My White Supremacist Mom Part Five

I used to think that the bigoted things Mom and Aunts said were just madness or ignorance, but I think the truth is worse! Their racist talking points are part of a centuries long tradition, an organized movement meant to undermine our nation and terrorize people of color. Do they know that? (The audiobook for Bring the War Home is really good! I got it on Libro.fm) 

The conversation, or whatever it was, turned to The Uprising, when she’d used all her comment time to defend herself from I-don’t-know-what and blaming me for taking part in what she saw as only riots. (“I taught you to believe in peace,” she said. “You should know better.” No justice etc.)

 

Sweetie, who Mom once let slip was her favorite, told a story about her own family, and for a few sentences’ worth of time, the mask of contempt left Mom’s face. Sweetie said something like:

 

“My parents and I don’t agree on things. They’re conservative. They’re from Texas. But a few years ago, when I got hurt and needed help, my dad dropped everything and came. Nothing else mattered!”

 

Mom left her guard down another moment and allowed that she should have checked on us during the fires, etc.

 

“I just assumed you were okay!”

 

“I was NOT okay!” I sobbed, and her faced twisted with condescension again.

 

“Oh, you mean emotionally.” In an eyeroll of a voice.

 

I guess to give her an idea of what we’d been through, I told her about the time (During the “Wall of Moms” era across the country in Portland) that Sweetie and I joined a handful of other protesters standing in front of police cars to keep them from getting too close to a students-and-teachers protest against police in our city schools. This was a fairly standard bit of privilege-leveraging, but I was proud of us! Mom’s disgust made it clear to me that she thought I should have been mowed down. This whole conversation was about how thoroughly murderable she thought I was. Being rooted so deeply in her own fear made her bloodthirsty.

 

Navigating bloodlust is part of the terror of having Trump relatives, but it didn’t feel entirely new. She could call me a “baby killer” for being pro-choice, but any threat to her own grown-up baby was just fine.

 

“Oh, they have police in schools? How many kids have they killed?”

 

As with COVID-19, she demanded a body count before acknowledging any suffering, though of course she was ready to discount any body count given. She was conversational quicksand.

 

The breaking point came during her litany of the terrible things she imagined the Left had in store for the country.

“Reparations would be HORRIBLE!”

(Of all the things?!)

When I asked her why, she said it was because it was really European immigrants who built the country’s wealth and because slavery was exaggerated in the lying and corrupt public schools.

Sweetie, who has WAY more tolerance for futile discussion, cut Mom off there.

 

“Just…don’t. Just stop.”

 

 

My White Supremacist Mom Part Four

(After Beach Aunt had her Trump-renouncing moment last month, I let myself hope a little that Mom would do the same. That’s why I opened her Valentine card over the weekend instead of writing “refused” on it an putting it right back in the mailbox. It could be, I thought. It could be an apology, a pledge to do better, a request to be mailed a copy of The Mueller Report. Hope is dumb sometimes. What WAS in the card was information on the masses my mom had paid for, to be said for me and Sweetie. I know that Mom would have seen this as a kindness, but this card honestly made me sick to my stomach. My mom thinks we should have a national religion, that we’re off track as a nation because not everyone is Catholic. So, in addition to donating to her child-raping church in my name, it was also a donation to fascism. And always, always, the feeling sorry for us—as queer folks, as fat people, as liberals, as people who believe in science and history and truth. She thinks that makes us less-than. She thinks the only thing that can save us is donation-funded prayer. And because the card was pretty, she can feed her idea that she is a good, loving person instead of a sinkhole of narcissism and pain. So I took the “I miss” off this series of posts. The shittiest-Valentine-ever made me let go of just a little more denial, a little more stupid hope.)

 

Anyway, back to that apple picking weekend back in early October. Mom and Stepdad are grousing about masks. I’m just trying to stay out of it and play Animal Crossing, but Mom asks me what I think.

 

“I’m on the side of the TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE WHO DIED. I want to help in whatever way I can.”

 

And I’m yelling. Sweetie rushes in from the other room to help out. I don’t want to be yelling, I know it’s wrong, I know I’m bad but six months and also a lifetime of gaslighting brings up the same awful childish helpless horror I felt when I was eight and Mom was beating up my doll Cindy with a wiffle ball bat because she knew it would make me feel worse than getting hit myself. I know I’m 46 and not eight. I know it’s all wrong. But I’m yelling.

 

It’s hard to track the conversation on my end or on hers, so here are some points she made:

 

-“Some people HAVE to die! Wouldn’t the world be a terrible place without death?”

-But also “masks make people sicker” and she wants to save us.

-Russian disinformation doesn’t exist or have an impact, but she might be willing to see what Mueller has to say because he was appointed by Trump.

 

-“Do you actually know anyone who has died from coronavirus? Because I don’t.”

 

(Apparently, Sweetie’s at-that-moment-hospitalized sister was not evidence enough.)

 

“At least I’m not a baby-killer.” I sort of wish I’d asked if she meant this in the Lizard People/Qanon way or just in the regular misogynist sense. Maybe both!

 

Next time: So much racism.

Epilogue: The Drummer

 

Once I like someone, I kind of assume they are going to evaporate into think air immediately. I guess that’s not such a weird conclusion to jump to these days, given that I did have a beloved longtime friend suddenly drop dead of Covid a few weeks ago. The Drummer didn’t evaporate, exactly, and I’m not sure if I made him disappear.

 

The Wednesday after our woods date was January Sixth. The Drummer, just texting every few hours or so, was a powerful comfort. I liked to picture his Nineties self, beating up the insurrectionists outside a hardcore show. “Bunch of clowns.” He texted, and I heard it in his adorably gruff regional accent. Bunch of clowns indeed.

 

Something unspecified happened with his family that following weekend. I knew he was caring for his mom who suffered from dementia and a brother on the spectrum, I hoped they were both/all okay! I imagined The Drummer having to bail out some lousy insurrectionist cousin or uncle, even though I was the one with the fascist aunts. I wondered if he secretly WAS one of the lousy insurrectionists! If he’d just been trolling me by playing liberal—he HAD mentioned still watching South Park… Things were very stressful and paranoid that weekend. I couldn’t physically relax.. My body knows the they’re coming for you feeling and I couldn’t shake it even though I was home and safe.

 

Not the best frame of mind to be trying to make plans for a date, but we did try. We were going to watch Wonder Woman 84, once I ascertained that we were NOT watching it as one of our bad movies. I looked forward to seeing the outfits again, to mediating upon Gal Gadot’s shiny hair. But we had to change plans a couple of times, he kept having to postpone, and it was one chaos, one vulnerability too many for me.

 

I told him I like to know my schedule, that he should reach out when things cleared up a bit, when things were less maybe-ish. He was so sweet and apologetic about the changes, but I never heard from him again. I regretted being (VERY GENTLY) sassy about the schedule. I worried that I hadn’t been compassionate enough. I worried that I was going to be alone with my schedule forever.

 

I texted one more time, to say I hoped he was okay, that I was here any time for comfort or distraction. I unmatched us on Bumble but I left his number unblocked, just so I can tell myself I’m open, I’m not too rigid, I’m here for imperfection and tumult and unspecified family stuff. Am I? I don’t know. The guys I’ve chatted with since are so BORING compared to him, I miss him a lot. It’s hard to be hopeful and hard to keep going, but I will, I am.

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part Nine

Someday maybe this blog will stop being a weird time loop, but for now we’re back in the late summer of 1993. Perfectly 1993 Guy and I had been fragmented all afternoon, ever since I accidentally used the word “temporary.” Still, we were back in my room, snuggled into the waterbed with its goldenrod yellow sheets. He had started making a mixtape for me before the trip, so he moodily clunked it into the tape player. The first notes of Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” not particularly our song but EXACTLY the song of that summer, made us both lose our defenses at once, made us melt into a heap of sweet sentimental slackerness, Slow kisses and maybe a few tears.

We lay there listening to what he had so far of the mixtape. It was…uneven. I was mystified by the inclusion of Nine Inch Nails’s “Head Like a Hole,”—I guess maybe he saw me as the one he served? There was nothing about that in either of us, so probably he just really liked the song. I still have it in semi-heavy rotation, so it’s not like he was wrong. I was tickled by Living Color singing “Everybody loves you when you’re bi,” assuming that the “everybody” in the song included him.

I don’t remember the auspicious, his-first-time, midnight-between-our-birthdays sex in detail, (sadly!) but I know it was sweet, kind, and halting, the first go-around endearingly teenage-brief. The second and third times, we found a quiet rhythm. I remember feeling a spark, a little asterisk of sure pleasure the last time he came inside me, less an orgasm than a…togetherness. A confirmation that I could be loved. A Bee-Girl-Finding-Her-Bee-People relief. A warm little flame of home in a body that often felt everywhere but.

Broke or modest that we were, we had only invested in a three-pack of condoms, so when we woke up the next morning with some exact small number of hours and minutes until his bus left, he wondered if we should go out and get some more. We didn’t. We stayed in each other’s arms until the last possible minute, until it was time for my dad to drive us to the bus station. Perfectly 1993 Guy had to get back to campus, and I had to figure out what my back-home life would be.

We promised to call and write, and we certainly did, glowing and fresh and sad as a not-yet-existent Get Up Kids song. I missed him SO much after he got on that Greyhound, and I a little bit pine for him still.

I Miss My White Supremacist Mom, Part Three

Since I started (glacially) writing this series, I’ve found out what it’s like to check the FBI’s terrorist photos to see if I find family members. (I didn’t. Just lots of reasons for my vagina to pack her bags and move away someplace safe.) Fascist Beach Aunt and Fascist Former Favorite Aunt, “Women for America First” that they are, had planned to be in DC on 1/6 to “save the country.” My brave and wonderful cousins talked Fascist Beach Aunt out of going (She and Worst Fascist Uncle have since renounced Trump, or at least taken their shrine down.) but I think Fascist Former Favorite Aunt did go. I would like to think that she was maybe further back in the crowd, but,to paraphrase that one attacked Capitol Police officer, fuck her for being there. I want to ask FFFA’s kids about this, but I’d like to keep our Liberal-to-Moderate Cousins’ Among Us night as cordial as possible.

 

Anyway, back to Fascist Mom. Last fall, Sweetie and I planned an apple picking trip up north so we could see my sister and her family before the cold made outdoor gatherings impossible. Because my sister and mom live in a very pretty leaf-ful tourist area, all the nearby hotels were booked up. So I, with crazy mixed-up hope, asked if we could stay at mom’s beautiful-but-politically terrifying rural home.

 

That choice seems INSANE now, given that my mom and stepdad are anti-maskers and fatness is a Covid-19 co-morbidity, but I really really wanted to have a normal visit. I didn’t want to admit how bad things had gotten, between us and in the country. I still kind of don’t. Mom and stepdad had plans during apple picking so we had a lovely time catching up with the niece and nephews, banking up hugs for the long winter.

 

The Sunday morning after apples, a few hours before Sweetie and I had planned to leave to take the kids on our traditional comic store and thrift store run, I was sitting at my mom’s dining room table playing Animal Crossing, collecting up star fragments from the previous night’s meteor shower. Mom and stepdad started grousing about some neighbors who had balked at their decision to hold a mask optional-meeting for their local beekeepers club. (I so hate that my bee siblings have to be roped into this story! No honey for fascists!)

 

I focused deeply on my Switch, making noncommittal noises as they gradually steered the conversation toward me. Mom has a “no politics rule” at her house but I’ve learned over the years that it’s really a “no politics unless nobody is looking and I can use world events to torment my oldest daughter for sport.”

 

“What do you think about masks?” she asked me “I’ve been doing my research

 

(PLEASE SPARE US FROM WHITE LADIES ONLINE DOING THEIR “RESEARCH”)

 

And I think they’re actually making things worse.”

 

Important to this story is that Sweetie’s sister, with whom she is close, had been admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 that weekend. Interspersed with the virtual island-visiting and apple-y adorableness were tense hours when Sweetie was waiting for updates from her family text chain and worrying that her sister might die. I didn’t know how to help except to be there for her and believe in science. Sweetie’s sister did recover within weeks, but until that point it was my closest and saddest brush with that stupid asshole virus.

 

I didn’t want to tell mom what I thought. I didn’t want to open the floodgates. But I did.

Fell in Like with The Drummer, Part Five: Still Holding Hands

(Still on the same hike, sorry everything takes 5,000 years for me to type through!)

 

“Your hand is tiny.” He said.

 

(Ha. Nothing about me is tiny, but he made me feel precious.)

 

“You’ve got REALLY nice hands,” I sighed, I’ll bet you could really hit somebody! In the good way, I mean!”

 

He deftly steered the conversation away from spanking and back onto all things pop culture. He said Howard Stern was one of his favorite podcasts and I tried not to give up on him just like that. Readers, can Howard Stern please just be a dealbreaker? I really hate to see the world in terms of dealbreakers, but how could the Drummer spend that much time with misogyny and contempt in his ears and still want anything to do with me? Which I guess he didn’t, eventually.

 

Anyway, aside from the Stern disappointment, which isn’t nothing, it was so, SO lovely talking to someone my age who was also (SWOON) an artist. Having the same reference points can make a guy feel like he’s the boyfriend for every stage of life, past and present. We were talking about how much we both love Rothko paintings and I said “Yeah, take that, Kurt Vonnegut” and he knew I was shorthanding to Bluebeard, kind of a Vonnegut deep cut if you ask me!

 

(I didn’t talk about that time Kurt Vonnegut was really awful to Jennifer Weiner, but I wanted to. Look it up, it’s vile.)

 

He shared the same uber-Nineties affinity for J.R. Bob Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius (I watched a documentary about them recently and it looked like the same soulless meme nihilism that got Trump elected. But also, Slacker is my favorite movie so who knows.) as the fiancée I had when I was twenty, with whom The Drummer shared a first name. “Yeah, that was me!” He laughed. I’m him!”

 

In some ways, talking with The Drummer made me feel like I had a place in the world, like I just fit. Almost to the car, we talked about how amazing Jane’s Addition are and it was the sensation of unlocking a puzzle box: Yes. This. Him.

 

When we got to my little red car and hugged goodbye, he took off his mask, I think to kiss me. I deftly hugged my face to his chest instead and joked about how he could save up some (many) makeout IOUs. With his mask back on, he looked a little bashful and said “I don’t really know how to end things,” but he was perfect and glowing when he brought his fingers to his masked lips and blew a kiss. So cute. So seemingly full of promise.