objectification

When I dress up, I get a lot of attention from men.

I know that this happens to everyone, because I see it.  I see the looks given to other women, girls sometimes.  But it makes me feel so exposed, vulnerable, in danger even.  I have of course gotten the outraged reaction when coming out to a straight man at a party; they seem insulted, like how could I even dare to talk to them if there wasn’t a possibility of sleeping with them?  To which I respond, wtf?  Are we not human beings, who can have a conversation because it’s nice to talk to other human beings?  [I know, I'm hanging out with the wrong straight men.  I'm not hating on you guys.  Much.]  And I wonder, couldn’t you read my OBVIOUS signals that I had NO INTEREST in sleeping with you?  Do I have to come out in order to make you stop?  Couldn’t I say no, even if I were straight?  This is my real question:  can’t you tell from how I’m acting that I’m not interested?  Why does looking good carry this automatic invitation to you?

Essentially, I feel like the part of me that liked to dress up and look sexy shriveled up and died a little bit over the past several years, and part of it is because of this attention from men.  I think on some level I felt like I couldn’t deny them that kind of access to my body, that if they were looking then I somehow was being complicit by dressing that way in the first place.  Not that I would ever apply that standard to other people; I still feel really conflicted about this.  Obviously I don’t buy the ‘blame the victim’ ideology, but since it seemed like I had the power to deflect this kind of attention (by not dressing sexy), it seemed like by dressing that way I was inviting it.

Interesting how my perspective on this topic changes radically depending on whether I’m getting laid on a regular basis…now that there’s been a revolution in our household, and the sex has exploded all over the place, I’m much more willing to be out there in a dress and heels, and forget about what anyone else wants or thinks.  I still don’t want to go out by myself in a really sexy outfit, but if I’m with M., it’s okay.  She is looking so much more queer (butch) these days, she gives me visibility in a whole new way.  Now straight guys stare, but they understand why I look sexy.  They understand that my body is spoken for, that they’re not invited.  Mind you, this doesn’t stop them from looking, but it does change the power dynamic.  I have power now, to deny them the casual, problem-free possessiveness that they claim as a matter of course.  M. and I out together plant a seed of uncertainty, a spark of doubt in them.  I love that.

April is the cruelest month

To me, there’s something really bleak about April.  Maybe it’s because the earth is waking up, and leafing out, but there’s really nothing to eat yet, no shade from the sun.  It seems to me the time when life is at its most fragile.   My father tried to kill himself in April, and almost succeeded.  He had been having money problems since quitting his corporate job and becoming self-employed, and taxes came due and he couldn’t pay them. So he thought he’d kill himself and then my mom could collect the life insurance policy. Brilliant.

The day it happened — today, April 29 — was a strange day. Normal in all of its particulars, but overlaid with weirdness. Every day was like that in our house. Things had been really tense; my mom had been spending a lot of time out of the house, leaving my little sister and me alone for long stretches of time. A recurring memory of that time for me is the house getting dark and quiet around us as we waited and waited for her to get home. Sometimes we’d receive a call from a payphone: “I’m at the mall, I’ll be home soon, pick up the mess and start dinner for your father.”  [What we didn't know then was that she would sit in the mall parking lot, crying and crying for hours in the car by herself.  It's a wonder she wasn't picked up by security.]

That day, a tuesday like this one, we were all sitting in the family room watching the driveway. We heard the train whistle blow as it pulled out of the station, just like we did every day, and five minutes passed. He didn’t drive up the driveway, and I knew right then that he wasn’t coming home, ever. I said something to my mom, something like ‘I don’t think he’s coming home’ and she didn’t answer me. But she looked panicked, worried. Turns out at that very moment — because he was on his usual train — he was getting into his car and driving away from our town, away from us, to a motel off of the highway in a town we shopped in all the time. He took a bunch of pills, I’ve never known what combination, and sat down to die.

Only he didn’t. The next day, around 11 or 12, the motel cleaning lady opened the door to find him psychotic and incoherent, wandering around the room. My father was taken to the emergency room and spent three days in the ICU looking like crap. He then checked himself voluntarily into a mental hospital and spent three weeks there, which spanned my 14th birthday, which we spent on the grounds there. My mom tried; she baked a cake, gave me a book that I’d really wanted. But in a way they’d already lost me.

I don’t know why this is so much on my mind this year. It broke my heart when it happened, and for a long time I wasn’t really okay. My sisters still kind of aren’t. It devastated me to spend my birthday that way, and I hated it for years afterward. M. helped me with that, because she loves my birthday, and gave me the gift of seeing that it’s the one holiday all year that celebrates me.  Maybe all this is on my mind because I’m turning 30 this year. Amazing that that horrible time was 16 years ago now. Amazing how much it still affects me, how part of me hasn’t healed. Sometimes I’m not sure I want to heal.

But I am mostly free now from the sick pit of dread that lived in my stomach when I was young, and that makes me really happy.

we are a family…

…whatever that means.  On the 25th, M. posted on our personal blog about the Day of Silence, talking about what it meant to her to be silenced so thoroughly by our environment and our families.  [Very subtly.  She's not one for overstatement.  Unlike me!  She didn't actually accuse anyone directly...I haven't yet, but give me time.]  There were nice comments from her parents, from my sister, from me (just to reiterate the point), and from her aunt.  Then there was my mom.  In one masterful, 7-sentence stroke, she managed to touch on every serious issue that has impacted our being out in the world, with a deft twist of the knife around my appearance, which has always been fraught in my family.  The highlights:

‘People are so complex it is always a damn shame when others pick out one thing to describe them.’  [Yeah, mom, except that by ignoring my gayness, you erase such a huge part of me that I might as well not exist in the first place.  My being gay isn't very useful to you, is it?  No social capital to be gained there, at least not in your circles.  And the thing is, see, I REALLY AM GAY.  It's just the honest truth.  So, you know, you can say so.  You can acknowledge that it's a part of me.]

‘I’m sorry you FELT that you had to be silent’ (emphasis mine)  [Yeah, right, so sorry, thanks, of course if I'd had my shit together I wouldn't have 'had' to be silent.  Not that I might have needed some support beyond 'just don't tell your sister, I don't want her to get any ideas'.  Right.  Sure.  You did all you could.  Whatever.]

‘But, and I am truly sorry about this, I did sort of tease you and your dad for being blond and blue-eyed….’  [Yeah, you all are so fucking impressed with my big blue eyes and my beautiful long blonde hair.  You feel all special when you look at me, when I look all elegant and sexy and I'm out in public with you.  My looks are a big family asset, aren't they, to be dragged out and presented to all your friends:  'Look what an attractive and amazing daughter I managed to produce.  Would you believe, she sings too?  Like an angel?  Darling girl, sing for the nice lady.  And she's so smart, would you believe, she reads French?  Of course brains run in the family...'  Thanks.  So much for my sisters.  Really helpful stuff here.  Why do I get the feeling you would have sold them down the river if the opportunity had presented itself?  You were selling me, weren't you?]

It’s times like these when I realize that you can be out, and proud, and all those things that we talk about all the time.  You can read StuffLesbiansLike.com and see yourself, and your partner, and laugh.  But when someone who is supposed to love you and support you says stuff like this, it still hurts.  It hurts that 14 years later, they still don’t have a clue about what my life is really like.  I know most of us go through this, or even worse.  But none of us should have to go through any of it, ever.  We don’t deserve it. 

Femme in the wrong bathroom

With all the wonderful reflections on gender wandering around the blog world, I was struck by an experience I had recently in the women’s room.  I sympathize with the butch women who get funny looks in the airport, or get told that they’re in the ‘wrong line’.  [Which stuns me by its rudeness.  Bathroom lines are self-selecting -- you don't make that kind of 'mistake'.  Meaning that every single person who's ever said that to someone knew exactly what they were doing:  being rude and horrible to someone else about their identity.] 

I was in the women’s bathroom at school washing my hands when a woman walked in dressed in full hijab:  headscarf, abaya, and face veil.  She stood next to me and proceeded to remove the veil, and adjust her hair and makeup.  I noticed — she was very, very beautiful.  She looked over at me and smiled, and I smiled back, totally embarrassed.  I confess that I was quite attracted to her, in that oh-wow-that’s-a-really-hot-girl kind of way.  I fled the bathroom, trying subtly not to look at her any more.  So, was it a safe space for her?  I don’t know what her religious views on homosexuality are, but I suspect from the traditional way she was dressed that it’s not high on the list of acceptable practice.  What does it mean for a religion that specifies strict segregation of sexes for a lesbian to be in the women’s room?  As I’ve said before, ‘dyke’ is not usually the first thing people think when they look at me.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t look, and notice, and react to attractive women.  I guess I just wonder — if she knew that she would be doing it in front of someone who would view her as a potential sexual partner, would she have removed the veil?  Sometimes I wish that all bathrooms were single stalls!

sunburn season

It’s that time of year again, when pale blonde people like me have to start worrying about turning lobster red.  Just at that sweet, delicious moment when everyone else is liberated from their heavy winter clothes, I have to think about sunblock.  Nasty, smelly, messy, sticky sunblock.  Or a hat to wreck my hair.  I do an okay girl-with-ponytail-and-red-sox-cap, but it’s not an all purpose look!  It wouldn’t be such a problem if I didn’t burn about 100x quicker than anyone else I’ve ever met.  1/2 hour in the moderate sun is enough to colour me pink.  If only I looked good in pink, maybe I could get away with it.  Even my part gets sunburned, which led to an awkward moment at work once where a very proper british lady got up on a ladder and handed something down to me.  Then she stopped, and said, in a properly aggrieved and pitying tone, ‘why, you’ve got sunburn in your parting!’.  Yeah, thanks, I know…

So happy spring, everyone!  Hurray for gorgeous weather, beautiful flowers, and pink-scalped me!

Neighbor TV: 2

So I’ve recently had a big disappointment:  Cooking Man isn’t gay.  All the signs were there — he cooks, has a Mac, keeps his apartment clean, is adorably balding a little tiny bit, he gets along great with his mom (his stylish, attractive mom — the type you see out at gay bars with their adorable sons), he has awesome alternative-looking friends who all dressed up as bunches of grapes last month for a fundraiser, and he’s in the midst of a huge renovation project.  During the course of this project, he has had several cute boys over to stay.  They always stand around helpfully while Cooking Man climbs ladders and rips wires out of the ceiling.  Isn’t he brave!  And did I mention the striped bathrobe?  So cute!

Fast forward to last weekend:  there he is, on the couch, watching tv, snuggling a girl.  A cute, blonde, petite, girl.  Honestly, I’m crushed.  I had such high hopes for him…all I can say is I hope he’s really poly or bi or something interesting like that.  He is still my favorite neighbor, but things won’t be the same…

she returns

She returned from a business trip Friday night.  Just an overnight, but I find I can’t sleep when she’s not here, so I was really tired, and frankly out of sorts.  When she’s gone I have a bad habit of dwelling on things that maybe I shouldn’t dwell on…  I made some brownies — not for her exactly, but we had kind of joked about whether or not I would make them before she left.  Yesterday, all day, I felt at sixes and sevens about making them; I didn’t want to be seen as having done it to make her happy, because I’m trying not to worry too much about that right now.  But I really wanted to try my new recipe, so what the hell.  

I had just pulled them out of the oven and was working on this blog as she walked in, so I was a little flustered.  She strode over to me and bent me back over the chair and kissed me hard, full-on, with no preamble.  I melted completely.  The combination of the kiss, and the way she just walked in and took it, and the way she smelled like fresh air and nighttime made my head spin.  I decided I was really glad to see her…

The best part?  She brought me flowers — beautiful deep pink tulips with a blush of white around the petals — and a bottle of the local cider from where she was visiting.  [Cider is one of my favorite drinks, derived from my favorite fruit of all time, the humble apple.  Yum.]  This was just so thoughtful…moments like this have been rare in recent years.  Yesterday we went shopping, and bought the most gorgeous shoes I think I’ve ever had.  Scratch that, they are the hottest shoes I’ve ever had in my whole life.  I am dying for an occasion to wear them…I will include a picture since I know you’re curious:

Perhaps you will say, gosh those shoes aren’t so hot — but everything is relative, right?  Now I just need a short black skirt to go with them!

Neighbor TV

When I was in college, a friend of mine moved into the big ugly dorm right in the middle of campus.  It was brutally brutalist, with three rectangular towers in a row above a flat, 7-storey block that rose from street level.  Needless to say, it was beige concrete.  The view from his room was straight into the central tower; at night you could see everyone’s windows lit up, and it was close enough so you could see what people were doing.  Fascinating.  So I said, “are you going to get some binoculars?” and his roommate burst out, “that’s sick!!!”.  Yes, the story of my life:  I am a sick freak.  I was quite disappointed not to live there myself, as I would have spent all my spare time with the lights out in my room watching everyone else.  With binoculars.

So when we moved into our current apartment, I was really excited to see another apartment building right across the street from us.  I can see into several apartments, and watch the residents to my heart’s content.  I’ve named them all:  on the first floor is Cooking Man, so named because he brings his laptop (a Mac, just like me!) into the kitchen and lovingly chops carrots, measures spices, and opens and shuts his oven.  He might do other things in that kitchen, but I can’t see them.  Above him is Plant Lady, so named because she has a window full of greenery.  I consider this a miracle, because the window is facing north in a northerly clime, and the sun we get in our higher south-facing window is hardly enough to keep us alive, much less a plant.  She has a boyfriend who walks around in his boxers.  Above her is Funny Lady.  Funny Lady and I don’t get along so well; she moved in only recently, and she doesn’t pull her blinds.  This is a problem since the window by her sink looks right onto our dining table.  I believe, since we got here first, that we are the ones with the open-blinds rights, and she should mind her own business and quit watching us have dinner.  Not that I have a double standard or anything…!

Moving across and up the building, there’s Cat Torture Lady, who on several occasions has forcibly placed her adorable black cat on a narrow concrete ledge five storeys up from the sidewalk.  I could hardly contain myself the first time she did it, and the second time I saw it I leaned out my window and yelled, in my best imitation-Upper-West-Side-40-something-privileged-mommy voice, “excuse me!  excuse me!  ma’am!  do you think that’s safe?  because I don’t think that’s safe!!  do you think that’s safe???”  She gestured incomprehensibly to me and pulled the cat back in.  Thank god.  I was prepared to go stand on the sidewalk in case the poor thing fell.  Next to her is Exhibitionist Couple.  They are the most recent residents, and they bug me even more than Funny Lady.  I have on multiple occasions seen the male half of the pair mostly undressed.  Now if it were the female half, I might have a different opinion…but definitely the worst moment with them was when said undressed man saw my other half slide her hand over my naked ass while kissing me in our bedroom.  Also they hold fun-looking parties and they don’t invite us.  Bad marks all round.

I think, if they were to give me a name, they would call me Nosy Girl.  ’Cause that’s really what I am.  And these exhibitionists are bringing out my competitive streak…

shopping

OK, so enough with the maudlin posts!  Last night I went shopping, and actually bought a dress(!).  Not that it’s surprising in the abstract that I would buy a dress (it says right there in ‘about me’ that I’m femme-ish), but it is the first one I’ve bought since 2005.  Skirts I have, but dresses are few in my wardrobe.  I think it’s partly due to the effort involved in wearing them — in the winter, they require stockings, and they are less commonly fully lined.  No way am I wearing a slip!  Perhaps even the word ’slip’ seems quaint and old-fashioned to some of you, but truly my mother made me wear them all the time I was growing up.  And frankly, they are gross.  Polyester, with ugly cheap lace around the hem, they get bunched up around the waist — literally the least sexy item of women’s underwear.  [If I'm going to be fair, there are some sexy slips out there, and worn on their own make quite a lovely statement.  It's just underneath the clothes I'm objecting to. Back in the day when they were made from silk broadcloth this whole discussion would be irrelevant.]

But this dress is for summer, sleeveless, cotton, and shorter than some of my other dresses.  I have been self-conscious about my body for a long time, and I’m trying to overcome that, especially around my legs and arms.  I have always thought of them as heavy, but sustained effort on my partner’s part is paying off, and now I can sorta see that they might be considered somewhat a little bit sexy.  Hence the dress.  NOW if the WEATHER would just WARM UP I might be able to wear it!  Oh right, after I get some shoes to go with it………….why does an image makeover have to involve so much effort?

The sorrow of the past

Reading the latest post over at sugarbutch, I felt a wave of sorrow break over me. She describes interacting with a group of friends in a way I can only dimly imagine for myself. Instead I picture the things I was doing six years ago, and the people I was hanging out with, and I remember feeling such an ache of isolation. I was (and am) continually an outsider, lurking on the fringes of other people’s communities. Always observing. Quiet. Shy, even. And yet, when I get to know people they always say things like “why didn’t I know you before?” and “but I would classify you as very sociable!” Her post is about finding a gender identity, or growing into one — and though my own gender has been pretty constant throughout my life, I think I’m still waiting to grow into my identity.

I can point to a thread of continuity in my life: I love to be in groups of people, talking, drinking, socializing, singing, what have you. This shy, quiet person is not me. I have the desire to talk to people all the time, to connect with them, to listen to them, to find out what their experiences are. I love nothing better than to find out where someone is from — there is so much specificity in geography, but so much universality in it too. What is better than to see the world through someone else’s eyes, at least for a moment? So what was holding me back? If I’m honest (as I claim to be in an earlier post) I have to admit that my relationship was holding me back. And it still is. I’ve been asked out to drinks with a group of people in a few weeks time, and it’s up to me whether I bring her or not. And I’m not sure what I should do — I will feel constrained if she is there, but I wonder if I will be able to shake the feeling that there will be consequences if I go alone. Not to mention that I will feel bad, like I left her all alone and went out and partied without her. It’s hard — I truly believe that couples should do things together, and separately. Have friends together, and friends apart.

In some ways I really wish I (we) had come out in high school. I don’t think she ever realized that if we came out as teenagers, there would have been a community for us. Not right there, or right then, but we would have found others, and I think things might have been easier for me. I am constantly amazed by other women’s coming out stories. The ones who came out in high school are so awe-inspiring to me; they also make me feel a little sad, because I could have been one of them. I was such a ridiculous freak in high school, partly because of being in the closet. Would it have been worse to be gay? At least I would have had an identity to embody, instead of being a shadow invisibly passing through the throng. There are of course reasons for waiting to come out, like personal safety risks and lack of support networks, but my parents were reasonably on board and had resources to draw on. I intimidated people (my one nickname, my whole life, was ‘ice queen’ because the straight boys were mad that I wouldn’t talk to them) and I truly believe I can hold my own in a fight, so I wasn’t overly worried about the safety aspect. There was a tiny goth/alternative community in our town, and being gay would have been an entry into that group — as it was, I lurked on the fringes of it just like I lurked on the fringes of the ’smart girls’ group and the ‘bad-ass-boys’ group and the ‘lower-income underachievers’ group. [Yes, I did in fact exist on the fringes of both the smart girls and the lower-income underachievers. I was smart, but was an inveterate underachiever, and wore a lot of hand-me-downs from my mom. I think that explains it.] Never once however did I even approach the fringes of the ‘jocks’ group. That’s right, a sporty dyke I am not. No softball for me…though I could see changing my mind for football.

So I guess I’m still working on growing into my identity, and finding a group to go with it. Not a ‘mean girls’ clique, just a fun, tolerant, funny, smart group of people who will watch my back when I’m not watching theirs.