The Dog Days Are Over

Summer is coming to a close quickly; I start school again on Tuesday evening. 


I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready.


I'm such a sucker for the long nights, Sunday evenings on the porch with friends and a suitcase of beer, deep sunsets out my kitchen window as I'm whipping up dinner for 10 people. There's something about summer that is so warm and carefree. A friend recently got a new tattoo, "Endless Summer" scrawled upon her arm, and I've been reverting to that image often this week. It's a quote from a novel that I can't remember, but I comprehend the sentiment down to my soul. 


I fight change so hard, even though the whiffs of fall have stirred me into a frenzy lately. The other morning I woke up and the central air had clicked off for just a few minutes, and I swear the clear sky out my window carried a breeze. I threw on a long-sleeve wrap, just in case, and was rudely awoken by the 95 degree heat on my doorstep. 


Most of my friends adore fall. I admit, I can't wait for football season. I can't wait for the heat to abide so I can play in Audubon Park on weekends and go for walks in the Quarter without sweat dripping down my back. Festival season will start up again. Friends will come to visit, and I'll have an excuse to travel home for a weekend. There's a lot for me to look forward to, even if it feels bittersweet right now. Decadence is in two weeks. I've got half my costume picked out, and I can't wait -- the glitter, the crowds, the queers, the madness. I adore it. The weekend after I'm flying to San Antonio for the wedding of two amazing gay men, and, to sweeten the pot, I'm staying with my best friend I haven't seen in months. These mitigate the end of summer, a bit. 


In my head I have a list of things I wanted to accomplish before the end of summer. A trip to the beach. A night at the clothing optional pool, hopping from the sauna to the pool and back to the cabana bar. The contract work I owe my old job. A membership at a gym and a commitment to go. Quitting smoking. Taking photos of the city. I have, so far, accomplished none of this. But I have spent many fantastic evenings serving dinner and playing UNO and dancing at the drag shows and... so many things I can't cross off a list because I never dreamed to put them there in the first place. I suppose there is an ever-unending list of unaccomplished tasks. Dreams will always remain dreams until they become goals, or better yet, priorities. 


I am ready for school to be done. I'm so fatigued with this degree. It's a wonder I haven't quit by now; I'm not really sure what my motivation is anymore, except to finish what I started. I haven't been enjoying my classes. I don't really know if I see any purpose, and it's looking like I won't finish until December 2012 the way I've put things off. I hope that part flies by. It always does, except when I'm rolling my eyes through three hours on a Tuesday night, ready to go home and eat and shower. I suppose I'm only finishing because education is a privilege that I have access to. Because not finishing doesn't feel like an option. Because I hope someday this degree is useful -- and in some ways, it has been already. Because the thought of quitting and beginning again terrifies me. I don't think I have the drive to do this again. 


(Repeat these words to me, please, two years after I've graduated when I have some wild hair that I want to do this again.) 


Oh, sweet summer, how I'll miss you.


Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.


Grant me a reprieve from the anxiety that comes with change. 


Grant me faith to keep going, and peace to live in the moment. 


And, you know, while I'm asking for shit, a pony would be great. But I'll settle for someone who will let me tie them up. :)

I'm on the Right Track

This post will be super short because I'm exhausted, but so it goes.

I spent my Pride weekend not in the streets or in a parade, not getting arrested in Russia, not having lots of sex or dancing to Lady Gaga or writing political advocacy letters, though all of those things are well and good.

I spent my pride weekend surrounded by queer family. I spent it being honest with someone I care about. I took a queer friend to the hospital. I caught up with a queer friend I haven't seen in months. 

I've been in and seen Pride parades, festivals, and marches. I've written letters and worked on political campaigns. I've done queer public health advocacy and gotten trained in conducting HIV testing and counseling. I've attended gay and lesbian weddings and raised hell in doctor's offices. I've responded with open arms and an ear to strangers who sent me emails and facebook messages, looking for someone to talk to as they came out. I've created a Safe Zone program and put on programs on safe sex and safe bondage. I've conducted three research studies on LGBT issues, and I've spoken on panels and at queer conferences and to rooms full of people I've never met about some of the most intimate details of my personal life. I've danced in queer clubs and drank in queer bars around the world and visited Stonewall and the Castro. I've gone to PFLAG meetings and gotten queer scholarships and read queer theory and become a trans advocate. I have immersed myself completely and totally in queer culture throughout my life.

But the power and the pride and the love I have for this community comes not from most of those things, but from my queer family. Some of them are very close friends; others are acquaintances that I've taken a particular affinity to. I disagree with most all of them on one subject or another. Some I see only sporadically -- at a wedding or on a fluke. Some of them I haven't seen in years (much like many of my blood relatives), but I still think of them as family all the same. A handful of them would do anything for me, and probably every one of them would, at the least, buy me a beer. 

I'm blessed, so completely and utterly blessed, to have these people as a part of my life. If I could have them all in one place, at one moment, I'd have my own damn Pride party. But they're spread across the country (and possibly the world), celebrating Pride in their own ways and raising hell and being awesome.

I don't often get the chance to pay tribute and honor to the things they've done for me. The people who've been there when I was in the hospital, struggling through a breakup, morning the loss of a friend, or fighting with my family. The people who make weekends fun, who make sex fantastic, who know how to make me smile. I love ya'll. Happy Pride. I'm proud of the community we've built, the one we're a part of. I'm proud that I can be there for you, some more than others. I'm proud to share my life with you. I'm proud of the person you've helped me become. 

So maybe I didn't do anything big and crazy this weekend. Maybe I wasn't surrounded by thousands of my lgbt friends. But I did find love and support, I did give love and support, to my queer family, and for that, I think this weekend was definitely a wonderful Pride. 

Relationships, Queered

So. I like this girl.

(which sort of sounds like something I would have said when I was 15.)

Honestly, it's a lot more than "like." I'm well past that. I mean, we've been sleeping together for almost four months. Sometimes she sleeps over, and we don't even have sex -- because we're too exhausted -- and I don't even care. I just want to be able to wrap my arm around her and fall asleep. Clearly, this is not a friends-with-benefits kind of thing. She's cute and funny and sweet and smart and all those good things, plus a whole lot more. She's got a huge heart. And enough music on her iPod to last for a roadtrip. She's a mess of contradictions and passions (which always gets me). And she lights up when I walk in a room.

(Did I mention we have fantastic sex?)

But best of all, when she falls asleep in my arms or kisses me on a streetcorner, my heart melts into a big puddle. 

Then there's me, who is sort of gunshy and twitchy about commitment (even the low-key forms). I go from fiercely independent to cuddly and sweet at the blink of an eye, and it's a bit unpredictable. I struggle to voice my feelings -- and sometimes to even just identify them. (Feelings are HARD.) I stay busy constantly. I stress often. I either have very strong feelings about something, or no feelings at all. Oh, and I'm a Leo... which translates to "pain-in-the-ass." 

Amid all this what-is-a-relationship mess that has been going on in my head, I found this chart on Autostraddle, which definitely made me laugh. 

So for all of us who have been in a situation without labels and without definitions, I give you this :)

Home (after) the Holidays

I'm home in NOLA for two days, then back on the road again. My kittehs are attached to me; they insist on staying by my side and sleeping on top of me. Either they missed me or they're cold, who really knows? It's nice to have some unconditional snuggling, though. The cold is bitter this winter. It always feels like it goes straight down to my bones, and I find I struggle so much to get out of bed or leave the warmth of my house, especially after dark.

This holiday season was something between great and a mass fiasco, depending on the day. Argh. I wrote a short story back in 2006 about struggling to go home to see family over the holidays, and four years later, every word still rings so true.

My mom and I have such an on/off relationship. I'm formally estranged from over half the family -- haven't seen my father in almost ten years, and haven't seen his parents in at least five years. But Christmas usually means going to Shreveport for my mom's family, and there's a huge gap there -- they're pretentious, racist, sexist, homophobic, and always eager to put down everyone around them for their own advantage. I'm not perfect, by any means, but I try to live a life in opposition to all of those values. It's stressful and painful to be around them, to suck up my queerness and keep my mouth shut, which is mostly because if I run away or get angry, my mother freaks and our relationship unravels even more. I hate going home to listen to them bicker and moan about each other, especially on the one day of the year that everyone should suck it up and get along. I avoid seeing family for all these reasons, and it's not helpful that my mother still hasn't come to terms with my being queer, and insists that I hide that part of my life from my family. Hiding? I'm over that shit. We just don't talk about it. But of course, when my degree and my career and pretty much my whole life has to do with social justice, sex and sexuality, trans advocacy, HIV/AIDS prevention, and addressing public health disparities in sexual minorities... well, there's a bit of a gap in "approved" conversation topics. I hate that I can't be genuine around my family. I hate that being around them makes me miserable. But that's just the reality of it.

To make things more complicated, this is the first Christmas I've been single in years and years. I usually have a girlfriend to call or leave to hang out with. When I lived in Shreveport, I could check out and go home when I needed a break from too much family. But when I'm visiting and staying with my mom, I don't get that time to check out and center myself. I could justify suffering through family because I was so looking forward to spending time with my girlfriend. But this year, not having that excitement and that distraction sort of sucked.

To put it in a nutshell, my  mom got pissed at my brother and I on Christmas Eve, then proceeded to not talk to us for 24 hours. She got drunk at Christmas, acted like an asshole to everyone, refused to open her presents, told us we were going on a family trip as a gift then flat out refused to go with us, and refused to talk to us about why she was angry. To top it all off, because she's passive aggressive as hell, she left Christmas without telling us, locked herself in her room, then called me the next day to ask why I didn't talk to her on Christmas. I swear, it was like my mom was fifteen. I was so, so, so glad to leave town and head back South.

On top of all this, my cousin started asking her brother if I was queer a month ago, and he contacted me, asking if I would talk to her. So, for Christmas, I got to come out to my little brother and my youngest cousin. Thankfully, both were cool about it. My cousin is turning out to be really awesome; we had a great conversation about how she's pro-choice (yay!) and keeps getting in arguments with pro-life kids at her Catholic school. Plus she's made it a point to stand up for her gay friends who are harassed by Catholic kids and told they are going to hell. So good to know that even in the soul-sucking atmosphere of my family, my generation has some hope. It's awesome that I'm finally breaking down those walls, and I feel like I am forming stronger relationships with my brother and my cousins, even as my relationship with my mother seems to be deteriorating again. Yeah, yeah, God and windows and doors and shit.

The saving grace of this holiday season, though, has definitely been my friends. I saw so many old college and high school friends in Shreveport over the holidays, which was amazing. I'm so very looking forward to this week, but I can't write about it until after the fact. I think my real Christmas was not the 25th, but the holiday parties at friends houses, the night of Solstice at my house, Carrolling in the Square with 8,000 people and dinner afterwards at Green Goddess, Thanksgiving with friends, decorating with my roommate, and all the other moments when I could be the most genuine, when I was surrounded by people whom I adore and respect. Over coffee and drinks, over homemade gumbo and Whole Foods brie wheels, over cigarettes and movies and crab cakes and brass bands, over Saints games and phone calls, over laughs and tears and brutally honest, soul-baring conversations... that was my Christmas. A mess of holiday moments, all spread apart and unconventional, but genuine and rejuvenating in their own way.