#TimesUp Means We Get to Claim All the Spaces

            Last Friday night, I went to Goth Night with a favorite friend and some of his favorite friends. Though I’ve been going to Goth Nights for about 25 years and my friend could NOT have been more welcoming, I was brightly-clad fish out of water. The people around us were all young and fit in their perfect black clothes, impeccably made up.  (Including these teeny tiny star decals—how did they know how to do that?!) But my perceived disconnect with my fellow dancers could not have mattered less—my pal and I were the smiliest goths in all of history and I could NOT contain my glee at getting to dance to Nine Inch Nails just like I did when I was 19.

            At one point, a bro-y guy sort of got in our space and maybe without even meaning to, my pal and his beautiful variously-queer squad formed a dancing wall between the bro and ourselves until he faded off away—a gift and a miracle.

            As I flailed around awkwardly and joyously, I compared this evening to the dance nights of my twenties and felt a PROFOUND difference—I’m all the way here on the planet more than I’ve ever been. My dorky fake converses felt grounded to the earth, solid in a way it’s taken me so long to achieve. I’m not just reacting to the currents of life anymore, I’m planted. Even when I’m not in my perfect blue bubble of an apartment, I’m home.

            I wanted to hug my twenty- and thirty- and forty-year-old selves, tell them how proud I am of how far we’ve come, how strong I am now, but instead I settled for leaping about like a demented cheerleader to the supposedly bleak music. I was so, so happy that I’d put on an outfit and gone.

            Earlier last week, I had a far less joyful but just as grounding experience, writing this bummer of a letter to my neighborhood gym:

“Dear --------------,

I am writing today to tell you a story that may be triggering. I do not currently feel safe attending (gym name) and I hope that you can help me. I am planning to pause my membership for three months to give the issue time to resolve.

On Saturday, January 28 at about 12:20 PM, I was sitting in the hot tub when a man came and sat down on the hot tub steps, directly across from me, blocking any comfortable exit. He was white, medium-height, bald, and had a mustache. As he settled into the water, he started contentedly rubbing his crotch, as if there were no one else in the room. He did this for several minutes, alternating with splashing water on himself. I felt very uncomfortable and violated. It didn’t seem like he was directing the behavior at me, more like my presence and the presence of other gym patrons didn’t matter at all.

When I asked him why his hands were in his crotch, he denied it, got very flustered and angry and stormed off. Although he had left the room, I did not feel safe and was forced to leave my workout early and go home.

I called and reported it on Monday morning, January 29^th, at around 7 AM. The woman at the desk was very kind and receptive, but the situation still feels unresolved. I often enjoy attending the pool at night, and I don’t want to risk being alone in the pool area with this man. I absolutely do not feel that this is something I should have to worry about at the gym (or anywhere!)

Female customers should feel just as safe and entitled to their space at the gym as men do. We are paying the same amount and we deserve the same access to services without fear of violation.

Here are the fixes that I am asking for:

1.      This man should have his gym membership revoked.

2.      The gym needs a clear sexual harassment policy, sent to members, visible on the website, and posted clearly in all gym areas.

3.      A female staff member should be posted in the pool area at all times.

4.      Staff should be trained in sexual harassment prevention and trauma sensitivity so that patrons can feel comfortable coming to them with any concerns.

I would be happy to meet with you and discuss this. I have otherwise enjoyed my time at (gym name) and I hope that we can find a just solution for me and for your female patrons.

Best,

Jane”

            I’m so annoyed that I had to spend my time on this, and that I’ll probably have to go to a meeting about it and/or find a way out of my membership contract, but this is the widest margin I’ve ever given myself for recovering from this kind of thing. I didn’t want to write the letter, but I asked my body what it wanted and this was the only answer that I got.

            This vexingly commonplace incident reminded me of an earlier one, from when I was sixteen or seventeen. I used to like to take the bus from the suburbs into what seemed at the time like the “big city” of Syracuse, NY. On this particular day, I had spent the day at the big library, picking out an art-themed and vaguely beatnik-y book of poetry.

            I was dressed as I dressed for most of high school-- a polyester thrift store find, a short, red floral print dress and probably lug-soled mary janes—I love the Nineties SO MUCH. It was spring, just warm enough to go to the park and read. I sprawled beside a tree with my poems and almost instantly, a man sat down next to me. He had curly hair and a shiny grey mustache and was wearing several mismatched hippie prints—and there was clearly something just…wrong with him. No one had taught me that you can tell someone to go away, so I just tried to ignore him and concentrate on my poems.

            I heard a terrible slish and looked up to see him tugging on his flaccid, worm-white penis and staring at me intently. In a wave of revulsion I stood up quickly to go and he said incredulously “You’re leaving?”

            What happened next is so cliché that I don’t even want to type it—the police station was like RIGHT THERE next to the park, they totally could have nabbed the guy. The policeman, though, like a villain out of some perverse after school special, said “What are you doing alone in the city, and what are you wearing that dress for?”

            I quoted the cop in a bad poem at open mic night that night (I tried for decades to get his line into a good poem, it’s just too stupid!) but I’d gotten the message from both the regular creep and the cop-creep: This city, this space, is ours, and anything that happens to you in it will be your own fault.

            The thing is, though, that park was just as much mine as anybody’s. Despite the policeman’s assertion, nobody had planted the trees and flowers so that guys in mismatched hippie clothes could take full advantage of whatever glimpse of teenage leg he happened to get. That park was mine to read in, just like the gym’s hot tub is mine to soak in. This is my world too, and I am sick and tired of feeling intimidated out of it.

            Women and other people with marginalized bodies (i.e. everyone who isn’t a straight, white cisgender man) should always get to feel as welcomed, grounded, and safe as I felt on that dance floor Friday night. I’m angry at the amount of emotional labor it is taking to move us all forward, but I’m so, so glad to help us claim our rightful place, which is everywhere.

Why D.C. Is My Happy Place

Last Sunday was the Equality March, where LGBTQ folks, allies, and Women’s March stalwarts gathered to show our pride and solidarity and to protest the Trump regime. As my BFF/ex-wife and I walked into the crowd at Farragut Square, we happened upon a wave of woohoos. A marching band in matching purple T-shirts played “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and I felt old when only a few people looked fired up about that. When they played “Born This Way,” I jumped around in sincere joy at my people’s unofficial anthem.

It was certainly the biggest LGBTQ demonstration I’ve ever been in, though of course it was teensy compared to the D.C. Women’s March. Amy was carrying a pinwheel she’d made herself!

 and I’d painted a sign that said this:

Since November, protests have come to feel like a second home to me. I take so much comfort in the signs, both the clever puns and the classics:

I’ve been chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” for twenty years, and I was amused by the addition of “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Donald Trump, sashay away!” The crowd grew at every intersection, and was ebullient until we reached the White House—you could hear the boos and the “Shame, shame, shame!” chants from many blocks away. When we got there, we noticed snipers on the roof, but maybe they are always there. Though we were literally targets of the Trump administration, I felt completely safe. I know that’s partly a function of privilege, (It’s much safer for me in protests than it is for people of color, Muslim folks, and trans folks, a fact I try not to take for granted.) but being with The People tends to make me feel at home, whether I’m canvassing, marching, or just going in for my weekly therapy appointments at Women Organized Against Rape. Connection is what keeps me strong and happy, the opposite of helpless, knowing that we are many and we will not be silenced.

            After the march, Amy and I sat down in the shade outside the Museum of Natural History to catch our breath and have a snack. I needed to go in to use the restroom, and as I got metal-detected and wanded to get into the museum, a thought occurred to me: Everything in the entire Smithsonian is mine. The Hope Diamond and all of her mineral friends, the Ruby slippers, the Washington Monument, every fountain and path and sunken sculpture garden, it’s mine. Ours. It belongs to everyone at every intersection.

This is not and has never been a country that belongs only to straight white men, and I’m glad that so many of us are working to turn away from that default and toward ourselves and those who need our support.

On the way home, Amy and I happened to pass the National Cathedral (Picturing Jed Bartlett there, crushing out a cigarette in the transept…)I wanted to gaze up at the architecture and see if I could get inside to look at the stained glass, which I hadn’t seen since a school trip when I was twelve. (The fact that I ran out of film on that trip still haunts me. Thank goodness that’s not a concern anymore!) Amy, legs sore from marching, kindly waited outside in the turnaround while I went to explore.

The outside of the building was as awe-inspiring as I’d expected, but it was the windows that really transported me, brighter to my eyes because of all the rainbows I’d just spent the day with. Pictures don’t do justice to the saturated colors, which looked like the other-worldly light that I picture when I do chakra meditations. A choir was singing, and as I walked around lit up and mesmerized, I realized that I must look odd walking around a cathedral with my rainbow-ribbon pigtails, pride fest beads, spiked collar, and beribboned leather cuff, but I thought of course I’m in a cathedral all prided up, this is my cathedral too. Doubly so.

My Catholic ancestry and upbringing means that I share responsibility for the horrors of our past, but it’s never occurred to me that I could take ownership of the beauty too. Every rich, shining pane of glass, every flying buttress, belongs just as much to my queer, pro-choice voice-having lady self as it belongs to the pope himself. Maybe I’ll go to the Vatican someday and check out my Sistine Chapel, my Rafaels, my golden dome. As much as the horror is mine to inherit and try to correct, so is the light.

And the same goes for America. I’m used to taking part of the responsibility for the Native American genocide, for slavery, for the School to Prison Pipeline, sharing in those problems and knowing they are mine to help fix, but I’m also ready to claim the good things. I visit the Hope Diamond as often as I can because it’s beautiful and ours, just like President Obama’s legacy is beautiful and ours. We can hold hope in our hand and let it sparkle, never let anyone take it away.

Ten Things I’m Grateful for After a Broken Month

A month ago this minute, a nice ordinary day turned into a nightmare when I got hit by a car in the crosswalk. It’s been a hard hard month, but if I didn’t have such a lucky life, it would have been a lot harder.

1.     I’m grateful that I have family and friends to take care of me when I need it, particularly my best friend/ex-wife without whom I’m be sniveling and starving under a pile of dirty dishes.

2.      I’m grateful that I work in a neighborhood where people stop to help if they see you get hurt. I’m particularly grateful to the two Muslim men who called 911 and stayed with me until friends came, but also the friend-of-a-friend who went to get me water and ice, for my work friends who stayed with me until the ambulance came, and for the driver who stopped after he hit me.

3.      I’m grateful that I live in a beautiful neighborhood full of flowers and lightning bugs, where there are yard sales and art sales and neighbors who surprise me with chocolate bars and lavender poundcake, where I can sit outside reading or writing every morning until it gets too hot.

4.      I’m grateful for Orange Is the New Black giving me a chance to scream-sob about all of the things.

5.      I’m grateful for my rewatch of The West Wing and I’m grateful that my outlook is more The West Wing than House of Cards so that I could take to heart the shows of support from Democratic leaders (particularly John Lewis) in the horrible wake of Orlando.

6.      OH MY GOD I am grateful for Obamacare, without which a physical nightmare would have been (more of) a financial one as well.

7.      I’m grateful for my very loving cats. Sally always sits next to me and Frannie always sleeps by my face, assuring me I’m loved and safe.

8.      I’m grateful for my #365RainbowDays and for the fact that I’m well-versed in positive psychology, because I’ll need a lot of intentional joy to circumvent the depression and fear vying for attention in my brain.

9.      I’m grateful to the LGBTQ+ community both here and online—thank you for caring so much, fighting so hard, and being so beautiful.

10.  I’m grateful that I didn’t miss a day of tutoring yet, and that my other two jobs are as friendly and flexible as can be. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to lift textbooks again, but I’ll be so excited when that day comes.

Thanks 2015! "Countless Small Acts of Courage"

The most incredible thing happened at my mom's Christmas party last weekend, something that was worth a million rainbows. My fourteen-year-year-old niece, AKA the coolest person in the universe, and her BFF (my also-quite amazing bonus niece) were regaling us at top volume about the byzantine love lives of themselves and their friends, stories that included all kinds of straight, gay, bi, and trans characters. It made my heart just shine with joy. Though there's still such a very long way to go toward gender equality, the world has expanded and gotten so much more glittery since I was these girls' age.

I'm so proud of the nieces for their ingrained inclusiveness, so I wanted to stop and appreciate all of the little things that got us to that conversation and to that rainbowiest of days last June.  Not the political things, though those are surely important, but all of the many little moments of connection, of engagement, of expression that helped us to make more room for love one honest interaction at a time.  And I'm so proud of all of us who went ahead and got married anyway (even if I personally failed at it) and of the families who created and supported those weddings, especially my own.

I want to hold June 26, 2015 in my heart as a reminder that there is hope for all of the projects of progress, that every time we speak up, show our love, or work for change in the tiniest of ways, we're getting ourselves to that place where we can stop for a second and say, holy Christmas, things really did get better. The future belongs to my badass nieces and my sweet, thoughtful nephews, and for that reason, I'm wholly optimistic.