What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
My house, the United Methodist parsonage in Naples, Texas, burned down to the ground on December 20, 1990.
It was a child’s Christmas in wails. Presents were given that year that would have been cool had they not been distorted by smoke or water damage, and I only know that looking back. Alternatively, we got presents that we knew were collected five minutes ago, and knew enough to be grateful because we had an awareness that of course no one has our lists anymore. Lindsay and I were grateful for any normalcy at all. The the first few hours, I internalized absolutely everything because I was the only one home. My parents and sister weren’t there. So, I did what I always did in that situation. I became a very tiny hostess to the fire department….. so sorry I was inconveniencing them. There were church members in my neighborhood that were all flocking to the middle of the street and I just started doing everything through an out of body experience. Too much pain to stay connected. In order to emote where people could understand me, I had to put my feelings away. My trauma reflexes do not all come from emotional abuse as a teen, but those reflexes were built on someone who’d already developed those reflexes independently.
I learn a lot about trauma using myself as a case study, because I’m looking back far enough into the past that I write like I’m someone else’s little girl. It’s a lot easier to parent yourself when you see yourself now as a different person…… because when you do all the work, you realize that you are indeed the same person and uncovering all your trauma allows you to reclaim the childlike parts of yourself that were stolen. I also use myself as a case study because even if I had an MD and a PhD, I would still never be as sure about someone else’s history as I am about my own. Patients lie, and about the stupidest shit because they think doctors are judgmental (they’re not, and you have no idea what you’re doing when you leave something out, capiche?). Doctors are, for the most part, judgmental like our last letter in Myers-Briggs is J, not judgmental like an asshole. A doctor is just as much of a geek as a computer programmer. Don’t hold back the tools that let them “if, then.” My dad was a pastor and my grandmother worked in a blood lab. I’ve been steeped in the languages of ministry and medicine since I was born, so it’s entirely possible for me to lose my shit and be completely fine in the same exact moment.
My computer had melted into my desk. My hangers had melted onto and into my clothes. When it all started, I’d been the only one home in my pajamas, getting ready for a district-wide church dance and even had a date.
I was wearing pantyhose and curlers with a Snoopy nightgown when I rang the doorbell next door. I was in preacher’s kid trauma victim mode, the first time I’d ever experienced trauma in its true sense. My house was burning down in front of my eyes and I was the only one of the four of us who knew it. My mother and sister were shopping. My father was delivering communion to shut-ins. It was all me.
All. Me.
I had just turned 12 three months earlier. My grandfather wouldn’t have known what to do in this situation, it was so unique. Age couldn’t line up to experience here because what happened was rare. The other thing is that I would not have felt as alone today. This was at least 10 years before I had a cell phone (because I’m that old, not “we didn’t buy one”) and every contact programmed into it so I wasn’t dependent on my memory for the numbers. In that kind of situation, you’re glad emergency services only have three numbers to remember.
If I’d had my current cell phone, I could have called my mother and sister at the shops. I could have called my dad while he was visiting the elderly. I could have called my grandparents because they only lived about a half hour away. My cell phone now is not handy to me because it can call out. It’s handy because without it, I wouldn’t know who to call.
(As an aside, aren’t cell phones a miracle? I have been impressed with being able to walk around and talk on the phone anywhere since our mobile was in a black bag.)
I am certain that I assured Doris nothing was wrong, it was no big deal, but I had to call the fire department. And would it be okay if I waited with you? I was doing all those things you do when you’re a preacher’s kid, assuring everyone around me that everything was under control.
So, in short, I learned two lessons. The first is that stuff doesn’t matter. The only thing I lost that were precious to me were photographs, and even those don’t matter anymore because any I have that are precious are also on Facebook or WordPress, so they’re backed up. There is no material thing I could lose that would hurt me, really. What hurt me was the second lesson.
Even when things are fucked six ways to Sunday, the reflex to make everyone else more comfortable is intact.
It’s something you don’t find until you lose everything else. You don’t find it until all the bullshit is stripped away and realize you’re pretending to be fine. The reality break from trauma makes it where you live and reflect. You have a binge-purge relationship with feelings because when they come up, you are too overwhelmed. It’s a continual cycle.
It was a brand new ball game when I realized that an anxious attachment is just an avoidant attachment style in disguise. I’ve just been avoiding me.
I have always been a font nerd. Just incredibly so. It started with newspapers, and not even with reading them myself. When I was a teenager, one of my dad’s contributions to our church was to make a big sign for it. Not like cardboard… like a huge logo built onto the side of a stone wall, or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it was made of, but I do remember the conversation before it was constructed.
He said that if we were going to advertise the church, the font didn’t need to be readable when you were standing in front of the church. It needed to be visible when you were driving down the road at 35 mile an hour.
And it’s not just one thing, but it is another story about my family. I have no proof of this, but my feeling about it is that my love of fonts started with my grandfather, Mayo.
Both of my grandfathers worked at Lone Star Steel for their entire careers. My mother’s father was a computer geek (this has no bearing on my current situation). I also think I may have inherited his autism, but I am not basing that on a diagnosis and it may be complete bullshit. I just observed him for years.
He, like me, ate about five things. (I’m a pro cook, but I don’t do it for myself. As a writer, I like consistency as not to interrupt my flow.)
He, like me, was the first in the family to adopt computers as a career…. except he was more high-level than I was. Not only did he do projects for NASA at Lone Star Steel, he would have been (I think, not 100% certain) the modern day equivalent of a systems administrator. The things that I recall that happened to my mother, aunts, and uncles back me up on this, because in retrospect it really seems like he was a neurodivergent struggling in a neurotypical world (which also has no bearing on my current situation, clearly). Not only did we have the connection of me being his first grandchild out of many, he could see me. For instance, literally no one around me knew how to tutor me in Algebra except him.
My father’s father was the public relations man for the whole company. He wrote like a journalist, he took pictures like a journalist. Probably neurodivergent and struggling as well, because genetics and past history in terms of observation.
I started with a tangent on my maternal grandfather before getting to the story because I am an interesting mix of both of them. I have my father’s father’s widow’s peak and my mother’s father’s nose. My dad attested to this in the video the other day…. “she’s got my face.” I assume he got it from somewhere. I don’t know whether me being genderqueer makes me notice it more, or whether it’s objectively true, but I find myself in them more than any other family member. Put together, I look an amazing amount like my dad’s littlest sister….. but inside, I’m both of them down to their careers. Not only do I use linux, I’ve got the skills of a PR man to make documentation and linux evangelism come alive on the page. It’s such a drag to read boring documentation and comments in the code, and every one of us knows it. So far, the best comment I’ve gotten when I’ve installed a package is “not guaranteed not to kill puppies and steal your women.” It was bleeding edge, and the reason it’s funny is that linux isn’t corporate and doesn’t have to conform to Microsoft bullshit. I would have a lot more fun working with developers on Launchpad than I would ever get out of Seattle……. because I could say things like “if you install this on a live server first, God have mercy on your soul.”
Where fonts come in is that coders are persnickety about the fonts used in the code editor (ironically enough, I prefer Microsoft Visual Studio Code because it’s every bit as good as Notepad++ and will run natively. Most coders use some version of the same font. It will look llike Verdana with a few notable exceptions. The first thing is that monospace type means exactly what it says. Every letter takes up the same amount of room. This is important when looking at coding because it’s so much easier on your eyes. In the newspaper business, they don’t do that because they’re not looking at the same thing. They don’t have to read the code between the content.
In an office suite and with coding, for me it’s Droid for everything- sans, serif, and mono. Not only do I just like them, it looks better for documents to always use a complete family of fonts rather than picking them out piecemeal. You can, it’s just easier on the eyes because then the spaces between the fonts look the same…… except for Droid Sans Mono. We have covered this.
If you’re an Android user, you’re used to the Droid font family because it’s the same one used on your phone. It makes it easier on your eyes due to looking at it all day.
Editor’s Note: “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face” from “My Fair Lady” is playing in my head right now as the designation below font familiy is font face.
The only thing that ever wins over Droid Sans is Helvetica…. that’s because it’s hard to find if you’re not an Apple user, because Apple actuallly bought it for distribution and Windows didn’t. They made up their own knockoff called “Arial,” and if they’d followed Steve’s advice to focus on design, they would have bought it, too, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. In case you didn’t think Helvetica is worth serious money, there’s a whole ass documentary by the same name. Helvetica is everywhere you look. Everywhere. I once bought a copy of Helvetica at Goodwill and a whole ass Mac came with it. Buying a Mac at Goodwill was on purpose. The first is that it would be old as shit. More like a glorified typewriter. The second is that it didn’t even have a wireless card in it, so I wouldn’t be tempted at Starbucks.
When I go to Starbucks, I’m there to play for keeps. I am going to get something out of this writing session if it’s the last thing I do. “Getting something out of a writing session” is relative. Sometimes it’s that I can judge whether my writing is better or worse. Sometimes I realize that even if it’s six pages of bullshit and four wide margins, I still worked out. Writing is a muscle, and you’re strengthening your core.
I am just saying both my grandfathers have taught me a lot about what it takes to be a computer geek and a writer who focuses on art. A lot about what it takes to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world…. particularly with my father’s father, I feel like a resurrection now that he’s dead. I am certain my father would say that, too, because he’s observed us together his whole life. I, just like him, have leapt in my bedroom to escape all the peopling. Everyone else just worked around us. Now that I’m older and I’m looking at his life in retrospect, the things that seemed weird about him when I was a kid are the exact same things that are making me weird now.
I am dying laughing thinking about how tears will roll down his face at that line. How tears would have rolled down my mother’s, aunts,and uncles’ face as well because I have just revealed the fact that I have both their dad’s numbers because I are them.
“All lesbians have this straight guy side to them…….” -me
Through my father’s father, I know that I have found both of my beloveds in this life, and they are to me. Invaluable and precious just like my grandmother was.
So, when I think about my personality, I am my dad on the inside and my mom on the outside in my behavior and actions. I think like a man, I look like a woman. This isn’t problematic to me because I’ve solved the mystery because now I have a word like nonbinary, where that disconnect doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I named it and claimed it, sister.
Although I know my first and ony thought at the first sign of breast cancer means rip them both off immediately, because what I saw when I saw Tig Notaro is that it didn’t make her look any less feminine than she did before and my shirts would hang right.
I say this not to say that I’d have top surgery on purpose because I feel I was born in the wrong body. I just know I won’t struggle with body issues afterwards because you cannot even guess how little it would bother me to look male to some people. My mind is big enough to accept that I contain multitudes and no answer is easy…. why most people think I’m the most intense personality they’ve ever met because when they tell me they have a problem, I say, “do you want some advice, or did you just want to vent?” If they say that they’d like advice, I will go Griffin from MiBIII on their asses. I can “if, then” my way through an emotional situation like a doctor, and I do that because of my dad. He left the ministry to pursue a career in medicine and my stepmother is a rheumatologist. They got married and we lived together when I was young enough to pick up their patois quickly and easily. I get lost in a psychological H&P.
So, to get back to what I was saying about fonts, I know what to use and when because I have all the use case scenarios where you have to make readability a priority, and that comes from my dad, too. He preached about it. He said, “when Kennedy was assasinated, it said, ‘Kennedy Shot!’ in about 80pt font. When Jessica (llittlle girl that got trapped in a well) got rescued, the newspaper said, ‘Jessica Safe!’ in about 80pt font.” I don’t remember the sermon verbatim, but it centered on the ways in which bad and good news is delivered. Perhaps it was that you can only control what you broadcast, not what you take in.
When broadcasting your good news, it helps to make readability a priority.
It’s really difficult for me to find a time when I’ve felt out of place, and not because I’m so confident I never do. It’s the opposite. It’s combing through every day of my life to figure out if I can remember a specific story about this, because feeling out of place is almost a continual state of being. I write with confidence and self-assuredness because I am not dealing with social anxiety while I type. You are getting how I sound when I’m alone… not when I’m trying to balance all the energetic forces in a room.
In public, I tend to go out with one person or perhaps meet up with two or three friends at a time. I do not like to go to parties very much, because I find that I only have one mood that likes to party and I don’t know how to get there. I have just been at a party and sometimes enjoyed myself without knowing what I did to deserve the favor. I like overhearing conversations more than I like participating in them. People are interesting to me, and if I don’t know them at all and just overhear them, it’s impossible to identify them on this web site. You won’t meet them, because I don’t even know who they are.
So, to the people at Starbucks and the zoo, I’m listening (trying to bring you Niles and Frasier Crane realness here). I honestly believe that I’ve become a blogger to learn to handle my shit because walking around and hearing everyone else and having my mirror neurons go off makes me feel tired and low-energy. I hurt for what I see around me, particularly homelessness. If I ever have cash, I won’t by the time I get home. That’s because I carry cash a quarter to never and when I do it’s only two or three dollars at a time. I will give it to anyone who asks, because since I don’t carry cash, I don’t often have the chance to give poor people money at all.
If I saw someone buying beer or cigarettes with it, more power to them. I don’t care. The gift was not in seeing what they did with it. The gift was seeing that I may have issues, but being kind is not one of them. But I also notice how long it’s been since they’ve had a shower and I take all that on, too. I empathize with Jacob who wrestled with God. Being empathetic doesn’t incapacitate me, but the struggle constantly disfigures my hip. My blog is a record of the scars.
One of the reasons I wish I’d gone to medical school is that balancing the energetic forces in a room and having your mirror neurons go off at everyone’s pain is the plight of the INFJ. I wouldn’t have gotten in to medical school because sciences and maths aren’t my gift, but I wish I had gone to gain clinical separation. It doesn’t stop an INFJ from doing these things, it just turns the volume down to a point we can take care of ourselves. Our nature says “give it all away.” I am learning to do it on my own just through the nature of becoming stronger in myself. I’ve felt so out of place not being the person to take everything on, and emotional strength is helping me create and maintain boundaries.
Those boundaries are more important to me now than they used to be, because what I’ve realized is that especially growing up queer in Texas I developed a habit of trying to be perfect in all things, do all things for others and not myself, so that people would overlook my deficiency……. because society and culture tells me that there is one. I have tried to be the queer version of the acceptable minority, and now my current favorite documentary is “I Am Not Your Negro.”
I am alive today because of James Baldwin. “Go Tell it on the Mountain” was assigned by my ninth grade English teacher and she had a pretty good idea what was up. I cannot imagine that a black woman teaching in Texas wouldn’t know what she was doing placing James Baldwin in the hands of high school students studying the performing arts. Like no one would pick up on the fact that she was surreptitiously trying to give us a hero without saying anything………….
In education, my experience is that it takes a black soul to reach out to a gay one. Not one of my white teachers ever gave me a gay author except one, and she wasn’t intelligent enough to realize Celie was queer as a three dollar bill (and couldn’t have said it that way even if she did). Because friends totally do that stuff with each other, right? It’s all normal. Totally and completely normal platonic behavior. The difference in tone at the two schools was stunning and had everyhing to do with context. It was like being taught about antiracism from Kendi and Coates, then having to live with Karen’s commentary on what she thinks they meant. Karen hasn’t had to deal with any of the shit on the list.
Black people dealing with internalized racism have a better sense of what internalized homophobia does to a person, and it shows. Sure, lots of black people spew hate at me, too, but it’s not personal. It’s been programmed into them by their churches and most don’t think they’re doing great harm because they think they’re helping me by telling me I’m going to hell.
But I could find that in the white church as well.
Evangelicals all suck, because the opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty (picked that up from Anne Lamott). For the people who aren’t evangelicals, we find common ground easily and often. It helps me find my place in the world to an enormous degree.
I am never trying to be egotistical, just trying to stop apologizing for my existence. I have the rights to thoughts and emotions. Freedom of speech, but not freedom from consequences.
When I sound egotistical on my web site, it does not mean that I am egotistical. The difference is that in person, I am only one piece of the conversation. I do not have a lock on anything except my memory of a situation. Ego doesn’t come into it except when I’m writing about the past. First, I am cognizant that this is only my perception of a situation, and others’ perceptions are just as valid. Second, it’s not your name in the author slot. It’s not my story because I’m all that, it’s my story because you didn’t write it.
I am also projecting confidence because I am aware that I am in front of an international audience, and people who are creating blowback are taking it personally a hundred percent of the time, often castigating me over a sentence that could be construed to have been about them because it reads universal, but it isn’t. Their egos are so involved it doesn’t matter what I say. I do not tolerate their foolishness because my opinion is just as valid as theirs, and I know my own intent. I also know when I’m wrong and I just sit there and take my lumps.
Those conversations generally center on “I AM SO FUCKING ANGRY AT YOU FOR SAYING SOMETHING TRUE IN A WAY I DIDN’T LIKE.” Not once has anyone come up to me and said, “now that I know the whole story, I really acted like an asshole and I’m sorry.” No, they show up on my doorstep full of spit and vinegar and I talk them down off the ceiling if I actually care about them. My tolerance is less these days because it doesn’t help me to have friends that care what I say here.
If I am talking about a univeral concept between abused kids, for instance, someone who is not abused will see it and turn the meaning inside out and backwards and now I’m a fucking terrible person for something I never said. That’s happened quite a lot, and made me feel out of place.
I’m going to close with a Kristina Mahr poem, because it encapsulates everything I’m trying to say to everyone who pops up here….. because generally when people are angry, it’s because I’ve said something that called them out for hurting me.
Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
If your love were taken from me Every color would be black and white It would be as flat as the world before Columbus That’s the day that I lose half my sight
Suzanne Vega
If the Internet didn’t exist, life as I know it would be very different. I still would have gone to Oregon, but I wouldn’t have married Dana. Dana moved to Oregon for an Internet relationship, so without it, I wouldn’t have met her or her former partner (said Internet relationship is a mensch). I went to Oregon for what I thought was family, but I stayed because I made my own. I really did like it more than Texas, and the only reason I say that is even in 1997, no one cared if two women were holding hands if they walked down the street. I walked into all kinds of things (not just a door) seeing cute girls interact. I wasn’t trying to pick anyone up- I just noticed sweet female couples all around me and thought, “I want that.” I might have gone to DC, I might not. This is because Kathleen worked for Global Information Systems. I don’t know what she would do had the internet not been invented, but it wasn’t as prevalent then as it is now, so perhaps we would have still gone to DC because databases don’t need internet connections to function. We could do everything old school- backing up to tape drives and floppy disks if we needed them.
No e-mail necessary.
I wouldn’t have joined AOL chat rooms or Internet Relay Chat, so I wouldn’t have been able to widen my network to the extent that I have now. There are some people I’ve known for 30 years and have never seen their faces in real life. When you’ve got as many complications as I do, and the personality type that I have, being friends online fits better. I can cast a bigger net for people like me. I express my thoughts clearer when I’m writing, but it takes out tone of voice and everything that goes with it. There is also no way to redirect after a sentence or two, also problematic. I type 90 words a minute. You cannot imagine how far down the wrong road I can go before someone calls me on it.
I also would have gotten worse grades in college. If I wasn’t doing so hot, I’d go up to the professor and ask if they needed a web site. Cher Horowitz had nothing on me. It was a jumping off point to start negotiations. I worked my way to an A one blink tag at a time. (That was actually a joke. I made fun of it all the time. When the blink tag was deprecated, it was like working for a restaurant. Web developers were popping champagne while Geocities went apeshit. It was a very good day when the customer realized they were wrong.)
I wouldn’t have gotten a job in IT when I was 19. I started as an Academic Support Assistant in the main computer lab, then eventually got two of my own at different times. The first was the one in the Graduate School of Social Work, where I met Brene Brown and still kid her that the hottest ticket in Houston is being invited to her house to watch her watch “Ted Lasso.”
I wouldn’t have learned that Brene had really done well for herself unless she’d been on television after writing successful books. If I close my eyes, I can literally see her next to Johnny Carson. I think those two would have had a riot together, and I’m sorry it didn’t happen. I do think that Brene would have been successful, I just don’t think I would necessarily know who she was because my introduction was YouTube. It’s not her books that made her famous. It’s the Internet.
The second computer lab I supervised wasn’t for the kids. It was for the professor. I was the only support staff for the entire college when it came to WebCT (distance education software bought by Blackboard), because there weren’t that many professors interested in using it, frankly. It was hard to get buy-in at first. The smartest ones saw that this is where we’re going now. I need to learn this before I have to rely on it. It reminds me of a Netflix president, though I don’t remember their name. “If we didn’t know streaming was coming, we would have called it “DVDs by Mail.”
The worst said “I’m too old for this shit” and tried to pass their course management onto me, because they were far too Important to do it themselves. Male professors treated me like “the help” a good bit of the time. Men are not programmed to see women in IT. I never fit their narrative. What they didn’t know that I did was that I was more man than they’d ever be and more woman than they’d ever get.
Now that I’m 46 I still think that, but I have empathy for not wanting to learn new software now. I have reached saturation, and did a long time ago. What is this “Instagram” you speak of? Seriously, though. I don’t use it. I accepted a Threads invite right away because now I’m using social media to introduce myself to readers (and you, for that matter. The comments section is just as important what I say.). I have to go back and learn what I’ve missed, because you’ve never seen a more “deer in headlights” look when I think about the fact that I haven’t noticed anything since SnapChat.
I started using linux when I started being a web developer, because at the time, Apache was vastly superior to IIS, the Windows version of a web server. In fact, that was about the time I learned how to install WordPress on my own server, which I used as production before I transferred everything to go live. Still a database for content management, which was a game changer in terms of managing web pages. The difference is that back then you also had to know webdev because you had to get a hosting company, install and maintain it yourself, and code all the things that didn’t come with the theme.
I did all of that for my first blog, “Clever Title Goes Here,” but for my second, I decided I was a writer. I don’t have my own hosting company anymore, but I’m thinking about it because I could do so much more with it. My main problem is that in the free tier of WordPress, I don’t have access to what’s called a head tag. That’s where you put all the things you need for web analytics, because if you don’t, WordPress offers a pay-by-month solution for a free product. I understand that it’s the labor dollars to pay the engineers for updates to the plugin, but it’s not necessary for someone who already knows this stuff.
And finally, I wouldn’t have met Supergrover. I’d have been an arrested teenager the rest of my life. I’m angry af at her right now, because her actions are making her look like a jackass and she won’t listen to that. She ramps up my anxiety and beats me up emotionally when I tell her that. It’s not personal. Emotions are for weak people. It’s the only reason she’s even got a shot at redemption, that it’s not personal. She’s a hurt little girl with third degree burns all over her body and she doesn’t realize she’s spreading the fire to me. I cannot say for sure, but either she does this with everyone, or she does it with me because she’s pleases everyone else and I’m the only dog she has to kick. It is generally one of those extremes, and in abused kids it rarely varies. She’s not a narcissist. She’s protecting everything she has left. She doesn’t emote because she can’t access emotions all the time.
It makes her invulnerable and impervious, the things she does in her job that make her piss excellence are killing her when it comes to strength coming to her through her vulnerability instead.
I finally just cut through the silence and told her that her actions made her look like a jackass because she wasn’t giving me the tools to love her or move on. Either way, I’m screwed. She doesn’t get that she made me responsible, and I hear Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in my head when I say that word, because he’s about to get the houseguests to the airport not knowing if he has tickets for everyone or not. He calls Jack Donovan and tells him he’s going to take them through, and to get his shit together before he gets there. “I am responsible…….” It’s disturbing to think I’ve heard Ben Affleck in my head since 2012, but it is what it is.
As an aside, I love Ben Affleck’s films so much. Argo was great. It won best picture and should have. But Air has the same vibe; it’s set in the same time period, so it’s the same color palate, etc. It is amazing, and I want more from him. Doesn’t he also have a friend that acts or something? Seem to remember something about it in the news. 😉
We could have watched both movies together and bonded in 15 minutes, but we didn’t. Just another cultural reference of mine she never picked up, because intel and science fiction are my bag, not hers. She didn’t even know what I was talking about when I said that Wakanda had a Tolkien case officer. 😉
Her face would light up at the music in Argo because she’s never seen me when I listen to it. Never seen me excitedly say, “OOH! OOH! Listen to this! The horns are about to enter the chat.” I think she would also enjoy my reaction to the bassoon solo in my other favorite movie, which I’m betting only Jack Lucas will know because even I thought it was an English Horn at first. But he’d know it was a bassoon even if I woke him up in the middle of the night. For the rest of you, there’s a correlation between Air and the movie I mean. But I’m not going to tell you what it is because I want to know if Jack knows what I mean first. 😉 He absolutely will.
She doesn’t think about me at all, but not because she’s trying to be an asshole. She just dicks me around because she doesn’t get back to me when she does have time unless I get angry enough at having my needs ignored that I don’t walk on eggshells around her. Walking on eggshells has been my only choice in this matter, and I’m just not going to do it anymore.She took away my right to write whatever I wanted and now constantly ramps up my anxiety that all I’m good for is getting her fired.
She really didn’t have the right to shut down for eight years, but I let her. It’s because I’m emotionally intelligent enough to know why she’s an avoidant attachment style, and she’s not emotionally intelligent enough to deal with it, nor my anxious attachment style on top of it. An anxious attachment style is not bad, per se. It’s bad when people talk to you and you don’t believe them, worrying yourself to death, anyway. This is what I’ve done because she keeps her trap shut and doesn’t give me anything to calm me down. I’ll give you a for-instance. If I say to Zac, “hey, you seem distant. Did I do something wrong?,” he’ll say he’s been slammed and he’s sorry. Now, I can choose to believe that he’s hiding something or not. If I spiral out, that’s on me. He told me what he thinks, and I’m undermining him by not believing what he says.
But you can’t do that with an avoidant attachment style because if they’re being avoidant, they won’t even give you words like, “no, we’re okay. I’ve just been slammed.” For an avoidant personallity if they say them, it could be the truth or it could be a lie. You do not know because their words and actions do not match…. and they’ll leave you in that anxiety til Jesus comes or you die mad about it.
They’re reassuring you while being their avoidant selves at the same time, talking around nothing. It’s the same way that when people meet in the grocery store and say they want to get together. Good luck. God bless.
In short, without the Internet, I don’t have a life. I love her in color, but when she pulls back, I fall into a world before Columbus. I’m not in love with her, it’s just that my life becomes all gray area, all the time. It’s too much pressure and she knows it.
And the more I think about it, that might be a good thing. The jury is still out, and “the hardest part of being a lawyer is convincing 12 K-Mart clerks you’re right.” -John Grisham
I am not picking something I don’t know anything about, but if I start now, I might learn some of the finer points by the time I die. I will never know them all. There is a crossover, and I’m starting to think that I’m more autistic than ADHD. Stopping the Adderrall only convinces me some of the time. I mean, I can list the symptoms I have and they’re all text book……. but they’re also signs of being autistic and trauma reflexes. Even if I went to a doctor, I think my issues are so complex that they would think what I do…. it’s not a case of just one thing. Everything in medicine starts with one diagnosis. Just one.
“It depends.”
That’s why med students are asked for diagnosis, secondary diagnoses, and protocols.
Experts in medicine are not counted by how many As they got in medical school, though if they fuck up, that’s definitely an indication. No, being a superb doctor depends only on what you’ve seen and what you haven’t.
You’ve seen it if you’ve ever watched “House” (it’s not lupus). Those kids go through every dependency like they’re on a bender searching for House’s opioids. They don’t tell you this on the show, but every illness they’re talking about is what’s called a “fascinoma,” probably Latin for “first case” or something. I’m too lazy to look it up, but that’s what it means for lay people, anyway. In law, it’s “prima facie” (pronounced “fa-chee.”). My three fields have dependencies in common. You have no idea how much they matter in Ubuntu.
In all of these things, particularly Ubuntu and medicine, the consequences for being wrong are drastic and cause gastrointestinal distress.
Here’s why I’m specifically mentioning Ubuntu. Most linux nerds have autism. Most nerds, for that matter. You don’t have to be neurodivergent to be a nerd, but neurotypicals, you should know not to intrude on a safe space. You do it all the fucking time by thinking you’re going to be cool and go to ComicCon, but when you get there you’re somehow put off by the other patrons. If you can’t learn anything about the Autism spectrum by observing a Star Trek convention, you’re not paying attention. Neurotypicals seem to live by the slogan “walk softly and carry a big stick.” That’s because you’re perfectly lovely until we do something you don’t understand, and then you get judgmental and sometimes angrily so.
Supergrover definitely didn’t have empathy for it, but at the same time, she didn’t know enough about me to really take it in, because she knows from autism. And she didn’t see any neurodivergence in me not because she wouldn’t, but because she couldn’t. I’m not blaming her, because it would have been totally different if I’d been hanging out at her house for the last eight years. If she’d actually seen me in my day in, day out appearance and mannerisms, she would have had me pegged by the way I walk. Also, I’m not sure that it would occur to her how much crossover there is between me and some of the other people she interacts with on a daily basis. She didn’t get it and not because she didn’t want to. It was impossible to do all that online.
“The medium is the message.” -Marshall McLuhan
I think after a while, we just got so used to our rhythm that meeting up seemed weird, plus I could have more of her if I was only in her DMs because I was the only one traveling with her consistently. I am not sure that anyone e-mails her more than me (by quite a large margin…. and if that’s not true, what I lack in frequency, I make up for in volume.
I wonder if she ever knew I was writing letters to her like a WWII-era high school sweetheart. I didn’t even realize that until today. News from the home front, essentially. I wanted to be one of the pictures taped up in the cockpit, but I never wanted to be the only one unless that was a possibility. Next to her son or something. I don’t know.. Just not left in a box in Virginia.
I know by now that I am every bit the photo I say I am, and here’s how I know that.
She rips me off all the time. We’ve been writing to each other for 10 years. I absolutely know that things I’ve said have entered her lexicon, and she quotes me almost every day. I know they weren’t all bad lines, and hers weren’t either. I think I’ve said “painting my feelings as fact” 50 times since she said it. She says “pack up your toys and go home” now. There are word associations with me by the thousands. This is why I believe that I am her Impossible Girl, woven into her from the inside out. I haven’t changed her because we interact. I have changed her because now our brains are inextricably interrelated because reading someone’s most important thoughts makes them last a lifetime. She has two legacies now…… the one that’s big and impressive, and the one that fucking matters. We’ve been writing to each other for 10 years. I absolutely know that things I’ve said have entered her lexicon, and she quotes me almost every day. I know they weren’t all bad lines, and hers weren’t either. I think I’ve said “painting my feelings as fact” 50 times since she said it. She says “pack up your toys and go home” now. T This is why I believe that I am her Impossible Girl, woven into her from the inside out. I haven’t changed her because we interact. I have changed her because now our brains are inextricably interrelated because reading someone’s most intimate thoughts is different than having a conversation.
Reading things makes you retain information longer than conversation.
It’s just that she’s so busy she cannot retain all of it. I’ve made it impossible. “LORDAMERCY” is a direct quote. 😛 I wish she would just not read it until she had time rather than responding immediately, because writing is what I do, not her. Of course I’m going to have more output than her if I’m workshopping an idea. During one of our big fights about it, I called her out on the carpet and she didn’t respond at all to it. “I told you to create a folder in Outlook and a filter so that my e-mails weren’t coming directly to your inbox, but going into that folder so you weren’t getting notifications for them. It was your choice not to do it. I didn’t expect you to be johnny on the spot, but you were.” That’s because she’s a fixer/pleaser always trying to please me as well.
Interestingly enough, this did not start happening until after I was a total idiot, so I’m wondering if she’s reacting to me like she reacts to her husband now. That nothing is ever good enough for me because she’s trying to please me and doesn’t see that I don’t need it. That gives me more empathy than anger, enough to bring me to tears because if I’d noticed what she was doing, I could have said, “my beautiful girl……. stop. You’re perfect.” And in fact I did try to say that a million different ways, but it didn’t take.
She is so pure- concentrated hope, love, sweetness, and light. She will also eat your face off.
Only my mother knows the whole story, and she didn’t hear it until long after she died. I comforted her and told her she could go, because I was safe. That she never had to worry about me again, both because she couldn’t and didn’t have to anymore. All the mother-love I have in me transferred to her and not as a replacement. Because she has kids. She’s already a mom. She got offended when I said she had that vibe, like it was some sort of joke. Even if I had been joking, I would have meant “I think of you as that vibe because it’s the one I need most desperately.” But it’s a mix. I kidded her later about our past and she destroyed me, not a sick burn that I thought was funny, either.
I told her that, too. Then she got even more defensive. I realize that I dropped an absolute bomb on her, but it’s never about me. Ever. I don’t have needs. I just said something to piss her off. It’s only my behavior, not what triggered it.
But my mother is the only one who knows exactly who I’m dressing down when I do it and she would be horrified. Absolutely horrified. That’s because my mother put a lot of stock into titles. But the rest of the world sees her as her title. In my head, she’s six. Our inner children talk to each other in adults’ voices. (What could possibly go wrong? Editor’s Note: A LOT). I am not sure that she’s taken in that I’m 14 when I talk to her…. and I’m not 14 with anyone else, because I don’t trust anyone else that much. She got in under the wire and disarmed the bomb. You only think my anger management is bad now. She metaphysically hugged and kissed me back together…. but I’m still a work in progmess. I have just begun the process to complete the transition.
Transitioning is a big word in my community. I hope I have a quarter of resurrection in me that my friend Evan has. God, he’s the most beautiful trans boy I know, and a redhead like Zac. Trans people have a lot of crucifixion moments. Lots of Sanhedrins out there, lots of Pilates…… but unlike Pilate, they were never chosen by anyone to have input.
I don’t have contempt for the Sanhedrin, because they were always going to be assholes. I have contempt for people who have the ability to not be an asshole and DON’T. Pilate could have saved all this from happening…. crucifying someone for their words and not their actions, a minority in culture because the Jews were ruled by the Romans. Jesus has more in common with Sandra Bland than he has with Joel Osteen, and please go right up and tell him to his face…. also don’t be an asshole. Put that shit on YouTube and send me a link. 😉
I would give up my life’s savings for that asshole to get a clue. He is a white supremacy Jesus apologist with one of the biggest platforms in the world.
He could overhaul American Christianity………….. but he doesn’t.
What all of this has to do with ADHD and Autism is that I’ve been rambling for 30 minutes without stopping regarding things that excite me because I can. I cannot do this in conversation witih anyone else, and I have stopped trying. No one puts up with it
Even when I can’t help it.
So I have to learn it on my own.
I just want you guys to know that I’m crying right now. Writing these entries take a lot out of me, a tempest in a teacup. Sorry for the cut and paste mess.I left it in because it proved my point.
Pretending it is yesterday is important because there is no tomorrow. There is only today and making it through. Every year I think it’s going to be different, but it’s not. The anniversary of my mother’s death hits me like a freight train. I don’t forget my mother is dead anymore. I don’t have the three second heartbreak every morning. It doesn’t stop body memory from throwing me for a loop, though.
I think that’s because I didn’t cry at her funeral. I worked it.
I didn’t fall apart until after I’d come back to DC, because I don’t do public grief. Being in show mode cost me, but it was less expensive than what I would have felt if I’d wept openly. No one would have made fun of me or anything like that. Me not emoting isn’t based on other people. It’s based on how I feel about being vulnerable, because my personality seems to believe that empathy only flows one direction at church. I’ve never been a member of a church in my life. Not really. I’ve never turned off that preacher’s kid mentality where it’s not my turn to grieve, it’s the congregation’s. So, at church (regardless of denomination because I haven’t been UMC since 17) I am always in show mode.
After my mother died, I lasted a few weeks at church. I eventually went back, then noped out a second time. I won’t go back unless I’m a paid ringer in a choir, because I can catch sermons on YouTube (or preach them myself by putting manuscripts here). I can find a lot of things at church, but God is not it. Doesn’t make me less spiritual, or make my belief in Jesus’ message less pure. It’s that church, for so long, has only meant “work” to me. Thus, getting paid to be a section leader instead of being an actual parishioner. I’m great at church as a choir member or lay preacher. I’m am absolute shit at sitting there and just taking it all in. Just being a member does nothing for me, because I’m a preacher’s kid. I can’t turn it off. I am not there to serve. I am there to lead, because that’s what i know to do. I got an F in church member. Periodt. Pastoral care is for other people, those that can look at a church without seeing the sausage being made. That tape starts running the first Sunday I attend, because I’ll overhear someone on the vestry or whatever at coffee hour. I can case the joint in 15 minutes and tell you whether the church is healthy or not, because you don’t have to have a degree to know that. You have to have thousands and thousands of hours of observation.
I have them.
My dad said something to me after he left the church that’s always stuck with me, and why National Cathedral is my church now (via YouTube) and why it’s pretty much the only place I want to audition. He said that after he left the church, he just wanted to be anonymous. We ended up at St. Martin’s because they had like, I don’t know, 10,000 members or something? I don’t know what it is, but it’s a lot. Everyone from me to James Baker and George Bush (who I was not that excited to meet……….. as a president. Meeting the former director of CIA was amazing.) Speaking of which, that reminds me of something Zac said. Just replace “church” with “government.”
When I walk into a church, it feels like when Zac says, “I’m a middle aged white man who works for the government. I’m here to help.”
I fall over laughing because it’s funny, AND I’m 10 years older than him and finding out HE’s middle aged was quite a trip. but the point stands. I feel like that on the first Sunday I visit every church. It was so freeing when I stopped doing that.
So, to anyone who thinks I’m an idiot for preaching about Jesus while also not going to church, you and me? We are not the same. You love it because you don’t feel the pull between “this is amazing” and “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” I will never fit into a congregation until I can submit and give up an authority I don’t have. That authority was the nature/nurture that raised me, so I’m never going to get there, never ever in my five dollar life, so I made change.
Preacher’s kids come in two flavors. “This is everything I want out of life” and “fuck this shit.” The latter is for second children, and gets stronger the more kids you have. i think the pull to follow in your parents’ footsteps is based on how old your younger siblings are in comparison, because what I’ve noticed is that the longer you spend as the only support staff, the more you feel bound to it. If you don’t become a minister, you’ll marry one because it’s what you know. Do not ever in your five dollar life think I’m bullshitting you about having been support staff, because even if you’re a “fuck this” preacher’s kid, your congregation will still see you as an employee. They can’t help it. The preacher’s kids are divine somehow, way better than their kids.
Having known two of them my whole life, I’m going to go with “that’s a no from me, dawg.” Sending your kids to the preacher’s house because you think we’ll rub off on them is valid………. but what you see is what you get. You just weren’t looking for truth. You were looking at me through the filter of my dad’s platform. I promise that if I’d been a pastor, I would have been every bit as good as he was, because you learn everything by osmosis and then you get a degree you don’t need. Ministry could come through work experience alone. That’s because you’ll learn a shit ton of new things, but old habits die hard. What was modeled is how you’ll be.
The reason I would have been great and not just good is that my father’s forte was going into churches that had been fractured and making them whole, and you can see it clear as day. I am so glad that I did not grow up with a toxic mess of a pastor………. the one who broke the church before him, which has absolutely no bearing at all on my 20s and 30s. Eyeroll (seriously. Biggest one on record).
Pastors, let me scare you a little bit because you need to be aware. If you have the type child that can case the joint like I am, we can tell what kind of pastor you are. If you are a toxic mess, we know it. You cannot hide it. Handle your shit and get help. Do you think we know this because we’re so smart? Fuck, no. It’s because when you’re a train wreck, our behavior makes us political pawns. I know that and I never did anything that as out of the realm of normal teenage girl behavior and I was still in this shit if the finance committee decided to revolt.
They’re mad at you, but they don’t get mad at you. They treat us completely differently as if we can’t read them blind. Their energy has changed. Just because my dad wasn’t toxic doesn’t mean he didn’t walk into a wall of bullshit first.
My mom walked me through that with all the strength she had, so when she died, church didn’t look the same. I didn’t realize how much association there was in it. That when my mother left the church building, God left with her.
I find God through music. Bach is like praying twice. If I have a God moment in church, it’s going to reside in a chord. The ultimate God moment for me is Easter morning at a church like National Cathedral, where they go all out with pipe organ, brass quintet, and full choir. Welcome to my definition of the trinity. Trumpet players act like they’re God, so it’s a shorter leap than you think. 😉
Maybe I’ll use great works in my plans for tomorrow. Listening to music like that heals grief, the only thing I really need.
To close, here is the best Mommy and me moment I own, made for me by my father’s father:
I have talked about the unconventional arrangement accidentally made between me and a friend, that we are bound out of loyalty and not romance. That at first, it was impossible for me to remain cool when she was so hot (and boy does that not have anything to do with her looks). She’s married, I’m as settled as I want to be. But just because it’s not romantic doesn’t mean there aren’t a huge set of problems between two people some days.
That relationship led me to thinking about politics, when one of my friends was talking about how the Republicans are the dad.
Republicans are the dad.
Republicans are the dad.
It has become a toxic relationship not because Republicans are the dad, but because they see being kind as soft……………..
They’re treating all Democrats like they treat women.
Toxic masculinity has reared it’s ugly head. I don’t know that people really grasp what happened on 1/6 in terms of intelligence. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all saw us shit ourselves on international tellevision.
Get your shit together, Congress.
Toxic men and vegan lesbians are going to have to put away their egos for a second and work together. I think they’re the ones with the biggest egos in the room here, let’s face it.
It is not lost on me that vegan lesbians are a very effective weapon against toxic masculinity- because we aren’t dependent on men for sex. We see right through what you’re doing (before you do) because we had to learn we didn’t want it when we were nine…. and not even the creepy touches. Touching at all. Thinking you’re entitled to hugs and kisses from me.Thinking that my wife nd I exist for your pleasure. I assure you we exist for ours. If that makes you feel bad, it must be so hard to be you. I have empathy for a man. Men do get close to me. Obviously. That being said, as a collective you’re so fucked up I don’t think you could find a clue with both hands and a flashlight.
My favorite fact in life is that the picturesque farm where Langley is built was owned by a lesbian couple before they bought it. So, to me that just says that we have the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agency and lesbians sold them their whole look. You are welcome. Thanks for eventually hiring us. That was rude. I’m sorry. You have made up for it many times with the way you’ve embraced trans people, women in particular. But even though I was a bitch to you, it leads to my next point. Please forgive me, I was on a roll…………. and I know you guys hate when I do that. 😉
It’s not your Alexa that’s dangerous. It’s your microwave. Don’t tell them I told you Pop Secret information. They’ll put me over the stove in a Jiffy.
I think it’s hilarious that men are so bitter that we’re so angry, because what is it in society we could possibly dislike? I mean, we got our own credit cards in the 70s. Straight women will take your crap because they want you and also you have in large part done jack shit to make women less financially dependent on you when it comes to needing money and love. It seems like we have to choose between those two things quite a lot when we need groceries.
It matters when we’re pregnant and vulnerable and we have to nickel and dime you for everything because you aren’t doing the planning for the household and think everything costs a fortune and absolutely go apeshit even when numbers don’t lie. You’ll go off like a bomb and if we’re lucky, we’ll get the money after you’ve come back to reality. If we’re strong enough, we’ll beat your ass (verbally and physically). Not all of us fight the same way, but we’re all furious. We will absolutely go balls to the wall with you and steal your wives while we’re at it (KIDDING, Jesus. Calm it down.).
Traditional marriage is killing this country, because the only people that ever talk about it are the people who are still trying to hold up a system that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. They hate queers and all the other expletives. In fact, their view of women informs their view of queer men. Queer men are soft. Democrats are soft. Transitive properties that all add up to a disorienting set of problems because they’re tangled as tight as that necklace you left in your underwear drawer when you were nine. There’s no clear path, and we’re trying. It would be helpful to be able to cull laws like old e-mail. To have one set of people working to maintain this system while another tries to create something better. I don’t know what that looks like in total, but I don’t mean switching from capitalism to communism. I want a system more like Canada, which is a capitalist society with a free market that also has a better safety net than we do because they aren’t nickel and diming vulnerable people who have to choose between love and money.
They don’t have it all figured out yet, either.
But they’re in mediation and we’ve literally got guns on the table.
Republicans are trying to be the husband that slaps his wife around. The party of no. Led by a naked, soulless, incompetent, greedy imbecile that those people think is an Emperor.
Democrats cannot stop violence by being passive all the time because we’re getting asses handed to us on most things. That’s because we don’t want to respond with violence and peace doesn’t work. It’s a gridlock.
We need a restraining order, because there comes a time in every abused person’s life when they’re just done. That’s where I am now. Just done. It’s not that I won’t vote and volunteer and all that stuff. It’s that I have burnout because I’m not moving the needle, and really no one is on a grand scale. Realistically, how long do you think it will take white supremacy to fade if we start working on right now? My guess is at least a century or perhaps two. I do not mean working on it legislatively. Legislatively does a quarter of nothing for me. That’s because Congress reflects culture, it doesn’t create it. If there is no culture for something irregular, we will not legislate it into being.
We are stuck in this, from the global to the personal. This is just unsustainable, and I am shocked at how many people think it is.
Because all of us, women and minorities, have to ask daddy for everything.
In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?
The title is a music reference, because when you’re the lead trumpet player, depending on where you live it’s called “first chair” or “first desk.” Everyone has a chair, and they’re ranked. Yes, I have been as low as 7th chair. I wish I’d done better on that audition. But I was 7th in the city of Houston. Beat that with stick.
I was also 13 years old.
I am not a prodigy. I make a lot of mistakes. I’ve splatted wrong notes on the back walls of MOST Houston auditoriums, but a time I didn’t and it went really well, I was on a television show called “Black Voices.” I was a soloist during Summer Jazz Workshop. Didn’t make it less funny when I was on camera. I am just picturing all my black friends falling over with laughter right now. “You were on what now?” My favorite was the logo over my big ass glasses.
Another time it went really well was when I was in one of the jazz bands (I was in Jazz II. I told you I wasn’t a prodigy. But again, different playing field. You know who else was in Jazz II? Robert Glasper from “The Robert Glasper Experiment.” and Jon Durbin from “The Suffers.” If I’d stuck with it, maybe I’d have a Tiny Desk Concert of my own, but I sincerely, sincerely doubt it. I loved performance. I was unconvinced by hard work. It’s not because I didn’t want to do hard work. It’s that my embouchure was wrong (how you set your jaw and ilps), which made practicing for more than a half hour complete murder, and it’s good concerts don’t last that long because I’m not sure I would have made it through all of them, either. For that reason alone, symphony was wonderful for me because in general, trumpet parts in classical music alternate between resting for 200 measures and the most majestic clarion call you’ve ever heard. It feels like being a goalie when your team is superb.
Most of the time, everyone is on the other end of the pitch, but when it’s your turn, you come up BIG. You have to have enormous balls for classical music, because a random eighth note high A in the middle of nowhere and perplexingly alone is not uncommon. The other thing s that I could hit a high A out of nowhere, but it may wander a bit in pitch from left to right until I find dead center. In classical music, this is not an option. It must be crisp and clean, every note tapered. The hard work was never the notes, though. The hard work for me was in reading music the first time accurately, which takes thousands of hours to learn how to do.
I have never been so relieved in my life than when I went to a huge ass choir competition in high school. The sight reading portion was lifted straight out of the United Methodist Hymnal. It was the first time in my life I had “sight read” anything so perfectly. And no, I did not tell anyone…. no trumpet player (or soprano, for that matter) would tell you they had an edge at something. Trumpets are line cooks. Sopranos are line cooks with nail polish.
I got into choir the same way. I auditioned, and I got into the junior varsity choir. I asked the choir director, “are you sure? I’ve done major works at my church…. messiahs and requiems and all that stuff.” Believe me, questioning her was the hardest work I’ve ever done, but I came up big. She gives me this contemptuous look and throws a Handel at me. Hard. Then, she picks the most exposed, most difficult entrance she can find……………… FOR HER. Bitch, I earned this. She thought she was so clever, but I’d been in the adult choir for three or four years by this point. You know what you do EVERY SINGLE YEAR? The Messiah, or at least highlights. Few churches put on “the whole thing” (in quotes because even that is redacted most of the time by taking out optional sections. It’s long. It’s really, really long. And you do “The Hallelujah Chorus” occasionally at Easter as well. This was not a piece with which I was unfamiliar. I’d memorized the highlights by now…. and if I could explain my voice type, it would be “Charlotte Church as a teen.” My voice (and hers) has matured, but still what people at Bridgeport used to call my “high, high, fluty voice.” I drove that audition like I stole it, and I was the first person in the history of Clements to be in varsity band and choir at the same time.
I’ve just noticed I sound like an obnoxious dick. It goes with the territory, but I figure I can tell you I’m good at something when I’ve spent so much time telling you all the ways in which I need to get it together and how my life is an emotional dumpster fire of my own making a lot of the time.
Additionally, I gave up trumpet a long time ago. I’ve taken prescription meth for a very long time (Adderall or Concerta, depending on what release schedule we’re doing this month……… eyeroll……..), and it has been murder on my jaw and teeth, just like for junkies. Therefore, playing my horn is painful because of the sound vibrations. The fact that I don’t play anymore has not occurred to the rest of my personality, because I have turned ego up to eleven when I need it. The key words are “when I need it.” I don’t need to walk around DC feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof all the time. I’m sure that if I dressed like a baller I could walk into any meeting anywhere and fake it. You cannot convince me for love or money that I do not have the smarts to be a Rep or a Senator. Not possible anymore. But I have the mental acuity to do the job. I am woefully unelectable, mostly because I would hate every minute of campaigning. I would frustrate the fuck out of my support staff because my answer to every problem would just be “let’s skip it. There will be people there. ” But if I was in Congress doing the job, I’d be as diligent as ADHD allows you to be, and on my worst day I would wipe the floor with Y’all Queda. I’d probably be censured by my own party for my language, but nothing I said would be untrue. Congress has issues and they scare me. The legislation doesn’t matter right now. The people are sub-par, and that’s okay now.
Because of all of these experiences (except working in Congress. I was a political science student, so I know about working in that part of Washington, I just don’t.), writing sets me on fire. I’m old enough now that I really have stories. It’s age that gives me credibility now, because I don’t have letters to fall back on. Graduating from college has been a shit show because I am barely capable of working a full-time job and going to school. I should have stayed the extra year in Houston to finish up, but I had a partner with a very lucrative job offer who said “go to George Mason. it’s right across the road.” I didn’t even get a chance to enroll and register for classes before that deal fell apart.
Besides, I got my money’s worth, anyway. I wasn’t one of Brene Brown’s kids at Graduate School of Social Work, but she was one of mine when I was the supervisor of their computer lab. I actually got into the Graduate School of Social Work contingent upon my BA. I’d just helped the Dean figure out a very complicated computer issue and she was very grateful. But I didn’t get into GSSW based on that issue. It was based on the conversation I had with her while trying to fix it. I always chat about nothing because people have no idea what I’m doing. All they hear is “blah, blah, blah, I’m done.” So, we engage in small talk and she’s the Dean of the GSSW and I’m an INFJ. I didn’t get in because of what I do. I got in because of who I am.
The thing is, though, I’d forgotten all about it because all I heard from Kathleen was “blah, blah, blah let’s go to DC.” And if I had thought about it, it wouldn’t have changed my mind because unless I’m at my family’s house and never leave to do anything, Houston feels like a toxic mess. The only exception to this is that Lindsay still lives there and introverts don’t make friends. An extrovert adopts you and drags you into public.
That’s the hard work right there. Being industrious enough to make my own friends and get my own dates. It took a lot of courage to lay it all out in front of Zac and say “this is what I’m dealing with, are you in?” In fact he was. ❤ The added bonus is that Zac told me that he was military intelligence the second time I met him, but not the first. So, I actually was brave enough to get my own date that time and manifested a really great partner, because my interest in intelligence doesn’t come from him. It just provides us with “intelligent” conversation.
He doesn’t emotionally overload me and I don’t do it to him. That’s because I process like a lesbian all day and by the time it’s evening I do not give a fuck about my feelings. (I just laughed so hard I would have made Oliver jump straight in to the air if he was here.) Zac doesn’t hear my bullshit, because I don’t need him for that. In fact, it’s great when he opens up to me about his problems, because I’ve spent enough time on myself.
Editor’s Note: Straight women are crazy. Absolutely insane. Why do you not date bi men when you’re all over gay men like white on rice? I would bet A LOT of money that my boyfriend smells better than yours and I’ve never even met him. Remember when we used to have a special term just for straight men who bathed? Straight women worry a whole, whole lot when his ex is male. They can save a lot of time and energy by not doing that.
Also, I’m a good enough writer that I could have gotten into a GSSW anywhere. You see all the stream of consciousness crap, but I clean up nice. 😉 I sometimes feel bad that you’re getting the B-sides and rough drafts, but at the same time, this is the hard work (said in Kristen Bell’s voice). Blogging is writing as a valid art form. It is a lesliecology of brain droppings in which I can cherry pick the best lines I’ve come up with and use them elsewhere. So much of my writing comes from e-mail and Facebook comments because I’m reflecting on something that someone else said, or something I’ve written previously works even better in another context. Making the commitment to write every day without fail. I got up to 63 days before I broke my streak for one. This is because writing is a muscle. I will not be a good writer until I can write in any mood, in any situation, in any anything. Creativity is a grind, and I will not be where I want to be without woodshedding, a music term that extrapolates nicely here.
When you’re practicing, some parts of a piece are really easy. The notes, that is. You still have to craft a narrative and that’s where the work comes in. That being said, you have to be technically accurate before you can craft the narrative, so you isolate the four measures in which you’re really going to be screwed during a concert if you miss. In a symphony, you have moments where if you miss a note, it won’t be noticeable because there are 150 people playing next to you. At others, there are three. When you’re out there all by yourself, it is frankly really fucking scary. You learn to manage, but it doesn’t go away.
Through voice lessons, I’ve become a phenomenon with singing comparatively.
It’s not how good of a singer I am, it’s what a train wreck of a trumpet player I was. I mean, obviously, there are high points to when I was living that life, but I feel so much more at home in my body as a singer because apparently the large amount of metal in front of my face was blocking my talent.But now that I’ve worked really hard in all things, given my whole heart to everything and everyone I’ve ever loved, I only have one thing left to say.
I’m not so good at talking about my “traits,” because it feels like all of them are somewhere in the middle in terms of value being good or bad. I’m tripping because none seem more important than the other.
For instance, being queer does not make me interesting in and of itself. Overcoming other people’s reactions to me being queer is what makes me brave, because it’s not something to which people have the right to react. It is what it is.
To me, it’s all like that. A trait’s beauty is dependent on its circumstances. If having brown eyes had been interpreted as wrong in the Bible, I would be overcoming fear and hatred of that instead. It’s the same amount of important.
Plus, my mind is an interesting combination of nothing right now, because I just woke up about 20 minutes ago (getting up at 0700 hasn’t taken. It’s 0520). I could go downstairs, get some coffee, read the paper. But that’s what normal people do. Creativity is a cruel mistress, even when it’s Internet word vomit.
[At this point I started joking with Cora (The War Daniel’s daughter who is now also mine)… Why was I not smart enough to have a child that lives with me? “The problem with using infants for waitstaff is that you get very poor service.” -Lemony Snickett She’s 25. Still funny.]
We’ve been chatting back and forth- she’s got some amazing artwork and I was telling her she should put it up on CafePress. All kinds of weird creatures with extensive back story- just more creative than I’ll ever be with visual art. She could make money easily because all she’d have to do is upload her art digitally. CafePress buys all the merchandise and you just pay for what you use- no up front cost because the costs to CafePress are billed to the customer.
I did a limited run of “Fanagans’ Wake” t-shirts, as well as one for line cooks that says “Keep Calm and Sell the Rail,” and they eventually did ok. But I’m not Cora. I enjoy working with fonts and spacing. She can design and decorate whole worlds.
An inborn trait for all INFJs is wanting others to be the best they can be. I thought of this because when Cora started sending me her artwork, I thought it might be useful for her to know about CafePress, and not because I’m trying to direct her into success. I genuinely would like to have a coffee mug with her artwork on it because I’m not saying that as “overbearing tiger queer mom.” I mean that her work wouldn’t look out of place at ComiCon, and I believe that the only reason she’s not making bank is that she’s an unknown. All unknowns start somewhere, and I’m getting in on the ground floor. I am also not here to make my dreams her reality.
INFJs think in visions of what might be. We start with an issue and spin it out. We throw everything on the table to see what it looks like and look before we leap to an enormous degree…….. except in my case, this is often derailed when I have stars in my eyes to an enormous degree. But everyone goes stupid at love. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.
I saw kids with Auna.
I saw living with Theresa.
I saw being old with Sam.
I do see being old with Supergrover because life is long and it’s not over. I am terribly small, but would never sing that particular song.
None of these things have or have yet come true, and it doesn’t matter that they didn’t or haven’t. That’s because the visions in my head are only guidance. I think in some ways it’s my brain protecting me from fear. That if things do work out, here’s what it will look like. Here is a goal you can work towards.
It was particularly important for me to see a future with Sam because I was so terrified. I am glad she broke up with me in retrospect, but she’d have to know just how many walls she broke down in order for me to even go on a date with her, especially after she gave me so many red flags in the beginning that I just ignored because she was adorable and I felt safe. Even with the red flags, everybody’s got ’em, so I would have tried harder had she let me. I’m just glad I didn’t have to. It was too early to work hard. I’m sure I came with red flags, too, clearly. I’m just glad I didn’t have to mourn her, because Supergrover was there to catch and told me how much of an idiot Sam was. She has a history of telling the absolute truth, so it was easy to rest in my pet monster on a leash.
If you’re playing Skyrim, she’s very unapologetic that she is Alduin.
She’s not. She is Paarthurnax for everything he was, is, and will be.
I want the best in life for her, too. If she was a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbeder, I believe she would see some direct correlations to our relationship with Uncle Iroh and Zuko. It feels amazing that I’m in season three now.
If you never met Supergrover or she never sent you a photo, you’d think you were being e-mailed by a prize fighter, but one who seems like he spends his time at home painting his nails and wearing a tutu just to see his daughter smile. But then you look at her and realize that she’s a six year old girl with lots of complicated layers who also believes in adorably seductive and tasteful Halloween costumes, thanks be to God.
Just because we’re not a couple doesn’t mean I can’t be interested when Vogue magazine is on the coffee table. I, just like her, love pictures of beautiful people. I’d like to see pictures of her in different outfits and settings whether I knew her personally or not. I love photography. I do know her personally, though, so I pretend like settings and outfits matter when I’m really only looking for her microexpressions.
An inborn trait of INFJs is that we all know you can’t tell when someone is happy by looking at someone who’s smiling. It is not found there. It is found in their eyes, the way their muscles tense when pulled just so, whether crow’s feet go up or down (in my case). You can hide a drained soul from many people. I am just not one of them.
If you are my friend, though, I do have boundaries. If I can tell that you’re struggling, I will not intrude unless I feel there is clear and present danger. I need you to be capable of realizing that you’re struggling and asking for help. I also see when people are incapable of doing those things and probably won’t just step in, but I will be relentless about telling you to handle your shit with medication and therapy. It’s not my job to fix you, but it is my responsibility to tell you when your behavior is affecting me. I am not the be all and end all, but I know from depression and alcoholism. If I’m willing to say something, it’s already bad because I’m not judgmental about everything. I assume you’ve got it handled right up until you don’t. However, I’m not sure I would be insistent with someone who didn’t live with me. Their behavior just doesn’t affect me enough for it to be a burden on me otherwise, and criticism is always unwelcome no matter how constructive you’re trying to be. No one thinks you are trying to lance a boil. It’s always an attack.
I’ll give you a huge for-instance. I couldn’t, shouldn’t, and didn’t tell Dana to stop drinking or I’d leave. That’s because I was in the situation, not looking down on it. Is it surprising to anyone that I accidentally developed a wandering eye? I needed a catalyst for change, and Supergrover was it. The “accidentally” part is that I did not go into that relationship expecting anything close. I walked into a wall of bullshit I’m still not out of yet. Even she would agree that I stepped in it up to my ass, because she knows she’s a handful and calls her own life crazy because it is. Laying out the story exactly how it happened is like that scene from Men in Black II:
J: Okay. Straight to the point. [whispers in a serious voice] You are a former agent of a top-secret organization that monitors extraterrestrials on Earth. We’re the Men in Black. We have a situation, and we need your help.
K: There’s a free mental health clinic at the corner of Lilac and East Valley. Next!
No one gets this life by accident, and yet I did….. just through my inborn traits.
When my mind goes quiet, there’s a black and white picture of you that appears. It’s the only one you’ve ever taken just for me. It’s not that I don’t like other pictures of you. That’s not it at all. I like that you were thinking of me when you took it, and there’s just a hint of a smile with mischievous eyes. I wonder what your eyes looked like that day, and the days after…. in which we were clinging to each other and you kept whispering “you’re safe.” Beautiful girl, you whisper me to sleep with that one enduring phrase. I don’t sleep much, but when I do you watch over me, just like you’ve done since I was “young.” When I get scared in the night, I hear you in my head. “Maybe a doughnut will help.” I would have taken any vow that day, but the one I took was unusual.
Sometimes I feel like you don’t realize it’s unusual, because you’re big picture and I’m in the weeds. I know it would take you being on vacation for us to even have a chance to drink coffee together, so it’s just difficult having feelings you’re not there to catch because you can’t and shouldn’t be. Yet, I still signed the paper with blood.
The game changed from Old Maid to No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, beautiful girl. Please know that this is true. Feel it in your heartbeat. Let the knowledge settle in you, because I am not placing guilt or blame. I am asking “where do we go from here?” Our connection is pure, but not our communication.
This relationship just makes me turn things over in my mind constantly, but is only one cog of many. My complications are dependent on what I’m tracking, and I owe you an apology for making you think you’re not on the face.
I am so sorry that when you came to me with what you were going through, I reacted poorly. I was having a bad day and I exploded. A laundry list of what you were going through with no thought to what I was going through made me crazy, because it was just reinforcement of the last eight years. I express needs, you express avoidance. I was frustrated that nothing was changing no matter what I did. I thought you were blind to something that has been in place since our inception. That the things we share do not go away when we don’t speak. We are making things worse for both of us, convinced we’re right and without each other. It’s stupid, but I’ll live.
The reason, though, that I was upset is that I could have written the essay on what you were going through. I do not take my needs lightly where you are concerned because your time is more objectively valuable than mine (during business hours). I have to weigh how I feel before I talk to you because I pick my battles carefully. I don’t try to goad, provoke, or scold you. I agonize over every decision because I have to think “does this matter right now compared to what she’s doing?” There will never be anything in my life as important, comparatively, so by the time I’m brave enough to lay something out with you, I’ve thought about it for weeks.
Every decision where you are concerned comes with complications, and I’m one of the people that can handle complicated. What I cannot handle is a conflict between two people where only one person says anything. You explained to me what you were going through, but ignored everything I said so I felt unheard after years of saying the same thing.
While you’re off thinking I’m a judgmental dick about everything, here’s what is actually running through my mind:
Where’s she going? What’s she doing? Does she have all her meds? Where’s Michael on this? Did she get that weighted blanket? Are the girls going with her this trip or is she on her own? Is a driver picking her up? What’s his story? When is wheels up? When does she land? Will she have e-mail in-flight or will there be crap going on? Don’t forget to tell her you love her when you know she’s going to be in the air.
This type monologue has been running every day for 10 years, and intensifies when I know it should. I know you don’t necessarily like it, but I remember pleading with you- that you need someone to care about you and could you just let me? Please? I always want to take care of you and I’m sorry I haven’t done it more often.
Limiting our interaction stops me from feeling unwanted, but it doesn’t stop the monologue because we fucked up and we’re married now- without me ever being able to explain why I mean what I mean to anyone other than you, and so far you don’t get it, or you really, really, do and that’s why you don’t want to talk about it. My job is to be lost in your mind. To be the best at separating what can go into the character of Supergrover from what can’t leave the building. I am afraid that I’m the worst.
The simplest answer would be to just stop writing about it, and I say that to myself every single day and realize I can’t go anywhere else. In this space, I have complete control of the narrative. I can relax and breathe, because no one else can respond. I mean, they can. People leaving comments is fun. I mean that Bryn and I aren’t going through each other’s comments and responding on the other’s behalf. I tell a story, people only talk to me.
I am not just writing the you in the entries, but the you in the comments. The you that exists in my world vs. the you that exists in yours. It’s never going to go away and we are both cutting off our noses to spite our faces by pretending we can walk away as if nothing happened…. but that’s not the problem.
The problem is that you absolutely can walk away like nothing happened, shooting emotions like metal spikes while I’m telling you that nail guns fucking hurt. By the time you told me everything you were going through, you told me there was no space for me in a way that meant change. That I could deal with things as they are. Period.
It cannot be the whole story. I know it. But you should understand that you walked into this willingly. I don’t need you to say you’re sorry and disappear into the ether. I need you to accept the reality of the situation and say “what’s next?”
There’s no one else for me and you knew that’s what would happen- because it happens every single time. The information becomes more important than the connection. I do not say that to guilt you at all; there will be others, just not ever again in the same way. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for at least seven years (now eight).
Nothing about our situation is wrong and bad. I love you in a way I don’t have the capability to love anyone else, and that makes me feel unique and special in a way I didn’t before. My worth on the planet doesn’t come from you, but the perks to living here sure do.
No judgment. No guilt. I just can’t engage anymore because I can’t communicate where you can hear it.
If I send a letter by publishing it here, it’s because I don’t have any expectation of it being read. I don’t want to open the door to more fighting. I want you to be at peace, even if I’m not it.
We told each other we loved each other once upon a time. Now, that check needs to cash. I’m just not going to wait at the bank all day, leaving empty-handed at 4:00 PM.
But know that if we agree to meet, I’ll be in the lobby with your coffee. I’m tired of feeling crazy for doing exactly what you need me to do. I’m just working without a net, and afraid.
Until my mind quiets, and the shadows reveal your face…. contemplative because I’m lost in your mind.
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
There’s four. I’m giving you a bonus.
Or it would have been a bonus answer if it wasn’t a joke. I couldn’t think of three jobs at first so I just went with a movie title. I would be good at none of these things except spy, and even then I would be good at the people part, not the paying attention part. Prevailing wisdom says that’s a bad idea. You can’t have a disorganized priority list when people’s lives are counting on it. I am the god of chaos wherever I go.
Editor’s Note: At this point I got lost in a tangent when my mind flipped to “chaotic god.” Just roll with it. I’ll circle back eventually.
Supergrover is neurotypical, which makes me fall over with laughter that our bff name has always been “The Holy and The Moly.” The funniest part is that I didn’t come up with it. Dana knows us. We’ve met. Whether I am chaotic good, neutral, or bad depends on perspective. I will accept either. I would imagine Dana thinks of me as both depending on the hour. Supergrover would look at me with amusement and say, “hard same.” I wouldn’t notice anything except the playful nature of her eyes. I think of her as Aziraphale in the bathtub at the end of Good Omens Season one. I think of me as Crowley in the other bathtub. Those of you who know what I’m talking about will see what I mean immediately………………
Aziraphale and Crowley could have been the couple that best represented us right up until they kissed. At the time, I was hurt. Friendship is underrepresented and I felt a relationship where they were deep, open, and vulnerable without romance was something vastly underrepresented on TV. I wasn’t disappointed, necessarily. Just that what was a good analogy became a bad one for me, but that has nothing to do with Neil Gaiman’s talent as a writer.
I get enough of that type friendship on Doctor Who to last me a lifetime. You just have no idea how much I am Martha Jones, or would want to be. Remember how Martha went through shit with The Doctor and it made her attracted to him? Remember when she got over it and saved his ass on multiple occasions because she realized that there was something bigger than her at work? Hard same, said with the same amusement in my eyes. I liken it to Jodie Whitaker being cast during Martha’s storyline instead of David Tennant. (Random aside… who says “Martha” better than Matthew Rhys on “The Americans?”)
Back to me.
I probably could win at being the CIA trainee to recruit an asset first at The Farm (they put on scenarios like cocktail parties). If you were going to bet on me, bet on me for that. I am smooth enough that the plant would just tell me. I can get one of the best spies in the world to tell me what she knows with a wink and a smile. I had Jonna Mendez dead to rights, where she couldn’t say anything and absolutely did. If you’re wondering, it was whether she worked on a Cold War movie. Her redirect was “maybe we should hire you.” What I should have said was, “dear God, you can’t imagine what a bad idea that is.” What I actually sad was………… nothing.
After that, I developed an affinity for satchels.
Now that we’ve fully explored my dream life, because I couldn’t get away from the bipolar thing even if money were no object, let’s talk about real stuff.
If money were no object, I would do two things. I would become a TA and get a master’s in whatever I felt like, in perpetuity. Read law at Oxford if I wanted, what the hell? When I wasn’t working on school, I’d be writing. It would just be a lot harder to make time for it. I think I’d be a great TA in divinity, history, psychology, political science, sociology, and education, particularly music education. I couldn’t be a choir director now, but I could learn. I have also worked with kids long enough not to get rattled, which is harder than learning to conduct.
Although, the thing that grates on my ear most is sopranos who are out of tune, even me, and at that age, all kids have high voices. I would learn to be good at my job for the sake of saving my hearing. If I was a band director, beginning oboe will clear your sinuses.
I would be a wonderful musician if I wanted that life. I know that I’m good enough for an opera chorus, and could be trained for mainstage roles because I was offered one when I worked at Marylhurst and I turned it down (I don’t remember the role, but it was Penzance). At the time, I was terrified. I didn’t even show up for the audition even though I was wanted for the role already. It was more of a coaching session.
That’s because the role was for a lyric soprano, not a mezzo, and at the time, it was pre-voice lessons. I now know I’m a true lyric, but it would still take years not to Florence Foster Jenkins my way through “Queen of the Night.” I knew I had one aria in me. I didn’t think I had all of them in one night. The workout to do that is tremendous. You just don’t see that from the audience because it happens internally. It feels like circuit training trying to get your body do respond quickly. You can’t have air when you need it the most. You just have to deal and move on. Sometimes, that’s another soprano in your section bailing you out. As a soloist, you’re completely screwed if you haven’t inhaled down to your feet. The heavy lifting is being able to control that much air after you have it so that it doesn’t all come out all at once. I cry with laughter when I think of the flops I’ve had. Wrong notes are horrifying in the moment and hilarious later.
I just don’t want to live that life, because it’s piecemeal. I wouldn’t have a permanent place in a choir unless I was in the military. I’d have to get contracts all over the world and move frequently. The gig economy is not easy, so I just don’t want to do it. I will probably end up auditioning for Washington National Opera Chorus or National Cathedral’s choir eventually. The thought of hiking to Georgetown twice a week doesn’t thrill me, though.
The life I’d like to live is quiet. Even if something of mine goes viral, I will still want to take it in from a distance. I only trust those closest around me because they’ll keep my head on straight. I would rather keep being an introvert and able to produce because I’m not lost in noise vs. signal. The signal comes in purer the less there is to compete with it.
So, I suppose my ultimate job is ogre. Just get off my lawn, but know I’m okay because Fiona and Donkey are around somewhere.
What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
I don’t want to write about my white cultural heritage. It’s not interesting, but I will give you the highlights. There are Irish and English immigrants in my family. The most direct was an indentured servant who ended up in Louisiana, where later descendents settled in northeast Texas. My mother, father, stepmother and me were all raised there (sort of, we moved a lot with my dad being a pastor). Lindsay was not born until we moved to Houston, but we returned to northeast Texas for five years shortly after that. It was a quiet life interrupted by bursts of show mode…………….. although I did have a great, great uncle somewhere tied to organized crime in, I think, Rhode Island. That seems to track. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my next career, but mafia seems to be a viable option given my personality on some days. Anxiety and depression feel like the mafia. You get irritated and want to whack an employee, but you’re self-employed.
Yes, Where were we?
I come from Irish and English people, but not with landed titles and Downton Abbey and all that crap. My family was basically owned by the English, not even close to American slavery though very close to Reconstruction. When the Civil War ended, enslaved people were sometimes hired back to their plantations, but weren’t paid enough to really leave. That was my family’s situation. The English would do shit like give us land to rent, but they could take it any time they wanted and you’d never be able to pay off the debt you owed on tools, etc. Many, many people escaped Ireland through work contracts, which is what my ancestor did. The contract paid for his passage, and was a seven-year logging thing in which he cut off a leg two years in. Answers to the name “Lucky.”
Even with that fun fact, there are billions of people who’ve come through the US since its inception by rich white people offloading their indentured servants, enslaved people, and criminals here. America was Australia before it was cool. Still white people history. So, again, not interesting.
It’s queer history that makes me interesting.
Being queer is to take on institutional pain, passed down from one generation to the next. We don’t grow up biologically together (most of the time), so it’s a process to seek out a family that understands….. for most of history, the family that took you in when your first family just couldn’t get over their vengeful God long enough to stop themselves from being terrible parents (and worse in-laws). Children are not capable of supporting themselves at 15 and 16. You’d be surprised at how many just have to figure it out….. and not because it’s surprising to queer people. It’s surprising to the people who generally don’t want to look it up. It’s so hard to be them.
Because I did have someone queer in my life at an early age, I was braver than most because I didn’t see being queer as abnormal anymore…. but this was after two years of torturing myself first. Bad things happen when people come out. It’s more rare today than it was in the ’80s, but it’s alive and kicking. Look up the rates for homeless queer youth. It’s not acceptable. Stop pretending it is.
If you think I’m being harsh, fuck your feelings. This has got to stop, and I know because I’m from the belly of the beast. If you think legislation about trans kids’ medication in Texas is bad, you’re just seeing the surface. Imagine what these kids go through at home when they’re born to people like this rather than to people fighting against them. Trans people are taking the fire right now, but gay people were (and still are in some circles) called mentally ill pedophiles for centuries.
Gay people are not predators. Predators are predators. And straight people are like, 85-90% of the population. It’s not gay people that are the problem, because even though there are gay predators, too many kids are abused for those numbers to check out. Not many people are gay. Many people are power hungry and some are ill enough to take it from a child.
So, to straight people, the call is coming from inside the house.
I was never molested by a queer person, but certainly had my life interrupted by that kind of absolute power imbalance. But having my life interrupted wasn’t all bad because I came out earlier. I don’t think I would have had an easy time in school if I’d stayed in the closet all the way through. There were too many people that used it as leverage. I know this because it was very popular to tease me for being gay even though I never said I was. They just knew it got the desired painful reaction and liked it.
Once I started wearing rainbow shit to school, all that stopped. It wasn’t blackmail, so it wasn’t fun……… which is how I have a legacy at Clements and my girlfriend at the time doesn’t. She was with me, but she wasn’t out, Therefore, I know I did something that makes me happy because I had the courage to do what many people couldn’t. It’s not a slam on her, it’s saying that I didn’t realize how important the story would become to me now that it’s been so many years. That I’m happy I had the courage to stand up then, because it makes me feel strong now.
I don’t have to wonder if my life would have been better had I come out later, because it was hell on earth then. I was just surviving, doing what I had to do. In retrospect, it feels like a badge of honor.
My sister is almost six years younger than me, with our birthdays being June and September, respectively. So, she didn’t get to elementary school until I was in junior high and didn’t get to high school until I was in college (and I would have been gone if I’d taken four years). So, I was a junior at University of Houston before I heard what happened:
When my dad left the church, I really stopped giving a shit about who knew what. I wore Pride rings (fruit loops) and had a rainbow ring and a couple other things that I bought under the radar (we all think that. Give it to us. Let us believe we are oh-so-clever.). It got me two things. The first is that I stopped getting teased. The second is that I could advertise.
She was an athlete. I felt like a god.
So, in addition to getting the girl, it was the rainbow accessories that made me a legacy.
I was off doing my own thing, oblivious.
My sister told me that she saw a group of kids with rainbows on their backpacks. She thought it was really brave, so she asked them about it. They said, “oh, we all do it. That way no one knows who’s gay.” Lindsay said, “who started it?”
They said, “I think it was this kid named Leslie.”
I will never do anything in my life more important than this.
Sometimes I think about “if I were an influencer, what would I want to promote?” It’s just a fun thought exercise, but if I had enough power to get things done in the advertising industry, here’s the people I’d like to give me stuff for free because I’ve been singing their praises for years without them cutting me a check.
Bombas Socks
I got the recommendation from Pete Holmes and have never looked back. Just order 10 pairs and throw your other ones out. They’re just the best ever and I will buy them until I’m dead unless they do something lame like change them in any way at all ever. They are ADHD/Autism relief in a box.
American Giant Hoodies
The Original Hoodie is the only jacket you will ever need. It’s double weight, double stitched, and all the hardware is strong and comfortable. No rough edges and extraordinarily well made. If you have teenagers, you need to buy one for yourself and one for them or you’ll never see yours again. Can’t find it? Check your daughter’s closet.
Starbucks Coffee
I don’t like Starbucks because it’s the best. Far from it. I like Starbucks because I’m ADHD and it tastes the same all over the world. It tastes the same on Connecticut Ave. in downtown DC as it does at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I checked. (CDG does have chocolate cereal milk lattes and I will die mad they don’t make them here.)
Nescafe
Talking about Paris reminded me that Starbucks was the best coffee I had while I was there. I think “French Roast” is a lie they tell little kids. My dad and I didn’t find a decent independent coffee shop or a Starbucks anywhere. The Starbucks was at the airport. So, I became absolutely reliant on the little packets of Nescafe the maids left for us at our hotel, which does not taste like American instant coffee at all. It was good. Therefore, I would pitch Nescafe all over the world because you can stuff packets in your suitcase in advance just in case you get somewhere and nothing is above Folgers with extra water. I know I will have a personal friend living in France or a French reader that will tell me I just went to the wrong coffee shop. Please, prove me wrong. That would be great. I need a place to go the next time I’m in Paris, and I want to live there for a few months so we can stretch out. I can already tell you that you can just show up at the Musee D’Orsay the first couple of days after I arrive. No worries I won’t be there. Vincent and I need some alone time. Maybe I can sneak some Nescafe into “our room.”
Chuy’s
No clothing brand represents me better when they’re on point. I think they have the best graphic designers in the business. I have several t-shirts and a hoodie that I wear constantly, except the one that says “Expecto Burrito.” I gave that one to Goodwill. Yes, I know Chuy’s is a restaurant, but their merchandise is very affordable and well made. I think my favorite Chuy’s shirt has the outline of the Chuy’s fish with Walter White hat and sunglasses. It says “Heisenchuy.” I also have a very cute kids’ t-shirt that’s a throwback to 80s Nintendo and says “Super Tex-Mex Brothers.” It’s perfect because I’ve worn it enough that now it actually looks retro instead of a current kids’ shirt. I also have one that’s still in production. It’s a Tattooine-type desert with a lone man and says something about “Juan Solo.”
Bourbon Moth
I love Jason Hibbs’ designs, and I would fill my whole house with his furniture if I could afford to commission Jason or buy the equipment to make it all. Having no idea how to construct anything, I think everything would turn out better if I just paid him. Jason is the kind of furniture maker that you want to entrust with your daughter’s first rocking chair when you find out she’s pregnant, or the crib she’s eventually going to need. You don’t just trust anyone with those projects, and he’s at the top of my list. Here’s how much I would trust Jason:
I would trust Jason’s vision if I lost a child, as well.
CIA/FBI/DNI/DIA/Pentagon/Branches of the Military,etc.
I’m putting the names of the agencies in here because I can’t find the name of the company that makes their swag. So, I know you can’t just walk into any of these gift shops, but you have options in terms of seeing if you know anyone. I say this because Zac has brought me several things from those shops and they’ve all been as well-made as my American Giant hoodie. None of the t-shirts have had tags, all the hardware is smooth, the workout clothes are double weight so you can run in he winter. I am sure that if I could find the name of the company, they make clothes without logos and I’d be there for those, too. It’s the difference between getting a jersey at Eastern Market (knockoff) and ordering it directly from the NFL. With my CIA baseball cap, I loved the logo, but I don’t wear it all the time to look like I’m pitching for USG. It’s so comfortable on my skin that I can’t take it off. ADHD Life, the struggle is real, etc I also walk a lot and “it’s beginning to look a lot like fuck this” becomes a refrain in my head when I don’t want to take the time to get fixed up; it won’t last. My baseball cap feels even more comfortable on those days. I don’t know how they would actually want me to support them, but I know I can’t not. My country is depending on me to want soft clothing, and who am I to stop them from providing it? Before CIA, I had a GAP hat that was just as comfortable and I wore it for 15 years straight. By the end it looked like I had old underwear on my head. I did not care. This hat has the same vibe and I’m looking forward.
Celestial Seasonings
When I say I switch to something innocuous like fruit punch when I’m not drinking caffeine, I really mean cold brew Red Zinger at obnoxious amounts. Obnoxious. I should buy stock.
Wendy’s
I don’t really care about their food. I want to work for them. I would have a riot in that writing room if I was on the social media team. Also, I have been repping their French fries and Frosties since I was a shorty (for the rest of the world, that’s American slang for a child. I am still short.). To me, theirs are the ones that taste best because they actually taste like they have real potato in them somewhere. They’re not as crispy, but they’re authentic. They’ll actually put a little more color on them for you if you ask nicely and wait patiently, just like at In-n-Out. I just think Wendy’s are better than In-n-Out because I prefer a thicker cut (more like they’d serve at a steakhouse).
McDonald’s
I want free smoothies and soft serve for life. I don’t know what I would do for such a favor, but I am willing to negotiate heavily. I know it won’t cost you much because the ice cream machine is always cleaning itself. Maybe not. I can drink the hell out of those smoothies. If you start making orange vanilla with the soft serve, you can just build me a house in the ball pit.
Chicago Cutlery
They’re some of my favorite knives because they fit my hand, whether it’s chef or santoku. They’re also cheap and hardly ever need sharpening. I choose to get mine sharpened over getting another one because even though it’s the same price or more expensive, your knife grows into your hand and vice versa. It’s like getting a fountain pen. Once you bend the nib to your handwriting, you cannot lend it out. That’s because the nib will bend to someone else, and it won’t go back to you. It’s the same in the kitchen, even for pastry chefs because their cuts need to be even more precise than the cooks who just throw things into a pan. Your knife becomes as close to you as a lover, why we often name our knives after women. It’s an extension of our bodies, where we cut to the beats of our hearts.
I am slowly starting to stay up later and sleep in. Not by much. Just one or two hours. I’m starting this entry at 7:48, after I’ve done the things I need to do to get going. I have taken my medication, and gotten myself something to drink, and settled in. Therefore, I woke up at 0700 instead of 0500 for love.
That’s because the person that most represents safety to me and vice versa is in Portland, Oregon. That’s three hours into the past from here. I’ve done it with other friends, had this asynchronous life because I’ve had friends in Portland since 1996 or something like that and moved to DC in May of 2001. The events of September 11th did not drive me away. Kathleen did. It was the best mistake I’ve ever made. When I went to Portland, I found everything I have ever needed to know myself. It affects me every day, and I’m grateful to my time there for it, no matter how low my Vitamin D was when I got home (six).
I don’t stay up for me. I stay up for Bryn. I want her as a real part of my life rather than a fake one, and video calling is easier for both of us in the evening. It’s just that her evening is generally my bedtime when I’m getting up at 0500. When I get up at 0500, sometimes it’s so early for her that she hasn’t gone to bed yet. We make it work, and yet we don’t. It’s not a matter of how much we love and adore each other, just that our relationship isn’t as full of practical love as it would be if we lived in the same neighborhood. Maybe we will eventually, but I don’t want either of us to do the hard sell on each other. Our lives will unfold as they should. The difference between this relationship and most of my other virtual ones is that I don’t video call with them, ever. I barely even do audio. I can do that with Bryn because we’ve had so much face time over the years that we call each other no matter what we’re doing or how we look because the video call is more important than fixing up for it. Video calls are so much easier when you don’t give a shit how you look on camera. It’s not that we look bad, it’s that we’re going to love each other no matter how we look, so why waste time on something so frivolous?
I like our back and forth, the way we’re both on the “think it, say it” plan because we can be. It’s a trust that’s implicit and makes it easy to breathe. She’s made the commitment to learn my attachment style and love language, but she doesn’t really have to do research because they’re the same as mine. She understands something in me because she wears it on her skin, not because she’s lost in a book…. or if she is, it’s the one I’m writing for us.
You’ll just have to put up with romantic and flowery language from me about her because I am Anne Shirley crazy for her. She knows that she is my Diana Barry…. so much lighter than I am in some ways, darker in others. We complete, not compete. I am the friend that would get her drunk on purpose, though, and she wouldn’t complain because I’m an excellent bartender and it doesn’t take much for either of us. 😉
I am sort of in a relationship in terms of having a companion but not a possible husband, and she definitely is in a relationship with promise. It fits us to a T to have other partners, while also making space for each other; our history is too long for us not to put each other first in some ways. I might have to be around for the next boyfriend, and Dave will be excused for cause. I have no reason to believe this will be the case, it’s just a sitrep. We’re a package deal, get used to it. 😉
Being with our respective guys gives us more to talk about, not less. I don’t feel jealous and neither does she. It’s nice to have a place to unload about everything, because neither of us blink when the other has a problem. We’re on it like a team. Later I have to call Multnomah County on some business of my own, so I’m going to do hers as well. It’s no thing because if I have to do something over the phone, I know she’d be my proxy if something needed to be done in person. It’s a give and take now that I have someone on the ground that I can trust to have my back in a city where I used to live and still need to bat cleanup.
I’m not divorced yet, or at least, I have been unwilling to check. Dana told me she would take care of it, but I haven’t been sent anything to sign and I don’t think people have the capability to divorce someone without their knowledge. I could be wrong, but I can’t assume Dana is more likely than me to fill out paperwork, either, even though she said she would. I am not being catty. Paperwork causes anxiety for both of us sometimes because of the emotional attachment it represents. We’re both ADHD. If it fell off her radar, it won’t come back.
I can have empathy because in some ways, we’re the same person and that will never change.
Now my mother lion has kicked in, because I should have done it long ago for Dana and followed up on the paperwork myself, because I know it was difficult for two reasons. The first is that the way our relationship ended is shameful to both of us given the connection we threw away. We should have been able to deal with the Supergrover issue because I shouldn’t have gotten so high on her. Dana would know exactly how being married and being lost in new relationship energy would feel, because she was married during most of the time she was dealing with her feelings for me……………. yet another reason I didn’t want to get involved in the first place.
I struggled with the idea of having an affair because she was using her wife as a safety net if I said no and I knew it. That’s because her wife knew what Dana was doing, too, and was never blind to it. She saw how Dana reacted to me and thought her days were numbered, then stuck around watching Dana be lovesick over me for years and putting up with that shit. By the time she broke up with her wife, even our girlfriends were convinced we should be together instead of with them because we couldn’t stop talking about each other. Being friends was easy. Taking the leap was hard……………. right up until it wasn’t. By the time we were ready to leap, we had years of emotional closeness feeding our fire. We loved each other because of what we’d been to each other as friends, not because we each thought the other was perfect. We knew what contract we were signing, and we were better for it.
For a while.
She could not accept that the same thing was not happening to her. That my feelings were supposed to have been light and flirty wordplay to give me some dopamine after Dana and me going through a really rough time. Supergrover wasn’t threatened, and she was so cute about flirting with me one time that I knew I’d opened the door to something I could dish, but I could not take. I thought I was a silver-penned devil.
I was, in fact, mistaken.
I laid the golden fiddle at her feet because I had gone down to Georgia and knew that I’d been beat. It was a mistake. It called my bluff. I felt things I never had because it was attention from someone who really deserved mine.
It was all a mistake. It was not a happy compromise, It jumped me further into something she was rightfully afraid would happen. It jumped me into something the relationship couldn’t sustain, but it wasn’t her fault because I pretended to be so cool. it was the beginning of the end with both of them. It just will never be a new beginning with Dana because I can forgive her punching me, but it’s not worth a chance it would happen again and the statistics are against us.
I fucked up asking for more patience from both of them and then not actually doing anything to move myself forward. It was my own choice to feel heat for someone that would never feel that way about me, but that’s based on all the other relationships I’ve had, the mark my emotional abuser left on me. That I couldn’t really know someone until I’d slept with them. I know that because if someone opens me up emotionally, I tend to want all of them. I don’t tie people’s worth to it, though.
If they just want to be friends and I love them that much, I’ll sit in that pain until it goes away. I certainly have done enough of that to feel secure. It’ll never happen again, like women who do fall in love and realize later that it was never the sex that mattered and they’re better off as roommates and friends. But it’s because I’ve felt those feelings that I’m a real and genuine friend and also never less protective and possessive of her than her husband- and not because I want to “keep her safe from him” by acting like a jealous fool. It’s not him that matters. It’s the the rest of the world.
I’m not here to fight her battles for her, just with her. But I won’t if she acts like I don’t matter, gets angry when I tell her that, and treats me like an annoyance a good bit of the time. I’m not here for that, but I am for the relationship in which we do the work to be strong and comfortable at 20 years, like we predicted we would be in the beginning. I can live with boundaries, but not when I don’t know what they are. I will fuck up, and I have. I was out of control, then lost and finding my way back.
I can’t be lost anymore, because I’m tired of feeling insecure. I can’t make up fantasies to ignore the reality of the situation because they feed me. She avoids me in a way she shouldn’t, and that’s not my call. But because she says that she’s enormously impressed with me as a person, everything I’ve said tracks. There is room for all our feelings by now because nothing happens quickly anymore. There’s not an exhilarated rush of trying to know each other as fast as we can.
Our feelings are extreme on both ends. The lovebombing is absolutely genuine, and so is our conflict. The reality is that I would have left Dana no matter what because of two hard outs, not just one……… and now need Supergrover in my life despite her not needing me because of the first hard out’s upper limits, not because I am “trying to get her back.” I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t at that time. Life was full of hard choices, and I did the best I could with the information I had. It didn’t matter what Supergrover thought. It matters what I thought would happen to me in the future. Supergrover didn’t think about that and I know she didn’t because I didn’t, either. We both got lost in new relationship energy and told each other things that would have consequences long into the future without knowing how stable we were or weren’t. Without knowing how stable I was with Dana, because even I didn’t recognize the toll her DUI would take on me and how that was more of a threat to me than anything Supergrover said that enticed me. I never want to have to bail anyone else out of jail, because it was traumatic. My friend Volfe drove me downtown to pick her up, and she had already left on the bus. I was racing to get to her only to have my hopes dashed. I did get to see her later, but she knew we were coming to get her and she left, anyway. It made me crazy to the point I couldn’t think, and then Dana lost her license. The entire legal process wore me down, and Supergrover was the gift I needed at a time when I was really open to receiving it.
I fucked up by loving her so completely I couldn’t see anything else, and not because it was wrong. Some of my actions were crazy, but I’m not. It was all painful and could have been avoided. But I’d already run from her several times, saying that I couldn’t be friends with a woman who excited me this much, and because we couldn’t separate, we didn’t. The swings just became bigger as my emotions grew. It was embarrassing to tell her I had to back off and why so she didn’t feel like I was dumping her because I wanted to. I had to. Dana could compete with romantic love, but platonic trumped it because it had to, not because I wanted it to, for two reasons. I felt like I couldn’t have reactions in front of Dana anymore, because it drove her crazy for me to have a woman in my life that was just as important as she was for very different reasons. She could not accept that Supergrover and I needed a relationship that was separate from her out of necessity, not malice. I knew that every one of my actions would be up for discussion with someone. As Sam Seaborn would say, “oh, this is bad on so many levels.”
Having a relationship with someone who runs hot and cold is not my jam when they’re as close to me as Supergrover is. If we hadn’t already been so close, running hot and cold wouldn’t be a thing because I wouldn’t notice or care.
I reached out for Bryn because our attachment is secure. I don’t have to worry because there are no swings too big. We know that the other’s style is anxious, so we take care of it up front rather than letting the other believe we’re pulling back, or let the other know when we need some space, but we’ll talk about what was said later; we need time to reflect. It is not time to choose what kind of life we want together, we just know it’s there if we want it. I cannot be on thin ice. I cannot run from her love because it’s just too big. I can’t jump into something the relationship can’t sustain. We are there for every regeneration, making it a good story in the end.
I could do, need to do more of staying up…………… to read the chapters she has written on her own.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
I remember things by the way people say them, because if it’s a good line, I will hear it in their voices for the rest of my life. Good lines often have a cadence to them. For instance, my pastor came up with “resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.” I came up with “messages I’ve missed in the middle of the mess.” I gravitated toward it because it had the same musicality. One line leads to the next, a call and answer. Resurrection happens by examining the emotional places you’ve never been.
I have memories playing in my head like movies a good bit of the time. My writing is what happens when I stick my head into a pensieve, and I’m giving you access to it. The messages I’ve missed are often in plain sight when I’m seeing me as a different person, rather than perpetually reliving things. I am not reliving anything, I am searching for what I can do better in the future, and that only happens when you can look at yourself and see both your inner Aziraphale and Crowley.
How do I know what will work in the future if I don’t know how I broke the past? I know how I’ve broken my past because I wrote it down, essentially giving myself a past because few people write about their lives to this degree. When they go back to reassess, their memories are faulty. You cannot say that yours is infallible, but if there’s a blog entry on what happened written that day, that memory is secure by the nature of the timestamp. I’m not just making shit up. I am also very musical with words by nature of crafting rhythmic phrases on my horn, music only I can hear because only I know the voices on who said what.
I retain information with rhythm, essentially becoming a mimic in my writing and in my thoughts; I don’t just go back to that one line. It feels like I’m standing in the same room again, even just for a few seconds.
I give myself a lot of good advice by going back and reading what I thought years ago and seeing if I’m doing okay comparatively. Except that I don’t think of it as listening to myself, but the people who inspired my writing that day. It’s like an actor watching their old films. They aren’t living in the story on screen, but the one about how the art was created.
I like having written intimate things about the people in my life, hoping that the musicality of my words will stick with them, because being my friend isn’t easy. They all have their favorites, I’m sure, and their favorites never match up to my favorite things I’ve written about them.
Bryn loves the mirror I hold up on our relationship because she says it teaches her new things about herself. She gets what I’m trying to be, which is so real that people identify. I don’t want to be famous, I want to be heard. That’s why I don’t have to be on Oprah to know I’m making a difference. My platform is smaller, sure, but a platform nonetheless. And on the Internet, where everything is protected by a wall of anonymity, I never know when I’m speaking to people like her or people like me.
In fact, now that I think about it, Oprah did give me the best advice ever. On the last episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, she talked about how everyone has a platform. Your family. Your church unit. Your work colleagues. All of those people add up, so no matter how small you think that platform is, it’s enormous. Use it.
Oprah’s not on at 4:00 PM anymore, so someone has to pick up the slack.
It’s the message I’ve missed in the middle of the mess.
Stories That Are All True 