on being gay and angry

okay seriously. I had no idea that my blog had gotten so weird and cryptic lately (thanks liz). it's easy to slip into a writing style that sounds good because it's mysterious and uses bizarre ways to explain things but it doesn't actually say anything to anyone else, and might as well just be in my paper journal.

so june was pride month. thanks a lot, obama, now I'm fucking exhausted from a whole month of being proud. In three words: drunk, hot, faggoty. I believe these are good things. In addition to that, conversations were had about the in/exclusivity of the nyc dyke march, the evolution of manhattan pride, whether or not it is appropriate to hate straight people, and how hot that-person-over-there is. seriously, my eyeballs fall out of my head whenever a horde of queers gathers. thanks, new york city, for being so damn pretty.

in any case, I was working through my $2 pbr the other night at the metropolitan (god what a gross thing to say. who have I become?), arguing as I am wont to do, and I remember a friend telling me that what I was saying was well-spoken and eloquent, but for the life of me I don't remember what I said. it has been bothering me, and not just because I speak the best when I'm on my way to drunktown. I've been working on living the phrase "the courage of your convictions," and it's so easy to be brave when it comes in a can. I wonder often where the power is in non-intellectual retaliation, also. it takes a certain level of... something (stupidity? bravery? the jury is still out) to yell at the dudes who called you a faggot to suck your dick, and I'm not sure if it does anything other than make me feel better. although if we wanna get all meta about it, I think it also represents a reclamation of space and power that someone like me can say something like that (not to forget the privilege that I'm a young white grrl and the repercussions are likely to be specific to that part of my identity) - maybe it evens the score a little, even if some day I get my ass kicked. people who decide in a split second to start shit most likely don't expect their target to respond, which is why they say it in the first place, but as the great audre lorde said in that ever quotable quote: "your silence will not protect you." I stayed silent most of my life, save my flushed face and gritted teeth, while the jerk in my physics class asked me againandagainandagain how lesbians fuck or if I hate men cause my daddy raped me, and it did me no favors, and taught him no lessons. I'm still angry about that. so I guess if I need to rationalize mouthing off to drunk dudes (I don't), there you have it.