scheme and scream and fight real mean

yesterday i went to boston with the intention of stalking sarah schulman. i went to this.

so my division III project is going to be a history of the lesbian avengers (more later), but what i have discovered is that there is very little actually already written about them. which is terrifying. but mostly exciting. it means i get to interview the women i've been reading about for the past few years, and some who i am just learning of.

so in the middle of the screening i attended, i saw sarah schulman get up to leave. after a quick conference with a friend about whether or not it was appropriate to chase her, i ran out of the theater and caught her on the stairs. i tried to write down as much as i could from our conversation but everything was golden and amazing and i am consistently in awe by the whole thing. i wouldn't call the avengers my heroes because i don't really believe in heroes, but they are who i aspire to be.

unapologetic, strong, fierce, brilliant, confident, and brave. someday.

"we're not waiting for the rapture. we are the apocalypse."
lesbian avengers' dyke manifesto

what can i say.

been busy.

with fangs of fire and a gentle heart

i'm back in massachusetts, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. that's the idea at least.

dear new york: you are gross, you are too hot or too cold, it hurts to breathe and i wake up nauseous in the mornings. i pay a lot of money for not a lot in return. i'm scared for the cyclists who ride without helmets. people are assholes and sometimes lack boundaries. but i'll miss the beautiful view from my fire escape, those two f subway stops above ground in brooklyn, the ambition of plants trying to grow. and i'll miss the artist formerly known as dino who has been once again taken by new jersey. and i'll miss the photo adventures, and the weekend run-aways into the city where i fall asleep in a different friend's apartment every night but the sounds outside are always the same. and trying to finish that handle of gin all summer. and the subway stop at waverly street, with the shitty bikes locked to it.

and the lesbians - always the lesbians - but that's a whole other story for another time. so there's no conclusion. instead i'll end with a quote said by martin luther king jr.:

"we must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear."

yes i will lock the door

so maybe i'm in love or maybe just so
maybe just i'm in love with bodies on bodies i think
i think that's it
the summer came and the summer went and it was
it was sweet and salty and it was
a stone flinging over water
but the steam still rises in my bed at night
so no, summer is not gone from me alright
just there's no more riverstones in my head
and i hate when i try
but it just don't work, and the try falls away
today's chapter in why i'm too nice
in my heart lives behind my ears
in but i'm gunna do it anyway
so be quiet cause mom and dad might hear
boys don't suck cock in the basement at the sleepover
be quiet that's not what they do, be quiet

from my grandfather's will

"together as our final gift, we leave each of you, curt, chris, cary, lesley, sharon, cindy, john, willie, dulcey, and sally, all the love that we shared with you and with each other. use it to add to our love and respect for each other. we rest easy knowing that in all your actions, you will be worthy of the great pride we took in each of you.

we made a gallant effort to live with honor and love and you are our greatest reward and legacy.

god bless you and keep you. we have done all we can."

i come from a long line of soft-hearted men. gives me hope.

more later.

oh yes

come september, I lose so many people and places and things I've survived on for 8 months.

there are a lot of things I stand to gain but I'd rather wallow right now.

sometimes it just feels so good to be sad.

-

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

[charles bukowski]

thoughts on dykehood

being a dyke, and specifically identifying as a dyke, has 100% to do with my political and historical responsibility. it has maybe 80% to do with the person(s) I choose to sleep with*. bagel and I used to discuss our "percentages," - as in, the percentages of who we are attracted to, like, 90% women, 10% men, or whatever. we were younger and very cut and dry in how we looked at it and there wasn't any awareness of gender ambiguity, but we were 16, so, you know. the point is that even at that age I maintained that I am gay, so maybe I had a boyfriend at a point or two, it didn't change my overwhelming faggoty ways. attraction is fluid, but that doesn't mean I have to find a new identity every 3 months to match that if the one I have already still speaks to me. since when does my identity have to incorporate anyone else?

both historically and currently, dykes have always faced the "you're not a real dyke / lesbian / whatever for the following reasons" argument. it's divisive, heterosexist, sexist, racist, classist, and any other -ist you could think of probably. example: women who were involved in butch-femme dynamics were not seen as "real lesbians" by some because they either wanted to be men (the butches) or wanted to be with one (the femmes). nevermind the oppressive basis of this argument, who was leveling the charge against whom, and the assumptions it made. amber hollibaugh was one of those not-real lesbians who went to lesbian feminist consciousness raising groups by day and the butch-femme bars by night and had to grapple with these accusations. in her oral history, she makes an interesting comment about gay male culture, and why she found liberation in it:

"So I guess the other piece in here that I think is important is gay men were important to me because while they had this extraordinarily explosive and interesting sexual culture, they were not judgmental about each other’s sexual practices... The other thing that I think was really important for me during that period of time was that I kept gay men in my life because they gave me buffer and they didn’t judge me around my sexual desire when the world of women and the women’s culture and the separatist culture was an impossible place to be who I wanted to be sexually. And gay men might not get it, but they didn’t care. If I said I was a lesbian, I was a lesbian, and if I was a lesbian fem, so I was a lesbian fem, you know? I wasn’t inauthentically queer because of my sexual choices. In separatist women’s culture, I was always suspect and so, gay men ended up playing a fundamental role in keeping alive my options sexually, where separatism didn’t."

i'm a dyke, and i'll stay a dyke. it's my gender identity, it's my political identity, my historical context. my relationship history has mostly been with women, but those boys and genderqueers who have made an appearance are not any less of how they identify just for being with me. and i'm not any less of who I am for being with them. and although I ally myself with many different identities and movements, I locate myself politically and personally among the dykes. my activism exists in many different circles, but shit son, I spend most of my energy at the lesbian herstory archives, so anyone who wants to revoke my lesbo membership card cause of my broad attraction can just try to tell me that i'm not a devoted and responsible dyke activist.

maybe if I was lucky enough to be one of those good dykes who is only attracted to female bodied, female identified people, preferably not too boyish cause you know that's just hidden straightness, I wouldn't have to feel the need to answer for my own life. I could waste time and energy pursuing the ladies that I'm supposed to pursue to be the right kind of dyke or I could do me, and then do that person over there if I want to. I could consider myself lucky that people I find hot find me hot too. and consider myself lucky that my attraction spans from high femme shark women to queer pink-wearing bearded boys to tough as nails butches to freckle-faced tomboy girls. I am, after all, a taurus and a hedonist.

I'll probably revisit this soon and tweak it as my personal philosophy evolves. but at the end of days, my little bio up there says i'm a dyke extraordinaire**, and i wear it proudly.

*i'm a social science person, not a mathemagician. whatever.
**seriously. google image search it and my picture is the fourth one.