season of the bitch

I’ll write more when I get back, but some stories simply must be shared.

Today (Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day) I volunteered at the Day of Service event in D.C. at RFK Stadium. We coordinated about 13,000 people making care packages for the soldiers serving overseas. Included in those 13,000 were Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Hilda Solis, and Freddy.

Freddy is from Savannah. Actually, he was born in Jasper County, South Carolina, which is between Savannah, GA and Hilton Head, which regular readers know is where my family lives, and where I lived for a while.

Freddy grew up there when it was still segregated, and he couldn’t go to the beach in Savannah because it was whites only. He went to the beach on Hilton Head because there was no one else there to care who swam there.

Now, 50 years later, rich people from around the world swim and play golf there. My parents live and work there. I went to high school there.

The last time Freddy was in D.C.was 40 years ago, to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr give his “I Have A Dream” speech. He was living in New York, and took the bus down.

Now Freddy lives in Atlanta, and came up to see Barack Obama get sworn in.

It was an absolute honor to work with him today, to hear his story and be a part of it.
(Pictures soon)

This morning, I’m getting up and heading down to Maryland to stay with some friends before the inauguration on Tuesday.

I’m recovering from a cold, so I sat home yesterday watching the whistle stop tour on TV. I didn’t go down to catch Barack here in Philly, but I watched him since.

I love the symbolism of the train tour. As matttbastard said, it’s like they’re symbolically doing away with the last 40 years. Plus, trains are cool.

The Obama campaign always understood the importance of symbolism, of performance. Yes, the president has lots of serious things to do, but one of his most important jobs is to stand for us, to represent us, and to reach out to us.

I love Michelle Obama, and Dr. Jill Biden.

And I love listening to Barack. I know he’ll screw up over the next four (eight?) years, but I hope he never screws up to the point where I get sick of hearing his voice. I hope I never forget how I feel now, how I’ve felt over the past couple of months knowing that we did it, we put the Bush era behind us, and how I’ve felt over the past year working for a candidate that, though he pissed me off at times, I actually trusted to do the right thing.

I’ll be in DC today, Monday and Tuesday, and will be twittering away, so feel free to follow along.

“You proved once more that people who love this country can change it.”

Well, Barack, I started trying to change this country long before I felt any love for it. And I’m finally starting to have a bit of faith in it.

Sometimes I am prescient.

Other times I’m just tired and want to curl up on the couch with the dog, my fuzzy faux-leopard blanket, and Marlon Brando’s broken nose on the TV.

Certain things are always and forever comforting even when I’m not quite sure why I’d be in need of comfort. Retreating into my own little world, with work to do, yes, but not enough to make me feel bad for putting it aside except for the story brewing somewhere in the back of my mind. The story has a hand twisting a ring, red lights reflected on the rain on a cab’s windshield, whispers, and a space of inches that might as well be miles. I’m not sure how it’s coming together yet, but it will.

The books that surround me on the couch are all begging me to read them for different reasons. A collection of Neil Gaiman’s short stories, my Law text, “The Political Economy of Media” by my fave media scholar, Robert McChesney, a couple of Warren Ellis comics, and my notebooks full of bits of thoughts, research, quotes and more stories.

The dog missed me for the last two days while I was couch-hopping in NYC seeing my favorite people (many of them, anyway) and thinking and seeing the glitter of lights on tall glass buildings reflected through train windows into my eyes. Watching a pretty boy reading a magazine in the reflection in the window. Dreaming.

Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront is beautiful, strong, and innocent. A good girl that I’ve never been. A static character, sure, but one that thinks and feels and loves and hurts. She’s a rock that Brando can break himself against or can use to pull himself up to his feet and be a man.

I always believed I could be that person for someone. Now I’m not so sure.

I’m too foul-mouthed and cynical, too practical and too good at hiding my romantic streak. I hide my heartbreaks inside laughter and flirting and jokes about my tits. I am too willing to argue. Maybe once upon a time I was innocent and unscarred and willing to open up, but it’s been a while since I’ve even unscrewed the jar I locked my heart up in and poked at it to see if it still bleeds.

I write better when I’m half-asleep, lost in thought, barriers down. The passion my professor wants from me–yes. But if I let it out, will I be able to stop?

maybe she’s just pieces of me you’ve never seen and there are so many pieces of me that most people haven’t seen. Just a few who’ve seen me break down completely and still love me.

I resist and you resist and we resist and we end up alone.

The person I spent the longest time with, the one who heard me say “I love you” more than any other, never knew me. And only partly because he didn’t want to. The rest was because I wouldn’t let him. And yes, he would have left, and that would’ve been the right thing, because I faked it too long and too hard and I wasn’t going to be happy with faking it. But of course I kept it right up.

What’s wrong with us that so much of our lives are a performance?

I prefer the performance I give here. The bits of honesty. Then I don’t need to put on a brave face. I can put on movies and try to cry.

I cried when my cat died. I cried when a security guard yelled at me at the end of a long day. I cried at my friend’s wedding, and I cried at a memorial service in a hospital in Maryland for a friend who was still nominally alive in a room down the hall.

Lately I just want to cry to remember what it’s like to feel things. To remember what “I love you” felt like when I said it and meant it.

Searching for something to blow my mind again.

“To me, the real truth is always a bigger turn-on. Send me your most pathetic moments, your most anything, as long as it’s real. I want the size, the shape, the feel, the smell. I want blood, sweat and tears on these letters. I want brains, and ectoplasm and cum spilled all over ‘em. Hallelujah.”

I got a late-night text message the other day from a friend that reminded me that yes, Pump Up The Volume is still an excellent movie. (What happened to you, Christian Slater? Samantha Mathis?)

So last night I watched it myself, trying to get some sleep after ranting and raving about McCain’s hypocrisy and the economic bailout plan, and remembered what I loved about it. Of course, I like the idea of a pirate radio DJ fucking up the whole town to the tune of Leonard Cohen and the Descendents, but I also like the idea of just spilling your guts out all over the place, of telling everything and nothing all at once.

We’re the overshare generation, we don’t feel like anything’s really happened unless we’ve shared it on Facebook or Twitter. I wrote about all this a few days ago. Yet so little of it feels like honesty. Much more of it feels like public relations. Managing your image, putting up only the flattering pictures, the ones that show how cool you are with all your friends, telling only the best moments.

Real, unflinching honesty comes either with anonymity, whether it’s disguising your voice on pirate radio in an 80s movie or putting up a blog with a pseudonym and no identifying details, or with those moments when you’re actually looking someone in the eyes. Where the bullshit collapses.

Sometimes I feel like one big raw nerve that despite all my words, the pretty ones and the ugly ones, is hidden away from people, just below reach. Wrapped in a layer of something that dulls all the little sensations, just enough so I can think about ‘em.

I still have some secrets. I turn some of them loose in ‘fiction,’ making them into pretty stories for others to read, putting meaning behind events that I still can’t quite interpret, making people into characters I can understand.

More often, though, my scars and damage are on as full display as my filthy sense of humor and my willingness to debate issues with anyone. I prefer raw. I want to know all the mistakes, all the messes, all the problems, the things that hurt, that make you cry. I want to know what you think about when you’re alone at night, even if there’s someone there next to you (those moments can be worse than any when you’re actually alone, can’t they? When the person who’s supposed to get it just doesn’t anymore?)

Maybe it’s how I’ve kept myself out of therapy. Or maybe I do need therapy, who knows.

I know I’m a good listener in part because I collect stories. But it’s also because I like the messes. I screw up so often I can’t even count ‘em at this point, I break my own heart more than anything else. Perfect has little appeal to me.

Bring on the pain, the mistakes, the losses, the scars. I want to know. Tell me your stories.

So I recently wrote an article on the 20th anniversary of the Sandman for Comic Foundry magazine. It will be in the next issue, so pick it up.

I made an excellent playlist to listen to while I was re-reading and staring at interview transcripts and writing, and though I can’t share my actual music with you, I thought I’d share my list, anyway. Isn’t there an option on iTunes somewhere that you can make a playlist and people can download things if they want them? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

Anyway, list below the fold. Because it’s really long. But I put in some pictures, too. » Read the rest of this entry «

I posted this video the other day when I had too much going on to really explain the thoughts going through my head. It was a synthesis of my teenage dream-come-true interview with Neil Gaiman (yes, Neil fucking Gaiman, buy the next issue of Comic Foundry to read all about it) and talk about Iggy Pop, and my beloved Pop Feminist’s question Can Women Be Part of Counterculture? and Octo’s post on Feministe about “Sparkle.”

And so before I went out I posted Siouxsie. With her short-cropped hair and Egyptian-queen makeup, her shorts and vest and skinny boyish body are genderfuck supreme here, especially singing an Iggy Pop song where she takes on the male power-role—she isn’t the passenger, someone else is. She’s going to take him for a ride.

She’s got both masculine and feminine aspects here, of course. She’s glittery and glam and made-up but in skinny boyclothes, taking on the male role. When she dances, she does high kicks with the boys from her band, she covers Budgie’s eyes, and mostly you have to stare her in the face—each time she moves, she keeps her eyes on you.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Back here in good old South Carolina…yeah, well…

It feels like I never left. Feels like the last year or so was a dream (on better days, feels like the two years before that were a dream, too, and I never met that guy). I’m working and laughing at myself at the thought that I could ever get out of there and be having as much fun as I’ve had in the year I’ve spent in Philly and NYC.

It’s fun to pretend that certain things never happened, but then I’m brought up short with the realization that they did. My father has to come into his office (at the house) where I’ve temporarily taken over because it’s home to the high-speed Internet connection, and he has to weigh himself twice a day to make sure he doesn’t have congestive heart failure. So the talking scale tells him that he’s over his target weight and asks if he’s taken his medicine that day. A sharp reminder that this time last year he was on his third week of five in the hospital and we thought he’d have to be on oxygen for the rest of his life. Thank whatever you believe in that he isn’t, but still.

My mother is depressed. She thinks she’s fat and hates to leave the house (she’s gained probably ten pounds. Why on earth should this be debilitating or grounds to stay inside all the time? But you know, I just can’t go there right now). She can’t work because of her shoulders, but she rarely does anything else. She watches soap operas and worries about my dad.

I miss Kacie like crazy right now. I have plans to watch the fights tonight with a bunch of old friends at B.’s house, and one of the last times I was at his house was with my sister and Kacie. And after remembering that, well, this was where she lived and so everything reminds me of her. So I put on more red lip gloss and pretend I’m doing it for her, and touch my tattoo and smile.

When I see other people that knew her, we hug for longer than we used to. It’s a way to hang on.

I come back and I have to go see the One that Got Away. It’s a rule, a compulsion…something. It’s too easy now. He runs a restaurant, my mother goes there all the time, and his parents always ask about me and I tell myself they’d be upset if they knew I was in town and didn’t stop by.

He looks shocked and then stares at me when I’m not looking (according to Megan, who had the seat with the angle that could see him). He will barely even come say hello to me. Like I’m going to bite him, or yell at him for breaking my heart? It was years ago. When I lived here I didn’t think about him as much, but when I come back for brief visits, again, it’s like a time warp and suddenly the wounds feel fresh.

Yet I’ve learned to take pleasure in little victories and little moments, and not ask for the world, and knowing that I’ve still got the ability to knock him for a loop makes me feel good.

He looks tired, thin. Had little to say. And when you love someone, you truly want them to be happy, and so I wonder if he is. Wonder what more he wants.

But there are other people in my life (one in particular) who make me happy now. So phone calls and visits to old lovers don’t have the weight they used to.

I missed you last night too.

Because this lady did it:

101 things to do in 1001 days. (which will be Feb 22, 2011) » Read the rest of this entry «

inspired by Natalia Antonova and my own shallowness.

Eva Green

Martin Biron (left, though Ryan Miller ain’t bad either)

I have always been looking to leave a mark, whatever I’m doing.

I bit deep enough to leave bruises, scratched my name into a lover’s chest, left tangible reminders of me behind and walked off with T-shirts that smelled like them.

When I was born I left my mother a C-section scar, and years later a kitchen accident left me with a raised burn scar on one shoulder, but I can’t remember the physical pain like I can emotional scars that come back at the scent of something, a word, a story, a voice.

I tattooed words and pictures into my skin to remind me of things that I’d never forget anyway.

In a larger way, I look to leave my mark on the world as well. I write stories and essays and little bits of ephemera like this, something that can’t quite be characterized but expresses how I feel, how I am at one moment. Which is never quite the same as the next moment. I finish writing something down only to realize that it’s changed.

Change is good, healthy.

But the scars remain.