28 January 2013

Obligatory Coming Out Poem

I remember the first time someone asked me if I liked girls.
And, the funny thing is, that I remember saying, "No!"
in the exact same way that I had ten years earlier
on the playground
the first time that I was accused of liking boys,
who, at the time, were infested with cooties—
we were sure of it.

And then five years later, when a friend confessed
that she'd always wanted to kiss a girl, just to see,
but that she had realized that day,
while getting her hair done at a salon,
that she could not possibly be bisexual
because she saw a male hairdresser massaging
his client's neck and she hoped that
her female hairdresser would massage her
in the same way,
but then her wish came true and she didn't like it.

"It didn't feel sexy. It just felt like
I wished she'd hurry up and cut my hair."
And my friend turned to me,
after her confession,
I could tell half-expecting me to come out to her,
or at the very least,
to make up a similar story to validate my sexuality.
But I didn't. I just kept chewing my toast,
and then, I think, I wondered aloud
if it might taste better
with real butter instead of margarine.

And then a few years later
a real-live, honest-to-god, out-of-the-closet lesbian
asked me if I'd be her nude model and I said yes
and I did it
and then asked me to sleep with her and I said yes
and I did it
and then asked me to go on a date with her and I said yes
and I did it.

Still, I had to borrow my roommate's go-to sage gay male friend
because while I picked out which dress to wear,
I kept saying, "But I'm not gay. What am I doing? I'm not really gay."
And he handed me a yellow sundress and pulled me together,
saying, "Decide if you like her first; decide if you're gay later.
You can figure out the rest from there."
So I did it, and I came back smiling,
thinking that she'd talked a lot but maybe that was a good thing,
thinking that maybe she thought that I didn't talk enough, slightly worried.
When he asked, "Did you like her?"
I said,"Yes."

And then she was there and she was a part of my life
and she was soft and she smelled like clean laundry
and like a little bit of sweat sometimes
and she was in my bed and at my table and in my head
and she was giving me nicknames and playing with my hair
and my thoughts were all dust caught in the wind.
And I want to tell you all that I was in love.
And I want to tell you all that nothing else mattered.

But it did matter
because I never really got to that deciding if I was gay part,
and now she was lying about ex-girlfriends,
and showing up at my work, and she was getting a job there too,
and she was inviting me to meet her parents,
and she was off and on and off her pills,
and she was crying for no reason.

And I wasn't sure that I liked her,
and I wasn't sure that I was gay,
but I knew that I felt small,
small like my speck of dust thoughts
sent swirling into nothingness by her breath
and getting caught in her eye,
so small that if she shed one more tear
I was sure that she'd drown me.

And so I ran away.
I ran away to the arms of a man, to the house of a man,
where I thought I was safe, thought the the lesbians couldn't get me.
But then it was a month or two later
and I was asking myself if I really liked my boyfriend
and I couldn't figure out the answer
but it didn't matter.

Because I was asking myself if I was straight,
and the answer was, "No!"
and it sung out in the same schoolyard tone
as when I'd first been accused of liking boys,
and I could figure out the rest from there.

25 January 2013

Y


I've been thinking, and it takes vowels to make a lesbian.
The e, and the i, and the a, but there are the implied vowel sounds, as well.

There's the u, obviously,
as in "I love you,"
as in the sentence whispered at the end of entirely too many second dates between two women,
as in "You and I should move in together,"
as in "U-HAUL."

And then of course, there's the o,
which is sometimes silent,
but which is usually very, very loud but hidden
under blankets and bed sheets and muffled by pillows,
so that it is often mistaken for silent.
If I could use only one letter to describe the ways
in which women differ from men,
I would choose the letter O.
Because when I think about women loving women I hear an ocean of Ooooohs.
And when I think about straight sex,
I think of women who want to be whole instead of o's—
women who want to be made into spheres instead of sounds,
which feels good, too;

Though I'd prefer to stay O
because to me, no O means there can be no orgasmic, no Oh, oh God,
there can be no onomatopoeia,
which is pretty much what O is, anyway.
Ooooooooooooooh.
And yet I am not quite O.
If I were a letter, I would in fact be Y
because I am A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes gay,
Usually gay, but not strictly, and so I am Y.

This is somehow fitting, given that the tiny piece of me,
a piece the size of the bit of the letter X
which must be removed in order to make the letter Y,
is quite equally proportioned to the size
of the part of me
that is stricken with desire
when an atypically attractive owner of the Y chromosome removes a layer of clothing.

And though, as a Y, I did once go though the consonant/vowel identity crisis,
insisting that I was one or the other at any given point in time,
but never both,
not possibly both,
because dual-citizenship in the world of letters
just results in constant queries from
consonant companions as to whether I'd be cool
with adding an extra letter into the mix,
turning our sex life into a three-letter word,
if you catch my drift,
or even just a two-letter word,
two vowels: you and oooooh
or maybe he would just sit that one out
or maybe he could just watch
or maybe you could just take pictures
or maybe you could just tell him about it later
in excruciating detail.

No, dual-citizenship in the alphabet world
will cause certain O's to turn up their noses.
I once found myself in a long-term U and I situation,
but when I revealed to my U
that her lady-loving O had once dabbled in the affairs of consonants,
her reaction was dramatic—
head flung back,
hands balled into fists,
mouth opened into that lovely wide O that I love so much
and she cried,
"WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?"
And I said, "Yes!"
"Yes, exactly," I told her. "Y!"
And she looked confused and she asked softly,
"But, but...why?"
And I told her, Because that's who I am,
and that's how I feel,
and I can't spell my name with just the letter O.

I need H,
that Hhhh sound,
the sound of an exhale,
the sound of the humidity of your lover's breath
heating up the back of your neck.

And I need L's
I need two L's because I like them that much
because L's taught me love
and love taught me licking
and licking taught me lesbians
and lesbians taught me more licking, more love.

And the Y is the most important letter because the Y is me.
And the Y is what gives me power to ask myself things like:

Why is it that I let him wrap his arms around me
if she's the one I see when I close my eyes?

And:
Why is it that sometimes it takes forty-five minutes
and some gentle guidance for his touch
to feel like anything at all?

And:
Why is it that she brushes my hair out of my face and the whole world slows
to the point that I swear I can feel the molecules of my skin being rearranged
beneath her fingers
and I want to bottle her touch?

And this is when I find the words that make myself understand,
And this is when I say the words that make her realize,
I say, "My O, the Y is the most important letter
because without why I could have never made it to you."

13 January 2013

Dear Peach,



When I first met you, you were wearing sweatpants, and I was probably not wearing much of anything. I know that I was with three or four people, and we were probably doing something weird, though I cannot remember what. You were visiting your friend, who later became your roommate. Whatever we were doing, you seemed not to approve of it and made a comment and gave a look to indicate as much. Maybe you were put off by encountering a group of people as strange as yourself. Sweet southern belle that she is, I think that you are the only person in the world that my roommate ever called a “cunt.” And I know that it probably wasn’t her first word of choice. She probably just agreed once I said it. (I, however, have always appreciated the word cunt and used it freely. Cunt. I think of canned peaches when I think of cunt. I can’t explain why.)
I miss our freshman year insomnia. I don’t miss staying up so many nights in a row that I felt like the floor was moving or waking up confused on benches in the mid-afternoon, but I do miss you.
After I got past calling you a cunt, our relationship entered into a new territory where I was vaguely afraid of you. Not because of anything you did or said but because J-Fro tried to convince me that you were in lesbians with me, and I was freaked out by the possibility of an attractive not strictly hetero girl having any kind of anything for me, though I was (and still am) pretty sure that J-Fro was just a sociopath who was trying to get me to think that you were a weirdo so that I wouldn’t befriend you. He would always tell me that you’d been asking where I was or that you talked about me a lot when I wasn’t around. And then there was the time that you were really excited because you’d just gotten your hamster, and you burst in and exclaimed, “Want to see my hamster?!?” Of course immediately after you left, J-Fro quipped, “She wants to show you her hamster. You know what that means!” I did not know for certain, but I was pretty sure that it meant that you wanted to show off the rodent you’d just purchased from the pet store.
I eventually wrote J-Fro off, deciding that you were not in lesbians me or with anyone, except maybe the silent boy who lived across the hall. You and I had become friends, bonding over sleeplessness and Tennessee Williams plays.
You did kiss me on Mardi Gras, and your lips and tongue were stained red from whatever you’d been drinking. Your mouth tasted sort of fruity. I didn’t know how to react to the entire situation because you were drunk and a pretty girl and my friend and kissing me in public and Richard was there and Richard’s mom was also there. Did Richard’s mom think that all fags were going to hell? She seemed good-natured and fun-loving but hailed from Alabama; I couldn’t be sure. I had this part-embarrassed, part-confused, part-ecstatic buzz for the next few hours. I was like, “Oh fuck, Katy Perry, I kissed a girl and I did like it, and sexuality is much less straightforward than your pop song makes it sound.” Growing up, I’d clung to very close friendships with other girls, very, very close friendships. I’d been naked with plenty of these friends. I’d slept next to them, showered with them, cuddled them, held their hands, massaged their backs and necks, watched porn with them, and exchanged notes with them that (taken out of the context of our fairly tame relationships) could be construed as passionate love letters. Sometimes we would kiss each other affectionately on the cheek or forehead, every once in awhile, we’d peck on the lips. I’d shotgunned smoke out of one these friend’s mouths, but all of the things I’ve just mentioned were not quite the same as the Mardi Gras kiss from you because all of these things had been the result of gradual boundary-pushing caused by intense, codependent friendships. Most of these things were easily explained away (showering together to save time because we were in a hurry, hanging out naked together because it was too hot) or top secret. I’d been accused of lesbianism before by concerned mothers, but their daughters were always quick to come to my defense, “Mom, she is not gay!” Even though in the back of my mind I would occasionally pick up on a barely audible whisper that taunted, Or am I? Your kiss had come out of left field, and there wasn’t even a whisper, it was just a loud and clear YOU ARE AT LEAST SOMEWHAT GAY.
All of that being said, I think it was even more what happened a few hours later that confirmed my interest in women. J-Fro texted me and asked if I’d seen you. He said that you’d gotten lost and needed someone to make sure you got home safely. You called me sobbing saying you’d been separated from your friends and were having an anxiety attack. Your phone was dying, it was raining, the streets were impossibly crowded. You needed me to come find you.
“Where are you?”
“McDonald’s.”
“Which McDonald’s?”
It was too loud, you were too drunk, my phone signal was awful.
We checked the McDonalds near Canal and University and didn’t see you. Fighting our way through the crowd just to get there probably took an hour. We realized we’d have to elbow our way through the masses on Canal to check the next McDonalds, blocks away. We found you there, and you were standing near the doorway, holding your phone, trying to call or text, though I’m pretty sure it was useless at that time. You were wearing a purple dress that I’d given you. I think you’d gotten ready in my room before you went out. You were so happy to see me and I was so happy that you were okay, and it took forever to make sure that you’d be getting home, even after we’d found you, but what eventually occurred to me was that I like taking care of girls. I like taking care of girls and kissing girls and having very close friendships with girls that may as well be romantic relationships, so yeah, I probably was kind of a lesbian. I carried that knowledge around with me for another year, trying to get comfortable with it, before anything came of it.
I’m pretty sure we never talked about any of that.
I’m also pretty sure that I was pretty sure that you were a little bit gay, and we never talked about that, either, though my suspicions were confirmed years later after you confessed that you’d slept with a yoga instructor. (We all did hot yoga together later. I’m still sad that the studio closed.)
I have a lot of important memories of you. I can’t explain why some of them are important to me. I sometimes crave the oatmeal bars that you used to make. You gave one to me one day when I was really, really hungry when I was working at the library. I don’t know why that sticks out in my memory. I always want to ask you for the recipe for those oatmeal bars but then I forget or just don’t do it. Listening to you tell me things that you didn’t tell other people is an important memory. Not being able to sleep, watching film adaptations of plays is important. Thanksgiving at your house was the best Thanksgiving I’ve ever had. And the day that you gave me a glass of wine and I just bitched about Kay, I remember Q left me a really nice voicemail and I listened to it in your living room while you cooked something in a pan, and I felt really okay, like I was free to hate Kay and to hate everyone else I’d ever dated and everyone else in the world and it didn’t matter because genuinely nice people who deserved my attention were giving me theirs.
I feel bad for not responding to your letter sooner. Sometimes large pieces of time pass by unaccounted for in my life. That’s another thing that I don’t have an explanation for. I wish that you were still here or that I’d applied to grad school and ended up somewhere close to you because I like that we can exist separately from each other and then run into each other and listen to each other like no time has passed and it was just yesterday that we were both up at 4 AM on the Honors floor, completely unable to make ourselves sleep. I also like knowing that you’re okay because you’re important to me, and I will be there for you every time you fall in or out of love or find yourself unable to sleep or need someone to get you home safely, if you need me to be.
I hope that you’re okay.
Love Always,
Stella

Dear Judy Moody,


hope that you marry him because I really can’t think of a worse punishment than that.

I hope that you devote your life to having his unwanted children, cleaning up everyone’s messes, crying about never having enough to make ends meet. I hope that you get pregnant, and he doesn’t force you to get an abortion this time. I hope that you keep it and quit your job at the mall to stay home with it, while he picks up extra shifts at Max and Erma’s Casual Dining Restaurant, partially to pay the rent for your one-bedroom shithole apartment and partially because he dreads coming home to his bloated, bitchy, accusing wife. I hope that when he stays out for a shift beer with the new, blonde 18-year-old cocktail waitresses, you’re at home losing your mind, like always.

I hope that you know when you pick up the phone to call me and tell me about how much it hurts, I’m going to press “ignore.” I’ll be at home, more money than I know what to do with, head full of meaningful conversations, heart full of love, and I’ll be giving all of that to anyone who isn’t you. I’m doing what I should’ve done when we were 17 and cutting you out, cutting you off, getting rid of all of my love for you, and pushing it off on anyone who will take it because chances are, they’re more deserving.

So there it is, that’s my plan. That’s why I haven’t screamed at you or thrown your things out on the lawn. I’m just waiting for you to do the damage yourself. Because god knows, you’ll make yourself more miserable than anything I could do to you ever would. I’m setting you free to fuck yourself over and wallow in your unhappiness. And knowing that you’re going to turn into your mother—a bitter, sad, withered woman—makes me happier than putting your head on a spike ever could. 

Love, 
T.N.

04 January 2013

Confundo!

harry potter and the sorcerer's stone book one hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry fan art fanart magic spells witch wizard

Hermione Granger battles a troll.

I drew this over Christmas when I was sick before I realized I had a 101ยบ fever. 

"I am the blood of the dragon."

Dany devours the heart game of thrones season one book one george r.r. martin fan art fan art pregnant pregnancy daenerys stormborn house of targaryen khaleesi khal drogo sun and stars daenerys game of thrones season one book one three dragons

Daenerys Stormborn of Game of Thrones

I love the image of her at the end with her babies. I couldn't get it out of my head. =)

01 January 2013

The year of the pen

Today is cold but you are filled up with love and hope and inspiration for ten thousand good things to come and you will be the creator of each one.
THIS WILL BE THE YEAR OF THE PEN.
You are going to master the art of letting things go. Of never looking back. Of being too sure of yourself to sulk over mixed metaphors and misplaced modifiers. You are going to stop erasing, stop second-guessing, stop stopping and starting over. Keep moving forward, sure enough. No pause for reflection. Just keep moving, moving, growing your muscles, loosening your limbs, blooming so big you shatter the pot you were born in and sprawl yourself into the unknown countryside, past orchards, past ponds, past swamps, past hills and mountains and deserts and beaches 'til you turn into dust, dissolve back into the air and light up the sky.