In Praise of Pride Merch, Part Two

Loss is, but so is LOVE.

This year, for the first time since burning-things-down summer, Amy and I joined the Philly Pride March. People of all ages were wrapped in every color of Pride flags, every sequined or tulle (or both!) permutation of every flavor of rainbow. So many young people with cute pansexual flags painted on their cheeks. Everyone there (aside from the requisite small group of surly religious folks) seemed so happy, so free, and SO STINKIN’ CUTE!

And there, at the end of the march, were the booths. My favorites were the independent artists. They were selling in-joke t-shirts, pronoun pins, big, bright PLUS SIZE! dresses. One booth had a flag pin selection so thorough that they had both the old and new versions of the polyamory flag.

And of course, there were organizations: for reproductive justice, for gender-affirming care, for getting out the vote. The National Parks Service was there making a flag out of rainbow “what inclusion means to me” postcards.

As I’m describing this day I kind of took for granted, it’s really hitting home how much history and effort and sacrifice had to happen to get us there. Just like those Freedom Rings were a key to a bigger life, Pride is a rebirth, reaffirmation, and continuous organizing of that bigger life. It feeds us and connect us and fills our field of vision with bright adorableness so we can be fortified to keep building a loving world.

There were corporations at Philly Pride too, banished to something called “corporate alley.” I love that for us.

But about those corporations: I am so, SO happy that my niece came of age in a time where her bisexuality was so ordinary that she could shop about it in the Target. I love that she could be like “Oh there’s a Star Trek themed Pride shirt this year and now I have a Star Trek themed Pride shirt.”

I love that I could super casually pick up a bi bandana to use as an in-case-there’s-teargas-and-also-because-Covid mask in the summer of 2020! Plus glittery rainbow socks.

When I see the Pride sections in regular stores, I always wonder what it would have felt like to see them as a kid. I was raised rurally and then sheltered-suburbanly in the Eighties and Nineties. For queerness, I pretty much had Madonna (whose records my mom let me get) and Culture Club (whose records she did not.) When I grew into hair bands, I had pretty, pretty Sebastian Bach on my wall making me feel gender things I didn’t have words for.

Would a beautiful activist Skittles package or a rack of multi-flagged tees have given me a language for what I was feeling? Maybe! Who knows! I didn’t even have a language for talking about “regular” sexuality, let alone for discussing queerness.

Which is why it really, really hurts my heart that violent, cruel monsters bullied Target into taking their Pride displays down. It feels like an end (hopefully just a temporary end) of a golden age. It’s not that I think corporations genuinely cared about us this past decade or so—it doesn’t make a difference to me how they feel, only that they’re adding more rainbows (And therefore, I think, more queer visibility) to the world. We really, really need all the rainbows we can get.

I value Corporate Pride not so much as a part of activism as a bellweather, as a symbol that we were powerful enough to be a mainstream thing, marketed to like everybody else. Selling us stuff is not an act of altruism, but it lets us see our progress nonetheless. It lets us see ourselves.

I know the tyranny of disinformation, violence, and fucked up “anti-woke” initiatives won’t prevail in the long run, but for now I just want to stop and feel the pain of losing a little ground. Pride is much bigger than cruelty, stupidity, white supremacy, much bigger and more powerful than brute force. It’s love, y’all, and there’s absolutely nothing they can do to overcome love.

Poetic License Horoscopes for July 27-Aug 3 (How About We Don’t Name Things After Grand Wizards Edition)

Cancer: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Leo: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Virgo: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Libra: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Scorpio: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Sagittarius: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Capricorn: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Aquarius: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

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Pisces: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Aries: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Taurus: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Gemini:  The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Poetic License Horoscope for June 8-14

Gemini: This week, in ways large and small, be like Mayor Muriel Bowser. With Washington D.C. under military occupation, she still found a way to make Black Lives Matter Plaza happen right in front of the White House. Your installations may not be as big or as resourced, but you can be a monument to justice, peace, beauty, and strength every day. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Cancer: It’s not that we birdwatchers (What? Stars can be birdwatchers!) hate leashless dogs! It’s message that their owners are sending: “Your bodily autonomy, your freedom, your safety, the birds’ homes, none of these things matter much as this animal I live vicariously through, this hapless, jumping thing that poops outside because I can’t.” Cancer, you’re the opposite of these folks: careful, deliberate, kind in the right direction, as you face the open wild or just the neighborhood woods.

Leo: The stars support your quest to curate your feeds, to weed out the racists or those who hate science or those who would stand on capitol steps with guns to fight for the right to murder us all with their breath. You know what’s on the other side of the silo, why wouldn’t you? Start thinking of estrangement as social divestment—some people just don’t deserve you.

Virgo: “How often have we heard you say that everything is futile, that nothing comes of all your labors?  Yet like amorphous buds, you endeavors sprout in all directions. You see everything as formless and you forget that this is a sign of life.” Hilma Af Klint. You’ve planted 1,500 morning glory seeds, but feel free to plant more. It’s all coming up, we promise.

Libra: The pieces of the portrait you’ve been working on so LONG are falling into place. Soon, you’ll see those kind eyes again, that shining, lucid heart. Spread out your love on the table like one hundred glitter gel pens and exclaim, exclaim, EXCLAIM about the sparkles. I can’t wait to see the whole of the angel’s magic face.

Scorpio: There’s a riot in your belly and that’s perfectly okay. According to alchemists, “vitriol” is an acronym for “Visita Inerriora Terrae Rectifcando Invenies Occultum Lapidum.” That means “By visiting the center of earth, you will find the Philosopher’s Stone.” Get a stick and poke around at the fires inside you, see what shapes appear in the flames.

Sagittarius: My neighbor buys flowers for herself every Sunday. She says that when she did this at the beginning of quarantine, back when we were all just hoarding Purell, the people in line at the co-op got annoyed with her, but it’s not their business what she finds necessary to her survival. No matter what letters there are to write, how many marches on your protest dance card, what weeping is forced upon you, set an alarm to got get yourself something beautiful. The stars are so glad you exist.

  Capricorn: The stars are sorry to both you and Rory Gilmore that we can’t do a thing about the whole humidity thing. Instead, we suggest watching the movie Adult World, set in our hometown of Syracuse, NY. That way, you can cool off watching a whole bunch of snow in our old neighborhood! Plus, you’ll get to see John Cusack go to Recess Coffee! That’s something, right?

Aquarius: Good work will come soon enough, we promise. For now, take to your bed like John and Yoko. Hold meetings, Be-Ins, singalongs, or cuddle parties, or all these at once. Invite the comforter to facilitate. Ask every pillow her opinion, and if it’s okay that you hug her. Count your audience of sleep masks, scandalous night-books, fancy lotions. Be very, VERY thorough.

Pisces: Thank the planets that are leaving your orbit, or just decisively swipe left. You don’t need a reason, just blow them away like dandelion fluff. You can build altars to them out of candles and spangles. Glitter bomb the places in your body and heart where long- or new-lost friends reside. It’s okay if you’re feeling scared and alone. The stars are with you, no matter what.

Aries: This week in the stars’ neighborhood, a group of six young people planned a protest in 48 hours. They hoped about fifty people would come, but it turned out to be over a thousand. Every step and turn of our “Whose streets? Our streets!” route was decorated with sacred names and cases of water. This was a miracle and also a privilege: Downtown, my friends were still facing violent police and the National Guard. Build everything you can, Aries, and don’t take a bit of it for granted.

Taurus: The stars are profoundly sorry that we forgot you the other week! Here’s what’s in your Apology Basket: Milk to wash away teargas. Spangles for all of your placards. Friends with ears that listen. One flower for every emotion in your heart, at any given minute. Scattered and prolific petals. Bearable heat. Every smell of candle you love. A reminder to drink enough water. The promise that we still know you’re a prism.

Beneath the Fear Is Love

this leaf-rubbing is on the back of a voter registration form. He named it "Ms. Jane in Autumn" because the colors reminded him of me. It's the one piece of his artwork that I didn't give back. 

I don’t mind saying that I am a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy champion. After eighty-bajillion years of therapy, I can argue down almost any distorted negative thought that depression and anxiety send my way. (I often think our political system could use a course in CBT. ALSO, all of our other systems.) But there’s one negative idea I just can’t get away from: The conviction that I will never again find love.

I understand that I have no way of knowing. I would never tell a friend they were too ugly, too fat, too old to be loved, but this is what my brain thinks, particularly when it comes to my (main) attraction to masculine-presenting people. I don’t even believe in those standards, but they are so, so hard to refute. It’s sort of the core of my belief system that everyone deserves love, and I know it gets found in a million different ways by everyone, including by me.

There’s no real reason to assume that the romantic part of life is over for me, but in some ways, it would feel like a relief to let it go. Mostly, I go along buoyed by gratitude, goal-setting, and Prozac, but the yearning, well, lets go ahead and call it loneliness, is still there, stubborn and ardent as life. Sometimes, a flash, a mini-panic that SOMETHING IS MISSING AND I’LL NEVER FIND IT.

The last time I really-and-truly fell for someone in a (briefly) requited way was in fall of 2016. It’s startling to realize that that was THREE ENTIRE YEARS AGO. In my brain and heart, it feels like not very much time has passed at all. The love is thorough, the pain is fresh, and it makes me SO MAD AT MYSELF. I would never stand over a grief-struck friend and yell GET OVER IT ALREADY but that’s exactly what I feel like doing to myself.

We met at my old, dear library afterschool program job—he was the cutest security guard. He’d take frequent shifts in the children’s department and draw or play Legos with me and the kids. One day, we painted galaxies, I forget why. Okay, so neither of us was being particularly amazing at our jobs in those moments, but the kids made more art that school year than I’ve ever facilitated before or since. So that’s something.

One Friday, we played Monopoly—I forget why, usually I banned it because it stresses the kids out and who wants to play a game about rent, anyway? But that early-evening, it was like we were all counting money and being play-tough in a bubble of peace. His knee was touching mine under the table and it was maybe the deepest sense of belonging I’ve ever felt—like he and I and the students and the library and the city and the WHOLE world were a family for a few minutes.

On the day after Daylight Savings Time ended, we were supposed to have a Pokémon walk but he had to cancel.  He texted, though, that he really did like me back and we decided to plan a date. It all felt so settled and hopeful: I would canvass my ass off, Hillary would win, and then we’d snuggle. (That is maybe the saddest sentence I’ve ever typed in a lifetime of sad sentences.)

The day after Hillary lost, I walked into the library, where the podium for our kid-election was still decorated with red, white, and blue stars, and started sobbing. He was summoned from upstairs to come and comfort me. Holy Jesus, that hug. That love, that man, that end-of-the-world day.

Our date was that Friday—I remember that it was Veteran’s Day because he was off from the library and could come visit me on the Rosemont campus, the bookstore being one of my three jobs at the time. (Oh bookstore, another lost love.) As soon as I took his hand though, he changed his mind, or maybe he’d come to let me down easy? Either way, he did nothing wrong, it was just dating, just life. We spent a few hours chatting, shivering, and half-cuddling under a beautiful yellow tree, bright with cold sun. Nobody did anything wrong, just a shift that couldn’t be unshifted.

Logically, (ha) there was no need for a broken heart. A bad match isn’t personal, I know, I know. But after the election, I needed a win so much, TOO MUCH. (It wasn’t really registering yet how important Kamala Harris’s win would be to me.) I needed the pre-election hope to somehow come back, and I needed that hope to be him. Now that I type it, that’s a lot to have put on one human being, and on myself as well.

Now, whenever a cute guy starts to seem even a little possible, I’m petrified. I’m like a spooked horse who wants to kick down every barn wall and escape to a meadow of infinite Gilmore Girls episodes.  The littlest hope from a blushing handsome face makes my unhelpful brain want to convince me that IT WILL ALL COME CRASHING DOWN, that love or even just a little spark of attraction with somehow make it 2016 again, with the panics and the sobbing and the rage-driving and the Thanksgiving ruining.

By some miracle, I’ve made a happy, angry, protest-filled life in the past three years, but it feels like the slightest loss of control, the smallest step towards vulnerability, would take it all way. When I was little, I used to wish so hard for anyone (besides, so amazingly, my mom and my three closest friends) to protest with, and now, though the world is so full of suffering and fear, I, by some crazy grace,  have a version of the life I’ve always wanted, connected to ALL of my fellow humans in a way I would have never thought possible, with every march, every sign, every letter to congress. For the last three years, my love has been the whole world, which is wonderful but not conductive to snuggles. Still, I don’t want risk anything taking that connection away.

As I wrote this out, I could feel my heart loosening a little, letting out a little of that vast reservoir of love I had in fall of 2016. I’m grateful to have reached the point of honoring that love. I would like him, the beauty and trauma and tragedy and silliness of loving him, not to take up so much space in my heart, but he does. Maybe I’m a little bit trapped in the amber of that week because it was so important, because he was so important. That’s good. Maybe I’ll just love him as long as I need to, which is probably forever, and then maybe I’ll love someone else. Maybe even that someone else’s someone else too, who knows?

Maybe time isn’t frozen in my heart. Maybe it’s just going at its own pace. Speaking of time, this took forever to type because I’ve been texting two cuties on Bumble, so it’ll probably be okay.

Jenny’s Gold Dress and the Persistence of Art

Very blurry Jenny Lewis at The Met Philly, October 26, 2019

The world seems to be ending in a million ways. The Getty, which seemed as eternal as any place I’ve ever been, might burn down. I spend time worrying about the denizens of the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, many of whom are probably long dead. In the grand scheme of things, there’s not THAT MUCH I can do for Kamala Harris or Greta Thunberg. And Yet.

We see the dress before the lights come up, a movement more than a color, a reflection of every kind of light, but unerringly, unceasingly gold. So many different kinds of gold. Gold in every light, heating up to pink or cooling to silver-edged shimmer, but always, always ALWAYS, gold, gold, gold.

This whole situation, this band, this stage, these multicolored neon landlines, this fancy new-fashioned chandelier, this rosemary-flavored hard seltzer, it all seems like a miracle to me. Like, how does anyone do anything? How does any driver ever make it where they’re going, never mind the logistics of this whole show?

And yet, this perfect gift, the actual prettiest person with her benediction of a voice. Somehow, out of all the world’s chaos, art. Solid, still, shimmering. It’s why I visit the Hope Diamond after the scariest protests, why I need to document nearly every flower. It’s important to take it all in, to honor it, to metabolize it into something new. This beauty, these perfect notes, this gold dress, this lifetime I’m in the middle of living.

I sat in the balcony with my cool cousin-in-law and her very ladylike friends, thinking yep, this is femme, and also thinking of the nearly 20 years since Rilo Kiley became my favorite band, my favorite almost-anything.

Though married then, I lived on a shifting sand of crushes, heartbreaks, and meltdowns. I played songs from beloveds’ MySpace pages to be close to them a little, watching a little blinking star near the cursor—I’m here, I’m someone, I’m someone else, I’m here in the world with you.

Though it seems like hometown, family, and true love would have stabilized me, would have made me feel safe, I was in a constant fight with the world to see if I belonged here, convinced that everything from closet-mold to weather was a personalized indication that the world was trying to push me out, that I would never be welcome anywhere.

I cried in the spring because I worried that I wasn’t looking at the lilacs enough. I cried in the summer if it wasn’t warm enough to go to the lake. I ate big salads with Amy on Sundays, read the paper, did the crossword, went over to our best friend Marc’s apartment to watch the Simpsons. I was in love with him too, and eventually that made us not friends, which could be the title of my memoir.

Since then, I’ve lost so much, but, miracle and meds, I’ve learned attachment. I’ve learned to (in my own extremely guarded way) belong in the world. My friendship with Amy is a stronger foundation than marriage ever could’ve been, a pedestal as important to me as the Statue of Liberty’s base. I feel, in some sense, permanent, though still glimmering, ridiculous, unsure.

Jenny’s voice and her gold dress plugged me back into something unbalancing though, and utterly vital. The way a cute guy or a good flower or a beautiful/sad documentary can grab me by the chin and face my attention in the right direction, toward my most central truth: art persists. There never wasn’t this ballroom, this flower, this gold dress.

And with that reminder, yearning comes back. Yearning to be solid and quiet and loved but also to be knocked off balance by the sheer force of gorgeousness, yearning for every destabilizing and grounding reminder that I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

Screaming at the Supreme Court: A Love Story (Part Six)

It all happened so fast. It seemed like the people at the front, with the big “NOVEMBER IS COMING” and “WE BELIEVE SURVIVORS” banners in Women’s March font had been ready for centuries—I guess in many ways they have. Maybe it’s my Chilling Adventures of Sabrina binge, but I’ve been thinking a lot about inherited pain and struggle, of power passed down between generations of women (ALL kinds of women: trans, non-binary, femme, cis, etc.) all witchy, all trained. We had their power with us that day, and it made everything easier for a while.

On a more earthly note, the training and organizing that has proliferated since the founding of Black Lives Matter, since Tarana Burke first tweeted #metoo, since the 2017 global Women’s Marches, and since Emma González called bullshit on gun violence has us SO READY to fight, SO READY to stand up against evil. We will only get better, more grounded, more interwoven, more soundly knit. We have built and are building something beautiful, every day.

The people (mostly women, mostly women of color, trans, non-binary, butch and femme and cis and so on) crossed the police barricades and made it up the Capitol steps so fast. They unfurled their banners and chanted “Join us! Join us!” so we did. I grabbed Amy’s hand and led her through a break in the barricade, streamed onto the Capitol steps with so, so many others. There we were. On the steps. Facing the crowd. I faced the “E.R.A. NOW” side of my sign toward the crowd and felt very classic and Seventies.

The noise was dazzling, shattering, reverberating off the marble of all of those white supremacist heteropatriarchal buildings:

“We believe survivors!”

“We believe survivors!”

“We believe survivors.”

I looked out into the assembled crowd and misted over from the magnitude of the moment. After a few more minutes, Amy said “Okay, now it’s time to decide: Do you want to get arrested?”

I saw what she meant: dozens of black-clad police started lining up at the corner of the steps.

I had no question of what I wanted to do. My first student on Monday would be a little boy, a first grader who asks me WAY more questions than I should answer about why we don’t sing “I Believe I Can Fly” anymore and about every single other thing. At that moment, he was the highest priority in my heart, pulling me back down safely into the crowd.

There, we had the chance to witness our steps-occupying compatriots’ bravery. As we chanted to the police “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?” Layers of protesters left the steps, while many others stayed to get arrested.

The first two people to get arrested were a beautiful, middle-aged, full-figured goddess of an African American woman and the white clergyman she knelt beside, clasping hands at the front of the steps. Cheers erupted for them. As much as I wanted to side-eye the white dude, the symbolism was hard to resist.

Most of the arrested people wore brave, beatific expressions, some with a hint of “Are we really doing this?” in their eyes. There were people of all genders, many with a sort of wholesome, Unitarian-schoolteacher look about them, shiny-eyed and hopeful. A gorgeous femme trans women of color returned to the crowd, exasperated that they wouldn’t arrest her.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a candidate, I don’t know” she said.

Of COURSE she’s running for something. Magical fucking times!

One of the last people to get arrested was a blonde woman of about twenty. She had perfect red lipstick on and subtly punk rock eyeliner, and she was clearly having a panic attack. I saw the fear flicker into her eyes, so out of place and yet exactly right in this moment of plucky determination.

As the policeman put the zip-tie handcuffs onto the young woman, cuffing her at the front of her body, I could see her start to hyperventilate, could see her start to fight back perfectly reasonable tears. I could see her wishing she could just FREAK. THE FUCK. OUT. I started to freak out for her, sobbed from my safe place and wished I could run to help her. Her fellow arrested young women gathered around her to help, breathing with her and helping her to breathe. This young woman’s bravery, her vulnerability, her trapped fear, will stay with me forever, will help me fight.

So much of survivorship is about feeling trapped, immobile, voiceless. If you’ve never lived in a body that faces those conditions, it’s hard to understand the risk that that young woman, ALL those women, all those PEOPLE took. They faced the fears that I’m not always strong enough to face, and they did it for me. For you. For our fellow survivors. For America.

I promise that this sacrifice will never go unhonored or unnoticed. I promise to honor that panicking young woman and her brave compatriots every chance I get. I promise to always face my fears, to raise my voice, to stand as bravely as I can for women of every category. I hope you can make that promise too.

Theme and Heart Inventory for Age 44

Before I go into what an amazing, magical, transformative year this has been, I kinda need to rip off a band-aid. I’m sad that romantic love is missing. I forget about it most of the time, reveling in my singleness, content to have the world and all of its movements as partners. I’m often relieved to feel removed from the roller coaster of attraction—it makes serotonin levels drop! That’s science! But this week I have to admit that I like and miss snuggles, I miss men, and I still have no idea how to get to romantic love.

One of my birthday adventures this week was to acknowledge and start moving past a long-fluttering crush. I did everything in the being-a-grownup-about-being-rejected handbook, and the guy was perfectly nice about it, but I was surprised at how SAD I felt when I found out he didn’t like me back. Crying in the night about a guy felt weirdly healthy, though, like something in me was grateful that it had been heard.

In spite of all my fat liberation, in spite of all my ALL kinds of liberation, this morning found me wondering if he wasn’t attracted to me because of the weight I’ve gained in the last couple of years. In weak, night-crying moments, I wonder if I’ve taken myself out of the guy-running forever, or if maybe I never was in it. Objectively, I think I’m beautiful. I don’t see a single reason why anyone would NOT want to snuggle me, but I also want to acknowledge that anti-fat prejudice might be part of it. I still believe my Aunt Connie, who told me when I was young that fat is jerk repellent, but I’m not sure I can call anybody a jerk for being susceptible to societal norms of beauty. Also I have no idea why this particular guy wasn’t into me, and in clearer-headed moments I’m a big believer in “just not a match.”

Whether I weigh 310 or 250, or even if I can’t figure out a way to stop gaining weight, I think it’s important to acknowledge that I literally dream about boyfriends almost every night. The circumstances and guys in the dreams are always different, but the feeling is always the same—a secure attachment, unlike anything I’ve ever felt with a guy partner in waking life. I think Jung might say (What? You weren’t wondering AT ALL what Jung might say?!) that this is part of my psyche’s integration, that the dreams are about falling in love with my animus, with my own power. While that ALSO seems accurate, sometime a dreamboat is just a dreamboat.

Though inconvenient, I think this longing is a sign of heath. I can feel myself getting enough space from Amy to make room for new love, and this is the first time since 2016 that I’ve let somebody fire up the good ol’ imagination machine that is my heart. That’s good. Also good? That this isn’t 2016.

Speaking of finding space from Amy, the transition from bookstore life has been one of the most fruitful and impactful parts of the year. Though I’ll never not be devastated that the patriarchy took our Rosemont store away, and I’ll never not be horrified that one of my next bookstore bosses turned out to be a men’s rights activist, I’m so grateful that life insisted on pushing me out of the nest. I’m happy that I was freed by fate and my own stubborn will (and big mouth) to go all in on my tutoring business.

My tutoring work is the crown jewel of this year and, I hope, of many years to come. I’ll never stop being delighted that I can transform a suffering, anxious, tearful child into an excited learner touching her heart and singing out “Credit!” for every small accomplishment. I love the student who greets me with “BOOKS!? BOOKS!?” every time and who requested more enrichment work even though it would mean more homework time later. I love the taciturn grandmom who was moved to give me a hug when her struggling granddaughter transformed into a “pleasure to have in class.” I love that the kids get a few minutes of practicing Spanish as a reward if they’re awesome—they are ALWAYS awesome. I love our elaborate handshakes, our mini-yoga routines. I love every high-five so, so much. I can’t believe this is a job.

Week before last, my fourth-grade student, whom I’ve been with for two and a half years, had a birthday on tutoring day. His parents surprised him mid-session, turned out the lights, and brought in candled cupcakes. They had him read their cards to him aloud. As we eased into the lesson, interrupting ourselves many times with noisemakers and more cupcakes and singing “Happy birthday to ya!” I felt the deepest and most satisfying sensation: Home. Work. Times tables. Love.

So my word for the year is focus. Focus on the beauty and flow of doing my work. Focus on what I want, change what I need to change, speak up for myself, be a professional. Also, just to remind myself and to make it official:

Familywise, I feel like I’ve done a lot to repair my Thanksgiving-ruining damage of ‘016. (Sorry, SURJ, it’s a bad strategy. Not that I did it as a strategy but still.) In terms of talking politics (or anything) with my family, my mantra has become:

Being right doesn’t mean I can be a jerk.

(I still reject all calls for civility in the public sphere, though!! I’m still pro-anger all the way.)

Probably the best day of age 43 was when my SISTER AND NEPHEW CAME TO A PROTEST WITH ME!!!!! We happened to be up in Oswego the weekend when everybody was protesting family separation, and to my GREAT joy, they agreed to join us. My nephew knew what to put on his sign right away: “Superman was an immigrant too.”

It felt so, SO good to share my political self with my family, without having to feel like I was a threat or like I was making a demand. It felt extremely important to show my nephew the difference between Thanksgiving-ruining anger and political anger—I would hate for him to be afraid of his own anger just because mine is scary. I feel so, so lucky to have stood on that Oswego street corner chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” And being proud and angry and sad and wonderful.

My dad asked me last weekend how I stay so optimistic (Well, 90% optimistic, 10% apocalyptic.) about politics. I told him what has become the guiding principal of my life—when you’re on the ground, doing the work, it’s hard NOT to believe. Seeing the varied and beautiful faces of The People, reading their signs, the collective magic of yelling for justice feels good to me, it’s what I was born for. I was born to fight, and I’m learning how to use my fury and power well.

Happy year, self! Good job! Credit! 

My Wonderful, Magical Day of Yelling at Nazis, Part Four

            Whenever I noticed one of the hardcore Antifa members, face covered, gas mask, sometimes in a spiky helmet and/or knee and elbow pads suitable for roller derby, I checked my instincts. What I found there was nothing but calm, an eerie-quiet feeling of we’re-all-in-this-together, even though this person would almost surely have called me a shill (or worse) if I’d met them online in 2016. What I felt was trust and compassion. I don’t always feel that way towards the younger, whiter factions of the left, but it was a relief to feel it that day. I felt like they were there to protect those of us who are less fighty, or less able to fight.

            When the contingent of young socialists behind us in the march, diverse and carrying a “Black Trans Lives Matter” banner, began chanting “No hatred, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” I was moved. I was overcome by an almost supernatural joyful sadness, a deep ravaged gratitude that felt like it came from the center of the earth.

            I went ahead and sobbed. I let so much out on that hot, loud, humid street—the years and decades of pain and fear, the children in cages, my childhood trip to the Statue of Liberty during which I took the words of Emma Lazarus’s poem VERY SERIOUSLY, it all streamed out of my face and my throat as I marched down the street with my best friend and thousands of strangers.

            A nice man patted my shoulder and asked if I was okay, and I cry-said “Yes, I’m fine, I’m just so happy that people are SO AMAZING.” He looked a little nonplussed as I thanked him and kept on sob-walking.

            If I could push a button and cry like that for a few minutes every day, I would. As the tears subsided and the chants did not, I felt like I was floating, like I was awash in a sea of empathy and healing. I’m not religious, but I’d call this a religious experience. In those moments of crying I felt myself merging with the crowd, I felt myself filled up with the best name for god I know: love.

            At each intersection, I wondered if this was where it would happen—the confrontation, the violence, the attack, the clash. But from where I was standing, it never was. Though I don’t usually find a police presence comforting, I appreciated the hands-off (from what I saw; I’m sure it looked different for people of color and/or for trans participants) organization of the D.C. police force. Plus, there weren’t huge tanks stationed around like there were at the March for Our Lives—I guess because this wasn’t specifically about guns. From my no-doubt skewed white perspective it felt like we, the left, were the ones who were being protected from the bad guys, but I guess it might just have been comforting that so much effort was being put into facilitating free speech, even if it was the free speech of horrible white nationalist monsters. I’m weirdly patriotic sometimes, and only sort of ashamed to admit it.

            Finally, we made it to Lafayette Square, which was already packed with liberals of every stripe. My body felt tense and pained with the possible proximity to Unite the Right, with the anticipation of confrontation. Determined to confront my fears, I craned my neck over the crowd where the nazis were supposed to be, but I could see nothing but a vast partition and then police.

            The crowd chanted “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

            We could tell by the way the whole crowd tensed up that the other “rally” had arrived. (We later learned that the nazi demonstration was about 25 people, far outnumbered by the number of police) Mounted policemen took their places in front of our side. We all peered over the fence and braced ourselves, though I’m not sure for what.

Next Time: A panic, a rainstorm, a victory.

The Stupidest Thing That Ever Happened to Me, Part One

These past few weeks, with Amy moving to her new store, I’ve been feeling so much grief for the Rosemont Bookstore job. It wasn’t perfect. Amy and I fought like idiots sometimes, the commute was too long, I sometimes got on too much of a soapbox with our wonderful undergrad employees, (currently in the process of taking over the world) but the job was a spate of happiness and stability in a life where I’m not always able to be a non-roller-coaster. I took good care of that little store with my best friend, and we turned something corporate and anonymous into something beautiful.

It was my love and protectiveness of the store that eventually led to me being kicked off campus, ESCORTED off campus really, by security at the command of the Rush-Limbaugh-listening campus liaison.

Strangely, the morning it happened, I had a dream in which the college had gotten together in disagreement with our #enough School Walkout poster on the door. The poster was real. (I love how I ended up spending the walkout: http://theserotoninfactory.blogspot.com/2018/04/activist-kids-rule.html ) In the dream, I told the assembled committee something like “You don’t really care about anything! You just want to control us.”

Really, it was a pretty standard PMS/anxiety/America dream, but it seemed psychic after what happened that day. I was opening the store by myself, happy that Amy was sleeping in and looking forward to catching up on Dear Prudence and easing into the day. But members of the maintenance staff and security team kept buzzing in and out of the store, asking me to turn things on and off, looking worried and urgent, presumably about something electrical. I didn’t like the vibes they were giving off, but I got things up and running and then went back to my desk. A smell permeated the office, an acrid, technical smell, somewhere between electricity and smoke, and poured out towards the front of the store. I grabbed all my stuff (poor second-breakfast half-banana! What did you ever do to anybody?!)

I called to the still-buzzing-around maintenance guys to see if anyone had called 911 yet. They hadn’t, and they told me not to, but that seemed nuts given the smell. I ignored them and called the fire department.

My favorite non-Amy coworker had arrived by then, and we sat in the lounge close to the door, waiting for the fire department to arrive and give the all-clear. Over and over, maintenance and security guys tried to get us to go back in, seemed urgent about it, but I wouldn’t let us go in until the fire department came. Given my distrust of the police and all authority in general, I’m surprised that I had this much faith in the fire department, but Syracuse Fire Department had saved me and my roommates from a blaze back in the Nineties, so I guess I still had gratitude and trust.

One of the maintenance men who kept hovering around and trying to get us to go back in the store was a twenty-something dude who’d been banned from the store a few weeks before that, for trolling us IRL about Star Wars. Don’t EVER tell me Rey is a Mary Sue, ASSHOLE! I swear to god. It seemed gross that someone like that could possibly have bearing on my physical safety, but he did.

I don’t know why I didn’t just send us home, just go off campus for breakfast like we eventually did,and call it a day. I was jangled with the possibility of fire and full of over-the-top protectiveness and love for our little store. Love makes me a crazy person sometimes. I know that’s ableist language, but I don’t have a better word.

After a long, janglesome time, the Bryn Mawr Fire Chief came in mad as hell, because they’d sent him (or he’d just gone) to the library instead of the bookstore. I’m a big, strong lady, but having a six foot something fireman yelling at me when I was already afraid from the smoke smell and generally afraid of white men, especially in the Trump-era Pennsylvania suburbs, is a lot. It was too much.

Besides his frustration/embarrassment about having gone to the library, the fire chief was also mad that I had called at all. After all, he explained, “his guys” had told him there wasn’t a problem. He repeated this a few more times until I just needed to clarify:

“So, you aren’t going to check the smoke smell for us because men told you not to?”

“Yes,” he said, and in the right-but-maybe-not-helpful way that I’ve had a lot lately, I said “Oh. Then you’re a sexist piece of shit.”

And he definitely was. When I finally somehow convinced him to go into the store and check it out, he said that the only thing he smelled was burnt food. Then he looked me up and down to indicate that I’d clearly started the fire by being fat.

Next Time: I’m escorted off campus by security.

Love Letter to Another Bookstore

Today, a team of corporate folks and bookstore pals are helping my BFF/ex-wife pack up what’s left of the Rosemont College Bookstore so the company that took it over can move in. That doesn’t sound like a situation that should feel personal, wrenching, and melancholy/beautiful, but it is.

Three summers ago, when Amy was offered the job and it turned out she needed an assistant, I was recovering from Philadelphia School District induced Acute Stress Disorder and panicking  my way through a fun but demanding summer camp job, realizing that I wouldn’t be equipped to handle long, loud days with kids any time soon. I knew the assistant job was for me, so I expressed my regrets to the camp and took what turned out to be one of the most happy-making jobs I’ve ever had.

I worried that it was CRAZY to work with my ex-wife, even though we’d already morphed into being best friends. I dreamed we were stuck on the Lost island together, bought myself a necklace with a little airplane charm so I knew I could escape. I worried that proximity to the snack section would make me fatter, and it totally did, but who cares?

Even though it was a corporate bookstore, letting me use all of the deliciously tedious and emotionally neutral skills I’d gained in twelve years of day-jobbing at different colleges, the Rosemont store meant so much more that that. The time spent grumbling about politics with my best friend, the time we helped register young voters during the 2016 election, all of the deep conversations in the back room, (okay, and also at the register, when I couldn’t help myself) it all reminded me of the old-fashioned Seventies feminist term consciousness-raising. Amy, with her bajillion years as a philosophy major, is much more equipped to handle disagreement, so she was able to form an even deeper bond with our brilliant student employees, almost all of them young women poised to take over the world in their own precious, unique ways. I learned so much from those young women,and will continue to treasure them as beacons of hope in my social feeds.

I love the way feminism and politics merged with pop culture joy at our store. I love the way we were able to revel in the brilliance of Hamilton ( R.I.P. Hamilton Wednesdays, which really were to sweary for work…) and also talk about what a rapey colonizer Thomas Jefferson was. I love that I know everybody’s Harry Potter house and that they’re who I was with when I took the Pottermore quiz and finally admitted I’m a Griffindor. It sounds braggy, I know, but the quiz said! I loved fangirling my way to the Gilmore Girls reboot and disagreeing with a favorite customer whether Jess was trash or not. (They all are. Glad that (spoiler alert) Rory’s true love was her writing.)

I loved parking my little red Yaris next to Amy’s (formerly our) little blue Yaris, with our matching rainbow Hillary stickers. I loved making us coffee maybe too many times a day. I loved our matching purple Rosemont travel mugs, which I hope we’ll use for road trips. I loved when, because a mean lady made fun of the Matthew Shepherd Foundation charity bracelets, Amy and I immediately bought ourselves matching ones. I loved watching each year as the campus’s flock of baby Canada geese waddled their way fuzzily to adulthood.

I loved having Pheobe Robinson’s You Can’t Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain at the register, giving me an excuse to lecture snide undergrad guys about consent. I love the day I convinced a curious young woman to buy Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America (Which I just discovered you can get for $2.25! OMG! )https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/nasty-women-samhita-mukhopadhyay/1125780108/2679971094578?st=PLA&sid=BNB_DRS_Core+Catch-All,+Low_00000000&2sid=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP212586&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjtLZBRDLARIsAKT6fXxXhlKJgubXV_KosqoiJ-jtT9de69XyUct_4KTwFifgFOv198sfJE0aAnPkEALw_wcB)

On the day I was banned from campus, (A Nasty Woman story in itself, which I will someday have the strength to put into words even though it is the stupidest thing that ever happened to me. I’m assured it’s not why our contract wasn’t renewed…) we had a Student Walkout poster on the door, and I feel grateful to have made such a small gesture in support of students who wanted to walk out. (You can read about my own Walkout experience here: http://theserotoninfactory.blogspot.com/2018/04/activist-kids-rule.html)

Not long after I was banned, I found out the store was changing companies, and I feel really sad that I won’t be calling Amy at that store anymore, that I won’t hear the voices of those wonderful coworkers in the background. But I’ve realized something about happiness, about college bookstores. Although, like all institutions, colleges can be very stupid and sometimes terrifying, I need the combination of exquisite boredom, mundane-to-miraculous chitchat, and walks past lovely architecture that college bookstores can provide. My new bookstore home doesn’t have an intersectional feminist book section, but it does have heart, and beauty, and the lively workout of carrying heavy books. This line of work is one of the great loves of my life, and I am so grateful.