Focus: flow.

I suppose it is a sultry summer evening, as sensei said. So after karate, after the meditation, I suggested we go for ice cream. Three of us went, out of four. Three women, three generations (after a fashion). One triple black belt, one yellow belt, one beginner. One butch, one femme, one young person still inconclusive about gender identity. We ate black raspberry chocolate chip frozen yogurt and moose tracks, all made there at the store on the edge of the reservoir. We sat outside in chairs on the sidewalk and talked about gender, and queerness, community.

I felt right in the middle of them. I felt my place acutely even as we walked there. Maiden, mother, crone came into my head, a remnant of my medievalist and witchy days. And what a funny triad we were! The younger, with her shorn head and wispy sideburns, her slouched posture and earnest conversation. The older, head also close cropped, shirt tucked into high pants and solidly, strongly aging. And I -- not so much older than the "maiden" -- still with short hair but by far the most feminine of the group, earrings glinting, newly manicured nails flashing, strong in my body but still (perhaps?) visibly queer. I felt myself become a bridge even though they didn't need one. I was amazed at how we were able to talk together so openly.

At my dojo we are taught that self-care is of utmost importance. If something isn't working for you, modify or bow out. Everyone has this responsibility. We care for each other, but in order to do so we must know how to care for ourselves. I think this let us have a conversation that is unusual -- three generations of queerness talking about incredibly difficult topics, knowing that we could say what we thought without fear, knowing that the others would listen and be able to protect themselves.

I can't really write about what we talked about. It would be impossible, and if possible, a betrayal. My teacher talked about growing up butch in the 1950s. My new friend talked about attending a women's college where "most people identify as queer, and many professors ask your preferred pronouns in the first class." And I -- I felt so strongly in the middle, identifying as femme, choosing to align myself with a (perhaps an old fashioned?) identity (although I know of many radical femmes in my peer group, but it's certainly less common) -- and yet having experienced some of the same shifts in community as my younger friend described. The thing that is really sticking with me is something I hadn't really thought of before. And it's hard to write about it here because there is so much mistrust and anger and miscommunication within queer/trans/gender-nonconforming communities (to say nothing of what comes from outside) -- it makes me worried I might hurt someone unintentionally. But I think it's important to find a way to have conversations about things that are hard, and we can't figure things out without having words for our experiences.

What I observed is that most often in the masculine-of-center spectrum, butch is an identity that takes years -- decades -- to grow into. I know people who say they knew they were butch as young people, children even, but I still think it takes time to develop. Part of the problem of course is that language is incredibly imprecise. Who can decide what a word means? Who can decide who can claim an identity? I certainly know older butches who are immature in many ways. But still I think that to generalize, butches are older and take longer to come to that identity. Whereas most of the trans folks I know are younger and often transition within a few years -- five or ten at the outside -- combining hormones and surgery and then passing or not, but being one way or another committed (a least physically) to a trans identity. I don't think this time compression is a bad or a good thing, but I do think it makes a difference. I think that no matter what conclusion you come to, the length of that process does matter, one way or another. I think that about myself and my gender/sexuality.

Where did this conversation leave us? This old feminist butch? This Alaskan femme who has always loved masculine-of-center folks and struggled with that, because at college everyone was supposed to be androgynous and queer and hip and I just wanted to wear light sundresses and big sunglasses and love butches and bois and genderqueer and trans folks? And this young person just finished with their first year of college and figuring out "gender and all that"?

It left us all grateful that we know each other, and can have a conversation about our perspectives and experiences and dear god where would we be without being able to share with one another? We would be even more lost and uncertain and nervous and confused. And thank god that we live in a place where we can have this conversation, that we can meet, that we can safely talk in public about things that are important to us on the sidewalk of a small, semi-rural town.

I am so grateful for queer community. For butches, for their strength and for giving me a focus and something to swoon over. For young people (am I old enough to call them young people?) who give me different perspectives. For my transgendered friends and lovers, for their courage and conviction. For my beau. Oh, my beau, who informs my thoughts, my feelings, who reflects my strength back to me and grounds me and holds me and has been gone for over a week and comes back in two days and has been right with me the whole time.

Thank you.

Storm clouds coming....

On Monday I hosted a 4th of July bbq (my first), very spur of the moment. We made fried chicken and homemade ice cream, played backyard games, drank copious amounts of beer, and went swimming in the river behind my house. In the evening, my landlord/neighbor (who has many pet chickens which run around my backyard and wake me up emphatically in the mornings) came up holding a rooster. One of her favorites. It had a name. She said, I finally understood just how much these roosters are tearing up the hens and decided it's time to get rid of them. I put them all in the truck last night and drove them two miles down the farm road and left them there. This one showed up outside the coop in the morning. Do you want to eat him? And so she got a cone and I got a knife, and I killed the chicken in front of all the (startled) guests, and I cleaned him and she put the kids to bed and then came over for ice cream. So tonight I'm making soup.

Actually, this afternoon I saw a cloud front coming over the fields and took myself out for a run before it hit. I breathed hard and watched the distant lightning roll closer. When I got back, I brought some things inside and did some tai chi on the back porch as the wind picked up. The air whipped itself into an ecstatic frenzy, and finally I dashed inside as hard drops of rain started to fall.

Then I made soup. And damn, if that rooster isn't delicious.

Here's hoping that the title of this post is totally about the weather and has no predictive qualities about my emotional state.

Our Story Today In Two Acts

Act One: Here
in my bed--cool sheets.
beau's broad back, my touch tracing
fingers down to ass.

beau's ass, a split round
moon, perfectly curved, ready
for me to slip in.

Act Two: There
The alley outside the club is busy tonight. Two men get out of a pickup with 40s, two girls follow them with beers. They try to get in but are turned away. Back to the truck. Hip college kids smoke cloves while others just take in a needed a breath of fresh air. I see them all, but I'm not paying attention. I've got better things to focus on: my beau's rough kisses at my neck, his fingers dancing with the hem of my skirt. I cock one knee forward between his legs and lean back against the brick wall. He's hard against my thigh, packing just for me, knowing how he turns me on. I want to give myself over, to feel the feel the rough bricks at my back and the tender insistent stud pressing me into them. I take the thick hair at the nape of his neck in my hands and pull him to my mouth. I'm so hungry for him, hungry to taste him, hungry for him to fill me up with his cock and his hands and his love. We lay claim to each other in the alley. As people pass us their eyes slide by, hot but embarrassed; they stare at my skirt high on my thigh and Beau's big hands there; they pretend not to hear my hot breath; they can't stop looking. They don't know what to make of this tough beau with the leggy femme.

I know just what to make of us.

Because that's the only part actually written in the history books.

Can't even wrap my mind, my body, or my emotions around myself these days.

So instead, I'll just revel in the fact that apparently Netflix has decided that my favorite genre is "Biographical Dramas with a Strong Female Lead." I'll say.

Beau is at a conference this weekend and the last day of school was a week ago, so my work schedule has changed drastically (mostly for the less-stressful). Therefore, I'm watching movies. Last night: Dangerous Beauty, the story of Veronica Franco, a 16th century poet and courtesan in Venice. Tonight: Agora (which I've been wanting to see since it came out), about Hypatia, the 4th century Alexandrian philosopher/mathematician/teacher. They're both great -- or rather, exactly what I want to watch (which is the joy of netflix instant). I want something that won't make me think about how fucked up it is every five minutes. I want something that doesn't make me think too much but doesn't feel like junk food for my brain, either. I want to see beautiful things, beautiful women, beautiful places, and I'm okay with taking a few liberties with history to do it. Voila.

Now if only I can find one in which the strong, smart, beautiful woman is not persecuted as a witch.

Rainy day

So then it was so bad that all I could do was strain, stretched tight around nothing, trying to contain the emptiness and keep anything from getting in -- drawn like a bow, quivering and taut, unable to move for fear of bursting, unable to speak or even to breathe. I am compelled to try and put words to it to make it less terrifying, but there are no words. I cannot write, cannot speak, can't hardly think -- I'm straining to keep from thinking. Everything around is sinister and grotesque and it's hard enough not to cry much less think sensibly.

I can't imagine what it's like to be around. We went to pick up our first farm share of the season. Beau was driving and I just sat numb in the seat beside, staring out the window, utterly hollow. It felt like Beau was driving around a corpse. I could see it from the outside, almost, but without comment or feeling.

I don't know what to ask for because I don't know what I need. I feel as if I am a huge burden and yet I need so much tenderness. In that moment I just want to know that someone is there, loving me but leaving space, not asking for anything. That seems impossible to ask, impossibly huge and selfish. Yet somehow Beau is so good at giving it. I am scared to depend on it. We came home and I stroked my cat's ears and cried, and then came into the living room and Beau stroked me and wrapped tight arms around me and I cried.

We're still sitting here but it's different. We're connected -- hand to hip, legs to lap -- and I'm calm and breathing and okay. I wish I knew what it is that comes over me. I wish that I didn't judge myself so harshly for it.

Melting

My favorite part about running has got to be the snazzy outfits. Today I wore yellow spandex leggings (left over from my short stint rowing in college), with grey spandex shorts over them. Also multicolored striped socks and my favorite comfy t-shirt with birds on it. I considered the run a success not when I made the two miles running most of the way, but when (in my five minute walking cool-down) a woman I'd never seen before grinned at me and said, "Nice legs." That's right. I'm a runner.

It's been strangely good to come back to to routine after being home -- that week feels really important, and as always after being in Alaska I feel like I'll spend a long time processing (for lack of a better word) the experience. I'm so torn up about it if I stop to think that mostly I don't. It breaks my heart every time I leave....but this time, it's been mostly a good re-entry. I was crying at the airport, and my mom said, "Well, it's a good thing at least you're going back with your beau." I made some wisecrack, but the truth is it actually was amazing to have continuity with a person as I left. Usually it feels like a complete break every time I go back and forth, like home and here are two different worlds that both exist in reality but never touch....and this time, I have someone to talk about it with.

It also helps that it's spring here for real. There's a magnolia tree in front of my house that's in full bloom, tulip flowers resting lightly on the tops of branches. It's warm and sunny. Yesterday afternoon Beau and I went for a long scooter* ride, around the backroads and right through main street. It was the first day warm enough that Beau was in shirtsleeves and I in a skirt, and it was so sweet to wrap my arms around his waist and feel my skirt whip around my knees in the wind. Last fall, when we met and Beau was courting me, wooing me, I was acutely aware of the sensuality of the wind and the fabric and the sight of the warm smooth back of his neck between t-shirt collar and helmet. This spring it's different. Although the scooter's been away all winter and so that's new and exciting again, our bodies are so much more comfortable together. I don't immediately thrill as I rest against Beau's back as we ride, and the press of his hips between my legs is more familiar. Sometimes I worry that as the shine of new love wears off (and as my gratefulness for who my beau is not gives way to a more subtle appreciation of who Beau is), one or both of us will get bored and tired, and we'll bicker or stop desiring each other, and this whole thing we've made will just crumble on top of us and leave us to start over again.

Then again, last night we got home an hour before sunset, mouths sticky with soft serve and kisses, and played in the backyard treehouse with my neighbor's two year old twins. When the sun went down we sent them in to dinner and took ourselves to bed. I drew the curtains, Beau turned down the sheets and lay naked and waiting on top of them. I undressed slowly for his watchful eyes, slipping out of my shorts, pulling off my halter top, and then pouncing. I know how I like my beau -- oh, so many ways, but I wanted to start by drawing him into me and feeling my own power. I smoothed his hair back and traced lines down his face onto his chest and belly. I did this until my fingers tingled and his breathing grew heavy, and then I lowered one nipple between his open lips. He sucked and gasped and ran his hands across my back until my whole body felt awake and alive, and I sat up so that my wet and swollen cunt met his wet and hungry mouth. We kissed like that, me with my head thrown back and my beau buried in me, and we moved over and in and with each other until I just melted, energy pouring from me in every direction, from my open mouth into the air, from my open cunt making his throat slick and shiny and soaking the sheets.

And so it went, much longer into the night than I have time to write about now with Beau sleeping beside me. Oh, I think we're doing fine, the way we love each other. And me -- I think I'm doing fine too. Springtime is opening time, it's unfurling time, and I'm planning to take little steps in all directions. Thank god the winter's over.

*Beau would like a motorcycle. Secretly, I would too -- both to ride myself, and to ride behind, although I've always thought of myself as a bicycle girl. However, the scooter is shiny and blue, tops out at about 38pmh, and is not a bad alternative for the winding country roads and small soft serve places we frequent.

Homecoming

It's high tide. Not full high, up under the deck, but high enough that the anchor buoys are way off shore, and the sun that's barely shining through high clouds makes the sea glint full and billowy. Beau is upstairs napping, and I'm sitting outside while the sky drizzles and spits and then lifts into a bright high cloud cover. An eagle is shrieking across the cove from the high trees on Lena Point.

I've been "home" for just under a week, I'm leaving tomorrow, and as usual I'm not ready. This isn't really home in any sense of the word -- I grew up seven hundred miles north of here, and my base is over two thousand miles east. But my parents have settled here, perched between mountainside and water, and so I've come for a week of rest, of introducing Beau to the family, of settling into a different kind of routine for a while. Spring tides are often extreme, and last week was a full moon which makes them even more so. We've been watching the water come almost to the deck, then suck itself way out into the cove. In the evenings, after dinner when sunset turns the ocean pink and purplegrey, we've gone down in search of the fountains of water spurting up between the rocks, and dug huge clams which spit at us and close themselves quickly at our approach. They're in a bucket now, but we'll put them back before we leave since the chance of red tide makes them too dangerous to eat.

I've been so overjoyed and ecstatic this week. I've had so many moments of pure exhilaration, of love and warmth and rightness. Today I've felt out of sorts and a bit on edge, a little myself and mostly with Beau. It makes sense -- it feels like we just got here, and now there's another transition, and I don't know for sure the next time I'll be here.

Reproductive Justice!

I spent much of this weekend attending workshops and plenaries at the 30th annual CLPP Reproductive Justice Conference.

"Birth is sex," said the incredible Mohawk elder and midwife Katsi Cook. Well, of course we as a culture are so afraid of birth, (I'm paraphrasing) replied Cara Page, my conference crush, we're still terrified of sex and sexuality in all forms! Birth is such a big part of occupies my thoughts these days, as I'm a doula-in-training and going back to college in the fall to start on the path of becoming a midwife. So I went to all the birth-related workshops I could at the conference -- Expanding the Doula Model of Care: Training and Being an Abortion Doula, Empowering Birth, and Reframing and Empowering Parenting and Mothering. It was powerful to be in a completely pro-choice space, where all choices -- abortion, adoption, parenting as a young woman of color or an older transman or anyone at all -- are affirmed and supported.

When I think about my own hopes for birth and parenting, it's so tied up with all kinds of complications because I'm queer. I want to give birth to my children (at least some of them). It took me a long time to own that feeling without guilt: guilt for not wanting to adopt "when there are so many children who need homes," (although I have more complicated feelings about adoption now, but that's a different post). Guilt for not being enthusiastic about sharing childbearing with a female partner -- it feels selfish, because I want it so much. Confusion about how I could be so queer, but still want to be "the mom." 

One night in college, I stayed up really late with my friends in our co-op, sitting on the floor drinking red wine out of mason jars and talking about our futures. As you do. I got very emotional about my dilemma and said something along the lines of, "I love women -- I love dating them, sleeping with them, being with them -- but I want to have kids, and I just want to be the MOM!" My wise friend looked at me and said, "You don't want to be the mom -- you want to be the parent your kids like best." Which was of course completely true. I want to have the kind of relationship with my kids that I have with my own mom, but that is independent of my partner's gender. And of course, the older I get the less I want to be the parent my kids like best -- I wouldn't want them to have favorites. I just want to have a great, fun, honest relationship with them, and hopefully my partner will too.

That said, one of the things that is so wonderful and...relaxing, somehow, about being with my genderqueer beau, is that in our relationship, I know that I would be the pregnant one -- Beau isn't interested. It's one of the many ways that being with Beau makes me more comfortable in my own skin, in my own desires. We started dating very shortly after I ended a two and a half year, long distance, emotionally abusive relationship in which I felt very judged as not queer enough, and not radical enough, particularly in my desires to have one committed partner and to raise children with that person. Lots of things have given me some perspective on how fucked up that was (time, distance, therapy, friends, a relationship with someone who isn't, as Michelle Tea put it "a queer douchebag"). It's actually amazing to me how much more settled I feel now that I can begin to envision a future for myself, with someone I love, without feeling judged for it. But of course, that shouldn't be amazing at all.

And....somehow I managed to write an entire post that was going to be about the CLPP conference, and turned into something else all together. I'll try to put more thoughts about the conference down later, but they're still all swirling around in my head.

Butch Lab Symposium #2 Roundup

I was inspired to finally start putting my writing into a blog so that I could participate in the fantastic Butch Lab Symposium. Here's the roundup from Symposim #2: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions -- lots of amazing writers here.

• Ali Oh at Made of Words: Bottoms Up, Thumbs Up
• Madeline Elayne: Butches Don’t Wear Pink (and other fallacies)
• Victoria Oldham at Musings of a Lesbian Writer: Misconceptions
• Wendi Kali at A Stranger in This Place: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions
• RM at Letters from Titan: Butch Isn’t Ugly
• Kyle on Butchtastic: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches and Misconceptions:
• EST at A Lesbian Christian on Butch Stereotypes
• Joliesse Soul at This Side of Changed on Butch Stereotypes
• Laina at The Bookish Butch
• Harrison at How to Be Butch on Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions
• Lenore Louhi at twenty pebbles, a piece titled “Smoke”
• Cody on Cowboy Coquet on Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions

Down by the river

I have done the dishes -- twice. I've swept the house, folded the laundry, cleaned the cat box, called two friends, listened to a lot of NPR, and made banana bread. Even with all that (productive) procrastination, something inside of me is so afraid of being alone with my own thoughts that I made myself come down by the river to write, where I don't have internet, and even then I've brought a pack of my roommate's clove cigarettes -- and I "don't smoke".

Who is this person who's so uncertain, so wary of a lack of structure, of her own internal world? Where did she come from? I didn't grow up with her. She's been around for a couple of years, I think, lurking in the corners, but it's only more recently that I've noticed her at every turn.

It's when I'm indoors that she sneaks up on me most, catches me off guard and whirls me around. That's probably part of why this winter was so hard -- why living in Alaska again after college was so hard -- because inside I feel stuck and trapped (no matter how homey it is). It calms me down deep to be outside, as long as I'm not shivering.

Maybe if I combine cigarettes with a more rigorous exercise routine, they'll even each other out? This clove is awfully relaxing. I've been trying to step up my exercise, again much easier now that it's a reasonable temperature for human life outside. I've slowly added running to my karate and dance routine, and today I went for a seven mile bike ride -- poking around some neighborhoods near my house, which I just haven't explored yet since I moved in in the fall. I'm terrifically unmotivated and excellent at procrastinating (see above), but I feel so good when my heart is pounding and my ears start to hurt because of the cold air against my hot eardrums. The more I do it, the more I can remember that feeling and the easier it is to motivate next time.

I know what I need to do -- some of it, at least -- it's putting it into practice that's difficult. And that's the thing about depression, isn't it? Wherever it comes from, whatever form it takes at any given time, it's there, making everything just a little bit harder.

When I was biking today, the wind was strong in my face for the first half of the ride. It was chilly against my bare shins and pushed at my eyelids. I pedaled hard into it, willing my body to be stronger, waiting for that moment when I would turn the loop and head home with it at my back. I made that turn, and for a second everything was still and the air hovered around me -- and then it was back in my face as I picked up speed, no longer the external wind blowing against me but the air resistance I created with my own movement. It struck me how all those things that slow us down, that push against us -- they're a combination of what comes at us and what we create, but they never completely go away. I want to learn how to make peace with the wind in my face, to keep going forward into it without it overwhelming me -- but god, it's hard sometimes.

Smoke

This story is part of the Butch Lab Symposium.

I didn't notice her at first when I walked in. It was dark and crowded, and I was already tipsy. I walked straight past the bar lined with queers ordering drinks, past the pool tables where frat boys threw back beers and grabbed their blonde girlfriends, past the dancefloor which was currently taken over by a crowd of onlookers watching someone I couldn't see sing karaoke. I threw my coat on a pile behind the cigarette machine and went to find a drink and my roommate.

She was leaning against the bar with her eye on me, but I didn't yet know it.

Roommate found, drink in hand, the karaoke finally gave way to the dj and we snaked into the middle of the dancefloor. I sweated out the heat of the day to the beat of Taio Cruz, eyes closed, arms in the air. After a couple of songs, my roommate nudged me and pointed to a couple of hot butches nearby. I grinned and raised an eyebrow, watching them now but trying not to be obvious about it. A few songs later, though, they'd made their way closer to us, although none of us acknowledged that we were all checking each other out. One of them was fucking gorgeous, and right next to me....I kept brushing up against her casually, the way you have to when the dancefloor's so crowded, and every time my arm touched hers I got more turned on. She was a few inches shorter than me, especially in my heels, with spiky hair, solidly strong arms and bound flat chest. She was looking at me boldly now through glasses just hip enough (but not too much), and when the music paused to go back to karaoke she leaned in close and said, "Smoke." Then she disappeared through the crowd.

I am not a smoker, and I will admit that it took me a split second to realize that she was asking me to step outside with her, instead of telling me...something? Her cheesily mysterious butch nickname? When I figured it out, I laughed at myself and moved to follow her. Outside it was dark and humid but slightly chilly, the mark of late summer, and I leaned into her and flirted. She touched my waist, I put my palm just below her collarbone, we talked of nothing important with our voices but everything with our eyes and breath. She finished her cigarette. We went back inside with our fingertips touching and danced together until last call. The crowd pushed us outside together, and we stood there looking at each other in the parking lot. I'd biked into town, and she offered to give me a ride home. "Thanks," I said. She opened the door for me, something nobody had ever done for me before. It tickled my newly-discovered femme identity, and I swooned a little on the inside. She fastened her own seatbelt and turned to me: "Your place or mine?" How bold! How gallant!

"Yours, I think," I managed. I kept my fingertips lightly on her thigh as she drove, and by the time we got there I was kissing her neck gently, urgently. I hardly knew this butch, but I was smitten and very, very turned on. When we got to her apartment, we were cool as anything until the door closed -- then we fell on each other, mouths open and hungry, hands moving over each other, exploring, discovering. She undressed me tenderly but quickly and I stood before her in my skin, dress pooled around my feet, watching her eyes wander over me. I knelt in front of her, undid her belt buckle, and unzipped her pants before she pushed me to the bed and finished undressing herself. She came to me with gentle power in her broad hands. She worked me over and filled me up and I sighed and screamed in her ear, and her breath was hot on my skin as she came with me all the way and back again.

In the morning she bought me coffee on the way back to my bike, still locked to the railing outside the bar. I kissed her in the car and told her to text me. And she did....oh, she did. She sent me gloriously explicit texts all that day about how much she enjoyed me, how she'd like to again, and I reciprocated. So I showed up that night, back at her apartment, wondering about my own judgment but knowing that she wasn't an asshole, and that I'd just had the best sex of my life. This time she got me a beer from the fridge and put on a record, and we sat close on the couch listening to Elvis and getting to know one another a little. We were both, I think, timid about the fact that this bar hookup wasn't just a one night stand, and she asked how it was that I felt confident enough to go home with her, essentially a stranger. "Well," I replied, "I have a pretty good sense of people. But mostly, you were by far the hottest butch in that bar, and I wanted you."

"Oh," she said, smiling, "I'm not butch."

"Yes, you are," I said, eyebrows raised. Is it possible that she doesn't know? It's not like she's some college kid, she's old enough to have figured out at least some of this identity stuff.

"No, I'm not," she said again. "I used to think I was butch. I lived in the city after college and I played pool with all the butches at the lesbian bars, and they thought I was one of them. I thought I was one of them. And then I realized, spending all that time with those butches -- that wasn't me. I'm not that kind of tough. I'm a faggy genderqueer."

I stepped all over myself apologizing, much to his amusement, appalled at myself that I would have misinterpreted so badly (liberal queer femme trans-loving-ally-self that I am). And then I had all kinds of questions, about how genderqueer was different for him from butch, and different from trans -- and I am lucky enough to still be getting answers to those questions. He answers me with his voice, with his eyes, with his body, with his whole self -- and sometimes we both help each other see a little bit more of who we are.


I didn't see you at first when I walked in, or even after. I had no idea that you would come into my life like a flame, like a fireplace to sit beside, like a warm hand on the small of my back, like a sweet morning kiss in the early grey light and a sexy strong presence to put me just where I want to be in my body. You are my sweet boy, my strict old man, my beau.