I Put On For My City

There's a section of I-10, the interstate that runs through New Orleans, that's raised up on the east side of the city. I usually drive it on my way home from night class, because there's nothing like seeing the Crescent City Connection bridge, the skyscrapers, and the glint of light off the river reflecting in the moonlight. Tonight, after watching "When the Levees Broke" for class, I hit the accelerator in my car, ramped up the interstate, and saw the city spread out before me -- the treetops over the shotguns of Treme, the tip of St. Louis Cathedral in the Quarter, the blocks of houses in MidCity, the skyscrapers rising out of the business district, the interstate split leading to Metairie, the West Bank, and Uptown. I almost cried passing the Superdome, thinking of the thousands of people trapped there during Katrina, the thousands more who flooded those doors for the Saints' games leading up to the Superbowl win, and the deep pockets and crooked politics of the Benson family who own the Dome. Oh, New Orleans. You've got a history like nowhere else. You shelter some of the deepest, darkest secrets -- a prison rate higher than anywhere else in the world, a culture of poverty, a host of class and race divides that cut to the core, harming all of us.

And yet.



I was born in Kansas City, Kansas. We moved when I was two. I was never given a distinct reason, but years later the truth slipped out -- my father lost yet another job, and unable (unwilling?) to support my family, he goaded my mother into moving to small town Mississippi, where he grew up. I spent the next ten years of my life there. It's a shithole of a town. There's more people living below the poverty line than above it. I grew up wandering cotton fields and eating fried catfish and never fitting in. Even as a kid, I couldn't handle the inequality around me. I couldn't understand why some people had everything and most people had nothing. In Mississippi, I was a child of my father's family, never an individual. Labeled by those who loved or hated him, as he always left a strong impression. I dreamt of nothing but when I would get out. When I was little and my mom was angry at the town, upset for being treated like an outsider because she wasn't born there, she used to call me Dorothy. She'd tell me to click my heels and take us back to Kansas. It became a distant dream for me, a Mecca. I thought maybe I would belong there. I have some good memories, some ties in Mississippi. I return to see family, to prove to myself that the city is still there. But mostly, it's a place I passed through.

When Mississippi (and my father) finally chewed us up and spit us out, my mom ran home to northern Louisiana. We moved into an neighborhood of mostly older couples, and I started public school (finally!). But the other kids saw me as a Mississippi kid with a twangy accent and horrible taste in country music. I was all wrong. North Louisiana never was home. It was a pit stop. I outgrew it quickly -- I became too radical, too queer, too artistic. I have ties, there, too, and oh, so many memories. I have exes and friends and ex-friends. I have family, too, but my mother and her relatives will probably never accept that my queerness and my outspoken activism are vital ingredients in my life. I couldn't get out of their shadow, and I couldn't find what I wanted in a town so restrictive. So eight years later, on the same day I arrived in north Louisiana, I left.

By providence and love and economics, I ended up in NOLA.

For a long time, I wasn't so sure I wanted to be here. Or rather, I wasn't so sure I was ready to stay. But I adore this city, from the way the pavement in the Quarter glints after a rainstorm to the stars rising over the Ponchartrain. I adore that people let me put my shit in their baskets at the Wal-Mart. I love the festivals, the music, the way people say hello on the streets. I love that art is a priority here; creation is a way of life. I love the people who put their lives and their time on the line to fight against the structures that make them crazy. I love that community building is part activism, part sharing a meal, part conflict, part politics, and all passion. I love when the stage lights up on Tuesday nights at the Pub, and I love the explosion of naked gay men at Bourbon and St. Anne at Decadence. I love beers on porches and red beans and rice on Monday nights. I love that people put roots here; they set down like the Oak trees in City Park. I love the transience of the hippies, the strength of families who have lived on the same block for generations. I love that this city is deeply Southern in a way that makes me feel like I'm enveloped by the familiar. I love that it's small enough I still run into people I know at the grocery store, and yet, large enough that I can still retain my anonymity on most days.

I will always wander. I will always need space to explore. I want to see too much, do too much. But, oh, New Orleans, you're the first and only place I can truly call home. I can't claim to be "from here" when someone in town asks -- it's a sin to claim heritage here if you weren't born here. But when I'm in Chicago or New York, when I'm on a plane headed to God knows where, and someone asks that inevitable question, my heart always skips a beat when I say, "I'm from New Orleans." And then I find myself launching into an often one-sided conversation about Katrina, about Mardi Gras and and neighborhood arts markets and trout almondine. I find myself repeating the stories of friends and queer family, and even telling tales of my own. I came here the first time when I was too young to remember. I came here in 2001 for Thanksgiving, right after my father left, because my mother didn't want to face her family. I came in 2005, two months before Katrina, and again in February 2006, Sept 2006, May 2007, August 2007, January 2008, March 2008, February 2009, May, June, and July 2009, and finally, permanently, August 2009. I felt drawn here, and it became hard to stay away for more than three or four months at a time. I still feel drawn here, connected, when I'm hundreds of miles away.

I'd marry this city, if I could. I hear that's not legal yet, thank God, since commitment never was one of my virtues. I still worry about finding a way to support myself after school here. I worry about floods and hurricanes. I worry about staying in Louisiana. But when I'm driving that stretch of I-10, and I round the curve where the city lays itself out before me... I can't help but know that I don't want to be anywhere else.

Chris Rose said it best, when he spoke of being a New Orleanian... "We dance when there is no music. We drink at funerals. We talk too much, and we live too large and, frankly, we're suspicious of those who don't."

(view of downtown and the Crescent City Connection from the West Bank) 

(view of downtown from the west side of the city, coming in from Metairie)

Undiscovered

The steam is climbing the windows. I glance up and realize that I can’t see out of the back windshield anymore – the glass is coated in a thin layer of condensation. With my pointer finger I draw “I Love” into condensation, but “You” doesn’t fit. Water runs down from the letters, as if they’re leaking. You watch, carefully, eyes rimmed in black eyeliner. You lean across me to write “you” across the other letters, and then scribble them out, all together, blending into one big mess.

We laugh at our creation, and settle across from each other, backs to opposite sides of the Suburban.  Even in the dark I can see the soft contours of your naked body, peeking out from the blanket, reflecting in the low moonlight. It’s freezing outside; the weather has fallen from seventy degrees to fifty in a week. Inside, we’re in our own world. You crawl across the back seat, toward me. I’m leaving kisses in the condensation on the windows, careful to rub them out so my mother doesn’t see them in the morning. You catch the hair falling in my face, brush it back, and land your lips on mine. I love the pillowed, satin touch of your lips. There’s a hint left of those round mints that you carry everywhere, tucked inside your hand sewn bag.

I pull you down, off your hands and bony knees, down into me. Down, down, down. “I’m cold…” There’s a hint of whine in your voice.

“Pull the blanket around you, silly.”

“What happens if we get caught?”

“We won’t.” I’m not confident in this fact. I never am. But I won’t convey it.

“You always say that.” I punctuate your sentence with a kiss.

I haven’t really thought about what happens if we get caught. If we were straight, the cops would call our parents and drag us home, leaving our parents to punish us for our sins. But I haven’t the faintest idea what a Louisiana cop would say to two sixteen-year-old girls, parked far out in a rural field, playing around naked in the back of an SUV. In all honesty, I don’t ever want to find out. But it’s a risk I’m willing to take. It’s the only way I get to touch you, to taste you, to wrap myself up in you. I crave your hands on my body, hourly, daily, and in those few hours we get alone together, I want nothing more than to spend every moment burying into you.

I move to change the subject. “Are you still cold?”

You look at me as if you’ve forgotten you ever had a complaint. “No…?” It’s hard not to laugh at your indecision. I try to hold it back, but it comes out as a snicker.

“What.” This time, the whine is clear.

“You’re cute.” A smile peeks out.

“And you know it.” She laughs. I’m playing with her, all in jest, with a hint of truth.

Our bodies are side by side, wrapped in a blanket. I kiss you, again, running my tongue across the tops of your bottom teeth. My hand finds your hipbone, protruding, the sharp points where the curve of your side stops before diving deep into your stomach. I push against your hips, slightly, and you fall over onto your back. I trace my tongue down, run the tip around your areole. I can barely make out the soft pink skin in the dark. I’ve almost got the buckle undone on your studded belt, when you slide the patched jeans straight down your hips without bothering to unzip them. Showoff. I slide my hand up the inside of your skinny thighs; no wonder you’re freezing, there’s no body fat to keep you warm. But the core of your body is radiating heat, your cunt unfazed by the cold night air. I can feel your cunt sweating through your thin panties, in the space between your hips, and a part of me wants to lap my tongue there. But we’re still young and stupid, so inexperienced. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I run my finger around the soft outer labia, and you jump, sensitive, shorn, but then come back, melting into me. If you were a kitten, you’d purr so softly. But instead I get a soft moan, very quiet. I haven’t yet learned how to ask you what you like. You haven’t yet learned to ask for what you want. It’s a tender dance, reading your body, and I’m learning how to fuck you inch by inch, day by day, at times groping in the darkness.

I pull my sweatshirt off and my jeans, trying hard not to lift the blankets. You curl up, trying to hold in what warmth you can. We can’t help but laugh. There’s nothing more ridiculous that scurrying in and out of clothing, in a space barely four feet wide and three and a half feet tall. I lay my body over yours, intertwining our legs, and I can feel the heat of your body feeding into mine. I’m amazed by the simplicity of our bodies, how easily we can connect and disconnect, jumbling into a mess of arms and legs and cunts.

We don’t talk, but our mouths spark together in the dark. I get dripping wet, just from kissing you (a trick I’ve still managed to maintain, years later). I can get lost in your lips, as cliché as it sounds. I worry that I’ll crush you, but my hips fit neatly, interlocking with yours. Your come falls so close to the lips of my cunt, dripping down my inner thigh and igniting nerves I didn’t know I had. You’ve got your hands all over me, so fast that I can’t even keep up, grabbing and stroking and sliding. I feel awkward, trying to remember to touch you as I kiss you, to divide my attention between doing and feeling, giving and receiving. I can feel the tips of your fingers, and I’m grateful you haven’t clipped your nails too close every time you dig them through my back. (I still love that.)

Under the blankets the heat is rising, atoms of our bodies vibrating against each other, skin rubbing together, creating friction and force. I reach down to touch you but you stop me. I haven’t learned how to penetrate you the way you like it yet. God, I’m still so new to this. But we don’t know yet what we haven’t learned – instead, we’re still in love with what we know, in love with the way our bodies create heat. You’re dripping down my thighs, soaking wet, slippery wet. My clit hits the edge of your hipbone, and I grind into it, instinctively, nerves shooting off haphazardly. You taste like heaven and powdered sugar, whatever the hell that means, and you pull away to bite down into the thick muscle on the side of my neck. (I know now that I learned what I like early, and I owe you for some of it.) I’m fucking helpless, melting into you, muscles tensing, and I can’t help but let out a high, long moan. Your body stiffens in response, and I giggle and move my lips closer to your earlobe, where I can moan straight into your ear. No one can hear us here; it’s only our own insecurities that hold us back.

The blanket has encompassed us, enclosed us, and I shift, grinding against you, grinding into you, slowly, rhythmically. The heat is rising, rising, and our bodies become slick and slippery with sweat and come mixing. When your cunt touches my thigh, the nerve bundles combust, turning the soft, sensitive skin into satin. My moans become higher, louder, out of my conscious control now, and when you moan softly, too, I can’t stop, I can’t hold back, it’s climbing and climbing, and I can feel your body stiffen as mine does, and the light burns so fucking bright as we come at exactly.the.same.time.

Talk about choreography.

I can feel your heart beat, and simultaneously, I can feel mine. Yours is faster, jumpy, like popcorn kernels in a frying pan. Our hearts are separated by only a few thin layers of skin and muscle, a handful of ribs. My head fits so comfortably in the cradle of your clavicle. I feel like you can take all of me in your arms, your body wrapped around mine, even though I outweigh you by a good twenty pounds. Oxytocin washes over me, and I fall into a half sleep, warmed in your bare skin and the soft, sugar sweet emotion of being so completely immersed in you. There’s no doubt, no fear, no anger. That comes later, in another time, another universe, another life. But for now, there’s just here. Now. I can feel you chest rise and fall as your heart slows to a simmer.

I wake from my drousy state at the sound of “Reveille” playing on my cell phone, the signal that my mother is calling, the signal to jump up and answer or face a litany of questions and anger later.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” My mother’s voice comes cold, sobering, across the line.

“What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“At the coffee shop. We’re leaving soon. I’ll be home in a few, I just need to drop the girls off first.”

“So you’ll be home before curfew.”

“As always, mama.”

“Ok. See you soon.”

Click.

You’ve risen and begun to dress, slowly, methodically, still fighting off the haze. I slip into the driver’s seat, balancing precariously, and wipe away the steamy condensation that covers the windshield. Through the dirty windshield I can see the stars forming a giant map across the sky, so clear away from the city lights. There’s nothing around us but cattle fields for miles and miles. I can see the straight twelve miles to the horizon, where the earth seems to fall away, illuminated by an almost full moon. You climb across the backseat, falling clumsily into the front, knocking over my cell phone and our purses. You’re slow to retrieve them, but you find yourself and get settled. I reach over to run my fingers through your hair one last time. Then I turn the car keys, listening for the turning of the engine, and drive back into the city, toward our separate homes and the coldness of two empty beds. 

(Oh, to be seventeen again)

It Gets Better

Dan Savage, author of the Savage Love column and a couple books, has started a new project in response to yet another suicide by a gay teen. He created a YouTube channel where LGBT people can post their videos discussing their coming out, their lives, and how, in growing up, it gets better. It’s not always miserable and hopeless to be queer, even though it can really seem that way.

Honestly, I don’t have any experience with video. Arg. And my computer, though it claims I can video using my built-in webcam, doesn’t seem to want to. I suspect I am missing a mic.

Plus, I simply prefer writing.

In fall 2004, I was a senior in high school. I’d been dating my first girlfriend for over six months, and my best friend had just passed away in a house fire. It was a very emotionally tumultuous time in my life. Looking back, I remember only bits and pieces, like driving to school on crisp fall mornings with the windows down and having hot sex in the back seat of my Camry, parked in a dark alley. I remember my girlfriend’s parents threatening that if she came out, her mother would lose her job, and the time when her younger sister outed us to all of her friends in an attempt to fit in. We didn’t really know anyone else who was gay, and I felt very alienated – I had no idea there were ways to connect to other LGBT people. The highs were incredible, and the lows were very, very dark. I was coming off a semester of drinking and popping pills every morning before class, but my girlfriend was one of the reasons I stopped playing with drugs. I was head-over-heels in love.

I had a hare-brained notion that I should come out to my mother, in hopes that my honesty would bring us closer. God knows I was so fucking wrong. Instead, our already miserable relationship worsened. She dragged me to a psychiatrist, insisted that I was in a phase triggered by the sudden death of my best friend, and used her shame and yelling to drive me deeper into the closet. My close friends, the few who knew about us and were supportive, were a solace. But losing the last few family members I had left, after my family had already been split by divorce and rivalries, was overwhelming and terrifying. My friends who were Christian took off pretty quick, and those that stayed faced disapproval from their parents for hanging out with “gay kids.”

I remember thinking my cousins would never speak to me again. I just wanted to move out, run away, but I had nowhere to go. I counted down the days to college, when I could get away from my mother. I was so overwhelmed some days, and I really couldn’t imagine how things could get better.

And then I went to moved out, went to college, and got a job.

Practically overnight, I had a bed I could fuck in any time I wanted. I had the money to support myself – to some degree – and I could go see my girlfriend for a whole weekend without asking permission and facing judgment, shame, and anger from my mother. I could call her anytime I wanted, and not fear that if her number showed up on my caller ID that I would face another two days of fighting. I felt liberated. I could come out on my own terms, and define my life in a new place. And I did all of those things.

It definitely gets better.

I don’t have all my shit together, and I never will. I don’t want to pretend to be a role model for anyone. I still struggle with coming out, at new jobs, in unfamiliar or scary situations, in dealing with family. But not for a second would I take back being queer.

I’m so blessed. I have so many queer friends and straight allies in my life. I have stopped putting stock in my biological family, which has never been supportive for really any reason, and learned to build a chosen family of friends who I actually enjoy spending time with. I get to play any role in the queer community that I wish, and I have taken on many – as a political and social advocate, as a member of LGBT organizations, as a researcher, as a geek who loves queer history, as an employee of an LGBT org, as a protester, as a supporter of queer arts and culture, as a volunteer, and now, I suppose, as a writer. I love that everyone in this community can choose their level of involvement – but at the end of the day, being queer – from who you fuck to how you speak out and everything in between – is subversive and beautiful.

I wake up every day, grateful to have not chosen suicide when I was 15, 16, 17. I can’t tell you the number of times I faced death as a viable option.

I can tell you there is so much to come, so much that you just haven’t experienced yet. Amazing, mind-blowing sex. Visiting cities like New York and San Francisco, where the gay flags on balconies signal “home.” Pride parades. Laughing about with queer friends over a bottle of wine or a few beers. The thumpa-thumpa of the club. Drag. Watching someone open their eyes and ears as they learn about what it’s like to be queer. Movies like Imagine Me & You. Seeing a gay kiss on-stage. Falling in love. Tiny, hidden gay bars where everyone is like family. Queer theory and queer history.

And there are all the not-so-gay things. Like the chance to go to school. The jobs you could have, the people you could meet. The friends you’ll make. The chance to reconcile with family members, who often do come around after a few months or years. The places you’ll go.

There are so many possibilities, so many opportunities. There’s so much worth living for. You only get once chance, so enjoy it while you’re young. Enjoy it when you’re old. Tomorrow does get better.

Someday, it’ll be you writing to the next generation, telling them the same. 

If you're struggling with being LGBT/queer and need someone to talk to, please call 866-4-U-TREVOR. The hotline is operated 24/7 by the Trevor Project, a non-profit dedicated to crisis and suicide prevention among LGBT youth. You can find out more or donate to the Trevor Project on their website, thetreavorproject.org.