This Is a List of the Things I Learned

Christ, is the "a" in that title supposed to be capitalized? Whatever, I don't know.

The past week or so has been filled with a series of what I'd like to fancy as interesting and introspective posts, but (and I think I've used this line on you before), my personal life's been getting a little too personal lately and I say inappropriate things in my head, and so all the contents of those posts will hopefully soon be relegated to paper in my pretentious hipster Moleskine journal. Aw yeah.

I'm embracing the hipster because lately I've been hanging out in Williamsburg so often that it would just be insulting to try to deny it any further. That being said, I'll defend myself once again: I'm not a hipster, I'm just a lesbian. Really. I'm thinking about writing an article about passing as straight only by passing as a hipster. I'll start it once I come up with a really clever, obscure title that I can use to judge people who don't understand it.

Anyway, now that I've clearly established that I'm in a psychotic state of mind (to Nina: "I love face tattoos because I hate having to wonder if someone is a psychopath."), the point of this post is basically just to have a post because I get a little bummed out when I go a long time without updating. So in going with the whole I'm-sequestered-away-from-my-people-but-I'm-stupidly-optimistic deal that's been taking over my brain this past semester, I present (in list form!) things the summer has taught me so far. Not all positive. Mostly in a weird middle ground, once again proving that I'm crazy.

This actually is probably going to end up looking like a series of mini posts compiled into one big post, and maybe one day I will actually end up turning some of these into their very own entries.

Hokay, let's begin!
In no particular order:

1. The most interesting people I know are all addicts.
We've all got addictive, hungry personalities, and we are all fucking crazy. Some of us are addicted to substance. Some of us are addicted to workworkwork or the internet or drama or the notion of glamour. Glamour the British way, obviously. We chase these things and cannot get enough and one addiction feeds the other, and goddammit, we're just all trying to get our fix of whatever and trying to figure out why we need it.

2. No, I would not like a receipt.
I don't check my ATM receipts. Ever. This is probably why I'm broke all the time/why my bank account sometimes ends up pretty far into the negatives. Or I think I'm broke. I wouldn't know, I don't check my ATM receipts. I'm not a compulsive shopper, but I pretty compulsively do not give a shit about what I'm buying. I don't even know what I've been buying. I think it's been food, because I certainly don't have anything to show for it. Also transportation costs FAR too much. Also you should really be allowed to withdraw less than $20 from ATMs. I was in line behind this guy, and dear lord, that thing just shot 20's at him. He doesn't just have $20 in his bank account, he has multiples of it. That's why he was in a suit.

3. I now have a favorite time of day, and that is 4-5 a.m.
This only counts if I've been up until this point, not if I'm waking up then. Making it to 4 a.m. means that you've been up entirely too late, probably doing something stupid or having the longest, most intense conversation of your life, or having the time of your life, OR everything you've put into your body has made your body angry, and now it won't let you sleep and, consequently, you are completing one of the above listed activities. Making it to 5 means you're officially nuts because now real people with real responsibilities are waking up to go to their real jobs, and there you are, still awake and fucked up from the night before. I love staying up through the night and day and then throwing yourself out into the streets at 11 a.m. where all the normal people are running around looking normal and stressed, and I'm just standing there all crazy-eyed with a RedBull in hand and a long letter to write.

I like buying RedBulls at 11 a.m. because it means that something weird happened. I feel liek people either buy them in the morning to get themselves going or at night to do the same (but with alcohol). If it's 11 a.m., you've already gotten yourself out of bed and to work/school. The hardest part is over. Why are you standing there looking crazy?

4. I've deemed this one to be inappropriate for interwebz.
Just know that I'm going through a detox, and my brain is like "what's serotonin?" and the subsequent crashing has pretty much led to the seemingly hopeless life-reevaluation that's been going on the past few days.

5. We don't give a damn, we don't give a fuck.
I actually, legitimately care about very little as of late. Not in the whole life-is-meaningless-I'm-16-and-wear-a-lot-of-eyeliner sort of way, but in the way that I realized that getting stressed and throwing fits over things just...doesn't matter. Oh, also we don't get in trouble for anything, and we don't get hit by cars. My friends and I shamelessly and flamboyantly throw caution into the wind and run through fountains and guess our way through traffic. Basically, I survived my week in DC, and that is a miracle.

Also, last night, while taking off a sweatshirt, I accidentally removed my entire shirt in front of a group of people that I really didn't know at all. It looks exactly like you're imagining it in your head. And actually, I'm fine with that.

6. Something I did not learn.
How to pronounce "creuller." Wow those donuts look great. I keep wanting to fucking order one whenever I go into Dunkin' Donuts, but I never. can. because I cannot pronounce it and am to shy and weird to try. So someone, please, either give me a phoenetic spelling or tell me that they taste like shit and not to waste my time. Thanks!

7. I still look really awkward flirting with girls.
Despite claiming this as one of my only few marketable skills, I'm still fucking weird. Great evidence of this is when, post-Santigold, a few friends and I were standing outside of DC9 smoking when I found a cute girl on the other side of some glass making eyes at me. I returned a shy smile, tried to be cute, then accidentally dropped my cigarette and chased it into the street like a small child chasing a ball. I did not see her inside.

8. Wow, I'm boring.
Last week I was at a used book store with Rachel, and after sifting through aisles and aisles of books filled with history, social commentary, and theory, I finally settled on this purchase:
I can't be certain, but I think it makes Rachel hate me.
It also makes me look at really tacky wall decorations like this and say stupid sarcastic things like, "Oh hey, I really like the way that size 18 Times New Roman font looks. Good job double spacing, really creative."

Sidenote: this really is the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. In addition to the really unrealstic waving that happens, it's basically a really awful poem about imperialism. Needless to say, I'm stealing it and putting it in my room next year.

9. I'm literate!
...or am I?
No, really, I've been reading, and it's exciting (this obviously only serves as an extension of #8)!
I like non-fiction (I wasn't kidding)!
I'm too lazy for descriptions, but check these out! (Descriptions will come eventually. I love parentheses).

Non-fiction:
Resist!: Essays Against a Homophobic Culture (Mona Oikawa, Dionne Falconer, Ann Decter, Rosamund Elwin)
The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women (Jessica Valenti)
Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Matilda)

Fiction:
Call Me By Your Name (Andre Aciman)

QWAC is starting a book club this year, get pumped!

That's it for now. It's a list of 9, yeah. I'll have something interesting to say soon.

A Metaphorical Conversation in Two Parts

or, A Broken Promise to Never Write Pointless Posts

I.
The Supermarket, Sunday morning after church
Age 16
Status: Closeted

Mom: Do you want some apples for this week?
Me: Yeah that'd be great.
Mom: What kind do you want?
Me: I like green apples.
Mom: Ew, you don't want those! I hate green apples!
Me: Yeah, but...I like green apples, and you asked me what I wanted.
Mom: How could you possibly eat those, I just really don't like them!
Me: You asked me what I wanted, and I told you. You don't have to like what I like or understand why I like it, I just want them!
*storms off with a bag of green apples*

II.
The Dining Room, aka my dad's office, where my mom is proofreading something
Age 19
Status: Out, but we don't like to talk about those kinds of things

Mom: If you have a list of things, do you put a comma before the "and" before the last one?
Me: You could. It's called an Oxford comma (sidenote: I'm not sure why I always insist on being a pretentious grammar fuck), some people use it, but you don't have to.
Mom: Hm. Well I really don't like using it. It doesn't really look right. It looks kind of funny.
Me: Well I know you don't personally like it that way, but I always like to do it like that. I know you don't, and you don't have to, but I do.
Mom: Eh, I still think it looks weird.

LOL. Substitute in whatever words you'd like for "apples" or "commas." It's like inappropriate Mad Libs. This conversation is also best imagined if you picture my mom as a small Asian lady with a thick Chinese accent. I mean, she's not and she doesn't have one, but, I'm just saying. It's best imagined as such.

But really. Some things never change. Just in case anyone is wondering about the tone of this, it's really not a hey-my-parents-don't-accept-me-so-feel-bad post. It's more like, lol how could I possibly lead two such contrasting lives, being loud and out and badass in one, and arguing over produce and punctuation in another?

Though, transcribing these has made me realize that it really should come as absolutely no surprise to me that my mother couldn't possibly wrap her head around tolerating or understanding, let alone accept my, ahem, homosexuality. I mean, it's difficult enough for her to understand why I like green apples or my preference for the Oxford comma.

But, I'm a college girl (grrrl) now, and I buy (read: steal from Whole Foods) my own green apples and proofread my own papers. Oh, and I like girls.

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And now, for a little vocabulary...
gaytience - (n) 1. the good-natured state of endurance that one enters when that straight girl who keeps flirting with you at parties insists upon said straightness and acts totally normal about everything in the daytime. She is said to be "testing your gaytience."

2. the frustrating state of endurance that one tolerates while looking forward to an event but currently leading a life free of queerness. This may happen, say, when one is home from school and looking forward to Pride Weekend in a different town, or even just when one sifts through the dense plot a totally straight show/movie just for the gay undertones that may or may not arise.

That being said, I'm going to DC on Wednesday after a very, very special event that will totallly make my life on Tuesday night. My gaytience is running thin.

Why Same-Sex Marriage is a Threat to Society

...and why we want to keep it that way.

Okay, it's 10 pm, so I'm going to assume that everyone knows what happened already.
The California State Supreme Court upheld the passage of Proposition 8, ratifying the decision made by voters last year to ban same-sex marriage.
If you're into legal jargon and have time to read 185 pages of it (WHAT?! Seems like an awful lot, when "discrimination" is only one word), the pdf can be found here.

Now wait, before you go getting your American Apparel boyshorts into a bunch, consider the direction in which you're focusing your anger. On the surface, it's really easy to become outraged at the blatant refusal of "rights" and the all-too-typical refusal by the government to acknowledge that, yep, queers are people too. But, like everything else, the issue goes much deeper once deconstructed.

1. Majority sucks
And by that, I mean majority rules.
When it comes down to the really bare-bones, unemotional, unsentimental machine that is our lawmaking body, we need to remember that for the California Supreme Court to overturn Prop 8 would be to outright deny the voting process, as well as the power of the people (no matter how wrong they may be). It's that simple. The Court refused to overturn the decision of the public. Imagine if Prop 8 was turned down in November instead, and it was brought to the Supreme Court again, this time to achieve the opposite goal. The very idea that seven people would be able to overturn the decision of thousands (who made the right decision) would be absolutely mortifying, and there would be nationwide protests in the streets.

Oh wait, there already are.

So here's the thing. All this evening there have been protests/rallies/riots (too optimistic?) opposing the Supreme Court's decision. Anger and disappointment and frustrating directed at the seven justices, not at those who in November were really responsible for the passage of Prop 8--the voters, the heterosexist, homophobic culture itself. We shouldn't be rioting in the streets for one day because a court upheld a decision, we should be out and loud and resisting every fucking day because the decision made today is nothing more than a slight reflection of the culture in which we live.

2. "I mean, I'm not surprised, but..."
This has been a resounding qualifier used by queers and our allies all day before stating our disappointment. Doesn't it seem a bit strange that we take it completely for granted that we have no faith in our government to uphold or even grant us rights? Why are we unsurprised that our government refuses to acknowledge us as real people? Just think about that. We are so conditioned to believe that we are undeserving of being treated fairly that we are completely unsurprised that we are not being granted rights. I said it once, and I'll say it again, if the state refuses to accept me as a real person, then I refuse to accept them as my lawmaking body.

To quote a wise (read: badass anarchist) friend:

all i have to say (as per usual) is that government has never seen citizens, but as human capital for their projects of wealth. rights are something given and allowed by the state. fuck rights, i'll take my freedom right from their goddamn hands by any means necessary.

3. I don't believe in Modern Love, or Call It Off
Yeah, that's right. I just simultaneously referenced David Bowie and Tegan and Sara.
So why do we give a fuck about getting married anyway? Please, please don't get me wrong. I am not calling every queer who wants to hit up the chapel (or town hall or whatever) an assimilationist or obsessed with "trying to be straight." I know that, for some people, marriage means a lot in terms of sentiment and love and all those things written on Hallmark cards. And that's fine.

The problem is that one of the main arguments made in favor of same-sex marriage is that the lack thereof is preventing couples from attaining rights (healthcare, visitation rights, ease of adoption, financial aid, etc etc). But allowing same-sex couples to get married is only a band-aid solution to this problem. A straw man, if you will.

It's not the fact that same-sex couples have to fight for marriage equality, it's that marriage is necessary to reap the benefits that the government so graciously allows these couples. This further instills in us the societal idea that marriage is the only way to validate self-worth or success or happiness. Feminists know this already. The battle over marriage not only supports the idea that one can only be acceptable if they follow the old go-to-school-get-married-have-children-be-productive-to-the-state deal, it also takes the sentimental value out of what marriage should be, a symbol of love and committment, not fraud and an easy way to get money from the government.

4. Rebel, Rebel
All that being said, the passage of same-sex marriage would be pretty fucking sweet to throw in the face of heteronormative society. It would force Americans to acknowledge that, yep, we're real and we are redefining the institution that you weilded for so long as a weapon against us. It would be like a big metaphorical middle finger with a wedding band on it.

Yeah, we're real, and we won't shut the fuck up, and we want our freedom, and we have SEX, whoa, yes, scary non-hetersexual sex both in and out of wedlock because we don't give a fuck about your standards of sexual morality. You've already kicked us out of there, and, baby, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Edit: I feel like I may not have clarified the point behind my subject line. Same-sex marriage is a threat to society. Why? Because society is built on patriarchal, homophobic, sexist standards, and allowing da gays to get married would inherently be throwing it in the face of all those things. Essentially, calling something a threat to society is the greatest compliment I can give.

Everything We Touch Turns to Discourse

So this piece lives on the walls of the apartment where I spent my last week in DC. It's a spontaneous stream-of-consciousness piece that I scrawled across the walls in what, so far, have been the happiest, most simple moments of my life.

I was a bit hesitant about taking it out of its original context because I was scared it would lose its meaning and its feeling, but lately I've been having a really difficult and terribly frustrating time conveying my college experience and my new-found identities and ideas to everyone around these parts, and I thought this might dip into the surface.

-----------------------------------

So am I a beatnik or am I a sellout? Am I guilty of fraudulence? Does my fuck-what-you-want-ain't-got-nothin'-forget-my-possessions non-materialism truly mean anything if I've got a $200,000 education keeping me here just not to care? Can I really be free of my possessions and obsessions if mom and dad are still backing up that iPod and that computer and when the year's over, I go back to my house in the New York suburbs to drive my car (MY car) around suburban streets to the sounds of my motor and the empty satisfaction of the American dream?

What am I?

I am my own god.
In the beginning there was God, and Zie loved us so much and so well that Zie gave us the greatest gift of all: to, in turn, create Hir as we wished. And so I have made God into myself, for that is all I will ever control. And I am my experience, and I am yours, and everyone I've ever known. I am love in and of itself. I am human relation because if I can know that someone's life has been changed because of me, then I do not regret because I have lived.

What if you died tomorrow?
Would you be sorry or scared because knew not how to live?
I think that I would not. I may not wake up tomorrow or never again write or create or have my soul leak dark blue on to a page. I may never fall in love again or know everything or meet a beautiful girl be a beautiful girl or see the children of my friends. But today I sat on the floor of our apartment (OUR apartment) slicing a stolen apple with a clear plastic knife and felt complete among the beers and the boxes and the feeling that we were living it like we wanted. My best friend knocking back his second beer at 2 pm, and I felt infinitely happy.

We are everything.

We ourselves are individual microcosms, universes, worlds within ourselves. Eyes reflecting starlight are stars in themselves, bright thought glazed, leading our ways and revealing ancient secrets through mere glances. Passion is a tempest, violent in its beauty, tumultuous and turning, leaving ships in its wake, its sailors not destroyed, rather, changed.

We are the colliding of bodies.
We are the collapsing of bodies.

We are pressed hips and chapped lips and trembling fingers, shedding their regrets and hesitations and releasing all that words do not, cannot, say.

We are verbal intercourse producing birth, creation.

Revolution?

Revolution.
Don’t you go thinking that what we’re doing here isn’t revolution, because revolution is born every single day. It happens every time you change someone’s mind. It’s deconstruction. Every time someone questions who they are or what makes them that why or why they’re unhappy, that’s revolution. If even just one kid stops getting so goddamn down on themselves because they’re not “just like everyone else” because they realize that “just like everyone else” is a farce created by a system designed to tell us that we’re wrong, then that's revolution.

Why be "just like everyone else"if all that means is assimilating into this world full of –isms? Sexism, classism, racism, heterosexism. Why should we all strive to be white, rich, and upper class? Why is that what “equality” means, and why do we tolerate “tolerance?”

What if wealth became experience, not status? Because if that was the case, wouldn’t we already be prosperous in human connection?

We could all be wealthy in each other.

Have a Great Summer

There's no best part about quite literally not living anywhere, because every single part is the best part. I mean this totally and completely. I carry my life on my back, I have absolutely no responsibilities, I fall into the stories of the people around me, drink beer, and live my life so well that I cannot even comprehend it. My every day is enhanced by the excitement and mystery of where I'll fall asleep that night and what I'll do when I wake up the next morning because for once, I am free of obligations and may really and truly do anything.

I'm calling it urban backpacking.

(Partially because the only reason I can afford to do this is because of my privilege and my parents' permission, but whatever. It's the end, not the means).

The worst part is that, being the last one to leave of those who are leaving, I have to watch everyone go. I have cleverly evaded this by occupying myself just enough so that I've managed to not say goodbye to the majority of people who have meant the most to me this past year. And I would almost feel guilty about this, but I don't. Goodbyes don't mean much to me at all. I mean, they do, but not nearly as much as my time previously spent with a person that made an emotional goodbye expected or worth it at all. I don't say goodbye because 1) they're rarely permanent, and 2) I don't want the last time I see a person for quite a while to end up being some awkward, fumbling, sad attempt at a summary of what our friendship has meant, and 3) you already know that I want you to have a great summer. That's basically it. I love people too much for goodbyes, and my verbal skills often fail me, leaving me with a lot of regrets and "I wish I had said's," and that's not anything that anyone needs to bother with.

The last time I saw you, I probably just left it at "later."
Because that's really all it is, you know?

Things I UnLearned in College

This was going to originally be a finals week rant about how frustrated and exhausted and pressed for time I was. But somewhere along the line I changed my mind. It may have been at midnight on the seemingly inaccessible patio on which, only six floors up, I could view the entire school, silent, consumed by their books, while I exhaled and watched cigarette smoke float through the still, humid air over the top of my Red Bull (the two have been a strangely familiar but not unwelcome combination from high school) as I prepared for one more caffeine-soaked evening devoted to conquering the evils of microeconomics. It also may have been six-and-a-half hours later, when, dazed but bright-eyed, I emerged onto the quad to find the air as still as ever and witness a few individuals milling about under the newly grey sky.

Or maybe it was just that substance-induced sleep in the amphitheater the other night. Who knows.
The point is that I realized that all this stress and pressure and unhappy-making nonsense was just that: nonsense that a series of events and places and people socialized me to believe were necessary to a generic, synthesized form of happiness and normalcy. And that, as much as I've learned in my first year of college, the things that I've unlearned are just as, if not more, important in deconstructing everything that I had assumed I wanted.

So here we go.

They told me I had to be a business major because that's how you make money, and money buys you success, and this success makes you happy. Money makes you happy because you're always entitled to new things, such as a new wardrobe each season bought from the nearest mall with the money you've been earning at that dead-end minimum-wage suburban-kid job. But you know you're happy because why else would you keep trying to earn money to buy things? You still want it, really, you do.

To be a woman, they said, your hair must fall at least to your shoulders, and you must use it to lure men. This and your feminine wiles. Failing at either of these disqualifies you as a real woman, and you'll never be beautiful. For that you must be ashamed and scared and spend your time shielding yourself behind another person.

And yes, you do need another person to make you complete. You can't do this by yourself because if you're not in love, then you're not happy, and if marriage and children aren't in your future, then you're not normal (did you ever notice that everyone you talk to is mysteriously and definitely married when they talk about their futures? What makes that a given?). If you blew it the first time you loved, then you'll never find it again, and you probably didn't deserve it in the first place, so you have to go and ruin everything you touch because it'll never be the same anyway.

Pants are necessary around others.
So are shoes.
And you can't get there if a pair of wheels won't take you.

Carrying all this shit around, it's no wonder everyone is so damn unhappy.
The problem is where to go from here.

I think I'm going to spend the summer (when not flipping burgers and fending off angry pool moms) alone on buses, wandering through cities, bumming around friends' places, losing myself (though not really getting lost, because that's terrifying) in the woods, reading, reading, reading, hearing other people's stories and making my own.

Company is always welcome.

I Will

go to class this week.

I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.

It is entirely possible that I've reached my breaking point.
Last week was lost in a cloud of smoke, and I subsequently attended half the amount of classes that I missed. Big college fail. I had a great week and don't necessarily regret it, but, really, I need to start going to class.

Actual post later today. Just thought if I put this out there, it might really happen.

PS - Download "Hysteric" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

PPS- A lesson in vocab...
transportered (tr v.) - to be transported from Porter house. Usually superior to an on-campus transport because 1. there is no ambulance, 2. "transporter" is more difficult for drunk students to chant than "transport," 3. you managed to make it off-campus before actually getting that drunk

highde-and-go-seek (n) - 1. as a game, very clearly the worst idea ever
2. as an accidental game, getting lost and refusing to tell anyone where you are and instead insisting that they search campus to come find you