Well, here is a copy of my paper for my writing class. The assignment was to write a descriptive essay about "home," which I realized to most people means the place you grew up. It got me thinking about the fact that I feel strange referring to the place where I grew up as "home" for a number of reasons. I also became panicky about the assignment initially because I don't really have a lot of heavily detailed memories about my growing up. What surprised me was that some of those memories improved while I was working on this assignment. That part wasn't always fun. Anyway, here it is. I turn it in tomorrow.
Home Like No Place
The specific details of my childhood are scarce. I don't have vivid memories of birthdays, schoolroom teachers, or childhood friends. I can't describe the scent of the home I was raised in, but I would wager that I'd be able to recognize it instantly. I can tell you that I am from Topeka, Kansas, that I grew up on Gray Street in a small yellow house with stucco exterior walls, that I lived with my mom and dad, that I was an only child and spent most of my childhood alone and lonely, and that my parent's child-rearing philosophies consisted of a blend of traditional Mexican values deeply rooted in Catholicism, expectation, and guilt. My tangible, detailed memories however are few and far between. My memories are like that word that's on the tip of your tongue, a word that you know is somewhere in your memory bank but you are continually denied access. They are two dimensional and aqueous and I long for the texture of my childhood but the longer I am away from that place, the more those memories fade until they no longer even seem like mine.
I'm unsure if my “home” is the town where I grew up in Kansas, the town where I felt so alienated for most of my childhood or if my home is here, in Portland, the place where I've been for almost ten years, the place where my chosen family is, where I feel happier than I've ever been. “Home” is defined as 1)a place of residence, refuge, or retreat, 2)an environment offering security or happiness, and/or 3)your place of origin. Portland satisfies two out of three of these definitions but Kansas will always be my place of origin. I've not been “allowed” back to Kansas for almost ten years, so when I hear my friends talk about “going home for the holidays,” the concept feels foreign. I get a little jealous about it. I want to see Kansas through my adult eyes, I want to be able to feel the Kansas air fill my lungs and touch the dirt my child hands touched. I want to hang clothes on the clothesline with my mother once again, letting the sunshine warm them and coax out the scent of synthetic lemon from the cheap detergent she uses. I want to sit in the bed of my dad's pickup truck, drinking sun tea as sweet as the sound of the country music coming off the radio and wave at neighbors as they drive past. They will return my greeting with a wave of their hand and occasionally, a short honk of their horn. I want to be able to build a new relationship with this place, one based on love and appreciation for what and who inhabits the space rather than a resentment and a longing to leave.
Gender differences and expectations were brought to my attention when I was four years old. Until then, it was perfectly acceptable, or at least tolerated, that I would rough and tumble with the boys outside, run around with my shirt off, come home with a dirty face and grass stained hands, and insist on a pair of overalls “like Daddy's” when we went to Sears. Suddenly, overnight it seemed, these behaviors went from “cute” to threatening and had to be stopped before it was “too late,” as my aunties warned my mother. She heeded their warnings and became vigilant about forcing me to wear skirts and dresses despite all my protests and never allowing me to cut off my long, black, curly hair that I despised.
I never quite knew where I fit in growing up, not with my family, not with other kids at school, not even in my own body. Spanish was my first language and was stolen from me by parents as a result of their determination to assimilate me into a midwest American culture. There were several other Mexican families in our town, many of whom came to work in the factories or the for the railroad company. My parents became aware of the racist treatment of Mexican kids who primarily spoke Spanish or spoke fractured English with heavy accents. They didn't want this to happen to me so at age two, they refused to let me speak Spanish and would only allow me to speak English. This alienated me from the other Mexican kids who would accuse me of “trying to be white” while the white kids in school would continue to greet me with racial slurs. Meanwhile, at home, my parents continued their crusade to cement me into the role of the dutiful girl-child of their dreams.
I became a quiet, introverted child, not because it was how little girls were expected to act, but because it seemed that if I was quiet and kept to myself, I was more likely to be left alone. I began my affair with books and reading on my first expedition to the library with my first grade class. I'd been reading since I was two but had never seen so many books in one place and was excited that I was granted access to “grown up books,” books without pictures, books with chapters. I picked “Ramona the Pest” for my first library book even though the librarian looked at me skeptically, suggesting that it was probably too hard for me and that I might have better luck with “The Cat in the Hat.” I was insistent and she finally relented. I finally found a world I could escape to, a world were I could be a boy or a girl or neither or both, a world where I could be dark and where I could be fat. A world where I could just be. I started thinking of Topeka as a temporary place of habitation, beginning to create distance even before I left, mirroring the distance I already felt from my family, a distance that began when I was four, a distance that increased over the years, especially with my father.
When I was very young, I wanted to be just like my father, or so I thought. I would try to convince him to take me fishing or let me work on the car with him on Saturday mornings, but he refused, constantly pushing me away, pushing me to participate in activities with my mother, activities that I had no interest in as a kid because the mostly consisted of staying inside and not getting dirty. As time went on, I started seeing my father differently. I began noticing how demeaning he was to my mother, constantly putting her down for being overweight and undereducated, even though he never attended school. I heard the rumors in our town about his affairs, rumors that, many years later, proved to be true. At twelve, I knew for sure there was something different about me, that maybe I was gay or something, knew that my future included more than what this small town could offer and that I had to leave as soon as possible.
Despite feelings of alienation, sadness, and longing that dominated my childhood, there are things about that midwestern town that I miss, things that I didn't appreciate while I was there. The longing to leave blinded me to the beauty that could be found there, the wild and wonder that was at my fingertips the entire time but the narrowmindedness that prevailed in my own front yard left me constantly searching for a way out. Still, maybe there is some truth to that saying about absence making the heart grow fonder, as I long to sit on the porch of my parent's house at the end of a long, hot summer day and witness the kind of thunderstorm that is so common there, the kind with large raindrops that are comforting despite the flash of lightening cutting across open skies, skies that have changed from blue to gray to purple, skies that rumble and pulsate with the bellow of thunder and the threat of a tornado always on the horizon. I would gaze across the flat, open land, squinting at the approaching storm practically hoping to spot a funnel cloud in the distance. These storms were exciting and dangerous and I welcomed them because they broke up the monotony and the water falling from the sky brought a temporary respite from the humidity of those sweltering summer days. I truly was an unhappy child and adolescent, so am I simply romanticizing parts of my Kansas upbringing? Am I trying too hard to scrounge up memories as a way to maintain my connection with my past, with my roots? Or have I finally had enough time and distance that I can now recognize the good things that can occur, even in the most oppressive of environments?
My most recent memory of being in Topeka is almost a decade old. At the end of a fifty-two hour bus trip, the Greyhound I was riding pulled off of I-70 and onto the run down streets of downtown Topeka. I couldn't wait to get off of that bus and clear my nostrils of stale french fries and cheap convenience store coffee that boarded in the clenched hands of anonymous passengers at various rest stops along the way. At that point, I hadn't been back in a couple of years and the town looked smaller, more dilapidated, grayer, than I remembered. It was a cloudy mid-September day and fall had already settled in Portland, but Topeka was still muggy and hot. Stifling. As the bus pulled into the station a familiar sense of strangulation began to settle in and I took a few deep breaths to avoid passing out from a panic attack. It was the last time I would see my parents, only they didn't know this. In my heart, I did.
The bus had arrived earlier than scheduled and my parents were not yet there to pick me up. I sat on the stone staircase outside the station to roll a cigarette and wait. It was somewhat jarring to be back in this place, the place of my birth and childhood, but the place I never quite felt was home. As I waited, the clouds rolled east, revealing the sun that had been hiding but somehow, the grayness lingered. Maybe I was just projecting.
My parents pulled up in my mom's burgundy minivan. I took a deep breath and stood up as they got out. They, like the town, looked smaller and more grey than I remembered. Despite the less than ideal relationship we had, I was happy to see them. We drove down familiar streets past unfamiliar faces and boarded up buildings. My mom told me that Topeka was growing on the west side of town and that our side, the east side where the poor people and the small number of non-white people lived, had been forgotten, like the rest of the town hoped we'd eventually just disappear altogether.
Turning into the driveway of my parents house, the house where I spent the first eighteen years of my life, it looked the same as the day I left only now I was seeing it through unfamiliar eyes. The visit was surreal, knowing that once I told my parents that I identified as transgender and was going to start a physical transition, I would no longer be welcome back. I wish I had paid more attention to the little details during this trip, had taken more pictures of the places that were comforting to me as a kid like my aunt Teresa's farm or my great-grandpa's garden filled with ripe tomatoes and grape vines that wound around the arboretum I used to sit under and read as he'd sing songs in Spanish and prune the wayward vines. I wish I had jumped into the creek near our house once more, hiding below the surface as long as my lungs would allow, like I did when I was a kid and wanted to get away, even for only thirty seconds. I wish I had captured the smell of my mom's kitchen in a mason jar so I could unscrew the lid and let just enough leak out to remind me of the hours I spent cooking with her, an activity I learned to love. It became a means of temporary escape from my dad's judgmental comments and cold shoulder because other than devouring the meal my mom prepared, it was his manly duty to stay far away from the kitchen while a meal was a work in progress.
On my last evening there, I biked up the steep hill to the top of Burnett's Mound, a bluff that overlooked the small town of Topeka. It was here that I had spent endless hours as a teenager, lost in a book or scribbling wistful wishes of escape. I was grateful that no one was up there and furious at the crushed cans of Miller Lite that were desecrating the hill, scattered about the dusty trail that led to the top. I dropped my bike at the end of the trail and tried to catch my breath. The bike ride up the steep hill left me winded and I realized that there was a space of two years and many cigarettes between this ride and the last time I had pedaled the trail. Sitting with my back against the tall oak that dominated the bluff, the bark felt familiar and calming, like there were invisible impressions that had been made over the years and my return reminded me that they would always be there. The crickets in the grasses behind me chirped a familiar cadence as the season's last lightening bugs danced in response and I gazed down at the small city below me and wondered if this would indeed be the last time. I knew that when I got back to Portland and started taking hormones, my body would begin to change, making it impossible to keep my transgender identity from my parents any longer. I'd already started constructing the letter that I would end up sending them a the following February, a letter telling them what the previous two years of my life had really been about, a letter explaining to them that this had been a long time coming, a letter that they would never answer. It would be my last communication with them.
Still on the bluff, embraced by the old tree and solitude, I didn't realize I was crying until I felt the tears drip off my face and cascade over my hands which were folded in my lap. At first I thought it was raining and that I would get to witness one more of my beloved thunderstorms, but this was a quiet storm. This was one produced by my heart and the reality of goodbye. I rubbed my soaked hands over my face letting the salty tears cleanse me. I was ready to go home.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
As if I already didn't hate driving
Today started with a clog in the kitchen sink and a snow covered ground. I was somewhat excited about the latter and irritated about the former. After my horrible drive to school, the disgusting mess that came up as a result of plunging the kitchen sink didn't seem so bad. In comparison anyway.
The drive didn't start out too bad, the snow was light and dusty so I thought it would be no big deal. Even so, I left a half an hour earlier than I normally would have, just in case. My biggest mistake was getting on I-5 and subsequently, trying to take the Fremont Bridge into northwest. I had my dogs in the car because I was going to drop them off at my work while I was in class in the morning since I have to go back there this afternoon and work a reception shift. Semitrucks and other ill prepared vehicles, or maybe ill prepared drivers, were sliding all over the place. My beastly subuaru of course was fine, but I started to panic a little on the incline of the Fremont Bridge on ramp, a steep, narrow two-lane curve that freaks me out on a warm, sunny day but when the wind is raging and ice is starting to collect under my tires....
As the 18 wheeler next to me started sliding towards me, I this scene started looping over and over in my head. I imagined the semi slamming into my car with enough force to toss me over the edge and into the icy waters of the toxic Willamette River below. What freaked me out the most about this is that my dogs were in the car. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get them both out of the water and realized that if I fell in, I'd probably pass out from shock before I could make any decisions. I began hyperventilating and sweating profusely while trying to continue to inch toward the apex of the icy bridge. I could feel a full on panic attack happening and I didn't know how to stop it. My hands and head felt tingly and I couldn't feel my lips or fingers anymore. I felt like I was going to pass out and this made me panic even more. I rolled down the drivers side window to get some air and prevent being sealed in my car if we plummeted into the freezing water below. I didn't even notice the ice and snow that was getting into the car; I was still sweating bullets and trying as hard as I could to take deep, even breaths. I tried to call about 10 people but it was one of those frustrating times when no one was answering their phone. My head became lighter and more tingly and I could feel my tunnel vision taking hold of my line of sight. Finally Erin answered her phone and talked me through it and I got over the bridge and off the exit ramp safely.
I've never, ever had a panic attack like that before, it was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me. The other horrible part is that I really, REALLY wanted a cigarette and actually found some in my pocket but I didn't smoke them even though I knew that it would only take one or two hits of nicotine to calm my panicky feelings. Wait, maybe the fact that I didn't smoke is the best part of this whole story. God, I miss smoking.
Now, I'm completely emotionally drained and want nothing more than to crawl into my bed and sleep. But that means I'd have to drive home first. ugh.
The drive didn't start out too bad, the snow was light and dusty so I thought it would be no big deal. Even so, I left a half an hour earlier than I normally would have, just in case. My biggest mistake was getting on I-5 and subsequently, trying to take the Fremont Bridge into northwest. I had my dogs in the car because I was going to drop them off at my work while I was in class in the morning since I have to go back there this afternoon and work a reception shift. Semitrucks and other ill prepared vehicles, or maybe ill prepared drivers, were sliding all over the place. My beastly subuaru of course was fine, but I started to panic a little on the incline of the Fremont Bridge on ramp, a steep, narrow two-lane curve that freaks me out on a warm, sunny day but when the wind is raging and ice is starting to collect under my tires....
As the 18 wheeler next to me started sliding towards me, I this scene started looping over and over in my head. I imagined the semi slamming into my car with enough force to toss me over the edge and into the icy waters of the toxic Willamette River below. What freaked me out the most about this is that my dogs were in the car. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get them both out of the water and realized that if I fell in, I'd probably pass out from shock before I could make any decisions. I began hyperventilating and sweating profusely while trying to continue to inch toward the apex of the icy bridge. I could feel a full on panic attack happening and I didn't know how to stop it. My hands and head felt tingly and I couldn't feel my lips or fingers anymore. I felt like I was going to pass out and this made me panic even more. I rolled down the drivers side window to get some air and prevent being sealed in my car if we plummeted into the freezing water below. I didn't even notice the ice and snow that was getting into the car; I was still sweating bullets and trying as hard as I could to take deep, even breaths. I tried to call about 10 people but it was one of those frustrating times when no one was answering their phone. My head became lighter and more tingly and I could feel my tunnel vision taking hold of my line of sight. Finally Erin answered her phone and talked me through it and I got over the bridge and off the exit ramp safely.
I've never, ever had a panic attack like that before, it was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me. The other horrible part is that I really, REALLY wanted a cigarette and actually found some in my pocket but I didn't smoke them even though I knew that it would only take one or two hits of nicotine to calm my panicky feelings. Wait, maybe the fact that I didn't smoke is the best part of this whole story. God, I miss smoking.
Now, I'm completely emotionally drained and want nothing more than to crawl into my bed and sleep. But that means I'd have to drive home first. ugh.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Shifting focus
I should be reading about the mechanisms of digestion and absorption in the human body. Or I should be working on my paper for my community health class. Or working on my paper for my writing class that Carrot gave me suggestions for improvement that were amazing and overwhelming. She was trying to go over some of it with me yesterday but I was hurried and anxious, having just gotten home from a 10 hour shift at work that was full of death and sadness and in a hurry to eat and shower before going to a show that I really didn't want to go to but felt some sort of weird social pressure to attend. I didn't stay at the show long, feeling anxious about being in a room with so many people and anxious about being in a space, sitting next to actually, one of my dates who was on a date with her other date. Confusing non-monogamy, right? I wasn't prepared and was jealous, an emotion that I've denied feeling in the past but an emotion I'm ready to face and deal with when it happens. Just before the intermission, the emcee told a racist "joke," sending my anxiety over the edge so I left to the safety of my station wagon and the comfort of my the country music spilling out of my stereo leaving me to dream about the two-step lessons Gene and I will be starting in 10 days! The thought of this made me happy.
I've realized that I need to focus on putting energy towards things that make me feel happy and healthy, like making time to go to the gym, writing, investing more time in friendships that are positive and loving. I want to take a break from dating for a while because its been causing me so much anxiety and sometimes it just feels like a string of negotiations and maintenance in this way that is inorganic and forced. I feel like the last couple of years of dating have been a series of heartbreaks and disappointments due to getting involved with people who are either long-distance or emotionally unavailable or both. I need a time-out before my patterns create an impenetrable scar-tissue around my heart. So, while I should be reading about the mechanisms of human digestion, I'd rather think about the mechanisms of my own heart. I need to take some time and figure out what my contribution to my own heartbreaks have been. I need to be my own date, for a while anyway.
I've realized that I need to focus on putting energy towards things that make me feel happy and healthy, like making time to go to the gym, writing, investing more time in friendships that are positive and loving. I want to take a break from dating for a while because its been causing me so much anxiety and sometimes it just feels like a string of negotiations and maintenance in this way that is inorganic and forced. I feel like the last couple of years of dating have been a series of heartbreaks and disappointments due to getting involved with people who are either long-distance or emotionally unavailable or both. I need a time-out before my patterns create an impenetrable scar-tissue around my heart. So, while I should be reading about the mechanisms of human digestion, I'd rather think about the mechanisms of my own heart. I need to take some time and figure out what my contribution to my own heartbreaks have been. I need to be my own date, for a while anyway.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Where are my memories?
I'm supposed to be writing a paper for my writing class right now. Its a descriptive essay about the place we're from and how its made us who we are. Being a "descriptive essay" it needs to include a lot of sensory memories. Which I don't feel I have. My memories are like that word that's on the tip of your tongue, a word that you know is somewhere in your memory bank but you just can't access. My memories are like a box of out of focus, sepia toned pictures with yellow edges you'd come across in a second hand shop, they seem somewhat familiar, but still distant. They are two dimensional and I long for the texture of my childhood but the longer I am away from that place, the place where I grew up, the place I feel like a fraud if I refer to it as "home," the more faded those memories become until they no longer even seem like mine. I don't even refer to the place of my childhood as “home,” not having been back there in almost ten years. I hear my friends talk about “going home for the holidays,” a concept that seems so foreign to me. I get a little jealous about it. I want to experience the place where I grew up as an adult, to be able to feel the Kansas air fill my lungs and touch the dirt my child hands touched. I want to be able to build a new relationship with this place, one based on love and appreciation for what and who inhabits the space rather than a resentment and a longing to leave. I remember being a twelve year old kid and knowing even then that I had to leave as soon as possible. It was then that I started thinking of Topeka as a temporary place of habitation, beginning to create some distance even before I left. This mirrored the distance I already felt from my family, a distance I began to feel at the age of four when gender expectations were formally introduced to me, a distance that increased over the years, especially with my father.
My most recent memory of being in Topeka is a ten year old memory. At the end of a 52 hour bus trip, the Greyhound I was riding pulled off of I-70 and onto the run down streets of downtown Topeka. I hadn't been back in a couple of years and it looked smaller, more dilapadated, grayer, than I remembered. It was was cloudy mid-September day and fall had already settled in Portland, but here, it was still muggy and hot. Stifling. A familiar sense of strangulation began to settle in and I took some deep breaths as the bus pulled into the station to avoid passing out from a panic attack.
Even this memory is fading. Like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I feel my memories slowly being erased and it makes me feel a panic and desperation to hold on to them, even the hard ones, the hurtful ones. I want to remember them because they are mine.
If I don't remember, who will?
My most recent memory of being in Topeka is a ten year old memory. At the end of a 52 hour bus trip, the Greyhound I was riding pulled off of I-70 and onto the run down streets of downtown Topeka. I hadn't been back in a couple of years and it looked smaller, more dilapadated, grayer, than I remembered. It was was cloudy mid-September day and fall had already settled in Portland, but here, it was still muggy and hot. Stifling. A familiar sense of strangulation began to settle in and I took some deep breaths as the bus pulled into the station to avoid passing out from a panic attack.
Even this memory is fading. Like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I feel my memories slowly being erased and it makes me feel a panic and desperation to hold on to them, even the hard ones, the hurtful ones. I want to remember them because they are mine.
If I don't remember, who will?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Writing class
My writing class is amazing! Maybe not the class itself so much, but its inspiring me to write again and reviving my confidence in myself as a writer. Its ironic because this is the class I was dreading the most and now its the one I'm most excited about. I think its this in combination with my new roommate, who is an amazing writer, all I want to do is sit in my room, my dogs at my feet, and write anything and everything that comes into my brain, then try to squeeze out more because this sponge in my head needs to get drained.
Yesterday in my writing class two amazing things happened. Number one, my instructor assigned my friend Chelsey's blog for our reading homework! Amazing!
Then our instructor put the following words on the board:
barn dress cow fire red girl pen
and wanted us to use one or more of the words to write a descriptive paragraph revolving around the interaction between two people. The only catch was, like the words above, the paragraph could only contain one-syllable words. We had 5 minutes to do it. This is what I wrote:
The smell of the fire fills my nose and takes me back to the barn in my mind. Ash and smoke sway in the sky in that way that plays with the stars, like they are a band that plays just for me to the beat of my own heart. I turn, my back to the fire and to you. I don't want to see the light dance on your face, the light makes your face soft and you are hard. Its not your fault, I know who you are. You are like the fire, in front of me but just out of reach.
I was really satisfied with what I wrote, especially under the 5 minute time limit. It was fun and it reminded me how much I like writing exercises like this, even though they can seem silly sometimes. Occasionally, they can also be seedlings for something spectacular.
Yesterday in my writing class two amazing things happened. Number one, my instructor assigned my friend Chelsey's blog for our reading homework! Amazing!
Then our instructor put the following words on the board:
barn dress cow fire red girl pen
and wanted us to use one or more of the words to write a descriptive paragraph revolving around the interaction between two people. The only catch was, like the words above, the paragraph could only contain one-syllable words. We had 5 minutes to do it. This is what I wrote:
The smell of the fire fills my nose and takes me back to the barn in my mind. Ash and smoke sway in the sky in that way that plays with the stars, like they are a band that plays just for me to the beat of my own heart. I turn, my back to the fire and to you. I don't want to see the light dance on your face, the light makes your face soft and you are hard. Its not your fault, I know who you are. You are like the fire, in front of me but just out of reach.
I was really satisfied with what I wrote, especially under the 5 minute time limit. It was fun and it reminded me how much I like writing exercises like this, even though they can seem silly sometimes. Occasionally, they can also be seedlings for something spectacular.
Hair we go
I'm going to get my haircut today. I've needed to get a haircut for a couple of weeks now but for some reason I'm having a lot of anxiety around it. It was so much easier when I was keeping my head clean shaven. But, I'm determined to have hair on my head, for a while anyway.
I've never been into my hair. Most of my life, I've hated it. When I was 6 I started begging my mom to let me cut my hair. Short. Like a boys. Of course, my parents refused, my mom insisting it would be a mistake and I would be ugly with short hair but when I was 8, I finally convinced my mom to take me to get a hair cut. My first ever. My hair, at this point, would swish against the waistband of the skirts I was forced to wear and usually, I wore it in two thick braids that would flank my head and heavy, like anchors keeping me tied to being a girl.
One Saturday we drove into town and walked into a salon with awful floresent lighting and the nauseating smell of ammonia and cheap shampoo. There were only ladies in that salon, which irritated me. I had imagined I'd walk into a barbershop with wood panelling, maybe a mounted deer head over the door of the bathroom and the familiar sound of a twanging steel guitar on the radio. The barber would chuckle and greet me, pull me up into the worn, brown leather chair and chop all my hair off. It would be like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy walks out of a world comprised of shades of gray and into a world of Technicolor dreams, only my dreams were made of Little League and Boy Scouts.
The reality was, I was here, with my mom, in a shop that was geared towards ladies in their late 30's and older. Much older. Blue hair older. I wanted to leave but my mom insisted we stay because I had made such a big deal about it, so now I was getting my hair cut, like it or not.
I slid onto the chair, made of vinyl that was slightly cracking. I knew this woman in front of me wouldn't give me the Tom Sawyer haircut of my dreams. "I want it really short," I told her as she draped an apron over my chest, the tips of her fingernails with chipping red polish scratching my neck as she tied the strings in place. She laughed. "Oh, honey, we don't want you to look like a boy now do we?"
I fought back tears as she began dismantling the braids my mom wove with my hair that morning. I kept my eyes closed the whole time and tried to focus on the sound of the scissors opening and closing but could hear my mom whispering instructions to the lady. When I opened my eyes, I saw a mountain of black hair that had fallen to my feet and it seemed like she was cutting off so much, I began to get hopeful. Maybe this lady would be my magical fairy godmother, with huge silver sheers for a wand, maybe she will actually listen to me and I'll get to walk out of here with hair I can finally be proud of. Maybe.
"All done, honey!" She announced proudly. "You sure had a lot of hair, it was almost a shame to cut it all off like that!"
I looked up as she swiveled the chair toward the mirror. Oh. My. God. This woman BUTCHERED my hair. She didn't give me that hair cut I wanted at all! Now, on top of my head, was what can only be described as a curly mullet. That's right, this woman gave me a curly mullet two weeks before the new school year was supposed to start. If I had a picture, I'd show you. Today, a curly mullet is ironic, almost trendy in that hipster sort of way but as an 8 year old kid in Kansas who was in their second month of wearing glasses, this was tragic.
I immediately started crying and looked up at my mom.
"See what I told you?" She said harshly. "You should learn to listen to your mother."
Looking back I wonder if she instructed the beautician to give me such a horrible haircut so I would be so horrified by it that I would never cut my hair again, i.e. never go for the boy hair cut I longed for.
After this, my parents again refused to let me cut my hair. Everytime I'd bring it up, my mom would remind me of the Disasterous Haircut Incident of 1987. So, from then on, I just let my hair keep growing and growing. When it would start to journey past my waistband, my mom would trim a few inches herself. I was not rebellious enough to take the scissors and chop it all of in the bathroom, man I wish I was that kind of kid though.
In high school, I basically looked like Slash from Guns N Roses, refusing to take care of my long, curly hair and usually wearing a bandana (headband style, not skull cap style) around my head to keep it from getting into my eyes. My mom hated this but didn't say much after I told her "You won't let me cut it but you can't make me take care of it." In her eyes, the alternative, a short hair cut, was much worse than the mess my long hair became.
When I moved out of my parents house to go to college in Minneapolis, I didn't chop all my hair off right away. It was actually the last thing my mom said to me before I got on the plane at the Kansas City airport. "Don't go cutting your hair off, ok? Promise me?" She seemed so desperate, I promised her I wouldn't, even though I knew it was a lie. But for some reason, I didn't do it immediately, like I always thought I would. I was away from home in this ginormous city and being gay all over the place, feeling more and more distant from my parents and from the life I knew as a kid and even though I had been planning my escape since I was 4 years old, a part of me was scared to "grow up." Cutting my hair all off, doing what I'd always wanted to do, would mean that I was completely independent from my parents.
It took me about 6 months before I finally made an appointment with someone to cut my hair off. I went to this amazing older butch dyke that my friend Teri recommended. I knew she would know what to do. Her shop was very cool, kind of dark with shiny oak counters and black leather barber chairs. She had a buzzcut, a ton of tattoos and was listening to Ani DiFranco when I walked in. Hella gay.
I watched as she made the first cut, removing a large section of thick, curly hair from the right side of my head. The umbilical chord had finally been cut. As she was clearcutting the black forest on top of my head, I told her how I'd always wanted to have short hair and of the Disasterous Haircut Incident of 1987. She laughed knowingly. I can't even quantify the excitement I felt when she started using the clippers. That buzzing in my ear was like when you have a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the name of it and then one day you hear it on the radio and you're like "YES! Finally!" It was like that. When she was done, she turned me toward the mirror. "What do you think?"
I reached my left hand up and touched the back of my clean shaven neck and let my fingers run through the small waves that were on top of my head that had replaced the long locks I'd resented my whole life. "I think my mom is going to hate it.... its perfect!"
Thanks to my genetics, I did not have the disheveled boy haircut that I'd always dreamed about, but it was short and very masculine, which was what I wanted.
Now, with my new haircut, the short cut I'd always wanted, I looked soooooo gay. And my gayness was suddenly visible to the rest of the world. It was exciting to my 19 year old self, all I had to do to let everyone know that I was gay was walk out the door. A little scary, but definitely more exciting. I suddenly had this confidence I never had before, noticed how I was walking differently, swaggering even. All this from a haircut? Man, I should have done this YEARS ago, I thought to myself one morning as I massaged some pomade into my scalp.
Needless to say, my mom was NOT happy. I told her by sending her a picture. She called me crying, reminding me of my promise at the airport 6 months earlier. "You knew I would do this, come on," I told her, unapologetic about my new 'do.
I pretty much had that haircut for a couple of years. When I moved to Portland, I began cutting my hair into a mohawk, which I had for several years until I finally began just keeping it clean shaven. Which was easy. But after a while, had become boring.
So now I have (for lack of a better description) basically a "faux hawk" going on. That term kind of makes me want to gag, but that's probably the best way to describe it. I don't know exactly what I'm going for but I know I want the tail at the end of the "hawk" part to grow out. I was so irritated the last time I went to get a hair cut and I specifically told the stylist NOT to cut the tail off and he did anyway. Argh. Since I've been growing my hair, he's the only stylist I've gone to but the last couple of times, I wasn't too happy about the work that he did. He's a friend of mine and I didn't say anything because its not like he could put it back on. I haven't gotten my hair cut since, which leads us back to today. What if I go to someone else, get my hair cut and then see my friend? Will it be awkward? Will we have to process? What if this new hair stylist cuts off my tail? I was talking to Evan about this and he said that the last time he went in for a hair cut, he specifically told the person not to cut the end of his hair off and the only reason it didn't happen is because Jodi was there and saved his tail from being added to the pile of hair on the floor. Do I need to bring a bodyguard for my tail? Why am I freaking out about this?
Well, I've made the decision. I'm going to try Bishops on Alberta. I mean, I am on a budget here. Wish me luck.
I've never been into my hair. Most of my life, I've hated it. When I was 6 I started begging my mom to let me cut my hair. Short. Like a boys. Of course, my parents refused, my mom insisting it would be a mistake and I would be ugly with short hair but when I was 8, I finally convinced my mom to take me to get a hair cut. My first ever. My hair, at this point, would swish against the waistband of the skirts I was forced to wear and usually, I wore it in two thick braids that would flank my head and heavy, like anchors keeping me tied to being a girl.
One Saturday we drove into town and walked into a salon with awful floresent lighting and the nauseating smell of ammonia and cheap shampoo. There were only ladies in that salon, which irritated me. I had imagined I'd walk into a barbershop with wood panelling, maybe a mounted deer head over the door of the bathroom and the familiar sound of a twanging steel guitar on the radio. The barber would chuckle and greet me, pull me up into the worn, brown leather chair and chop all my hair off. It would be like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy walks out of a world comprised of shades of gray and into a world of Technicolor dreams, only my dreams were made of Little League and Boy Scouts.
The reality was, I was here, with my mom, in a shop that was geared towards ladies in their late 30's and older. Much older. Blue hair older. I wanted to leave but my mom insisted we stay because I had made such a big deal about it, so now I was getting my hair cut, like it or not.
I slid onto the chair, made of vinyl that was slightly cracking. I knew this woman in front of me wouldn't give me the Tom Sawyer haircut of my dreams. "I want it really short," I told her as she draped an apron over my chest, the tips of her fingernails with chipping red polish scratching my neck as she tied the strings in place. She laughed. "Oh, honey, we don't want you to look like a boy now do we?"
I fought back tears as she began dismantling the braids my mom wove with my hair that morning. I kept my eyes closed the whole time and tried to focus on the sound of the scissors opening and closing but could hear my mom whispering instructions to the lady. When I opened my eyes, I saw a mountain of black hair that had fallen to my feet and it seemed like she was cutting off so much, I began to get hopeful. Maybe this lady would be my magical fairy godmother, with huge silver sheers for a wand, maybe she will actually listen to me and I'll get to walk out of here with hair I can finally be proud of. Maybe.
"All done, honey!" She announced proudly. "You sure had a lot of hair, it was almost a shame to cut it all off like that!"
I looked up as she swiveled the chair toward the mirror. Oh. My. God. This woman BUTCHERED my hair. She didn't give me that hair cut I wanted at all! Now, on top of my head, was what can only be described as a curly mullet. That's right, this woman gave me a curly mullet two weeks before the new school year was supposed to start. If I had a picture, I'd show you. Today, a curly mullet is ironic, almost trendy in that hipster sort of way but as an 8 year old kid in Kansas who was in their second month of wearing glasses, this was tragic.
I immediately started crying and looked up at my mom.
"See what I told you?" She said harshly. "You should learn to listen to your mother."
Looking back I wonder if she instructed the beautician to give me such a horrible haircut so I would be so horrified by it that I would never cut my hair again, i.e. never go for the boy hair cut I longed for.
After this, my parents again refused to let me cut my hair. Everytime I'd bring it up, my mom would remind me of the Disasterous Haircut Incident of 1987. So, from then on, I just let my hair keep growing and growing. When it would start to journey past my waistband, my mom would trim a few inches herself. I was not rebellious enough to take the scissors and chop it all of in the bathroom, man I wish I was that kind of kid though.
In high school, I basically looked like Slash from Guns N Roses, refusing to take care of my long, curly hair and usually wearing a bandana (headband style, not skull cap style) around my head to keep it from getting into my eyes. My mom hated this but didn't say much after I told her "You won't let me cut it but you can't make me take care of it." In her eyes, the alternative, a short hair cut, was much worse than the mess my long hair became.
When I moved out of my parents house to go to college in Minneapolis, I didn't chop all my hair off right away. It was actually the last thing my mom said to me before I got on the plane at the Kansas City airport. "Don't go cutting your hair off, ok? Promise me?" She seemed so desperate, I promised her I wouldn't, even though I knew it was a lie. But for some reason, I didn't do it immediately, like I always thought I would. I was away from home in this ginormous city and being gay all over the place, feeling more and more distant from my parents and from the life I knew as a kid and even though I had been planning my escape since I was 4 years old, a part of me was scared to "grow up." Cutting my hair all off, doing what I'd always wanted to do, would mean that I was completely independent from my parents.
It took me about 6 months before I finally made an appointment with someone to cut my hair off. I went to this amazing older butch dyke that my friend Teri recommended. I knew she would know what to do. Her shop was very cool, kind of dark with shiny oak counters and black leather barber chairs. She had a buzzcut, a ton of tattoos and was listening to Ani DiFranco when I walked in. Hella gay.
I watched as she made the first cut, removing a large section of thick, curly hair from the right side of my head. The umbilical chord had finally been cut. As she was clearcutting the black forest on top of my head, I told her how I'd always wanted to have short hair and of the Disasterous Haircut Incident of 1987. She laughed knowingly. I can't even quantify the excitement I felt when she started using the clippers. That buzzing in my ear was like when you have a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the name of it and then one day you hear it on the radio and you're like "YES! Finally!" It was like that. When she was done, she turned me toward the mirror. "What do you think?"
I reached my left hand up and touched the back of my clean shaven neck and let my fingers run through the small waves that were on top of my head that had replaced the long locks I'd resented my whole life. "I think my mom is going to hate it.... its perfect!"
Thanks to my genetics, I did not have the disheveled boy haircut that I'd always dreamed about, but it was short and very masculine, which was what I wanted.
Now, with my new haircut, the short cut I'd always wanted, I looked soooooo gay. And my gayness was suddenly visible to the rest of the world. It was exciting to my 19 year old self, all I had to do to let everyone know that I was gay was walk out the door. A little scary, but definitely more exciting. I suddenly had this confidence I never had before, noticed how I was walking differently, swaggering even. All this from a haircut? Man, I should have done this YEARS ago, I thought to myself one morning as I massaged some pomade into my scalp.
Needless to say, my mom was NOT happy. I told her by sending her a picture. She called me crying, reminding me of my promise at the airport 6 months earlier. "You knew I would do this, come on," I told her, unapologetic about my new 'do.
I pretty much had that haircut for a couple of years. When I moved to Portland, I began cutting my hair into a mohawk, which I had for several years until I finally began just keeping it clean shaven. Which was easy. But after a while, had become boring.
So now I have (for lack of a better description) basically a "faux hawk" going on. That term kind of makes me want to gag, but that's probably the best way to describe it. I don't know exactly what I'm going for but I know I want the tail at the end of the "hawk" part to grow out. I was so irritated the last time I went to get a hair cut and I specifically told the stylist NOT to cut the tail off and he did anyway. Argh. Since I've been growing my hair, he's the only stylist I've gone to but the last couple of times, I wasn't too happy about the work that he did. He's a friend of mine and I didn't say anything because its not like he could put it back on. I haven't gotten my hair cut since, which leads us back to today. What if I go to someone else, get my hair cut and then see my friend? Will it be awkward? Will we have to process? What if this new hair stylist cuts off my tail? I was talking to Evan about this and he said that the last time he went in for a hair cut, he specifically told the person not to cut the end of his hair off and the only reason it didn't happen is because Jodi was there and saved his tail from being added to the pile of hair on the floor. Do I need to bring a bodyguard for my tail? Why am I freaking out about this?
Well, I've made the decision. I'm going to try Bishops on Alberta. I mean, I am on a budget here. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
A new year
There's something that I really enjoy about my birthday being so close to New Year's and in the dead of winter. Usually its kind of a drag having a birthday so close to Christmas and being upstaged by Jesus. My friends are gone or distracted by family, a reminder that I don't have a relationship with my biological family, which I can deal with most other times of the year, but there's this visceral reaction that I think many of us have about "the holidays" whether we want to or not.
This birthday was upstaged by Arctic Blast 2008. Things didn't go as planned (do they ever??) and I spent more time at the Florida Room my birthday weekend than I care to admit, but what was wonderful was that my friends totally rallied and braved being covered in sheets of ice to come out for birthday celebrations.
Now that "the holidays" have passed and I'm settling back into a schedule filled with schoolwork and study dates, I am enjoying the newness of so much in my life. A new year, just turned 30, a couple of new friendships that I'm really excited about, the sharp air fills my lungs in the morning and wakes me in a way that is both assaulting and inspiring. My lungs, my lungs, my lungs began to hurt last week and I decided to stop smoking. It will be a week tomorrow and my lungs still hurt as the tissue starts to repair itself. I won't say that I quit smoking, I prefer to say "I'm not smoking right now" because it doesn't sound as scary and final as "quit." The truth is, I really like smoking, I miss it. I also know that I would be in pain if I smoked a cigarette right now and I actually cried the other day about not being able to smoke. Not being able to smoke in the bars has helped though, and my clothes don't smell disgusting when I come home from the bar, this is a good thing.
I've been excited about writing again and have been thinking about writing a lot more lately. I haven't dedicated a lot of time to writing in the last few years so its nice to feel on the edge of inspiration, like I'm holding a lit match in one hand and one of those metal sparklers in the other and slowly bringing them together, anticipating the reaction that's about to take place.
This birthday was upstaged by Arctic Blast 2008. Things didn't go as planned (do they ever??) and I spent more time at the Florida Room my birthday weekend than I care to admit, but what was wonderful was that my friends totally rallied and braved being covered in sheets of ice to come out for birthday celebrations.
Now that "the holidays" have passed and I'm settling back into a schedule filled with schoolwork and study dates, I am enjoying the newness of so much in my life. A new year, just turned 30, a couple of new friendships that I'm really excited about, the sharp air fills my lungs in the morning and wakes me in a way that is both assaulting and inspiring. My lungs, my lungs, my lungs began to hurt last week and I decided to stop smoking. It will be a week tomorrow and my lungs still hurt as the tissue starts to repair itself. I won't say that I quit smoking, I prefer to say "I'm not smoking right now" because it doesn't sound as scary and final as "quit." The truth is, I really like smoking, I miss it. I also know that I would be in pain if I smoked a cigarette right now and I actually cried the other day about not being able to smoke. Not being able to smoke in the bars has helped though, and my clothes don't smell disgusting when I come home from the bar, this is a good thing.
I've been excited about writing again and have been thinking about writing a lot more lately. I haven't dedicated a lot of time to writing in the last few years so its nice to feel on the edge of inspiration, like I'm holding a lit match in one hand and one of those metal sparklers in the other and slowly bringing them together, anticipating the reaction that's about to take place.
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