Sarah Vowell puts it best:
It is curious that we Americans have a holiday—Thanksgiving—that’s all about people who left their homes for a life of their own choosing, a life that was different from their parents’ lives. And how do we celebrate it? By hanging out with our parents! It’s as if on the Fourth of July we honored our independence from the British by barbecuing crumpets. (The Partly Cloudy Patriot, p. 12)
“I don’t get it.”
I’ve heard this phrase more times than I care to remember in the last few weeks. “I don’t get it” not as in “Please, tell me more.” But “I don’t get it” as in “I disapprove.”
The first time “I don’t get it” got to me was when a progressive straight male friend of mine didn’t “get it” when I told him that I was binding my breasts. Granted, I, too, love breasts and would like to see more of them un-bound. But the “I don’t get it, and there is nothing you can say to rationalize binding to me” was more than a little insensitive on my friend’s part.
Then we got to packing. Not with the straight male friend. This time, with two gay men. While I could understand (though not relate to) their “the real thing is better” argument, I was still saddened by their inability to want to understand how playing with gender via packing can be exciting for two girls.
And then another gay male friend laughed at my mention of top-bottom relationships. “How does it even work with women?” he asked and cringed at the thought. That women have agency and power dynamics in relationships was a new idea for him.
I suppose I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I’m just slightly thrown off by the judgmental “I don’t get it” sentiment that seems to be big among my [themselves allegedly oppressed minority] friends.
If I may turn to Foucault without immediately climaxing, he reminds us that essentialzing any sexuality is dangerous. Talking about the emergence of normative discourses around sex, Foucault writes:
The society that emerged in the nineteenth century—bourgeois, capitalist, or industrial society, call it what you will—did not confront sex with a fundamental refusal of recognition. On the contrary, it put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses concerning it. Not only did it speak of sex and compel everyone to do so; it also set out to formulate the uniform truth of sex. As if it suspected sex of harboring a fundamental secret. As if it needed this production of truth. As if it was essential that sex be inscribed not only in an economy of pleasure but in an ordered system of knowledge. (History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, p. 69)
If we accept Foucault’s premise (and I’ll accept Foucault’s anything at this point… fan girl), then this desire to have a rational scientific discourse around sex is understandable and should not shock me like it does. What still shocks and shakes me, though, is that those of us who are minorities should know better. To essentialize our own sexuality, our own way of doing it, our own kinks and fetishes is to do the same kind of violence that has been done to us for years.
I hope more of us recognize this today, on Transgender Day of Remembrance. I know that my binding/packing/top-bottom issues are miniscule in comparison to what so many trans people have to deal with on a daily basis, but I am convinced that they arise from the same well of confusion and essentialism surrounding our thinking about sex and sexuality.
Perhaps we don’t have to “get” anything.
The first puff of my clove when I left the restaurant was the freshest air I’d breathed in weeks. I felt strong and hot and grown-up for no reason other than the girl I liked turned from The Girl I Liked into a friend. All in one hour and ten minutes. I know!
Maybe I’d been in love with the idea of her rather than with her all along. She’s still the prettiest girl I have ever kissed; I will never deny that. But now, she’s also the prettiest girl I have ever kissed that let me go in the most gracious and charming manner imaginable.
If this could fit into a tweet, I’d tweet it. But it can’t. Leaving the restaurant I felt larger than life and certainly larger than 140 characters. Or perhaps not larger than 140 characters at all. Just free.
I wrote this about a year ago. Saw it today and decided it still rang true even though the characters have changed. (You may be able to better understand this last sentence after reading the poem.)
“So there’s this girl, right?..”
Any time there is a “this girl”
(and there is always a “this girl”)
I get text messages
Twenty-six old letters of the alphabet
Rearranged to make me feel born-again
Again I flip my phone open
And stare at her words
I memorize the punctuation
As though the letters on the screen
Are some secret code
That will surely save me
If I ever consider quittingThe characters mean so much
They make up a theater on my screen
I’m tempted to print them out and frame them
Burn them into my mind
So I never feel lonely againThen
After a few weeks, the texts are usually gone
I have deleted them without a second thought
They didn’t save me after all
Why would I
Save them?
I read too much into your every gesture
Your every glance becomes a one-night stand,
Each word a poem
I read too much
Dear Mother,
I am in love with a girl
Okay, three girls
But it was never my intention to date three girls
The school year started and they just kind of happened
All at the same time
The first gave me a kiss
The second a lap dance
The third proclaimed her love for me from way back when
And what’s a girl to do?
Sometimes I think you knew before I knew
At thirteen a much older girl borrowed my sweater
I came back from camp
You wanted to wash it
And I said, “I can’t.
It still smells like her.”
And you said,
“Are you gonna be a lesbian now?”
That’s when I knew I could never be gay
But, Mother, I think I just may
Be gay
“Gay” is not a word I could use in Russian to describe this to you
Words always fail, but this failure
Feels too naked
I say “gay” you think “vagina”
I say “love” you think “sex”
“…How is it even possible between two women anyway?”
You’ll never read this
I’ll never speak the word
I thank the God I no longer believe in
That you don’t read English
But I do love you
So maybe it’s four girls
I don’t know how to speak of God. I realized this as I was trying to introduce one of my favorite poems to my Twitter followers.
My first Twitter draft said, “I no longer believe in God, but I still think John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV is one of the most beautiful poems ever written in the English language.”
Then I paused and considered the words “no longer believe.” The phrase seemed to suggest a non-existent relationship with [a possibly non-existent] God when I’m not sure that I believe one way or the other in my very adult-like attempt to avoid the lingering extremism of my religious beliefs from just a few years ago.
So I changed the sentence to read, “I no longer like God, but I still think John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV is one of the most beautiful poems ever written in the English language.” The verb like being a safer word choice minus the whole eternal damnation for not being fond of the Deity business.
I censored myself once again. Not because of any kind of fear of hell, since, in my early years as a Christian theologian, I had established that the doctrine of universal salvation first introduced by Karl Barth was consistent with Scripture, but precisely because I no longer have any strong feelings about God one way or the other. Fundamentalist Christianity can suck it. Most other forms of Christianity are either inconsistent or simply immoral, but I don’t have a problem with the idea of God per se.
The Sterling Memorial Library at Yale is one of my favorite buildings to show people when they visit me in New Haven. The library is built to look like a church. In the front is the altar to the Goddess of Knowledge and instead of saints being immortalized in the stained-glass windows, Sterling captures the various stages of the library’s development, starting from the very first book donation.
Perhaps I worship at the altar of knowledge and I am no less self-indulgent, moralizing, and stubborn than the Christians of whom I am so critical. My point being, regardless of what anybody thinks of God, knowledge, Twitter, or unicorns with super powers, John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV is one of the most beautiful poems ever written in the English language.
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Sarah Vowell taught me to cut my own hair. No, she didn’t come over and show me. (Although, Sarah, if you are reading this, you are more than welcome to drop by any time. Bring Ira Glass and Rachel Maddow.) Vowell did say this in an interview though, and I haven’t been able to not have anxiety attacks upon the very thought of going to a hair salon ever since:
I cut my own hair. Not to save money but because I never know what to talk about with the hairdresser. The last time I tried it again it was like an hour of hearing about rollerblading routes.
So I purchased a haircutting kit for $40. Now when I get my haircut not only do I avoid having to make small talk, but the end result also inevitably ends up being a surprise. Judging by the number of compliments I have received from drunk attractive strangers at bars, I do an okay job. So, thank you, Sarah Vowell.
And if there is one thing I want you to take away from this story, it’s this: awkwardness and a general dislike of people can save you a lot of money.
I do not go outdoors. Not more than I have to. As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.
– David Rakoff, “In New England Everyone Calls You Dave,” Fraud: Essays
I have one photograph of him. It’s a passport-size. His head is tilted slightly to the left. I read somewhere that this is how men listen—by tilting their head. Ladies supposedly never do it. I do, but then again, I’ve never claimed to be a lady.
I’ve always said that I grew up to look just as dumb as him. In the picture, he looks stunningly stupid. Or lost, or awkward, or something. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s as if he’s been trying to figure out a puzzle, has succeeded some, but then came to a point at which he simply has nowhere else to go. He is lost and confused. His self-confidence is shaken to its core. He looks like a lost puppy in the middle of a crowded street at peak hour. Come to think of it, I feel that way a lot. If I’m reading the picture right, it may not just be the looks that I’ve inherited from him. The relentless awkwardness decided to tag along into my genes as well.
Growing up without a father did not feel like growing up without; it felt like growing up. Until I was faced with the harsh reality of people not sticking to the beautiful doctrine of Minding One’s Own Business. I didn’t mind the questions. What I minded was the implications of being asked. Not having a father somehow made me less normal; as if his absence was somehow my fault.
Today America celebrates Father’s Day. Back home, there is no such holiday. Here, even Facebook decided to celebrate by asking me to add my “Dad” to my “profile info to celebrate Father’s day.” No, thanks.
I would like to believe that I’m not bitter. I will never understand how he lives with himself knowing that he has a daughter—a smart and occasionally funny one, too!—and not knowing anything about her. But ever since I’ve given up any claims to normalcy, I don’t feel like I’m missing much in not knowing him.
Every last paragraph is supposed to be smart, funny, profound, or at least pretentiously cheesy. I keep trying to come up with one, and I can’t. Instead, I will say that I have the most wonderful mother who, by herself, has given me more than I could ever ask for. I do have something to celebrate on this Parent’s Day after all.
