one's underpants on a regular basis is also helpful.
Been lotsa underpants-dancing here lately.
I can accept my own body in various sizes and shapes and states
of being on an aesthetic level, but that's a different thing than
how I feel in it physically. To really feel centered and balanced,
I need to be packing a good deal of muscle, which means that I
can't get too thin, but I also can't get too big either as far
as body fat goes. I'm built to be a pretty compact little machine,
with the curvy bits tossed in for shits and giggles and nice things
to fiddle with. The year before lastish, between depression, eating
way too much bleedin' cheese and not having something to train
at seriously I got to a shape that just was NOT good for me. My
BMI is back at an ideal 24, whereas a year and some ago, I was
hovering at 28. Not good. This is much better, bruises and sports
injuries aside (have a torn abdominal ligament or something this
week going on, last week I got popped in the head enough between
boxing and some BDSM play in a 24-hour period that I literally
couldn't think straight for a good day there).
In many ways, besides being the skin I live in, my body is my
instrument and my most important tool in regard to the photography,
obviously far more so when I'm shooting myself, but also when
I'm shooting others -- I have to be able to really move effortlessly
and quickly, without thinking about it. If my body feels out of
balance, I can't do that. For this last set, I had a dead remote
that I couldn't get replaced in time to do an update, so I had
to work handheld and on a timer, which means holding poses for
much longer than I usually do -- something I haven't had to do
since I was posing for artists a while back -- or flying into
a pose really quickly to catch a still shot after the shutter
fires. It's a good challenge, and even with something like that,
having my muscles in good order and strong makes a big difference.
Plus, it's so much easier to weather life changes and emotional
issues when your body is a happy little beastie.
But I digress. I've been feeling really good about the work I've
been doing lately. Sometimes, especially when the summer signup
slump starts to kick in, it's a bit hard to do that when it's
barely paying the bills. And I'm not immune to the pressure of
knowing that if I made myself do more mainstream sex work, I'd
make a lot more cash because I'd likely net all the straight guys
that are usually the backbone of any sexual market, but who are
my minority as far as my own patrons go. But then I look at the
work I'm producing, how I've been developing as an artist, and
while that isn't a non-issue because the bills need to be paid,
it looks pretty silly in comparison. And I dig my people, and
I do dig having a member base built largely of women. It's a cool
thing. And I find the mainstream work boring as fuck.
It's funny, really, given how much I talk body image that sometimes
I manage to forget that it's totally okay to be in love with your
own body.
So, in part I suppose it's a vanity trip, but it's more than that.
When I'm doing the self-portaiture, I need to be my own muse,
so I have to be able to inspire myself...well, with myself. It's
an interesting position to be in, that's for sure. We've got girls
at Scarleteen who are adamant that they can't develop self-love
and esteem or good body image by themselves, that it has GOT to
come, if not solely than primarily, from some external source,
AKA: their boyfriends. They're convinced that saying it has got
to come from within is a big pile of new-age bullocks. Hopefully,
they'll come around before they're 40 with ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands
in tow who never managed to give them what they needed to give
themselves, and what the poor guys likely drove themselves mad
with trying to supply.
I'm losing focus again. Oops. Need more coffee, need to run into
the shower soon anyway, as Becca and I are going to take the canines
out to the Dog Park.
But this last set was great to do, in short. Molly and I were chatting on the phone a little bit ago, and she'd
mentioned that she's got this obsession with hands. I've had mixed
feelings about my own hands over the years -- the reconstruction
done on them when I was a kid was hardly perfect, and I have to
make a lot of adaptations to use them, so now and then I can feel
like they've betrayed me in terms of what they're simply unable
to do that they could do were they someone else's hands. But they're
my hands: part of my body, part of my tools, and they can touch
in such delightful ways. They're such a profound part of my sexuality
-- they grab, they grope, they tickle, tweak, claw, hold tight;
they dip, they dally, they dive, they bring myself or partners
to sighing orgasm (and I admit, on more than one occasion I have
flirted by showing off one of the fingers and bringing notice
to not only the fact that it can wiggle on its digit, but that
it has no fingernail whatsoever -- that's worked with girls and
boys, mind you).
They're good hands, and that was a nice spark from Miz Molly she
delivered without either of us realizing it. It'll be great to
see her in September: we queer, feminist, sex-positive, curvy
redheaded photographers have to stick together, you know.
And with that, off I run. Going to be a REALLY busy week for me
-- have a date tomorrow. Wednesday Mintpink will be here to shoot for a couple days, then Jane is coming in (as Mintpink is leaving) for a few days, during
which I have a shoot scheduled with a client for some body image
work, then at the end of next week, my mother and her partner
are also coming up to visit. Busy! |
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May 22nd, Two Thousand Three: I've decided I'm allowed to simply gloss over a lot of the things
that have had me sitting here stupefied as to what to say publicly.
For as much as I gloss over anything, that is.
Very few people in the world have to issue press releases, as
it were, when they have a breakup or a change in a relationship,
when things in their lives start to shift, when their feelings
or ideas about things change, and I have no idea why I feel obligated
to try and do so. Not only has it not been working over the past
week and some (I have written pages and pages and...), it's just not required. I've felt obligated and I haven't liked
that feeling.
Toeing the line between public and private is a difficult thing.
It's hard enough when your personal life is made public when you
don't want it to be, but even more tricky when you've willingly
made so much of it public all by yourself. And in my case, my
professional life is joined at the hip with my personal life.
They are so symbiotic, I can't untangle them because they're wound
tightly together by design.
It's hard enough to sit down with someone who is very close to
you and admit you've been wrong, that you've misjudged something,
that you didn't see obvious pitfalls, that you feel differently
about important things than you used to, that you have limits
which were once flexible which cannot be bypassed anymore. It's
hard enough to say goodbye -- even if it's really seeya later
or let's try something else -- to someone whom you care about.
It's hard enough to start finding things out about yourself which
truly surprise you, and which might require you rethinking huge
parts of your life, all by yourself. It's incredibly difficult
to do that with an invisible public, the majority of whom you
know only as numbers, not as names or faces, but who know your
name, your face, and a pretty big chunk of your life, your heart,
your soul -- but who also don't know a lot more than they likely
feel they do. Especially when other people are involved who are
also somewhat public.
So, I'm using my gloss-over card this time. In a nutshell, Aaron
moved back to Chicago. Some of why I'm feeling weird about talking
about that is because of all of the above, but also for other
reasons. Because it isn't a big drama, because there are no villains,
and believe it or not, that makes it harder to talk about. Some
of that comes down to this: I feel very strongly for people I
care for, and am closely involved with, especially romantically
or sexually. It tends to be understood that if you fall in love,
if you allow yourself to jump all the way into someone with your
heart, if you create with and around them, if you grin like an
idiot at their name or their face, if you welcome them into your
life and your heart, that those feelings essentially dictate a
certain wanted direction or certain actions. In other words, it
is expected that if you fall in love or in lust with someone,
you'll be scribbling your name over pieces of paper with their
last name on it, or looking at china patterns or figuring out
how to fit them into the rest of the map of your life from this
day until the day you stop breathing or some close proximity to
such.
Thing is, that isn't the case with me, not even to a greatly reduced
degree, and it never has been, and that's something I try to be
very clear about with people to avoid hurt. Especially over the
last few years. That's very hard to explain to people, and it's
very hard to override those seemingly natural (though I'm inclined
to think they're constructs) expectations.
I think some of the reason I've always found Zen such a good fit
is because it's not a big challenge for me to live in the moment.
That's often the hardest part for most people, but it's been the
easiest one for me, despite needing some refinement and ongoing
work. (My biggest Buddhist challenges are things like emotional
and object attachment and right speech.) A big part of why I'm
not wired that way is pretty obvious social conditioning. Not
only did I grow up in a completely unstable environment where
literally nothing was ever a given, but the first person I really
fell in love with in my teens died violently and suddenly, and
my last-name-swapping, my plans for the rest of our lives -- hell,
my plans for the next weekend -- all meant absolutely nothing;
all were cut off and shown to be pipe dreams and illusions in
the smallest moment. While I can't say I'm happy that happened
as it did -- how great it would be to have my first love, and
someone who changed the course of my life completely, as a lifelong
friend, or just to know he's still around, and having to go through
that so young, see the gore of that isn't something I'd have chosen
-- it's not the terrible tragedy it sounds like. I am grateful
for what it gave me in terms of really understanding in the hardest
way that plans are only wishes of things we'd like to do, and
that I'd rather spend my time enjoying someone as we all are,
right here, than I would dreaming up things that might be, especially
when those things are really what we are, what we've got, right
now.
(Forgive me going all esoteric on you. My glossing clearly needs
some work.)
I asked Aaron to leave because it was best option I could find
in a pile of lousy ones, for a lot of reasons, most of which are
private for one or both of us. I'll miss being able to see him,
because he can be a hell of a person. And you know, he renewed
my sense of joy and wonder for me when it direly needed renewing,
even though that came with a cost at the onset (in short, B. was
convinced after we split that I'd been secretly sexually/romantically
involved with Aaron before we split, which was not the case; which caused a lot of hurt
all around, and truly mucked up the waters for everyone). But
it isn't right for either of us right here, or in the situation/model
we had going here. We want and need different things, and I've
been at a point in my life where I can't have or handle, don't
want, a primary or serious relationship because I need to spend
as much energy as I can looking inward and being with myself,
and feeling very free to do that. Exploring spaces that are earnestly
not spaces I can explore, or feel able to explore, in a serious
relationship, and issues he and I were having really couldn't
be worked in a more casual one.
(I'm fumbling, here, but again, this is just so awkward, this
half-picture I'm trying to give because anything else is invasive
for everyone involved and isn't my place to divulge.)
I'm also grappling with some poly guilt. I'm finding it's very
hard not to feel guilty when one relationship is going well and
another has become a real struggle. And it's hard, really, to
just admit to oneself that while you may care deeply for more
than one person, truly and deeply, some character fits are just
better than others. You'll say to yourself you shouldn't compare
and contrast, and you don't need to, because you don't have to
choose between these people, but you can't help not doing it,
really. I can't, I suppose. Maybe you shouldn't try not to.
It's been hard for me, these last weeks, to be in one relationship
that I've had a little longer, that has history, which isn't as
new, which has a deeper friendship, but in which it became clear
to me that both of our wants and needs were very divergent. And
then to be in another which is new, in which our wants and needs
seem totally harmonious, but it's so new, so of course it's fantastic.
You ask yourself if it's just denial or wishful thinking or just
a way out, and you know, it feels like it hurts a bit more, it's
a bit harder, when you're pretty damn sure it isn't any of those
things, but just the simple luck of the draw and a really happy
accident.
I have other guilt, too. It's become clear to me that I have some
truly atrocious relationship patterns with men, patterns I can
tie right back, in predictable Freudian form, to my relationship
with my father, as well as to my stepfather. Patterns that I cannot
seem to escape for the life of me, no matter how I construct my
relationships, no matter who they're with, no matter what limits
I set or feel I'm setting. And that's a real problem. Not a "god,
men suck" problem -- it's likely at least half my problem, if
not more so.
To boot -- here comes the even harder part -- over the years,
my physical, and certainly my emotional -- attraction to bio-men
has been waning. I've always dated very femme men, especially
in the last handful of years, and all my early relationships with
men were with very femme boys. I've had a couple notable exceptions,
but as the years roll by, those loom further and further away.
This isn't my coming out moment: I've been out as a bisexual for
as long as I've been out as a sexual anything. I think the closest
I ever came to having an Official Coming Out Event was the morning
after a platonic girlfriend of mine left my Dad and I's apartment
at 16 or 17 after staying the night, and the following conversation
ensued:
- Dad: "So, was that your girlfriend?"
Me: "No, just a friend."
Dad: "Oh. Sorry, didn't mean to imply..."
Me: "Don't worry about it. The girl over the night before was
my girlfriend."
Dad: "Ah. She's a looker. Good job."
Yep, that'd be my big coming out drama. That Antigone ain't got
nothin' on me.
I'm not questioning that I'm bisexual. That's pretty darn clear,
I mean, I've had more partners than anyone I've ever met who wasn't
a sex worker, and from day one of my sexual exploration, it's
been all over the map. In other words, I've done the field research,
and I know I'm attracted to people of both genders, like to have
sex with people of all genders, can have relationships with folks
of any gender, always have. But I always assumed that I was primarily
male-attracted, and secondarily female attracted. I'm realizing
that isn't so.
Usually, I'm lousy at keeping secrets. But until very recently,
I've been exceptionally good at keeping this one, likely because
it wasn't so much a secret as a growing inkling that either things
are shifting with me -- and have been, over I'd say the last two
or three years, if not more -- or that I've been wrong all along.
It's a complex issue. Not only do we have default-heterosexual
bias at play, but some of why my partners have mostly been male
in my life is simple availability. I'm not a math whiz, but if
you factor in the number of out dykes in the world (butch bisexual
girls to femme ones are bald eagles to pigeons, so let's not even
go there), minus those who think bisexual girls -- especially
active ones -- have some sort of terminal cooties, minus those
with whom I don't have a mutual sexual and emotional attraction
... well, that's pretty low probability there. And let's face
it: I'm a cute femme-looking girl who is very obviously into sex.
The rejection factor is so minimal with men as to be nonexistent.
I can't actually think of a time a man declined my advances, but
plenty of women have.
(You know, I wasn't going to talk about this here yet -- over
the last couple of weeks, I finally just started talking to my
closest friends about it. But apparently, I'm talking about it
here today.)
But I don't think it's as simple as availability or simple rejection
fears. What I'm starting to wonder -- and I feel no rush to come
to conclusions on this -- is if given that NONE of my most serious
romantic relationships have been with women, and given how emotionally
wide open I am in relationships, I haven't been trying to protect
myself to a certain degree. Heck, it's only been in the last five
or six years that I've finally developed very deep platonic friendships
with women, and at this point now, all of my closest friends are
women, something I never would have seen coming ten years ago.
Creating distance once I'm truly invested in something (which
takes me a lot longer than it looks, and IME, longer than it takes
most people I'm involved with) as a protective measure -- both
of my heart and of my autonomy -- is very much in my character.
Observe, if you will, this handy -- if crude -- chart. It's hardly perfect, but what I'm trying to illustrate here is
that I come in, all guns blazing. Then, I slowly pull back, and
keep pulling back, when the other person is usually slowly building,
giving more, opening more as they go and gain trust, and I don't
catch up to them for a long time, if ever. Now, some of that,
I think, is just my essential nature. I'm an Aries with a Leo
ascendant, for crying out loud: I start, I inspire, I instigate,
I lead when I'm dancing. It's not that I can't follow through,
because I can, it just isn't half as compelling to me, and I'm
not as good at it. I get scared, I get overprotective of my personal
space, of my freedom. I find that my limits and boundaries get
crossed and that I have a really hard time enforcing them (which
may be part of why they get dismissed or bypassed or tested).
I find that -- not surprisingly -- the other person is wondering
why I'm pulling back when I came in so wide open. And I seem to
do that more with men. I'm less able to make my boundaries and
limits and wants clear from the outset, less able to say no when
I need to and hold that line, less able to process and express
my emotional timbre in relationships and feel they're communicating
clearly with me, and I think some of what it comes down to is
that I'm just far less comfortable with them, I don't have ...
something.
I've listened, in the work that I do, to a lot of people talk
about their partners, their partners bodies, etc. And some of
what's been brought to my attention lately is that when I'm with
men, I don't feel ... at home. I feel a bit like I'm taking a
lovely holiday in Paris when it's good, which is great, but I
don't feel grounded, I don't feel familiar, it feels foreign and
I'm not sure I like that or want it, and to a certain degree what
I feel is homesick.
(Okay, so I gave up on the glossing-over.)
I hear straight women go on about male bodies in a way that I've
just never gone on about a man's body, but I have about a woman's.
I haven't had a purely opposite-sex sex fantasy in ... well, years.
There's no tactful or kind way yet for me to talk about the difference
between the sex I have with men and the sex I have with women,
save to say that they are very different experiences for me (and
that goes beyond, as well, the fact that I tend to nearly always
top with men and bottom with women, which is dizzying enough all
by itself, really). Okay, I'm starting to weird myself out talking
about this here, so this is where I stop with that. I'm starting
to feel like I'm standing naked in the middle of the street. J's
teased me about this a little bit (Aha! You ARE a big ol'dyke like the rest of us!), which is fine. Good, really; I need to keep a sense of humor
about the whole thing. But it's easier to laugh about it in private
right now.
The point is, I need an embargo both on dating men for as long
as I feel I need one, and on any sort of relationship that's more
than a couple-times-a-week or every-once-in-a-while thing where
someone else wants or needs something more committed or serious
or aim-for-the-long-haul than I do. I've had a couple male friends
have poor reactions to this, which I confess makes me feel vaguely
resentful: I don't remember my men or women friends having anything
to say when I was taking a handful of years off from dating women,
after all. What's that all about? This isn't a "Men suck!" issue.
It's a "This is clearly toxic for me and others, for whatever
reason, and my interest clearly lies elsewhere right now" issue.
As a pansexual, I'm allowed that. Hell, as a person I'm allowed
that; I think it's really sound judgment on my part, if you must
know. But I have to remind myself of that because through most
of my life, my bisexuality has felt more "either is fine" than
"this one is better for me right now." If that makes any sort
of sense. It's a new feeling and a bit disorienting. But overall,
I'm finding that right now, I want to be surrounded by women in
my life: sexually, romantically, and even platonically.
(For the record, had a user at Scarleteen the other day saying
she felt she shouldn't be bisexual, but should "choose one or
the other" because bisexuality was "the easy way out" the other
day. I'd pay good money for a photo of the look on my face reading
that one. I barked loud enough when I read it that my dog started
barking right back at me, totally threatened and wigged out.)
There are points here, I swear. And one of them is that all of
this stuff, no doubt, got in the way of things/ is getting in
the way of things with Aaron and I, in m seeing things clearly,
and I feel guilty for not recognizing that sooner: my attraction
base shifts, my lifelong patterns with men, the disparity between
what he wanted/wants and what I did/do, though part of not knowing
that really wasn't my fault because it wasn't clearly communicated
to me until well into the game, and I need to remember that. I
also know, for myself, that I can't feel obliged to be in someone's
life in a given role, but only as myself. My best relationships
in my life have always been those with a lot of fluidity, with
allowance for a lot of evolution and change, in which having me
in their life took precedence over having me in their life as
wife/girlfriend/friend/lover. I need that. And what that may mean
is just saying no from the onset to anyone who I even have an
inkling is looking for a more traditional relationship or for
me to fill a certain role, because I just don't think I'm meant
for that or that I fit it very well without feeling that I'd need
to change my essential nature and character. Or that it really
fits into the rest of my life, no matter how appealing it can
look, and it very much can.
I wonder if sometimes I accept that into my life when I know I
shouldn't (or don't cut it off at the pass right when I see it
happening) because with my emotional life, my work, everything
around me being so mutable and unpredictable all of the time,
something that looks very predictable and stable has definite
appeal. Even though I know that with me, its mileage is limited
and in due course, I'll feel very suffocated by it. I've always
had the feeling that I'm ultimately meant to be a secondary partner,
especially since when I am a primary, or someone tends to look
to me to give that, it's almost always in a big caretaker role
on my part, and I can't help but get resentful when that happens
-- I just feel like I'm taking care of so many people so much
of the time. While secondary or more casual partnership also that
has its hardships and it's pitfalls, the truth is I already have
a primary partner -- my creative life, my work, my head and my
own heart. It's hell to compete with for everyone, and looking
at my relationship history, my most solid and healthy relationships
were those in which the other person was of a similar temperament
and situation. Michael and I did incredibly well for years for
that reason. B. and I did as well, and from what I can tell, only
fucked it up it when we tried to do otherwise.
I've gone on for an age, here, and I truly didn't intend to. This
is about the sixth time I've sat down and tried to write all of
this out, and even all of this is total tip of the iceberg. Icebergs
are big, and part of this one isn't mine to tell because it involves
details that aren't mine to divulge. So, consider this act one,
and only the Cliff's notes at that. I could have just said, "Look,
shit in my life happened/is happening and a lot of it is private
to me or someone else, so let's just move the hell on and skip
it," but that just felt disrespectful and irreverent in the worst
way. And not very brave. If there's anything I don't want to do
with my life or my work, it's live it like a wuss. I can at least
disclose my own shit to a decent degree, and I think it's important
I do.
While it's tough living a pretty public life sometimes, there
are benefits to calling yourself to the carpet in front of other
people, or creatively, even alone. It allows you a certain protection
from denial. Trying to write this out has involved all of my mornings
over the last week or so. I've done it in prose, I've done it
in poetry, I've done it in artwork. It's a work in progress because
I'm a work in progress and it's possible that some of the guilt
I'm feeling is that I use this sort of thing; that people and
events in my life are part of the clay that I work with to make
things, to make myself. It isn't that it isn't painful or doesn't
bring me sorrow, but that tends to be overridden by this feeling
of growth and change and a chaos that shakes me into having to
grow and change. It's scary as fuck, but it's the point of living,
in my book. It's the point of the work that I do and the choices
I make and it makes me feel really alive and I like that, even
when it hurts like holy hell. Pain or sorrow or heartbreak doesn't
bother or scare me half as much as flatlining. The scariest time
in my whole life was the year after Matthew died in my teens --
totally overwhelmed by everything I'd been through up to that
point and then culminating with that, I just literally shut off
inside, and once I did that, I couldn't find my way out for a
long time.
I have never been so terrified. I'm more scared of never having
my heart broken again than I am of it breaking.
Over the last few years, I've felt somewhat stagnant -- not turned
off or cold or flatlined, just ruttish and stuck -- and I didn't
know why or how to get out of that, and some of what I'm talking
about here (and a lot of what I haven't) seems to be the why and
that's a very big deal. I have no idea where that will take me,
but I feel less worried not knowing than I do fooling myself into
thinking I do know.
(I have also discovered that I clearly have no bloody idea how
to gloss over anything. But we all saw that one coming.)
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Photography: 05.15 (28 photos): samples 1 • 2 • 3 • members • sign up
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