Edith

About a year ago, my life changed drastically. The person who had served as a romantic ancillary-surrogate (who helped carry me out of my divorce in that capacity for months) couldn’t take any more of me and left. It was a confusing and severe rejection. It was also the first time in seven years that I was abruptly forced to live entirely on my own—without catering to someone else’s needs, whims, desires, and moods—thrust upon me in the midst of all manner of upheavals.

It so affected me that I started planning my last suicide attempt. I didn’t know who I was. I couldn’t get off the couch. I wouldn’t burden others by reaching out for help. I thought I was done. The only things that stalled the plan were my dogs. I couldn’t die without them having a safe and loving home. So, I texted my sister one day, and made up some cockamamie story about a retirement will that I was receiving through work. I asked if she would be willing to take on the task of caring for Lionel and Coleslaw, should I die unexpectedly. She feigned ignorance, but my sister has known my inner waves and recessions for a long time now. She knew what I was getting at. She pretended to comply; meanwhile, she corralled her husband and called the police to perform a welfare check on my home. When she and the cops showed up, I was deeply embarrassed, and entirely morose. Yet, I was thankful for her quick thinking. At that point, I was scared and lost. I needed someone to help drag me from the keel of life to which I’d found myself stuck. I was lucky she understood the dance of depression, and could spring into action upon her nagging intuition. Because of her resourcefulness, I was able to go back to work, increase the rate of my talk therapy sessions, and switch to a medication that has worked well to elevate my mood.

After my father died this past summer, I realized that writing about my depression as it happens invites a plethora of well-meaning responses and questions that are, ultimately, overwhelming for me. So, I’m glad I gave myself the space of time to process this one without discussing it too much. This year has seen its share of turbulence, but this post is not intended as some massive, proverbial hand slapping my latissimus dorsi for coming out the other end of it. I’m still a massive fuckup in enough ways that would make some humblebrag seem even more ridiculous and arrogant than humblebrags, by nature, already are. 

I guess this is just a note of gratitude for the people, like my sister, who love me despite my best efforts to screw it all up. Thanks to her—and Marc and Peter and Lori and Asilia and Steig and Tamara and Bianca and everyone else who is patient enough to listen to and understand the complicated parts of me—I’ve slowed down and learned how to better care for myself. I’m in a safer place now. Cliché alert: change is fucking terrifying, but sometimes it’s necessary. Thanks to all y’all who help to carry my imperfect ass through it. I love you.

New Year. Same Phone. Who Dis?

I allowed myself--for a brief stint--to regress into a predictable, boozing, money-wasting, man-hating sex fiend. As a result, I feel like I'm now more of a cliché than I have been in quite a long time.

This past year and half has seen me through a lot: change in my self, change in my marital status, rejection from an ancillary-albeit-undeserving presence in my life, transformation in the way I conduct myself professionally, the death of my father, a silencing, going underground, emerging only to rehash the basest remnants of my life's coping mechanisms.

Can I see sunlight? Will I beat my wings against these suffocating walls until my heart gives out?

I don't know if I have already relented. I was exhausted. Now I've rested and have no clue where to go.

I want to be not constantly overwhelmed. I want to hide. I want to be comforted. I want balance.

Maybe my rest is not finished.

The Only Person Who Reads These Is Me

And that is fine.

Trying to get through a bout of low-level depression.

This loneliness is a lake I'm floating in, mostly underwater.

Two Ziploc Bags of Pancake Batter

I'm trying to avoid doing work at all costs. So, here I am--writing where no one will see.

I don't know if it's because I've been teaching M. Butterfly for the past week, but the idea of relational performativity has been on my mind constantly. I keep wondering: Is everything we do a performance? Is there any act--I'll just say of mine, but I'm applying this to the world at large--in which I behave that is purely my own? Or do I always anticipate, or crave, an audience? How am I manipulating my thoughts, my memory, my words? Is my entire existence just a string of scenarios in which I am I censoring parts of me, or exaggerating others?

I guess some of it boils down to trust. Trust implies interaction with another person, and an assumption that the person possesses an essence of sincerity or authenticity. But what if they don't? What if every act is exactly that--an act? So many speech acts are ultimately futile. From the people in meetings who love to hear their own voices, but rarely achieve any meritorious labor, to the men who pantomime vulnerability in order to fulfill their get-laid-quick schemes--what is the point? 

What am I not understanding about the world and my place in it? I spent my entire life working myself numb, so that I could achieve the love, the recognition, and the comfort I so desperately wanted. I did whatever I could to make myself (what I believed would be most) lovable in the eyes of someone--anyone--I desired, and it almost killed me. Now, I have all the things that I thought would make me lovable to someone--things that would earn me a person who would want me and understand me. And now, I'm more isolated than ever. I have the job, the home, the physical beauty, the capacity to love myself and someone else. Those took me literally decades to achieve. But now, also, it's like I've stepped into my own life's camera obscura--where everything has been flipped upside-down and inverted. Having achieved the goals has only placed me in a more rarefied stratosphere, near which very few of the type of people who I want would ever venture to go. And the people who are here? They don't understand me. 

The ones who might be able to understand me now think I'm just some privileged priss who's always had it this good, so they approach me suspiciously. And the more I try to tell them that I've spent 90% of my life in the same place they are, the more I just come off as a panderer. They stop listening to me. I'm two-dimensional to everyone, but for different reasons. I'm either the strange, white trash chick who managed to roll under the closing garage door into the fancy party just seconds before being crushed to death, or I'm the chick who can afford to pay for an overpriced lunch, so I must have no clue what it means to struggle. I don't have a solid place in this world. 

To be honest, I have no clue how to navigate it. The full-time teaching job I have now pays five times what my first full-time teaching job did just six years ago. I don't know how that happened. I just kept working my ass off; one day I woke up and was financially secure. I went from scrambling for low-income housing, living out of my car, engaging in survival sex, and sleeping on piss-stained futons--to this. And the opposite of my endgame happened. Instead of finally being accepted as a result of my hard-earned achievements, I'm more outside of anyplace to call a community than ever before. Look, I know there are far worse problems to live with. I just feel lost, and pretty lonely sometimes. Oh well. Whatever. 

Thanks. I'm Trash.

Another night in which I should be doing work for my job or on myself, yet I'm just catatonically gazing at the blank television screen and forcing myself to write.

These are thoughts that have been floating in my sad brain lately. I'll probably give them greater page attention later, but I want to document them for now:

1. Dave Chappelle's most recent special confirms my suspicion that he is a sexual assault survivor who clearly feels incredibly uncomfortable with other survivors who vocalize their own struggles. From the rhetoric to the identification with the abusers, it's all there.

2. Since my father died, I've noticed I have much less rage directed at men. I no longer feel the injustice I did before--where I felt like they all should perform at my level of strenuous relationship effort, and none of them could come close. Now I just don't care. I feel guilty for seeking out people who, I knew, couldn't provide me with what I needed emotionally--only to turn around and chastise them for what they weren't capable of. I've also kind of given up on exerting any effort. I think that all this time what I really wanted was to be single and free, but I didn't know how to articulate that to myself (let alone anyone else). So, I entered into unsatisfying relationships in which I either buried essential parts of myself, or experienced the freedom at intervals of consistent breakup periods.

3. My Aunts theory has resurfaced. Men are protected from the hyper-surveillance that socially obedient women/non-men reserve for the less gender conforming among us. So yes, patriarchy is the worst; but men have conveniently found enough women to fight other women on their behalf. These men don't really have to get their hands too dirty, so to speak, because there are droves of women seeking their approval who will do the work for them. So, really, the worst perpetrators of patriarchy--the ones who maintain its omnipresence in society (and my life, more specifically)--comprise this class of largely heterosexual women. They flex their surrogate gender dominance by (as I just mentioned) interfering in the personal lives of their female foes, by flaunting their martyr-of-the-month behavior, and by finding strength in numbers. I hope this makes sense.

4. I'm so tired of being anxious and depressed. I wonder what I would willingly do never to have a depressive episode again.

That's all for now, to be returned to at a later date.

The Joker: A Eulogy for Robert Wayne King

Imagine you’re Batman, and the Joker dies—not by your hand or anything. He just dies. Maybe he gets melanoma, and you wonder, “Why hasn’t he gone on a crime spree lately?” Or maybe he has a quick and sudden aneurysm in his sleep. Either way, Alfred mentions it at breakfast one morning: Sir, your nemesis, he’s dead.

You mull it over. So many of your works—the benevolent acts for humankind you have accomplished—have been fueled by a vengeful hatred for this very person. You’ve spent so much of your life becoming his antithesis, trying to improve where he has wantonly gone astray. In a very immediate and real sense, he has been your raison d’etre. It is your desire to eradicate the world of cruel and confounding people like him that has made you who you are.

What do you do? Sure, you could invest the one percent of your hate that’s been leftover this whole time to focus entirely on thwarting lesser villains. But really, how long would it take to end people like The Riddler, The Penguin, or Poison Ivy? An afternoon? A whole day? Then what? Batman moves to Boca? Ridiculous.

You never even got to have the full-blown, climactic crescendo of a standoff that would once and for all have slain this enemy. You don’t get to spend the rest of your life in a smug denouement of reflection on how you triumphantly defeated your most formidable foe. You don’t get to pat yourself on the back for the rest of your days, or feign humble gratitude every time a townsperson thanks you for killing the juggernaut.

You didn’t even get a fucking apology from the guy at the moment of his demise. You didn’t get to stare into his eyes and see a twinge of near-death, epiphanic clarity. He never got the chance to realize the error of his ways. He never begged your forgiveness, for giving you no choice but to pursue a life of conflicted do-gooding. You wanted to be a celebrated writer whose stories got made into movies, for Chrissakes! Not some goddamn brooding antihero trying to help people who mostly ended up just shitting all over your soul, the way he did.

As if it’s bad enough that he didn’t apologize, none of the villains do! The Penguin doesn’t send a wax-stamped correspondence expressing his condolences. Catwoman doesn’t call and say, “Dude, Batman, that’s so fucked up. I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry for all the similar shit I put you through. I’ll chill out on the crime capers for a minute. Let me know if you need anything.” They just go about their fucking business, annoying the fuck out of you with their self-absorbed disregard for literally everything. 

It’s all infuriating at first, but then you realize: he’s dead. He’s gone. You spent so much of your life plotting justice against this asshole, that you didn’t take much time to think about why you were doing it, or what you could be doing instead. That thought forces you to look inward. You realize that beneath the anger and betrayal, which have been propelling your achievements for so long, lie exhaustion, loneliness, and sadness. These are feelings you’ve yet to conquer. They’re the foes that The Joker has been a stand-in for this whole time. No amount of crimefighting or justice-seeking will take these away. So, what do you do, but devote this next life’s chapter to overcoming them? But how—and, most terrifying of all: Will you stop being Batman if you do?

Dead Dad Dad Dead

Some of the more interesting responses to my telling people that my dad died last week:

"I'm sorry. Please let me use this as an opportunity to name drop my own dead acquaintance who has been in the news all week and pivot to a discussion solely on that."

"Hm. Sucks. Can I come over, use your washer/dryer, and bone? But, like, no dead dad stuff. That's too much for me right now."

"I know I disappeared all weekend the second you mentioned your dead dad, and posted shots of me on social media hanging out with other chicks right after I said I wanted to be exclusive with you, but you didn't text me either, ya know."

"I know we were supposed to hang out and I totally flaked/freaked out on you, but you're a fucking bitch because now there is the potential for you to make me look bad in front of your cool, pro skater friend I've been trying to impress."

People are wonderful.

The Cokehead Sociopath and His Sex Worker Attaché

I've always been fascinated by charismatic con artists, silver-toothed mountebanks, and mesmerizing cult leaders. I ask, again and again, how can they do it?

Not how do they do it--that's pretty self-explanatory. They bullshit their way through enough people--who are mostly altruistic in nature--for as long of a time as they are allowed, until they have to move on.

My question is: How can they do it? How does one find the gumption to hoodwink everyday people and not feel utterly poisoned and hollow from within? Do they engage in some sort of trancelike meditation, so as to detach from their own cognizant decision-making in an attempt not to realize the abysmal depths of their own ethical perdition? Or is taking advantage of others' kindness just as perfunctory to them as driving to work?

I had a recent run-in with two such people--my titular characters. The cokehead mostly got his way through coercion and threats of violence. The attaché did so through performing the role of ever-suffering victim. I won't go into too much detail, but my brief tenure with them ended with me changing the locks on my house and getting an HIV test after the words "Fuck You" and a smiley face were written in human shit on my guest bedroom wall.

My dilemma is twofold. On the one hand, I truly would like to understand the rationale behind their raging entitlement. Why the outburst directed at someone who showed them nothing but acceptance and generosity, until their user antics got out of hand and she was forced to (heaven forbid) tell them no. On the other hand, stepping inside chaotic minds and souls like theirs is a feat of despair so repugnant to me, that I simply can't do it.

I guess I have to live with the uncertainty. I guess all I can do is hope they receive the extensive psychological care of which they are both so desperately in need, and move on. I guess, ultimately, I just hate not having the answers--even if I do have the new door locks.

Thank You, Fleabag

After recommendations from both Pam and Sean, I decided to watch Fleabag. Ten minutes in, it's already inspired me to blog my own, similar experiences from an ocean and a continent away.

I recently visited Portland for a conference on race and equity. I had a blast--not just there, but on a couple of dates I managed to squeeze in during my trip. Two different men on two different dates: A) paid for all my drinks, meals, and cover charges; and B) actually talked to me (and listened, too!) about my interests, my hobbies, and my life. I was bowled over.

Yes, you read that correctly. I was bowled over because I was taken out on two consecutive, standard dates. How horrifically depressing--my joy at being treated like a worthwhile person, and not a service provider. Maybe it's the brainwashing of Catholic female selflessness thrust upon my psyche from my earliest memories. Maybe it's having lived in Long Beach, Ground Zero for the Peter Pan Epidemic, for so long. Whatever the case, my standards and expectations for heterosexual male suitors exist, stature-wise, somewhere between subway platforms and irrigation ditches. Dating here is that grim.

That's not to say that all men who live in Southern California are like this. I've recently gone on several dates with an awesome dude who goes out of his way to treat me specially--from interesting date ideas, to researching the best local restaurants, even to offering to pay for a dog-sitting service so that I might spend the night at his place. But the context in which he and I have gotten to know one another limits us from having anything long-term, so--although he is charming, handsome, kind, and loads of fun--pursuing anything more with him is essentially out of reach at the moment. Also, it's not lost on me that he's not from this area--he's not even from this country. So that, along with his dogged effort to be a good person always, tells me that these dire cultural expectations have not been programmed into him the way in which they have with local guys.

What is it, then, about men from this area that makes them so--entitled? Lazy? Incapable? I can't quite find the right word to describe it, so here's a visual. It's like all these guys show up at my door, with a list of demands in their pockets. The date, then, becomes a game of how many of these demands they can passively foist upon me throughout the duration of the evening. Oh, you want to hang out my place that I've taken the time to clean and arrange, eat the food I've bought and prepared, watch the TV that I've worked to pay for, sleep in the bed I've cleaned and made up? Oh, you don't want to go out to a bar, restaurant, or (if we're being sleazy and honest) pay for a hotel to stay in? Oh, you want sex that you enjoy, without giving much thought to my stake in the matter (beyond being an available, wet hole)? Oh! Oh! Oh! Aaaaaand you're going to complain, or roll your eyes, or conveniently "forget" when I ask you to bring over a $15 bottle of wine for me to enjoy? Fascinating.

Since I believe in the neo-Marxist principle that all labor possesses both an intrinsic and extrinsic value, let's put a price tag on that labor that you, in your feigned naivete that male privilege affords you, think is free. Let's say we eat that dinner, at a mid-priced restaurant, for two people, including two adult beverages. That's $100. A bar that serves decent drinks we both enjoy? Another $50. A hotel that is clean and provides all the amenities--including parking and overnight stay--that you would require? $200. Sex work for a duration of several hours? $300. Therapy and counseling services in the form of me listening to you tell me all about your life, previous dating history, and anxiety over the upcoming sports season? Hmmm. At $150 per hour, let's say two hours that I'm actually listening to you. That's another $300. These are all modest price values, by the way. This is nothing extravagant--just standard, mid-level date fare that would provide the same level of quality and service that you are expecting of me.

I'll even deduct the $15 bottle of wine you may or may not have brought. That brings the total to: $935. Just consider it my date Patreon. So, the next time you bring your list of demands, tucked neatly away in the pocket of your Levis, or Balmains, or whatever you can afford because you've skirted paying for any of this on your last hundred-or-so dates, I'll have ready my bill. Deal? Great! See you sometime between never and when you actually grow the fuck up and become a real adult.

Insomnia

Luckily, no one reads these anymore, since I'm so paranoid about my colleagues and students knowing anything about me (for fear of losing job security) that I've deleted the links off of all my social media pages. I guess, then, I can write the most self-indulgent of posts.

I can't sleep, and it's half past two in the morning. So, what's the cavalcade of thoughts poisoning my sleep schedule tonight? Let's see:

Guilt over my ability as a writing instructor --> Wanting to decolonize my approach to relationships (since I pretty much only date men of color) --> The prison-industrial complex --> Thinking about how conservatives never admit that they actually don't mind handouts, as long as they're the recipients --> Being hot (literally, not sexy hot, but sweaty hot) --> My family --> My friends (a.k.a.  chosen family) --> The severely low number of people I actually trust in this world --> One of the dogs farted again --> The ways in which I am blinded by my privilege, and what I can do to counteract that/help others --> Chernobyl --> Shit I need versus shit I can afford --> Not wanting kids --> shitty jokes --> Maybe I'll watch TV --> A never-ending rabbit hole, in which I ponder the tension between the bottomless pit of my need for emotional comfort versus the ever-growing hostility and annoyance I feel toward partners as any given relationship or hookup situation progresses.

What's a girl to do?

The Chasm

Yesterday, as part of my faculty obligations, I had to attend my college’s Commencement ceremony. It wasn’t the waking up at 6:30 AM on a Saturday, nor the fact that I had to wear a scratchy, black robe in the sun for three hours, that made me irritable. It wasn’t even the bullshit rent-a-cop—the one who took out every vestigial, adolescent frustration he’d been harboring for the past twenty years on any employee trying to park near their office, with his self-satisfied officiousness and arbitrary rules-following—who told me that I wasn’t allowed to park in the same place I’ve been parking all year, at my fucking place of employment. 

It was what I will, from here on out, refer to as “the chasm.” The chasm is that well of pain that is so deep, so relentlessly impossible to fill, so a part of me, that it may as well be a sixth finger or another gall bladder. The chasm is not only the initial shocks of trauma that I experienced in my childhood; it’s also the shitty lessons and the opposite of self-care I learned as a result of those experiences. It’s the poor decisions in my adult life that I made, because I had the equivalent of a preschooler’s amount of knowledge about how to establish healthy boundaries and hold others accountable.  It’s the thing I always, in my hubris, think I’ve overcome--only to be shoved up against its loins, like Leda struggling against Zeus, because of some triggering experience. The following particular catalyst of disappointing memories came about as I chatted with colleagues as the procession of graduates glided willfully past us to pick up their diplomas:

“My graduation was so embarrassing. My parents brought a loud horn. Instead of yelling out my name, they just squeezed it when my name was called.”

“Oh yeah? Well, my whole family came, and my brothers were so loud and obnoxious when my name was called!”

“What about you, Katie? I know you have a big family. How many people in your family came to your graduation?”

“I was the first woman in my family to get a college degree. No one came to any of my college graduations. Either I wasn’t talking to them at the time, or they didn’t care.” Cue the asshole-clenching silence, in which my friends internally roll their eyes at another Katie-and-her-shitty-dysfunctional-family-stories-and-geezus-what-a-massive-crybaby-Debbie-Downer-she-is. Or at least that’s what I’m projecting. Of course, the voice in my head adds, “They didn’t come to your wedding, either. Not one family member came to your wedding. Every major, meaningful event in your adult life has been ignored by the ones who were supposed to be your tribe.”

Commencement ends. Students are smiling, crying, yawning. Families are huddled on the football field—cheap bundles of carnations and aluminum balloons trying desperately to escape the grips of sweaty palms to scatter anywhere (The ground? The sky?). I feel claustrophobic navigating my way through the crown of navy blue and black polyester robes that have been soaking up the climate-change sunlight for so long that they are almost scalding to the touch. I get to my car, and perform immediately several moving violations—anything to get me the fuck away quickly, so I can seclude myself at home with my dogs and breathe.  That’s when it hits me. All those snide, snarky comments I launched to the colleague sitting next to me; all that complaining about having to be there to people who also had to work right along with me on a Saturday; all the obnoxious, off-color jokes—they’re all a way of dealing with the chasm and its volcanic pain bubbling in my gut. But they are also akin to a cheesecloth tarp trying to cover what's about to spew from the chasm. Despite nine consecutive years of therapy, those memories aren’t dormant. They erupt. I bawl my eyes out, in front of my dogs, on my bed. The pain is real, it is ready, and letting it out is necessary.

Sometimes I don’t know why I tell my stories. Sometimes I do feel like I’m nothing more than a pretentious trauma queen. I still have to get them out, though. I don’t know. I hope they are performing some function—beyond just what they do for me. Thanks for reading, whoever.

Questions

Questions I have to remind myself daily:

1. Is this asshole's bullshit opinion and transparent hypocrisy worth my energy?
2. Who is my impostor syndrome serving?
3. Am I getting compensated for this labor reasonably?
4. Do I need this person in my life?
5. Is this (person's) mess my burden?
6. Is this more important than spending time with my friends or my dogs?
7. Will this concern me in 5, 10, or 15 years?
8. Am I being kind enough to myself?

Power

The quest for power and dominance is fueled by a fear of intimacy.

When we expose ourselves, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable in front of people we'd otherwise attempt to bend to our will, we avoid loneliness. We find love and kinship. We connect.

By shutting off those impulses, we surround ourselves with a giant moat of emotional impenetrability, and we are alone.

So, a byproduct of dominance is an incessant, abiding sense of alienation.

One Meets The Most Interesting People on Dating Apps

I’m happy to say that Tinder is no longer the hellscape of painful dating experiences and passive aggression that it once was for me. I’ve started to meet some kind and fascinating people.

No more strange men harassing me in pirate speak.

No more people my age telling me I’m ugly and old.

No more uncomfortable exchanges to screenshot so my friends can relish in my discomfiting singledom.

Just nice people, putting themselves out there, looking for any number of emotional, intellectual, or physical connections.

Sure there are still the dudes who put on the full-court emotional press—spitting an adorable game of how they want to girlfriend me up and treat me well--only to disappear after two weeks. But that’s their journey; I just happened to bump into them at that particular point of not-ready. I’m not bothered by it. Most are good, though.

There’s the guy who gave me the banquette seat and sat in an uncomfortable stool the whole date (that he paid for). I later found out—without him telling me--that he’s had major spinal surgery in the past. I thought that was a beautifully kind gesture.

There’s the self-described “masculine man by day exploring [their] feminine side,” who just wants female friends to hang out with--and who also directs, writes, and owns their own company. I’m excited about that one.

There’s the guy who encouraged me to talk about my real life, and who was very understanding about my struggles with depression and anxiety. I actually got to be myself on a date with someone! I didn’t have to perform the farce of a romantic job interview that most dating entails. And he was cute and funny, too.

There’s the hookup who checks in on me the way my friends do—with no expectation of further hookups, a relationship, a date, nothing. Just a kind, decent person.

My point is, I guess I needed to experience more of the real people who could be found inside of what at first seemed like a nightmare. I can’t believe it, but the site’s hyper-speed style, and its hyper-concentration of potential dates, have actually contributed to my hope and faith in the next stage of my life. There have been so many interesting people for me to meet. Oddly enough, by searching on a site that stresses the value in the immediate hookup, I found that I just needed to be patient to find worthwhile individuals. Sometimes, as I scroll through the ones I’m not immediately attracted to, I think about how they’re all just reaching out. Sure, their lives and mine will probably never intersect, but they’re trying. I hope they find the people who fit them nicely someday. Or at least I hope they meet cool people, too.

Let’s Hear It For The [Men]!

There have been several great men in my life.

The first was my junior- and senior-year English teacher, Dr. Poff. He was the one who opened my eyes to the ways in which society should be improved. He challenged me to work constantly and diligently, not only on my writing (a gift that has given me the beloved career I have today), but also my critical thinking skills. He taught me how to question and attempt to see through bullshit, always. He also acted as a parent-alternative. To say my own family was dysfunctional would be an understatement. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse ran rampant, with women and girls serving as the victims of such injustices. My biological father was a narcissist. My stepfather was a manipulative sexual predator with massive debt and a substance abuse problem, and my mom was his willfully blind cheerleader, who chose to blame her children for his abuse. Getting away from them was a goal I sought early on in my life.

I babysat Poff’s kids while he and his wife, Stephanie (whom I also adored) would attend foreign film festivals and visit alternative lifestyle conventions. He invited me into a family that was both eccentric and welcoming, and they made sure that I knew that I was a worthwhile person in their lives. It was exactly the safe haven of weirdos I needed in such a desperate and lonely time in my teenage development. A significant reason I am the educator I am today is attributed to the kindness of the Poff-Taylor clan, and I am very grateful and indebted to them.

The second was my friend Peter. I met him a few years later, when I worked at his hair salon. He immediately became my surrogate big brother—having me over to watch bad movies when I was upset over yet another boy, teasing me and calling me Wiener Dog for my awkwardness, and just being a great friend with whom I could confide whenever I needed. He also saved my life, literally. I attempted suicide at age 21. Had Peter not found my near-lifeless body after a frantic search for my apartment in Huntington Beach, I would be dead today. I am still haunted, and I still feel vestiges of shame, for having put someone I care about so much through such deep horror. Peter, being the wonderful person he is, has forgiven me, and I will spend the rest of my life thanking him.  Luckily, he still laughs at my dumb jokes—which haven’t changed much in almost twenty years—and he still laughs at my awkwardness, which also hasn't changed.

The last one is Marc. Marc has been my friend for the better part of two decades. He and I have a deep kinship. We both share a dark sense of humor that arises from overcoming excessive trauma. We both support each other completely, no matter where we are in terms of our life’s development. Marc is the person I message when I have the dumbest shit in the world to say, or when I need to talk about the stuff I can’t talk to anyone else about. He knows my deepest secrets, and he pushes me to be the best version of myself that I can be. If everyone had a Marc in their lives, this world would be a much better place.

So, what separates these men from the emotionally stunted sad boys, who take quite personally all of my critiques on systemic, ideological gender practices? Why, as a feminist—someone who, supposedly, to people who don’t know any better, “hates men”—would three of the most important people in my life be men? It’s because of who they are as people. All three have worked very hard—not only on their own emotional development, but on being an engaged part of my life. All three actually listen to me, and have made serious efforts to understand me when it could have been so easy to write me off and dehumanize me, as so many others have done. All three, like me, are not perfect. We’ve had tough conversations, big friendship fights, all the usual things that come with caring about another person for a long time. But they have persisted. They do the difficult work, flex their sometimes paper-thin patience, and provide the immense amount of care it takes to sustain a family, which is what they are to me.

There are many other men whom I feel similarly about. I don’t hate men. I hate patriarchy. I hate privilege. I hate toxic masculinity that is taught to so many people, to their ultimate detriment. And, from what I gather, the men I choose to have in my life aren’t fond of those things, either.

Maggots

Killer Mike posted an Instagram story about how he wrote this poem on the back of his mother's (his "hero's") obituary--which is another reason why I like Killer Mike:


When I Die
when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries 
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love

and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out

-Nikki Giovanni

The King of Pop

When I hear people talk about Leaving Neverland as proof that Michael Jackson was some sort of cultural anomaly, I find it a bit naïve. For Michael Jackson truly is the King of Pop—that is, the king of popular culture. I say this because, what is popular culture’s function, if not to: 1) treat women to be inherently evil and disposable, as he repeatedly does in Leaving Neverland 2) forge an indelible obsession with whiteness, as he did throughout his life, and 3) sexualized youthful innocence, as he did repeatedly, in private, and (I argue) with everyone’s consent?

We want to believe that he is aberrant, as if his fame and wealth allowed him to exist in a cultural vacuum. It was precisely his attaining society’s highest capitalistic achievements in his lifetime, however, that eventually afforded him the power to prey on children to the extent that he did. Wealth—the greatest measure of cultural capital in our society, that thing we are all programmed to kill ourselves trying to attain—facilitated his becoming a monster; he did not become a monster in spite of it. 

I’m clearly not justifying his behavior, or giving him sympathy whatsoever. I’m just saying that he took many of our ingrained cultural practices—misogyny, ageism, racism, wealth ambition, etc.—and played them out to their extreme, horrific conclusions. It was our adulation of him (as a black man exalting whiteness, as a symbol for some pervasive Horatio Alger myth-remnant, and yet still as a caricatured other that we could comfort ourselves in mocking) that inspired us to buy his albums and line his pockets. It was our lack of concern for sexual assault survivors, coupled with our tendency to serve as a voyeuristic public jury, that saw his trial—his being brought to accountability—as nothing more than spectacle and farce. It was our fixation and paranoia surrounding the attainment of wealth that led us initially to dismiss his victims as money-grubbing fame whores. We can, likewise, easily write him off as a grotesque oddity—and many of us have; but I think, instead, we should try “starting with the man in the mirror,” so to speak, and question the ways in which we perpetuate such common, toxic cultural practices every day.

Try Smiling

(I know I’m coming in hot with a revelation here: depression blows.)

Try having a mind that constantly seeks to get the rest of your body to destroy itself. 

Try doing everything you can to be happy, only to have every attempt fail—and I mean every attempt: going out and spending time with friends, opting not to go out and instead stay at home alone, dancing, lying on the couch, working, trying to rest, drinking, staying sober, eating so much you gain seventy pounds, eating so little you lose forty pounds, taking medication, upping your therapy sessions, reaching out repeatedly to your support network, giving your support network a break from you, trusting people, trusting no one, talking it out objectively, letting your rage flow unbridled, cleaning, leaving a mess, watching TV, reading a book, listening to music, listening to a podcast, meditating, exercising, staying single, trying to date, writing, not writing for fear of being judged, engaging with social media, deactivating social media, creating boundaries with toxic people, allowing yourself to interact superficially with assholes, forgiving, holding a grudge. It all leads to the same debilitating sense of alienation that you felt, anyway, and it changes nothing. You feel like you could perform any activity on the planet, then its polar opposite, then any other activity within that spectrum—and yet, you still end up at the same place: Hell. It is inescapable. 

You do these things and more because your well-meaning friends (some of whom have experienced depression themselves) have offered you their advice. It seems to have worked so well for them. You want so badly to feel the happiness you can vaguely remember experiencing. So, you try out their advice, and it doesn’t work for you. Ever. How could it? What the fuck does anyone even mean when they say, “You’ve got to learn to love yourself?” It just sounds like utter horse shit. All your brain has ever done is try to hurt you. Now you’ve got to love yourself with that same brain? Okay. Sounds great. You’ll get right on that. Bullshit. You know, truly, that your happiness is broken—possibly beyond repair.

So, you try turning yourself off. That’s what we do when something doesn’t work—turn it off. You no longer perform. You no longer give anyone any part of yourself. You just barely exist. The outspoken you vanishes. The person who vowed to be always, unapologetically, transparently vocal silences herself. Even though you‘ve sworn never to return to that emotional atmosphere you’ve known since you were a child, where silencing and burying your voice only served to protect the most abusive people in your life, you relent. You know it’s too late. You’ve been loud too long. People have already labeled you and shelved you alongside the rest of the crazy, undesirable women. They’ve already stopped listening for a long time. All the meager energy you have left, you invest in robotically performing your base-level, day-to-day functions.

Maybe a few people notice that the white noise existence of you has stopped. Maybe they realize how deafeningly quiet you are, and they reach out. They tell you to stick around because they care; but you know that they really mean: they’ve just gotten used to the white noise. There will be a lack—a noticeably empty, small space—if you cease to exist as you already do, as an almost insignificant part of the background music in their lives. They like things exactly as things are, so you can’t do that to them. You’ve got to keep suffering through your hell for what feels like an eternity, lest they have to live with the inconvenience of hearing a record scratch.

That’s really what depression is: existing in hell forever so that the people you care about won’t be sad for a couple of weeks. Feeling like your soul has been soaked in poison every waking minute of your life, but doing your best to keep it under wraps so that other people aren’t inconvenienced by you. And you do it, because you have a lot of love in your heart for your friends. You do it because you have hope for future happiness. Unfortunately, just like in the myth of Pandora, you’re never sure if that hope is the thing that is saving you, or if it’s the thing that’s been destroying you all along. Either way, you live.

Bohemian Crapsody

I watched the Queen film last night, and I have to say: not a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huuuuge fan of Freddie Mercury, and a medium-sized fan of Brian May; I just don’t see the reason for all the hype. It’s almost as if awful, ham-fisted, or half-baked art about beloved legends like Mercury is made on purpose. The director knows full well that no one dares besmirch the name of a rock god. So, attaching said rock god’s story to a shit film is a keen way of garnering undeserved authorial praise.

Rami Malek’s performance is no great feat, either. Based on all of his pin-pupilled acceptance speeches and his jittery aloofness throughout the film itself, it’s clear that the guy is not hiding his Adderall/coke problem very well. Yes, the film implies that Mercury experienced similar issues with addiction—thought, for a movie set mostly in the mid-to-late seventies, there’s nary a white line in diagetic sight; but Malek performs that way even before the rock star-cum-addict stage in Freddie’s life. The actor is obviously gakked out from Scene One, making loading luggage onto an airplane seem more akin to an exercise in eye-bulging. Also, the costume prosthetics make his facial features seem exaggerated and caricatured, and not as traits oozing with sensual imperfection that Mercury so adeptly and coyly manipulated to work as part of his Byronic persona.

Granted, Bohemian Rhapsody is mythos and not documentary, but the film takes quite arrogant liberties with facts and reality. Mercury was not diagnosed with AIDS until two years after Live Aid. He didn’t meet Jim on the morning of the historical music festival; and he didn’t grow up working class. He was posh, as were his bandmates, who had the capital to attend school for careers in physics, electrical engineering, and dentistry. These (and many more exaggerations) provide a misleading portrait of a man who was brilliant, anyway. So, why bullshit?

Perhaps the most egregious reimagining, in my opinion, is the depiction of Mary. I don’t know if this is a thing in Hollywood at the moment, but what is with all these movies about gay men using selfless, long-suffering straight women as a means to find themselves sexually or emotionally (and then, to varying degrees, discard these women after such epiphanies take place)? Call Me By Your Name achieves something similar to this, and it bothers me. It’s a trope that doesn’t need to be nurtured for a variety of reasons—least of all because it’s already the overarching trope in films with heterosexual male leads. Why is the woman-as-emotional-wet-nurse phenomenon accepted as doctrine? Portraying such a relationship with the male lead as gay does not diminish the fact that a woman onscreen—yet again—only exists as a helpmate, a walking wastebasket into which the male protagonist can dump his feelings and saunter away unscathed. And don’t give me that, “At least he bought her a house!” bullshit. Yeah, he also made her stay up all night blinking the goddamn lights for him in said manse, like a prisoner in a fucking lighthouse. WTF?

If you want to watch Bohemian Rhapsody, listen to Queen’s Greatest Hits, and simultaneously play literally any romantic drama from the past fifty years on mute. Oh, and throw in a way-too-long reenactment of Live Aid for the final twenty minutes of it. That’s it. You’re welcome.

Frenchy. Oui Oui.

I ran into a colleague today. I hadn’t felt the kindest toward her in the past—and there is legitimately no good reason for my behavior. Well, I know the reason. She’s younger, prettier, nicer, and has better hair than me—and I think the guy who broke my heart likes her. So, in the past, every time I’d run into her in the hallway, I’d roll me eyes as if she were a colossal waste of my time. I even had a secret, cruel nickname reserved specifically for her. I was really, really threatened—to say the least.

Today, I saw her in a meeting, and I felt the same pang of jealousy I’ve always felt toward her. I could feel my heart start to beat more rapidly when she said hello to me. I performed my most badass self, just to prove (To her? To me? Who knows!) that I was the alpha bitch in the room. I effortlessly rattled off expert knowledge on matters with which she’s had little to no experience. I challenged the ideas of my senior colleagues with my best blasé-blasé tone. I showed the fuck off, and I made that shit fashion. 

Then, something strange happened. I realized that she purposefully would not look at me—and it wasn’t because of apathy or lack of feeling impressed by what I brought to the meeting. I realized: she was intimidated by me. I could feel it; heck, maybe I could even smell the fear pheromones she was giving off (Is that a thing? Let’s just say it is). I have the kind of job she wants, and is working her ass off to get. I get to act smug because I’m safely settled into a tenure-track position. She has to be cloyingly deferential, even to an asshole like me, because her future job security might depend on it. I’m past the point of worrying about getting people to like me. She has to make sure not to piss off the wrong people, or it could mean no rent next semester. Sure, I’m a fucking weirdo, but even that is a byproduct of a freedom and an independence that she doesn’t have as an adjunct.

I began to see her differently in that moment. Before, she was Sandra Dee, and I was Betty Rizzo. She was an annoyingly attractive and novel thing, and I was the beat-to-the-street bit of yesterday’s news—and that pissed me off to no end. In that meeting, I could see that we’re both Frenchy, just chicks trying our best to exist in a world where we’re constantly made to feel uncertain and insecure. I felt a kinship with her that my insecurity had quickly eroded away, originally. 

So, after the meeting, I approached her. I began with a joke to ease the tension. I asked her about how the full-time application process was going, and we commiserated about what a bullshit nightmare the job hunt can be. I made her laugh—something that makes me really happy when I’m successful at it. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Her eyes changed from large and skeptical to calm and welcoming; she even looked in my eyes when we spoke. I no longer felt like I was secretly engaging in an artificial, social competition with her—one that never has winners, anyway. It felt really good, and I want to feel good more often in my life.

There have been countless women recently who have shown me endless goodness with no expectation of payback. I want to be like them. I want to be a better woman than I’ve been. I hope I can keep this up. I know I can. I will.