When You've Got No Other Choice, You Know You Can Follow My Voice

Turning points are always so informative about who you are and what you value.

We've all had them.

Think back to a turning point for yourself.  A moment that made you make a change, or something that shifted how you felt about some thing or some one or some situation in your life.

What was it that happened that made it shift so completely?

Can you recall how time slowed down a bit as you realized what you absolutely had to do?

(pause)

Not too long ago but also long ago, I went to go see a live/play version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

It's a play that has impacted more or less 90% of all queer and trans people I have ever known and, thus, also impacted me profoundly when I saw it for the first time ages ago.  During the more recent show, there was this queer boy sitting behind me and to my left.  We laughed and yelled and cheered for the exact same things while no one else did. (It was opening night.  There were a lot of funders of the theater there, season ticket holders and other people who just didn't get it.)

I recall after the show, going to share one of the songs with the person I had gone to the show with -  someone I had been dating, but was technically broken up with at the time.

Long story short:  She got mad and impatient and exploded. How she interacted with me that night after Hedwig made something shift for me.  It was something of the stark contrast in the meanness of her behavior with the incredible beauty of the story of that show.

What was I doing hanging out with someone who not only didn't get/have interest in the musical Hedwig and the genius of John Cameron Mitchell but, on top of and separate from that, was seemingly fine with speaking to the people she loves with such unkind words in such an explosive way?

It wasn't the first or second time it had happened. I was still getting to know her, but had seen her talk to people she loves in really cruel ways. Then she did it to me. It was why I had broken up with her. This was one of those attempts at friendship or a blurry date or, something that an aching heart tends to do. But that night things shifted for me.

After her outburst, she left in her car.  I sat in mine and listened to various versions of Wicked Little Town. Something had changed for me. It felt positive. Sad. Beautiful. Hard. Loving.  Much like the story I was listening to being sung, or the tale I had just seen on stage.

Love, no matter how it's struggling, would never be fine with those kinds of actions and words. I could love a person in their entirety, but I still - unapologetically and clearly- knew I deserved more than that.

Integrity matters in both words and actions.

['Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of 
Caring about ourselves]

Needless to say: I made some decisions, set some boundaries, and that night of Hedwig would serve as the last time I would interact with her in person.

(pause)

The universe, in its strange and funny way, put me in a gloriously queer context about a week later.  Drag queens and community organizers and djs and dogs. A femmey butch queer man with so much knowledge and incredible taste in/about music and I began chatting. I liked what he had to say. I liked his attitude, his friendliness, his style and what he was involved with.  We kept chatting. Exchanged music recommendations. We kept chatting and chatting and...

He pushed up his sleeves.  I stared.  "I love your tattoo. From Hedwig, right?" (I already knew the answer).

He said yes, paused, and added, "You know, part of why I have this tattoo because it's a way to know pretty immediately if someone is awesome or not.  Awesome people recognize it and, as soon as they do, I already know that they are incredible people."

Word.

(pause)


There will always be something to be said about people who understand the pain, love, tenderness, beauty, loss, gain, terribleness, forgiveness, vulnerability and complexity of this moment:

(From the movie musical) : God, watch their eye contact and exchange


Here is to the necessary turning points and glory of musicals-as-church-yet-of-course-one-of-the-main-characters-last-names-is-Gnosis.


Keep loving out there- yourselves and others. Keep celebrating every piece of the complexity of your beauty - inside and out.


be well; be loved,

k.

P.S. Tonight RENT LIVE will be shown with Valentina as my favorite character !
P.S.S. A general reminder I received today: We need each other to heal. Bam

(image: one of nine zillion drawings related to The Origin of Love from Hedwig found on the internet.)
(italicized words: Lyrics from Under Pressure written by yet another beautiful gender maniac)

Autobiography of an Engraving

Let me tell you something:  There are the times that you feel completely loved and lovable simply based on who loves you and how much and how complexly they do. Now is one of those times.  Although it was the birthday of someone I love so deeply and who I respect to the end of the galaxy and back, somehow it was me that left feeling gifted.

I've always been of the school of thought that you should surround yourself with who you want to become.  Be around those whose activism, politics, brains, fashion, artistic ability, well-read-ness, creativity, joy, hilarity, sexiness and every single other thing you can think of you wish to emulate, cultivate, and create synergy with.

There will be people who come into my life- for a month here, two years there- who will not be permanent. They won't be permanent because, although they have their own beauty I am certain- they are simply not who I want to be like.  They are not who I look up to.

If you have been in my life for more than four years, I can guarantee you that I admire you. I respect you. I want to become more like who you are and what you put out into the world and into your friends. I am, in short, in a respectful and grounded state of awe of you. "Awe", here, not in the "I could never be like that..." type way, but, rather, in the "holy shit! This person is amazing. I want to live my life in a way that they respect. I want to build community in a way that they would approve of. I want to be a person that they want to have in their life." type way.

It doesn't matter how frequently we talk or hang out.  If you are a person I text randomly every few months to talk about writing or politics or humor or art, you are one of these people.

In any case, it is something on my mind tonight.

Those beautiful and complex and historied lattices that we create that hold us together so that we may fall apart.

(pause)

I love you.

And to those that are new and flirting about in the margins:  I invite you.  This isn't the lipstick-wearing boar's clubs that I have seen: The ones who keep people out. Who cackle and are cool. Who are careful with their words in a way that only monolingual and monocultural people can be.

We are big. We are beautiful. We are bright. We are complex. We are sloppy. We are awkward.  We are loud. We are quiet. We are jagged. We are smooth. We are loving.

We are loved. 



be well; be loved; be the person you want to be for the people who you love.


k.

(image: Grace Jones via whiskeyboat tumblr)

Always

...she interrupted him with a sympathetic but firm smile: "That's hardly relevant now and, besides, my time is not like this piece of chewing-gum." Muriel was completely taken aback (as well as somewhat in awe of this attractive, elegant, educated woman, who was, of course, very well dressed), because there was no chewing-gum in sight, not even an empty packet on the desk or the merest whiff of mint or strawberry.  True, the office was so pleasant and so highly perfumed that no other odour could possibly have survived, and at first, Muriel felt as if he were floating helplessly in the air, drunk or even drugged. 

-Javier Marías, Thus Bad Begins

This year I  have managed to dodge any loud build up to this day. I find myself left typing at a kitchen table with the periodic spattering sound of a hanging plant that is dripping excess water onto a lovingly placed towel on the floor. Things have been busy and warm as of late, and I have about twenty minutes before the whirl begins again: I am steam and eucalyptus and ready for all of it.

I am thinking of you.  

Even in the most official and uniformed sense: How could I not? 

It isn't often that the mirror reflects back the eyes of another, and it is these types of intricacies that are no longer something I would wish to rid myself of.

Be well; be loved,

k.

(excerpt from the new Marías book. English version released November 2016. We shall see. This British spelling of things always trips me up, but admittedly charms me.)