Bone Goblin

Winter brings the Bone Goblin back. He sits on my back like a minor king on a throne, jealous and fragile, elongated toes embracing my ribcage with affection, chilled corpseflesh fingers digging into my shoulders for support. His teeth, incarnadine over ivory, rough seeking rough, snap on my neck, chewing on the vertebrae . A delicacy! A delicacy! Brute animal life, slogging on under his jealous grip. He must be careful, the Bone Goblin, not let his teeth meet around my vertebrae and thus sever the life he rides, remora to the mortality. The body must live for him to live. The scent is sweet, of that bountiful carnal red wine. So gently, gently, he closes his teeth a thread, a hair, until they scrape the ridges of my spine. Spring will come, or so they say. I’ve experienced it but for now, belief is dust. All my finer sentiments are an empty wineskin; stubborn is all I have left, mulelike endurance. I can only roll my shoulders and let the snow fall.

Tempus fugheddaboudit

Time flies.
Flies in amber.
Reminds me of work.
No more poetry today.


Ok, so I recently re-read The Well of Loneliness, by that stalwart and miserable lesbian icon Radclyffe Hall. (for actual research purposes, I swear) I read it in college, in my early and miserable dyke years. It was in the How To Be A Lesbian handbook, I had to read it. Right after I refered to myself as a Lesbian-Feminist. I did this exactly once, in conversation with another English student, to see how it would sound.
The 70's are over.
No already tortured queer person should read that particular tome in their formative years. Trust me on this- wait a while, go get a few broken hearts, learn to have a little happiness in the world in the 21st century, then go read it.
I assumed that with time and experience I could go back and chuckle, knowingly, about how bloody depressing it was. How many things have changed!
Ok, second Well of Loneliness rule- don't read it in the winter.
I'm about to drink brandy and wander the moors.
Only I don't drink, and it is too bloody cold out to go wandering anywhere.
Dear God, Stephen! Stop being such an uptight ass and just keep your damn woman. There is no nobility, no honor, in driving away someone you love 'for their own good'. Meaning, so they will start riding the flesh pony, and get societal approval. Please, brother. Please.
In Radclyffe's generation, we plead for our right to exist.
Activism in the 90's- We're Here, We're Queer, Get Used To It!
2000's We're here, we're normal and we'd like some civil rights now, please.
next? We're not here right now, we're taking the kids to soccer practice, then Grandma's, then ballet. We'll get back to you.

Genderfukt!

Gender Note: I refer to drag kings as he when using their stage name or in reference to a show, regardless of how they identify offstage. It shows respect. I also hope to influence a good general trend in this direction.
Really, can you imagine calling a drag queen in full regalia ‘he’?
Me neither.

The Genderfukt show was Friday night. They just keep getting better. Genderfukt is the brainchild of Skylar Rocket, drag king performer and producer, and his partner Em, who functions as both tech director and stage manager. Genderfukt shows happen in Toronto every two months or so, and usually sell out in advance. The show bills itself as a performance cabaret, combing drag kinging, burlesque, spoken work, live music, dance and theatre. This show in particular lived up to that.
Gender is a complicated, messy, wet, emotional topic in any circumstance, so performing gender, exploring gender, deconstructing gender, playing with gender, fucking with gender should be even more so.
I think Skylar and Em are on to something that is just starting to hit big. Genderfukt was recently ranked 6th best event in the world to find drag kings.
The list of performers:
- Brian Bedside Mannor, Justin, Kat.ass.trophy, Milo de Milo, Sabstien Cognito, & Skylar Rocket - Brucy Barnett - Cameron - Codi & Elton Schlong - Jaycub - Johnny Class - Junoon Walla - Mitch - property - Robin - Sabrina - sbaastien siobhan - Straightjacket Tyler - Strutz - Titty-Titty Bang-Bang & Janet - The Wet Spots!
These guys are rock stars. They sell out every show. They had to move to a bigger venue to accommodate the audience, estimated at better than 300 on Friday. The audience has favorites, the performers have their followings and factions, but the experience is larger than any individual.
We’ll start out with the MC. Genderfukt wouldn’t be Genderfukt without Deb ‘Dirk’ Pearce hosting. Dirk plays off stand-up comic timing laced with enthusiastic, cheerful vulgarity, bringing the crowd up and reining them in as needed. He banters, he cajoles, he introduces the acts and reads the bios, then encourages the audience to show their appreciation. He keeps the pace and the tone. It is an event in of itself, watching Dirk handle an audience member who threw underwear on stage for him.
I have my biases and favorites, but let it be said that I am just a big old fan boy of these guys all around.
Standout acts from Friday:
Junoon Walla, dancing to a Pakistani version of Pretty Woman in a dark vest and trousers that he then ripped off, exposing shimmering gold for the second half of the dance. He can move, he has stage presence, the music was great fun.

Johnny Class, blue shirt, blue tie, pinstripe trousers, black bowler, doing a sophisticated homage to Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher. He can work a crowd. The audience was right with him, singing back every word.

Brucy Barnett, decked out like a cowboy with a guitar, doing Alan Jackson’s Chattahoochee. Ok, Brucy is a charismatic performer, but I also love Alan Jackson.

Mitch, in a suit and bowtie, dancing to Michael Jackson’s Rock With You. Anytime Mitch dances, you are in for a treat.

property, performing while showing slides of volunteer work in New Orleans.

The Wet Spots, a bisexual husband and wife who perform lighthearted sex positive songs, like the utterly charming “Do You Take It (In the Ass?)”
They sang about everyone, no matter how advanced a sexual adventurer, having that one
stopping point- don’t lick my toes. They came back later to open the second act with a little ditty about not being able to buy a dildo in Texas. I love them.
Here, let me be a fan-boy and pimp them out- http://www.cassking.com/wetspots.html

A righteous commentary on media saturation, consumerism, the unholy relationship among advertising, politics, and apathy- in a number that had Skylar’s sensibility written all over it, with dashes of Brian Bedside Mannor, performed by Skylar, Brian, Justin, Kat.ass.trophy, Milo de Milo, and Sabstien Cognito.


The defining moment, and an example of Dirk’s ability to speak to a crowd, was one of the last. It was near the end of the night, the crowd in the bar had been drinking and celebrating sexual and gender freedom in a safe space for hours. Dirk stopped for a moment, and called a couple he’d just met up on stage. They were two women who had moved to Canada from Venezuela a year and four months before. Both women spoke, in English they were still mastering, about being grateful to be there. They’d moved to Canada so they could be together, and be married. Dirk put the evening in perspective. Cherish the freedom of living in a country where you have full civil rights.
I look forward to one day doing so.

Portraits- start of a new series

Portraits: Most names have been changed to protect the guilty. The innocent don’t need no protecting, they are surrounded with swarms of angels wheresoever they go.

Ray was one of my library assistants. Close to 40 if he was a day. A biker who wore boots, a leather chain wallet, a trucker’s cap over thick, curly doe colored hair dusted with gray, every day. Walked with a limp and used a cane, after what seemed to be a series of motorcycle accidents. He had the most luxurious and enviable muttonchop sideburns and a goatee that framed a charming, impish smile. He was returning to school to study computers after a motley collection of jobs and adventures including: military service, armed escort for Utah strippers, bartending, sharpshooting, and association with drug runners, hunters, bikers, and outlaws. He lived in a Spartan apartment over a biker bar, and would often come in to work at the library red eyed and exhausted from staying up to close the bar, after the cops had been called, or one of the girls got in trouble, or some dumbass called him as the emergency contact. Once, he handed me a flier for a fundraiser for Biker Deb (her actual moniker) who had run afoul of some medical trouble and needed help. Ray was a good guy- generous, chivalrous towards women in a very working class rough handed way that reminded me of my childhood and felt instantly comfortable. He was shrug and a grin about me being gay; it was the least of things that he’d seen in his life. We would take breaks and stand out back of school and smoke his cheap reservation cigarettes and talk. We got on famously; he was my kind of guy. He could, and did, tell the best stories at the drop of a hat, usually starting with “There was this dancer I knew..” “I could tell you what I did in the military, but you don’t want to know. I’d have to kill you. ” Or, “They found a rifle I lost 30 years ago, and sent me a picture asking me if I wanted it back. I was out hunting...” “I might have an eighteen year old daughter.” “My buddy keeps coming to me and saying you have to fix my computer, it won’t run! I ask him what he did, after the last time I fixed it, by clearing out all the teenage Russian porn he’d downloaded. I told him to knock it off, or I would fix it again. Dumbass went right back to it, filled his hard drive up with viruses, and then his wife, who’s in school, went to do a paper, and the machine crashed. So she’s pissed at him, I’m laughing at him, and he wants me to fix it.”
Thing is, Ray would probably end up helping him out. He had an endless compassion for people, for their struggles, the compromises we all make in real life, for the hard, hard time most people have making ends meet, for the rigor of raising kids,. For how hungry people can get, and how sad, and desperate, and stupid hunger makes us all act. Ray graduated, and moved on. I miss him.

Doves

I wanted to deface a non-violence sign this morning.
Cover the sweet, peaceful blue silhouetted dove with barbecue sauce and hack it up like a Gaul on a rampage, like a Norseman gone bear-shirt crazy. Ber-sark. Berzerk.
Wouldn’t it be lovely, once in a blue moon, get a free pass to pure madness? Here’s your axe, here’s your loincloth, go nuts. Sanity just poof- goes out, like a candle in a hurricane. Like a tiny white nonviolence candle, held against the wind at an outdoor peace rally or memorial service for a great social justice activist who died on a hunger strike in prison to commemorate the suffering of the children in refuge camps.
Hand me the tofu but make it ironic.
Really, have you ever seen a cat steal a piece of tofu?
Cats will eat sock fuzz if they think it’s a spider. But they will not touch tofu. I’m just saying.
I was just cruising along minding my own business, clenching my jaw on the way to work, after a night spent grinding my teeth in my sleep to keep pace with my stress levels and parade of phantasms that call themselves REM sleep, and it hit me. Look, I was just minding my own business, officer! Editing, working two jobs, looking for work, occasionally having a life, on weekends. Managing, thanks, even feel a little like an adult now and again. I wasn’t looking. Lord knows, Gods know, the long nights I’ve prayed for it, in the past- Muse, find me worthy! Baptize me in your bloody inspiration! Taurobolium my worthless mortal self. Nuthing. Silence of the Hams. So, I go back to being normal and work myself to death, as I suspect most of the world does.
And, months later, when I’m reconciled to being where I am, inspiration wise, I get slapped upside the head by a Muse in a fool mood. Not foul. Fool.
She has a hell of a sense of humor.
My next book came and grinned like a eight year old holding a frog in my face.
Look, I argued, I’m busy. Bills to pay. Taxes. I need new tires. I’m editing. I have to find a job. There’s that emigration business. I do not have time for this right now! Where were you when I begged on my knees for a voice whispering in the dark?
Bupkes.
You can’t argue with Her. You do as she says, or know that you’ll be half the human you ought to be.
I submitted. The change was palpable immediately.
Cyd said to me, after a few days of my being a joy to be around again, “You’re a much better person when you are writing.”
Thanks. I know.

January and Aqua-net

Sometimes, I feel like such an alien to life. Life is too broad. Culture? Yes, that’s more it. Culture. It gets to feeling like every choice a person could make for a Normal life, I’ve done the left hand turn. My experience is so outside the boundary of a normal life, yet here I am in the nation of Normal, raised to speak the language and act like I belong. I can be good at it- I can make it seem like I’m as much of the soil as a Pelasgian, I’m from the Old Country, I’ve been here since the grasshopper came. I can smile ruefully with stories about growing up in a small town, growing up female, having a crazy family (or one just slightly off; most are) and so on. I get it, I sympathize, I understand. I laugh, with recognition and warmth and affection.
Then the costume starts itching, and the mask slips, the music is too loud, the make-up too garish, everything is just a bit off- I’m outside again. I made up that part about make-up, I don’t wear any. That’s part of the problem. I have never, other than a brief, despair fueled try in 7th grade, to not live forever as an outcast.
This, culture said, holding out a can of Aqua-net and blue eye shadow, are what being a woman is about. Go, daughter, and learn.
I gave it a stab, not because I was drawn to it, or to the power those symbols represented- power of attraction, which is status to a teenager. Or adult. Power of attracting males.
I tried, because by seventh grade it was crystal clear to me that I was no longer acceptable. Certain personal abnormalities and quirks you can get away with, or even trade on, when you are younger. Its fine to have personality as a girl in 6th grade. It will make you want to end your life in 7th. Don’t try this at home: say to a girl in 7th grade, you have a nice personality.
You might as well spit on them. You just told them they cannot stand within the rating scale of their peers. Even the consolation prize is an insult.
Now make it worse. Recognize that, by this age, girls are desperately trying to figure out who they are, how they fit with their group, and how the adult world can be managed. Without being chewed up and spit out. Keep in mind, that a girl by this will have experience with men, in her family and outside it. Likely, she’s already encountered the ugly facts of being female in the world. And, likely she’s absorbed the weight of silence- you cannot talk about what it means to be female in a world of men.
Rein it back in, before that horse bolts on me.
I stopped being a part of my peers’ social development in 7th grade. My life existed in a kind of stasis. I was well aware that my life was marginal, and I had no hopes of ever being anything else. Friendship, I had. That I got good at, and it saved my life. I have those same friends today, and I thank any God you care to name for them.
It did get better as I got older, left that small town and went to college. I got exposed to a broader run of humanity. I had the experiences my former peers might have had as teenagers. For a while there, I had a social footing, a set of experiences I could discuss with my peers.
Then I graduated, worked, went to grad school, and worked. I find myself working in a suburb, with a raft of normal people. Nice, sure. Pleasant, sometimes. Better trained than the 7th grade equivalents; they know enough to pretend everything’s peachy having me around. But I am still an alien. Women my age talk about: their husbands. Their children. More than anything else. I’m not in possession of either. You know, spouse-equivalent doesn’t always fly in idle conversation. So I get strangely neutered. My life vanishes. I borrow one, so I can talk about it. My weekend was spent in Toronto, with my lover. I talk about the kids I live with, the children of a friend. They are currency- I can say that the baby was up all night crying, suddenly I’m human and have a story everyone can empathize with.
My Aqua-net, and my blue eye shadow.
Even though I dress exclusively in men’s clothing. Even though I am ‘out’. Even though I couldn’t pass as straight, or even female, some days. I need a conversational crutch to get through the grind of being dropped down into a Normal existence.
Janus, the Roman god, had two faces- he could gaze in both directions at once. This is his month. He was lord of beginnings and endings, of doorways and gates. Progression from one state to another.
I know how he feels.

Kiddie Crack

I haven't been around much lately, between work (with my assistant librarian gone) other work, editing, and holidays in both countries. So I thought I'd hang out at the house last night, and watch a movie with the adults. Cyd's cousin was in town. Morgan went to bed like clockwork, the kid never varies. But Rowan would not settle down.
Then her dad let her have a cookie.
I swear that thing was Red Bull in crumbly form. Rowan is 18 months, she isn't ready for that! It looked like a harmless, innocent little treat. But within fifteen minutes, Rowan was climbing on the coffee table, where she proceeded to dance and sing for the first hour of the film. That was interspersed with jumping on the dog (also visiting) throwing her brother's toys, stealing my book, and generally running around like an overwound top. The kid was in rare form.
Earlier in the evning, she'd been trying to master her latest linguistic challenge- "Ooh la la."
She'd heard someone say it, and spent the rest of the evening trying it out. First it was a sort of uuuh, then the secondary notes were added- uuuh le le. It devolved into a howl later on, just a pure owooooooooo! that she'd already learned, from Johnny. Part of the time dancing on the table was howling.
Her mom and dad had martinis. Rowan naturally wanted what they had, and zeroed in on the fragile glasses. She'd make a beeline for them if they were set down, and ask "Have bite? Have bite?" Her request for whatever food related item you might posses. She was denied.
But later, when the glasses had been moved to let her dance on the table, one ended up on the floor by the couch. Empty of martini, at this point. However, the baby found it- and proceeded to try to drink from it. She spent some time chewing on an ice cube, then cried when the glass was taken away from her.
She did crash eventually, but I have never seen such a show from her. I want one of those cookies.