Helpless, Not the Fun Kind

I wanted a release. I wanted an escape from softness, from the mossy melancholy that still muffles my days in this heartachey in-between. Thinking back to the absolute REFRESHMENT that The Song Sender brought me last summer, I wanted this new guy to spank the softness OUT, to kindly knock me into my heart’s next phase. This new guy seemed promising, with the good banter,  probably because, like three messages in, I responded to “How was your weekend?” with “Lovely but I didn’t get spanked!” (Three sobbing emojis)

It wasn’t the best news week for this, but when is it ever? E. Jean Carroll’s courtroom journey was milder than, say, the Kavanaugh hearings, but still. In clips from that hideous CNN “town hall” thing, I’d heard the Trump crowd’s laughter at her expense, at the expense of all survivors. That crowd is why my body has trouble moving through the world, moving at all sometimes.

Sometimes on Feeld, all there is to go on is a pretty smile and a vibe—guys, for the love of heck please write bios. But I did my screening questions and:

“We’ll get along if you listen,” he’d said.

“We’ll see.” (Angel emoji) I’d replied.

He was BEAUTIFUL in the selfie he sent me, broad, dark-skinned, silly/frowny Dom expression, cute glasses.

I was EXCITED.

I put on one of my favorite red first-date dresses and headed over to my favorite restaurant, the same one where I’d met the Princely Guy. (I’ve decided to become an in-person regular there as my summer hobby, regardless of dating. BFF and I are going this Friday before we go see Fast X!)

When I saw him already at the table waiting for me, I just started to GLOW from within. He smelled so good when we hugged hello that I wanted to skip dinner and drag him right home.

The conversation tumbled into politics like falling off a cliff, though! I’d screened for politics, I always do, but I suppose that “I hate politics but I’m a registered Dem,” does sound pretty moderate in retrospect.

He really dug in and tried to convince me that there’s blame on both sides. That the hate only came when Trump arrived and said it was okay. That “we have to be nicer to Republicans if we want them on our side.”

“You sound like my mom,” is not a thing I ever want to hear myself say on a first date! Or ever! But there it was—the “very fine people on both sides” vibe even though he insisted that wasn’t what he was saying. My brain started fizzing with alarm and I couldn’t remember the phrase “false equivalency” or anything else coherent.

“Victim blaming, it’s…bad.” I said. He agreed with me there but was so determined that I should just give up. When I said I’d always fight for justice, he said “How’s that working for you? What are you going to do when Trump wins again?”

 I was already on the move. I offered to pay for dinner but Prospective Dom insisted. As the waiter very kindly packed up my samosas and rice, (I was getting rice all over the table!) my date said:

“So this means we’re not talking anymore?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, and it’s too bad because you’re SO BEAUTIFUL.”

At least it was one date in instead instead of seven, like it was with This Charming Man, that fall when Dave Chappelle was ruining everything.

Before I blocked Prospective Dom, he texted “I apologize,” and I wrote back, “It’s okay, that’s what first dates are for.”

But my brain stayed fizzing. As I drove home, I heard rustling sounds that turned out to be the takeout bag I’d left on the roof of the car—I would have to face the night samosaless. I overshared with my neighbors outside my apartment and regular-shared with closer friends over text. I called BFF while I added a few pieces to my 1000 piece puzzle of dahlias.

Sometimes, the cloud of dread seems real and insurmountable, like tyranny has already won. The “behave and maybe they’ll stop hurting you” impulse that has followed me from childhood can seem like the realest thing, can cast a shadow over everything I know and everything I am.

But. That beautiful impulse to flee. The grace with which I carried myself to safety. Knowing who it’s safe to let in, and who isn’t. It’s unreliable sometimes but precious and hard-won, I’m so, SO grateful for it.

Back to the Nude Beach, Part Two

Taking all of my clothes off didn’t feel like such a big deal, though it seems like progress that I was unashamed of my tampon string. It felt like an even bigger milestone that I set up my beach umbrella on my own and it didn’t fall down for most of the day. (Of course, when it did fall down, there was a nice man who smelled like The Shy One to help me put it back up!)

Naked on the beach for the first time in about nine years, I didn’t feel the happy abandon, the instant adrenaline-rush pinupness I used to. It took me a little while to settle in enough to enjoy the day, but I never did fully settle in. The water was gorgeous and cool and I felt like a beautiful free mermaid, at least as much as you can when industrial ships and a big city skyline are in view.

Turning to float facing the shore, I saw a guy holding his cell phone up, probably just talking, but maybe filming—I fought the urge to flee. 2022 nude beach might be too different from 2014 nude beach, or maybe the difference is in me.

The first time I walked up the hot hot sand and back to my spot, I felt judged. The men, the boomer white men who are always there, reminded me too much of my Trumpish uncle. In the midst of all this freedom and diversity, they felt predatory and malevolent.

Yes, I’m nine years older and at least 50 pounds heavier, but neither of those things make me feel less hot or more judged on a day-to-day basis. But my perspective has changed, for good and for ill. It has been such a long, long almost-decade.

It’s harder to feel good-humored about the boomer guy who’d made himself tourguide of the surf, (Is it always the same guy or does it just seem that way? BFF-Formerly-Sweetie says it’s probably a different same guy.) “reminding me” that it’s important to splash my boobs before diving in so the cold water won’t be too much of a shock. Dude, there’s SO MUCH internet. You don’t have to do this!

Back at my towel, in the imaginary privacy of the umbrella-shade, I was able to settle into my own skin a little more, to enjoy my own nakedness. I took a selfie for the boys. I got gently turned on, but then it ebbed into a more serene pleasure. I listened to the combining songs of three or four different radios, until Beyonce’s Halo stood out. The song of my Summer of Romance. (Sorry, Running Up That Hill. You’re very nice too!) The song of kindness and pleasure and treasuring everyone, but especially of treasuring myself.

My day at the nude beach was a lot. I couldn’t concentrate for long to read either of my books or just gaze at the sea. This was a beautiful adventure, but a sad one too-after all, so many of the old nude-beach friends are gone from me, for life reasons or politics reasons or both. And this will always be the place where I decided that Sweetie and I needed to get a divorce.

I think I might prefer to be truly invisible on the beach, in my cute auntie-style swimdress, more concerned with the dolphins and the waves than with the humans. It was a moody-sweet drive home, so I put on the moody-sweet playlist I just made for The Song Sender. I grieved for the past and pleasantly longed for the characters of the present. I was glad to get home.

 

 

Knotty Thursday: Square Knot Harness

 

OMG sorry so blurry! I promise I'll do a better job next time!

This week was a LOT in both miraculous (boyfriend!) and devastating (Gilead!) ways so I was tempted to put up a TBT and skip the learning this week. But of course, as soon as I started scrolling around on Rory's Brainworks, the overwhelm cleared and I felt centered and purposeful. I did the top a little too tight so I couldn't leave it on as long as I wanted to, but even after I took the harness off and put the ropes away neatly, the stillness remained. 

An Absolutely Beautiful Mess, Part One

After three maybe too-intense dates, The Good Boy and I are on a pause so we both can figure out which end is up. (BFF says that’s what fizzy water is for because the bubbles go up. I don’t know why I find that observation so comforting.) Let the untangling begin:

On Wednesday the 9^th, The Good Boy and I were scheduled to have our third date—an actual go-someplace date! We were going to see the new J-Lo romcom—I’d originally planned it as a self-date but he suggested we go together before we’d even had our first couch date.

I think maybe the combination of Ma’am-ing and Valentine’s week made me lose my mind about our movie date a little bit. I was so, SO excited to get dressed up, for him to buy the snacks, to sit in the back row and hold hands, maybe make out a little. My anticipation was a little bit teen-girl-childlike, maybe bordering on unhinged.

So of course, OF COURSE it got cancelled, or, I thought, postponed. TGB was having issues with his other partner, and they needed the night to talk things through.

TGB had been together with his First Poly Partner for about six months and she was the reason he was trying nonmonogamy. Until this cancelled night, I hadn’t thought much about her except to respect her nights and be grateful she’d sent him out into the world so I could meet him. Grateful was my main emotion about FPP, and somehow, it still is.

I’d already bought tickets for the movie, and TGB paid me back double. I felt two ways about that! A little queasy, kinda I’d been bought off, but also, yay money. I bought a book I’d been wanting.

I pulled all the way back (Well, I mean, as far as a smitten kitten could.) from him that night, having no desire to become a factor in whatever they were resolving. When he gave me the all-clear the next morning, I asked if he’d like to come over after work on Saturday. He works from three to eleven, dealing blackjack. I really hope I get to see his professional-grade card-shuffle someday.

That Saturday night, I planned to do my yearly Valentine’s street art project. I’d saved up about six months of paintings and protest signs and doodles and was also planning to restore some of the watercolors that had been up for a while. It’s a love-gift for my neighborhood, which is truly one of my Great Loves. (Along with my apartment, my cats,  the Hope Diamond, and my new magenta ropes.) When it turned out the casino was overstaffed and he was getting the night off, I invited him to join me for the art.

This was a BIG DEAL—I’d only ever gone on street art walks with close friends or by myself. It felt like letting him in on a secret part of me. Maybe too intimate. Kinda like when I invited This Charming Man to the Fancy Garden, but this messy date turned out WAY better than that one.

I’m sure I’ve called many, MANY things THE CUTEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED but this was definitely in the running. He carried my bags of art and silk flowers. He handed me the staple gun when I needed it, goading me gently when he thought I was using too many staples. (Ha like that’s his business!) He reached up his nice long arms to add color to the paintings that had faded with time and weather.

I felt nervous hanging up political pieces in front of him—we hadn’t talked at all about politics since he’d passed my screening questions. But it went okay! We talked a little bit, very lightly, about empathy and growth.

In the moments when we weren’t working on the art, he held my hand like it was important to him, like it was a detail he’d looked forward to, a little like he was staking a claim. We took a short walk through the woods. I think I could be forgiven for thinking something romantic was happening between us, and maybe it was. Maybe (I hope not!) fleeting, maybe already on the way to over, but, on my end at least, definitely hearts-floating-up-around-my-head romance,

A Brief Match with Gilmore Guy

After hearing it recommended on the How to Do It podcast, I gave Feeld a try and felt at home pretty much right away—leading with ropes brings a lot of joy and inspiration to the sometimes-demoralizing process of chatting/vetting/ flirting with strangers! I’m hoping I’ll have some adventures to report before too long. Wish me luck!

Anyway so they give you the premium thing for a little while when you first join, where you can see who liked you already. And there was Gilmore Guy! He had pressed like! Even though the last time I saw him I was full-on yelling at him for underestimating Kamala Harris and being pessimistic about 2018 midterms. (We were kind of both right, but have you seen the House of Representatives since then?!)

I felt incredulous, but curious too—had he meant to press like after that debacle? Was he one of those swipe-right-on-everybody-and-then-figure-out guys?

I really hoped his like was sincere, and my imagination/nostalgia kind of ran away with me. Seeing his picture, all swoony eyes and meticulous locs and proffering a definitely bespoke cocktail, I wanted to just tell him to come over here, watch some (Come on, it’s not that bad!) Season Seven, and get tangled up in his warmth and tenderness and attention to detail and overlook the mansplaining a little better this time.

So I wrote the first note, and the second, first just asking him how he was and then apologizing for being so harsh back in 2018. I felt off and longing-y when he didn’t write back, and when he unmatched the next day without saying anything, it will surprise no one that I felt wistful and hurt. An ache in my heart as if our four-or-five dates were last month instead of an utterly world-shifting four years.

And I was sad, yes, but also impressed with the way the connection still lives in my body, the warmth I still have for that relatively brief try back then. When I got the (His Name) has left the chat notification, it broke my heart just a little, and I’m honestly kind of glad it did.

 

Seventh Date Tears, Part Three

 

To get to the rest of this hard, hard day, I have to backtrack to the date before it. The Failed Fancy Garden Date was on a Friday, and the Monday before we’d had (my favorite) a make-out-in-front-of-Gilmore-Girls-then-have-all-the-beautiful-sex date. Our connection that night felt so thorough and deep (Ha, yep, that too, but for now I’m parsing out the emotions.) that I couldn’t think how I was going to shift into casual mode for The Lovely Guy’s already planned Friday night visit. Awash in satisfaction, peace, and a little bit of the Relationship Escalator, I decided it was time to let The Lovely Guy go.

The Lovely Guy and I had a sweet and kind text exchange, and he told me to reach out again if I ever felt the need.

This Charming Man hadn’t asked me to be monogamous, but I wanted to give him my whole self. I was ready to sink into lovely-dovey mode like a warm bath. I had well and truly fallen for him and I was doing the move-too-fast thing. It made me happy and also freaked me the fuck out.

Anyway, back to the Friday of the garden date. When This Charming Man left to go home and plan for his D&D game that night, I had time for a little nap before work. But instead of napping, I texted The Lovely Guy and asked if he happened to be free that night, and he was. He showed up fresh from work with a big bottle of my favorite pink wine.

The Lovely Guy really came through as a friend that night. He advocated hard for me to keep going with This Charming Man, explaining the cultural differences between me and both of them, shedding welcome light on some of my white lady blind spots. Plus, after the moderate tangles of the afternoon, it felt really nice to be talking to a cute liberal. Really, there’s enough to disagree about here on the left.

I sent The Lovely Guy off early even though he was so cute and smelled so good. Neither he nor I wanted to make things more complicated or confusing with This Charming Man.

When I woke up the next day, it’s possible that TCM was already all the way gone from me. His like-clockwork “good morning” (Which we’d sometimes followed by talking about what we’d dreamed. Ohhhhhhhhhh OMG I miss him.) was noticeably absent.

Either way, I knew I had to let This Charming Man go. I wrote a way-too-long breakup text. I used the word love, which I meant. It sucked. I cried all day. I watched The Starling, and then Birdbox, and then A Quiet Place, all scratching the itch of my lost and fighty mind.

I know dealbreakers are real. I know you should never start a relationship hoping that something deep about the other person will change. That Friday, in that great garden tangle, we’d both been trying to fix each other, and that is fundamentally unkind. Still, it feels like a great failure on my part, to have found such a beautiful connection and then let it fall so thoroughly apart.

I wish, wish, WISH there was something I could’ve done—not panicked, slowed down, asked the right questions, let him know I heard him. I wish it didn’t have to end the way it did. I wish it didn’t have to end at all.

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.

(Curfew Has Lifted) Postscript: Quarantine Crush

It’s been such a hard couple of weeks, even here in my relatively un-police-terrorized neighborhood. My city was one of the ones with the curfews, with the police brutality toward protesters, with the military occupation. We’ve had so many victories, too, but I still really struggle to put the experience into words. Mostly I’ve just been repeating it over and over, like I did that time in the Nineties when my house burned down. Only everything is burning down and building up all at the same time.

On Saturday the 30^th, Sweetie an I were in a big protest (I’m so fucking SICK of the phrase “peaceful protest” because of its respectability politics implications, but it did start out that way.) and we got separated from our friends (twenty- somethings who referred to us as “protest moms”) just before the first fire started. (“Tear gas is an accelerant,” my young friend later pointed out, not sure it wasn’t the police who set their own car ablaze.) My friends were boxed in by the police and I was just outside the crowd. Sweetie, panicking because she struggles with wearing a mask for very long, had gone to get the car. I stood there feeling like the very epitome of a dumb white lady, filming and sobbing, while my stuck-in-the-crowd friends texted periodic updates so I’d know they were alive.

My friend in the crowd texted “Walk, don’t run, north.” I followed her instructions and picked a place for Sweetie to meet me with the car. I sat in some grass on a quiet corner, took off my mask to breathe a little better, and snapped a selfie, mostly so I would know I was alive. My regular check-in-buddy, my extremely mild-mannered neighbor in charge of feeding the cats if Sweetie and I ever get hurt or arrested, had never received this upsetting of updates. I hoped I wasn’t scaring her. I wanted to text Quarantine Crush but I knew that made no sense. I was relieved when his facebook reactions showed me he was out there rooting for me.

Sweetie and I were waiting in the car when our friends finally unstuck themselves from the crowd and started making their way towards us. They texted that they were almost run over by a police car in an intersection. (They later clarified that it was THREE police cars that went ahead and drove into the crossing protesters. May Heather Heyer haunt those police bitterly for the rest of their lives.) I got out of the car and waked toward my friends and though our county was still in the red zone, quarantine-wise, we definitely did hugging.

Though it was the police and not the protesters instigating and cultivating the violence and fear, our mayor put our town on curfew after that day. I did activism from home most of that time, but many people I cared about were still out in the now-also-military-occupied streets. I joined the protest watch group on Facebook, so I knew when my friends had to close the windows of their homes to keep the teargas out. I knew when the police were dropping teargas bombs from helicopters. Like everyone else with a heart, mine was petrified, breaking, and proud all at once. I took roll calls every morning so I’d know my friends had survived. So far, they have.

One night, after days and nights of terror, once I finished posting my phone number for the however manyth time in case there were emergencies in the night, I RSVPed yes to Quarantine Crush and Adorable Co-Host’s poetry reading, figuring I needed any comfort I could get. Figuring that things were now so life-or-death (I know! They seemed super life-or-death before!) that heartbreak and longing couldn’t possibly be factors any more.

Oh, Adorable Co-Host. Perhaps the person who hung up on me because I was talking too much about U.S. imperialism after 9/11 wasn’t the person to go to for comfort in this particular week. I feel like an actual crazy person for having thought so.

There were many signs in the pre-Zoom-reading chitchat that should have told me I’d better log out. Someone said “I’m glad *theyre* protesting.” (Emphasis mine.) The apparent queen of this almost-all-white reading piped up in favor of “states’ rights” as if we were in Civil war times. A white guy (possibly the one who said “We’re all in cages now” a few weeks before) used the phrase “identity politics.” I really should have logged out.

“Since we’re not gonna get abolition,” began Up-To-That -Point-Adorable Cohost, “One way to compromise with the police would be…” I tried to push back, but he switched into lecture mode:

“I mean, the police do good things too, like control crowds…”

I stayed for a little while. I read a nice post-protest poem and a not-nice letter to city council. I felt so jagged and broken that it felt like I was shouting Sweetie’s house down. (There was a weather-related power outage at my place, so I camped out with her for a bit.) I heard what the readers had to say, and it was good, as much as I could hear through my humming panic and boiling blood.

Right now, I’m so angry with myself for whatever in my heart and not-okay mind made it seem like this reading would be a place of comfort. I’m so angry at myself for mistaking facebook friends, twenty-years ago friends, for people who would really care about a city so far away, about me.

In the grand scheme of things, micro-abandonments by white and/or not-sufficiently courageous friends, don’t matter so much. I know that. What matters is that the Minneapolis City Council is in favor of defunding the police, that my city, through the efforts of so, SO many may have a chance at defunding as well.

Please, no matter who you are or where you are, go beyond your usual roles. Use every platform you have, not to make a cozy space for hand-wringing moderates, but to work for real change. Sheltering-in-place is not an excuse for sitting by the sidelines, especially not online. Write to your mayor, your city council, your governor, your friends. Please.

A Brief Gilmore Guy Revival: Part Two (Concern-Trolling Is Gentle Voter Suppression)

We didn’t talk much, at least not in the fun/deadening let’s-discuss-all-of-our-interlocking-relationship-dynamics poly way. After three hours of easy bliss, we lay in the afterglow. I was holding him tenderly as he started to talk, first about his day and then about the then-four-days-away Midterm Election:

“I want to believe there’s going to be this big, sweeping Blue Wave, but I just don’t think it’ll happen. I think we’ll pick up a few seats but…”

He went on to talk about how bleak things were going to be over the next few years. When he got to the part about how the Democrats didn’t have any strong candidates for 2020, my body went from being a sparkly cloud of bliss to being an angry spring. I disentangled from him as if I was disentangling from the entire last three years.

“Who do you want it to be then? BERNIE?!”

“No, actually I don’t really care for Senator Sanders…”

“WELL, you’ve got that going for you.” I hissed.

Part of my reaction, I have to admit, was good old-fashioned daddy issues. Gilmore Guy’s erasure of Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Corey Booker, et al felt too much like the anti-Gillibrand conversation I still felt trapped in with my dad. (OF COURSE dad didn’t acknowledge the letter I sent. OF COURSE he didn’t.)

It was also too much like the role-flipped therapy session I’d had earlier in the week, comforting a clearly-not-a-match therapist by trying to convince her that the Resistance does, in fact, exist and have an impact.

I’m so happy to have the election results to back me up as I continue to un-gaslight myself about this!

It frustrates me so much that they can’t see it, that they can’t see US or our work, even as it slowly but surely lifts the country out of our mess. I realize that as a member of the Resistance, it’s part of my task to HELP people see it, but having my own reality denied so often really hurts—it’s too much. The time theft is too much. The emotional labor is too much.

I’m not here to try and convince anybody of my existence, to convince anybody that the movements I love are not helpless or worthless or stupidly hysterical. (I’m all about reclaiming the word “hysterical” but that’s another post for another day.)

(My off-script textbanking exchanges with Republicans earlier in the Midterm process have really gotten to me as well, but the right is clearly not the only problem here.)

“I’m just worried about voter suppression,” He said. Of course! We all are. We were both up off the folded-out couch and I was angrily putting on my clothes.

“You’re DOING voter suppression when you tell us we can’t win!”

Concern-trolling is definitely not as evil or insidious as governors who purge voter rolls, exact-match laws, or Native Americans suddenly having to root out street addresses from obscure bureaucratic labyrinths, but it IS part of the problem and definitely should be voted most likely to keep me from snuggling.

I argued probably not very well. He said:

“Let me explain why Kamala Harris can’t…”

Perhaps realizing that I will be having some version of this conversation until she is elected, I fucking SNAPPED.

“I told you I don’t want to have this conversation. Do something about it or Shut. Up.”

(That may have been mostly for dad, sorry. But also yes, shut the fuck up.)

“Don’t scream at me in my own house.” He said, apparently out of arguments. My voice was raised, but screaming was an exaggeration.

The saddest thing about writing down that moment is realizing that he was happy to have me raise my voice in all of the sex-wails that I wanted, but not to stand up for myself, not even to defend my own worth.

“Have fun SITTING ON YOUR ASS and criticizing everybody who’s doing the WORK!” I hollered as I grabbed my purse and umbrella from the kitchen and headed for the door.

“Get. Out.” He said in that annoying I’m-the-reasonable-person tone that I know so well from back when I was married to Sweetie.

After I’d splashed through the rain to my car, the dash clock read 12:06. I’d aimed to turn myself into a pumpkin by midnight and he had (inadvertently, I hope) helped me along.

I wish I could say that I feel righteous and free after that, but I just miss him. I feel lonely about it, and sad. I’m glad I blocked his number and deleted his texts, because I keep wishing I could reach out, somehow repair the connection, somehow be in those arms again.

But even causally, I can’t be with someone who doesn’t live, at least mostly, in the same reality as I do. America has changed so deeply since 2016, and I’m one of the lucky many who can see the underlying positivity: The networks of activism, the interlocking movements full of loving, fiery momentum. Resistbot, Pantsuit Nation, Solidarity Sundays. THE MARCH FOR OUR LIVES KIDS, for god’s sake. The way PEOPLE ACTUALLY CARED about the Midterms!

I want a partner who, no matter how bleak and scary things get, can see the goodness and care that’s growing every day. I wish, in that afterglow moment, I’d mustered the empathy and strength to convince him, to bring him into that hopeful view and keep him safe there. I know I can’t keep him safe, can’t keep anyone safe no matter what. So I run when my body tells me to run, fight when it tells me to fight, and I hope for the best.

#metoo Letter: Dear Dad, STFU About Senator Gillibrand

Dear Dad,

            I’m going to need you to stop complaining to me about Kirsten Gillibrand. While I obviously agree with you about global warming being an important issue, your repetitive complaints which only target female politicians, echo your 2016 “I go easy on you about Hillary” comment. All these comments sound, at best, like low-key sexism and at worst, like a gentle continuation of a lifetime pattern of abuse, both on a national and personal scale.

            When you tell me, over and over, that the senator who is most vocally in support of the #metoo movement isn’t doing a good enough job (For YOU. After one donation and one survey response. Are you KIDDING ME WITH THIS!? I know you see how much work I do very day, why do you feel so entitled not to? And WORSE why do you expect ME to do your work FOR you? I pour countless hours into justice work and I have my own senators to nag!)

            ANYWAY, when you complain about Senator Gillibrand, you are also dismissing the work that I do, both personally and politically, Every. Single. Day. You are dismissing the power and courage of not just me but of every single rape survivor who perseveres although life feels like a constant attack on our bodies. When the sea levels rise, do you imagine we will somehow be LESS vulnerable? Less raped? Do you imagine WE are somehow the ones endangering the planet, by rising up and insisting that---GASP---we be treated as humans?

            But there are a couple of more insidious reasons you should not be low-key trolling me by running down female leaders, particularly Gillibrand.

            When I was in third or fourth grade, I overheard you at least try to rape Mom. You’d both been fighting about sex for weeks and I was WAY too up to date about what was going on in there. I heard Mom scream “No! Don’t! (his name!) Stop! Stop!” and it scared the shit out of me. I started to cry really loud and she said “See? Now you made (me) cry.” And then things seemed to calm down in your room. I don’t know how I understood what was going on, but I did.

            After that, the world changed for me. I became darker, less hopeful. Though Mom denied it to me when I asked a few years later, I know what I heard. You took something profound away from me that night—my trust for the world, my trust for love. I’ve been fighting like hell ever since to get those things back. (Senator Gillibrand?! Also fighting for those things.)

            Fast forward a few years to when I was drugged, raped, and beaten at a party. A few days later, you beat the shit out of me too—just pounding and pounding away and saying “You brought this into our house! You did this!” Meaning, I guess, that that I’d somehow made you and Mom violent by getting raped, even though you’d been that way my whole life.

            That night my friend Bethanne came and got me and I stayed with her family for the night, but I had never felt so deeply and horribly alone. Over the years, that feeling of abandonment and betrayal has come back to me over and over, causing me more panic than any of the original violence. “You are alone, the panic tells me, and the people who say they love you are only waiting to attack and blame you.” You taught my panic how to speak.

            And yet, here I am with the optimism you keep trying to undermine. I did not get this way by accident. It has taken me HUNDREDS of hours of therapy, writing, self-care, activism, and many other kinds of work. I am optimistic and productive by both sheer force of self-creation and as a tribute to the people who have helped me build, thread by thread, vote by vote, scream by scream, the person I am today.

            And not only can you not write ONE GODDAMNED LETTER to Congress, but you have the callousness, cruelty, and entitlement to give me a hard time about how YOUR SENATOR CARES TOO MUCH ABOUT WOMEN’S RIGHTS? PLEASE.

            I have loved you and done my best to forgive you for all of these years without asking you for anything in return. Now I’m asking for two things:

1.      Acknowledge that you got this letter.

2.      Stop retraumatizing me and trying to put me in my place by running down female politicians.

I am not going to give up the fight to own our own bodies. We are not going back and there is nothing you can do about it. If you EVER crap on Senator Gillibrand or any other female leader to me again I can’t promise I won’t FLIP THE FUCK OUT. And NO ONE will get an apology letter.

Love,

Me

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh: Part Two

I still consider it such a miracle that that Walkout Monday ended like this: Me leading Gilmore Guy upstairs to fresh sheets and fluffy pillows. My cat, the shyest little cat in the universe, letting him pet her and hold her before running away to her spot behind the dryer. Me trying to undress Gilmore Guy and finding out what shirtstays are—I told you, he’s a little dandyish.

It felt so comforting to welcome him into my bed, all kissing and warm and ready. His skin was so gorgeously soft and he had an earthy, minty smell like natural soap. Sooooothing.

And finally, I had the chance to do what I’d been fantasizing about the most.

“Get on your knees next to the bed,” I said, and he complied.

“How do you feel about calling someone Ma’am?” I asked. (A flash of fear went across his face in the middle of that sentence…)

“I feel…good.”

“You feel good…what?”

“Ma’am. Yes ma’am.”

            I spread my legs in front of his face and pressed him to me, pushing his shoulders down with my hands and then with my legs. I lay back in ecstasy and power, dissolving into joy. He did a very good job and I told him so as I pulled him up onto the bed and held him prone.

“It’s just…will I always be calling you ma’am?  I don’t think I would like that.”

“No. I don’t like anything all the time. That’s why I’m a pansexual switch.”

“Oh, okay, good.”

“Oh, okaaaaaaayyy…”

“Ma’am. Okay ma’am.”

(Writing this part down really makes me miss him and wish it had worked out. I really like the way it felt when he called me ma’am.)

Since he’s so new at kink and I’m sooooo far removed from any rope practice, I tied him up very gently (and pretty unconvincingly) with the pink fuzzy belt of my robe. I only tied him by one wrist, but it was such a thrill to be over him, his body warm and vital and delicious beneath me, playing this game and feeling my own strength against his. Though the title of this series might connote revenge on men, it could not be more opposite. This was a loving power, a kind exchange of equals. This night, I’ll say again, was such a gift and a miracle in the middle of so much bodily and national turmoil.

“What will I say if I need you to stop?” he asked.

“Just say stop.” I answered, in what felt like a new kind of commanding voice. I felt such power and peace, such connection. I felt grounded in my body and in my soul, in pleasure. He was so sweet and kind and such a gift, and in that moment, he was mine.

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh* Part One

*Gabriel Garcia Marquez was also a rapey garbage person.

Before I write elsewhere about my adventures at the Supreme Court protests last Saturday, (Short recap: Screamed at a couple of Trump supporters, got in a cop’s face when he wouldn’t let me take my sign up the steps, screamed at a Franken apologist, helped take the steps of the Capitol, didn’t get arrested, went to the botanical garden) I want to keep honoring my time with Gilmore Guy, which is both related to and so sooooooooothing about the national misogynist mess.

After our wonderful time on the twenty-first night of September, Gilmore Guy and I set our next date for the following Monday. I was sooooo excited for the date that I even went shopping for cute new PJs, a lacy new bra, and underpants that were decidedly NOT the Bridget Jones kind. It felt wonderful to think about lace and ribbon and general girly adventurousness—I hadn’t felt that way in a long time!

Unfortunately and fortunately, that Monday was also the day of the National Walkout to Support Dr. Blasey Ford. It felt tricky to hold both that massively important moment and the wonder of this gorgeous, cuddly new man in my life at the same time.

I did NOT like wearing black. I would do anything for survivors, but in the future, I may not do that. Without my jewel tones and happy, sparkly jewelry, I felt armorless, marked as a victim for all to see.

I stopped at the library to pick up my holds, and the librarian complimented my NARAL pin that says “feminist” in six languages. She then felt moved to tell me that her brother had been molested by a man in the Sixties while hitchhiking. I felt equal parts sympathetic and annoyed, equal parts solidarity and irked by himpathy.

I text voters as often as I can to support the #bluewave, but I maybe should have skipped it on that day. Or maybe I’m glad I didn’t. Every time (okay it was only two times) somebody told me how undignified the Democrats were being at the Kavanaugh hearings, I came out as a rape survivor and told them why their support was important to me. It was good work, but also so discouraging and WILDLY triggering.

So after that, I was jangled. I was scared both physically and about the election. I also sometimes get a feeling from guys that once you’ve had sex with them once, it’s assumed for the rest of time. That’s maybe unfair, but it’s where I was at. I texted Gilmore Guy all this, and he understood, but wasn’t very wordy about it—taciturn. I felt like I had done something wrong, but I might have felt that no matter what.

Still, I liked the idea of just cuddles and episodes, and he even agreed to bring some Prosecco, my hero. (him AND the Prosecco) The idea of bubbly wine and introducing this cutie pie to Steven Universe got me back to myself and on with my day.

After work, even more of the fear and strain fell away. My job is very restorative these days, thank goodness.

So I got home, lit candles, got happily into my pretty new undies, awake and full of anticipation.  He was a few minutes late but when he got there and popped the cork, it felt like the moment was charmed. Plus, I got to use the fancy champagne flutes that Sweetie and I got at our wedding way back when. I gave him the pink glass and took the green, thinking (BUT DEFINITELY NOT SAYING) oh, heart chakra colors!

It’s a good thing Steven Universe episodes are only like fifteen minutes long, because Gilmore Guy’s arms were so warm around me, and this apartment sure as HECK has an available bed.

Oops, I Accidentally Got a Crush on an MRA, Part Four

In a piece of administrative bad luck, both the Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager and I took sick days on the Monday that followed that Friday snit. The Store Manager was out again on Tuesday so there was no meeting, no resolution. CPAM had clearly been told not to talk to me about anything that wasn’t work related. Why would this be a solution? Barring me from small-talk could only serve to further separate me, not make me feel safe or included. I shouldn’t have to be ready to, for example, confront a rape apologist in order to rate a slot in the cheery work chitchat.

I was scared when I came in and in fact asked if I should leave, but CPAM became friendly again pretty quick., joking about his unicorn-ness and bonding over the music. I even wondered if Friday (and I guess the whole rest of his microagression-o-rama) had been a fluke, just a snit. I felt sheepish to have been so upset.

But then, while we were working happily together in the back room (that darn back room!) with a recently-back-from-vacation grad student, he asked, apropos of nothing, if she had ever heard of the documentary “The Red Pill.”

(FYI: https://dailyreview.com.au/red-pill-watched-dont/61240/)

            I hadn’t heard of the movie, but my hackles went up. I knew that “Red Pill” mentality was one of the Men’s Right’s Activist, deep-Reddit monstrosities that has become the part of the toxic misogynist soup we’ve all been swimming in. In their parlance, “taking the red pill” means realizing that (white) men are actually society’s most oppressed category and that one of the ways to correct this “imbalance” is…rape. I also knew that the Red Pill/ MRA movements are tied intimately with white supremacist movements.

            After a few minutes of him summarizing the “documentary” and me saying “that’s TERRIBLE” a lot of times, he continues to double down on men’s vulnerable status. (NOTE: Men ARE vulnerable and harmed, but he wasn’t realizing it’s heteropatriarchy, not rape survivors, who make the rules.)

            I asked him to change the subject, but he said “I’m not talking to YOU. This isn’t work related.” And stalked away. I walked right after him.

            “I thought we were going to get along,” I said calmly but forcefully, “But you CAN’T be sexist at work. The people you’re talking about are rape apologists.”

“No, they’re not. You’re just saying that because you disagree with them. No matter what I say, you’ll hear what you want to hear. Besides, it isn’t work related.”

            “It IS work related because I don’t feel safe at work. This is a microagression, no, a MACROaggression!”

(As if he would know what either word meant.)

I went back to working on the books, but my body didn’t want to be there. After he evoked the Men’s Rights Activists, the trauma of the 2016 election, the “Lock her up” mobs, the way Trump had recently threatened to forcibly take “Pocohontas” Elizabeth Warren’s DNA to test and mocked the #Metoo movement in the same sentence, it felt like all of that was in the room with me, and it was. The store was presided over by a giant photo of the college’s mascot, a white colonizer, rape and murder in his puppet eyes. How does any woman get through a day on that campus, or in America, or anywhere in all of history?

            I went home. I called the HR hotline, called my therapist, called (ex-wife, BFF) Sweetie. I felt helpless, scared, worthless, panicked, but more than anything else, I felt angry—for the time theft, the money theft, the ELECTION theft brought about by misogyny in general and the MRAs specifically. I felt like I would never be safe anywhere.

Earlier this week, I watched “To All the Little Girls: The Untold Stories of the Sixty-five Million”, https://www.toallthelittlegirlsdoc.com/watch Rebecca Morgan’s story of her work on the 2016 election and it’s aftermath. After the election, Becca was diagnosed with PTSD, and in some ways, I think the whole country has it. I know I do. It’s hard to shake the idea that I have to fight and scrap for survival, that we all do. I don’t know what healing looks like, but I do know that I’ll call out hate (and call HR) just as freely as I call Congress. My heart aches for whatever genuine friendship was there, for having left another thing I liked. I don’t know where we’re going, but I know whose side I’m on: mine.

Oops, I Accidentally Got a Crush on an MRA, Part Three

Yesterday would have been my first day back at the bookstore. Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager was transferring, so it seemed doable a couple of weeks ago. When the time came, though, it seemed too sad. I knew it would take a lot more transformation for me to feel safe there, and it felt like that would take more work than my 10$ an hour covered. I’ve been wanting to commit to my own business anyway, so I took the leap and declared myself bossless. I’m nervous about the change and still heartachey about what happened, but I’m proud that I put myself first.

Things finally broke down between me and CPAM while the Store Manager was off for a week. We were setting up the textbook department for fall rush, so there was lots of good getting-in-a-flow-and-moving-heavy-books-around—my favorite part of the job.

But on the Friday of that week, something curdled in CPAM. He was in a text message argument with his sister-in-law. (she and his brother had just moved back in with his parents, where he lived as well) He was sniping about her to another employee in the back room and when I walked back there to get more books, he looked at me with such deep contempt, like how dare I walk in there, as if I were the hated sister-in-law herself.

I kept doing my job and chitchatting cheerfully with him—I have that abused-kid bad habit of trying to nice somebody out of being a jerk, as if I can avoid being hurt by being well-behaved enough. It bugged me, though, when he talked about her “bitching,” when he said he was going to “put that bitch in her place.” I had been volleying back his low-key prejudices for weeks, but this outright misogyny was still shocking. I didn’t say anything about it, though, because I was sick of having to say something so many times.

But then he turned on me. Although I had been working with a textbook company on and off for fifteen years, he decided to explain how alphabetizing works. Then he explained it again and again.

“I know how to alphabet,” I joked to try to get him off my case, but I succeeded only in giving him a chance to correct my grammar. Just want to mention at this moment that I have a Master’s Degree in Education.

            I said calmly that I wanted to be treated like an adult, but he kept doubling down on the condescension. I needed to learn how to take constructive criticism, he said, because after all, he was my superior. Which technically he was, but nobody had ever put it quite that way to me before. In all my years of low-level and often-temporary positions, no one had ever talked down to me that way.

As I tried to stand up for myself, he poured on the gaslighting: He said I needed to “compose myself.” He said I wasn’t hearing what I thought I was hearing. I left early, feeling livid and shaken. I wrote to the Store Manager about what happened, and he wrote back right away saying that he would take care of it.

Next Time: He didn’t.

Dating in the Upside-Down: A Like Story (Part Three)

            Thinking about the rest of this story, I had a saaaaaaad realization: I’ve lost a word since the last time I wrote about sex! Let’s have a moment of silence for the word “pussy,” which will never not remind me of the rapist-in-chief. I used to like using it sometimes, and now I’m kinda lost about what can replace it. It sounds a little clinical, I know, but I think for now I’ll just call body parts by their names and hope for the best.

Okay friends. If you’ve been keeping score, you’ll know that I haven’t had sex in a couple of years, not since blue-canary-nightlight guy, so I might not have the most perspective on what it was like with The Socialist, but it was good. Easy. Friendly. PIV sex has always been the big mystery to me, the hardest thing to settle into, even though it’s often what I want the most. This was a night where bodies just knew what to do, where everything just sort of took care of itself.

Soon after we got into bed, he got out of it. He knelt on the floor and pulled me to the side of the bed, put my legs over his shoulders, and BURIED his face in my vagina, like I was the most delicious thing in the universe. As assured as if this had been happening since the beginning of time, like he owned the place. Urgent and expert, he sucked my clit and thrust his tongue in as far as it could possibly go, and it felt so ridiculously good that I laughed between cries, apologized for laughing, then descended into giggles again.

All those years on lesbian island had made me sort of indifferent to receiving oral sex, but I guess that’s over now. I felt beautiful and silly and so, so happy. I kissed his slippery face gratefully, then set out to learn his lovely penis. It was friendly in my hand, sure of itself the way he is, and as affectionate. I felt self-conscious about my skills since it had been so long, but he assured me that there would be plenty of time to practice.

I was soooo grateful to have a box of condoms in my nightstand like a boss. They’ve mostly been used to make toy clean up easy, but what a joy for them to find a person.

There was something different about the sex this time, and as much as I want to collapse into giggles at the chemistry between us, I think what was different was me. In all my adventures, though so much good, dirty fun was had by all, I could never be fully present in my body. I struggled so hard to reduce sex with men to a transaction so that I wouldn’t be swept up in an inevitable wave of abandonment and hurt. But this? I was here for it, in every sense of the phrase.

He just fit so perfectly, bent me in all the right ways, filled me up in such a joyful, kind, friendly way. When I looked up into his face, he was with me, and when he held me down by my hair and insistently bent to kiss me, I felt the weight of the world lift. This is my bed. This is my body. This is my home, thanks for visiting. I felt grounded and pink, floaty and rooted, and the feeling hasn’t really left since.

Between snuggles, we chatted about music and fascism and other 2017 things. I looked into his deep green eyes a lot, felt silly, and did it some more.

            Since I started writing these posts, I’ve ruled him out and ruled him back in again. I haven’t lost my post-election fear of white men, the fear that somehow I’ll be swept away from The Struggle by the appeal of testosterone and playlists. I haven’t forgotten that he listens to Howard Stern, but I have to admit that The Socialist treated me 100% like a person. He treated my body with respect and admiration, and I can’t dismiss that.

So for now, I’m cautiously optimistic, thinking of an outfit for our next date, and Googling “Stranger Things Valentines.” I can’t ever really be anyone but myself, and I have faith that that will appeal to someone, even if it’s not this time. For now I’m willing to say, who knows?