Secret

I now blog here.

2011-03-02T19:51:00.000-08:00

if this was desire then...

2008-06-06T02:26:00.001-07:00

She imagined love where there was no love. She put on their clothes and had imaginary conversations with them when they weren’t around - often in public, on the bus where there were people. When she said she loved you, it was a noose, loose around the neck. And when she left you barely noticed. She conjured faith where there was no belief, truth in spite of distance, transcended make-believe, rebuked cold, hard evidence. Every morning was an emergency and she frequently was heard saying, “I’m really not like that,” over and over and over again. Her mistakes were like fire and her defenses, outdated. I can’t remember a time when she really ever learned her lessons. She operated from inside a fantasy and was forever getting attached to the outcome. He humiliated her with his indifference, his gray areas. She felt shame older than twice her age. She needed bookends to match the middle; hold her as if it mattered.

unexpecting

2008-03-02T23:42:00.001-08:00

So I was g-chatting with my friend Nico today and he says he's about to take his ex's kids to this puppy adoption event at this pet supply store near my house. He asks if I want to come and get some puppy therapy and play with them. I say sure, sounds great. I was feeling a little down after speaking with a good friend of mine this morning whose father just passed from brain cancer this week. He is blessed with an amazing family and has been best friends with his parents his entire life, and I spoke with him right after he had gotten home from the services and friends and family were still gathered at his house. We had a good conversation and he just told me how much he loved his dad and how he was relieved he wasn't suffering anymore and just the thought of loosing a parent when you've never experienced that before is so overwhelming, I was feeling, well not down necessarily, but definitely emotional. So puppy therapy sounded like a good idea.

I walked over to the park next to the bakery near my house and Nico and the girls scooped me up and we went to this great little pet shop I'd never even noticed in my hood before. On the way, I learned that the younger of the two girls has been accepted into the school I work at for next year and was really excited about attending, so that was cool. I told her what a cool place it was and how the teachers were really young and fun and nice, and I think I may have mentioned that it has pretty much the best after school program EVER. I also told the girls they had to watch out for me when we get there because I might just go puppy crazy and leave with a dog. I was kidding of course, though I have been talking about wanting a dog since I moved to Oakland, I was still unsure about wanting the responsibility or extra financial stretch.

We parked in front of Lisa's Passion for Pets, climbed out of the car and wandered inside this tiny little hole in the wall of a pet store. As soon as I walked in, I was faced with a mirror holding onto a pillar in the middle of the store looking directly at me as I moved, and in that mirror, I was faced with the reflection of thighs spread wide, a run in a panty hose that I followed all the way up a thick leg till I had to look away for fear of seeing a woman's vagina who I didn't know and whose face I was going to have to behold in a matter of moments. Legs splayed upon a metal, folding chair and stretching a polyester patterned sunday skirt so tight it was forced to slip higher and higher up those thighs just to relieve the tension and remain in one piece. I turned my head quickly to the other side of the store and saw about 7 or 8 tiny dogs in a play pen. As me and Nico and the girls came through, all the dogs perked up and started making their case for adoption. As soon as my eyes focused, I found myself in a dead-on eye lock with this tiny little adorable chocolatey puppy. We stared at each other for a few seconds and then I walked over and reached into the pen to pet her. She started crying immediately. She cried and cried, like a baby. I tried to shhh her but the more I petted her, and then the girls started petting her, she just cried even more. We took her out and played with her for a long time. We played with most of the other dogs too, but me and this little one, they called her Madeline, we just had this connection. She was 2 1/2 months old and was being taken care of presently by a foster mom who held her all day and so she was having lots of separation anxiety. I felt like I understood her. Silly, I know, but that's the same age I was adopted from my foster mom and I know a thing or two about separation anxiety. She seemed so smart and that she had something really special in her, and I kept thinking, all that little girl needs is a stable home and someone who will love her and never leave her, and I bet she will be the fiercest thing you've ever seen.

I kept trying to talk my self out of it, asking Nico to talk me out of it, but I just couldn't think of any reason to not take her home that was better than all the reasons i could see for loving her. I asked Lisa, the store owner, if i could fill out an adoption form. Nico and the girls had brought along Nico's dog, Morcio, and he was getting antsy, so I asked him to drive me home and told Lisa I'd get my checkbook and drive back in my own car in a few minutes.

When I got back, Lisa showed me all of Madeline's paperwork. She had been taken by her owner to a pound and was given 4 days to be adopted. Her 4 days ran out and she was about to be euthanized when the California Underdog Rescue and Education saved her. Lisa told me that she was really lucky cuz alot of the time, they kill black dogs at the pound without even giving them the 4 days to get adopted. Racism is that deep that they kill black dogs first at the pound?? Jesus christ. Anyways, turns out Madeline is a scorpio, born 3 days before me on Halloween! So we were pretty much meant to be. She also told me that she's only been called Madeline for about a week now and didn't respond to it yet, so it would be perfectly fine for me to change her name. I had mixed feeling about this since I have mixed feelings about the fact that my name was changed multiple times throughout my adoption and I've always said, 'wow, who does that? people don't even change dogs' names when they adopt them, much less a baby's.'

So I signed all the paperwork, bought her food and bowls and toys and a leash even tho she doesn't walk on one yet. Lisa was kind enough to let me borrow a crate for a week till I get paid and can get one myself. And then me and Madeline walked out the door...well I walked, she was carried....got in my car and drove off into the almost sunset together.

She's been at home now for about 6 hours and has already warmed up to her new environment. She has shown herself to be smart and loving and cuddley and adorable and freaking fierce and totally playful and sweet. I just keep calling her babygirl for now, but I plan on thinking of a name for her in the next few days. It will be something smart and fierce and loving. She's already a total mama's girl and we stare into each other's eyes alot.

We're in love...

why adults don't play tag....

2008-03-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

Freeze tag, flashlight tag, tv tag - all derivatives of regular old tag, and all have provided children across the globe with countless hours of giggley, screamy, fast-paced, frolicky fun for god knows how many years. Last night, on the eve of the eve of the anniversary of the illustrious birth of my friend mic jones (not the rapper, the original), a pack of ladies suited up in their running shoes, jeans, sweats, hoodies and gloves, and, armed with their stealthiest and most aerodynamic flashlights, met at dark on a grassy knoll snuggled up against Lake Merritt, to call upon the spirits of their child selves in an all-out battle royale grown-up game of Flashlight Tag.

The rules were concocted by Mic's lovely mom who came up from LA just for her daughter's birthday, and the rules were this: There would be two teams: the law and the civilians. The law would consist of taggers and jailers. The taggers ran around tagging the civilians and freezing them. Once a civilian was frozen, the tagger had to call for the jailer to come and fetch the frozen and haul them off to the prison (an area in the center of a triangle of trees). Once they were inside, the prisoners teammates could come bail them out of jail by running up and tagging them inside their cell, but they had to get past the jailers first. Once all the civilians were put in jail at the same time, with no one left to bail them out, there would be a regime change; a coup, if you will.

Once everyone was briefed on the rules, we set up some spatial boundaries, gave the civilians a 10 second head start and we were off!! We were all over the place, running, yelling, arresting, incarcerating, people were sick with power! Aaaaaand about 5 1/2 minutes later, people were actually sick. Coughing, wheezing, shouts of "I can't run anymore!", "Stop! Stop!", "I lost my earring!!", and "I'm gonna barf!!!," filled the night sky.

The game dissolved shortly thereafter into a huddle of grown ass women holding themselves up on each others' shoulders and backs asking, "Holy Shit, how do kids play tag all day????" We ended up doing a revival of Red Light/Green Light, just to prove to ourselves we weren't quitters and we still had a firm grip on the last threads of our youthful energy as we reluctantly or joyfully slipped into our mid to late 20's, and then someone asked, "So where we goin for cocktails?"

why

2008-02-19T18:42:00.000-08:00

Because we don’t want to see our mothers
for who they really are
or how far they have stretched
knowing they could never go back
Because we carry the weight
of their secrets they were forced to
wrap around hips, shoulders and backs
wrapped tightly hugged against breasts
babies for whom no one would claim
responsibility for or likeness to
Because we left a legacy of
girl too fast becoming womanchild
while underneath her skirt
still burns the fire of innocent intoxication
Because our fathers had the luxury
of sleeping on their stomachs
being ambiguous or unknown
while we waited, tenderfooted and swollen
to be unnamed

don't believe the hype

2008-02-16T18:47:00.000-08:00

as per usual...Mr. Howard Zinn articulates what so many sane people are feeling right about now...

Election Madness

By Howard Zinn
(The Progressive, March 2008) -- There's a man in Florida who has
been writing to me for years (ten pages, handwritten) though I've
never met him. He tells me the kinds of jobs he has held: security
guard, repairman, etc. He has worked all kinds of shifts, night and
day, to barely keep his family going.

His letters to me have always been angry, railing against our
capitalist system for its failure to assure "life, liberty, the
pursuit of happiness" for working people.

Just today, a letter came. To my relief, it was not handwritten
because he is now using e-mail:

"Well, I'm writing to you today because there is a wretched
situation in this country that I cannot abide and must say
something about. I am so enraged about this mortgage crisis.
That the majority of Americans must live their lives in perpetual
debt, and so many are sinking beneath the load, has me so
steamed. Damn, that makes me so mad, I can't tell you. ... I did
a security guard job today that involved watching over a house
that had been foreclosed on and was up for auction. They held
an open house, and I was there to watch over the place during
this event. There were three of the guards doing the same thing
in three other homes in this same community. I was sitting there during the quiet moments and wondering about who those people were who had been evicted and where they were now."

On the same day I received this letter, there was a front-page
story in the Boston Globe, with the headline "Thousands in Mass.
Foreclosed on in ‘07." The subhead[ing] was "7,563 homes were
seized, nearly 3 times the ‘06 rate."

A few nights before, CBS television reported that 750,000
people with disabilities have been waiting for years for their Social
Security benefits because the system is underfunded and there are
not enough personnel to handle all the requests, even desperate ones.

Stories like these may be reported in the media, but they are
gone in a flash. What's not gone -- what occupies the press day
after day, impossible to ignore -- is the election frenzy.

This seizes the country every four years because we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the two mediocrities who have already
been chosen for us.

It is a multiple choice test so narrow, so specious, that no self-
respecting teacher would give it to students.

And sad to say, the presidential contest has mesmerized
liberals and radicals alike. We are all vulnerable. Is it possible to
get together with friends these days and avoid the subject of the
presidential elections?

The very people who should know better, having criticized the
hold that the media have on the national mind, find themselves
transfixed by the press, glued to the television set, as the
candidates preen and smile and bring forth a shower of clichés with
a solemnity appropriate for epic poetry.

Even in the so-called left periodicals, we must admit there is
an exorbitant amount of attention given to minutely examining the
major candidates. An occasional bone is thrown to the minor
candidates, though everyone knows our marvelous democratic
political system won't allow them in.

No, I'm not taking some ultra-left position that elections are totally insignificant, and that we should refuse to vote to preserve our moral purity.
Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat
better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the '30s,
for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between
the two parties may be a matter of life and death.

I'm talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the
election madness. Would I support one candidate against another?
Yes, for two minutes -- the amount of time it takes to pull the lever
down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time and energy
should be spent in educating, agitating, and organizing our fellow
citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, and in the schools.

Our objective should be to build -- painstakingly, patiently but
energetically -- a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical
mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress,
into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let's remember that even when there is a "better" candidate
(yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George
Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of
the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White
House will find it dangerous to ignore.

The unprecedented policies of the New Deal -- Social Security,
unemployment insurance, job creation, minimum wage, subsidized
housing -- were not simply the result of FDR's progressivism.

The Roosevelt administration, coming into office, faced a
nation in turmoil. The last year of the Hoover administration had
experienced the rebellion of the Bonus Army -- thousands of
veterans of the First World War descending on Washington to
demand help from Congress as their families were going hungry.

There were similar disturbances of the unemployed in Detroit,
Chicago, Boston, New York, Seattle.

In 1934, early in the Roosevelt presidency, strikes broke out
all over the country, including general strike in Minneapolis and
San Francisco, and hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile
mills of the South.

Unemployed councils formed all over the country. Desperate
people were taking action on their own, defying the police to put
back the furniture of evicted tenants, and creating self-help
organizations with hundreds of thousands of members.

Without a national crisis -- economic destitution and rebellion --
it is not likely the Roosevelt administration would have instituted
the bold reforms that it did.

Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it
faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading
presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will
not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system
of free healthcare for all. They offer no radical change from the
status quo.

They do not propose what the present desperation of people
cries out for: a government guarantee of jobs to everyone who needs
one, a minimum income for every household, and housing relief to
everyone who faces eviction or foreclosure.

They do not suggest the deep cuts in the military budget or
the radical changes in the tax system that would free billions,
even trillions, for social programs to transform the way we live.

None of this should surprise us. The Democratic Party has
broken with its historic conservatism -- its pandering to the rich,
its
predilection for war -- only when it has encountered rebellion from
below, as in the '30s and the '60s.

We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in
November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin
fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.

So we need to free ourselves from the election madness
engulfing the entire society, including the left. So, yes, spend two
minutes focusing on the election. Before that, and after that, we
should be taking direct action against the obstacles to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.

For instance, the mortgage foreclosures that are driving
millions from their homes -- they should remind us of a similar
situation after the Revolutionary War, when small farmers, many
of them war veterans (like so many of our homeless today), could
not afford to pay their taxes and were threatened with the loss of
the land, their homes.

They gathered by the thousands around courthouses and
refused to allow the auctions to take place.

The evictions today of people who cannot pay their rents
should remind us of what people did in the '30s when they
organized and put the belongings of the evicted families back in
their apartments, in defiance of the authorities.

Historically, government -- whether in the hands of
Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals -- has failed
its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and
Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and
boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of
soldiers in order to stop a war.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute
for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

------------------

Howard Zinn is the author of "A People's History of the United
States," (with Anthony Arnove) of "Voices of a People's History",
and most recently, "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress."

love notes

2008-02-14T13:49:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's Valentine's Day yet again. Red and Pink, Balloons and Teddy Bears, Candy Hearts and SpongeBob sentiments. In my desk at work, I have a collection of love notes that I have found in the hallways of our school. Sometimes they are actually written for a crush, sometimes about a crush, or just about love or like or lust or the infuriating and life-altering combination of all three that grips you in middle school and suddenly turns each and every day at school into the nucleus of human existence on planet Earth and the very possible end or beginning of life as you know it. Someday, when my collection grows large enough, I want to make a book out of them because I'm a sucker for nostalgia and besides, what adult wouldn't want to remember what love sounded like before you knew it wasn't enough? I think it's only when you start to forget what it felt like to be a child, that you begin to die.

The nucleus of my world in 6th grade was Tony P. He was my best friend and I was a tomboy so I wasn't supposed to give a shit about my guy friends besides what time they could hang out till after school, what Nintendo games they had, what thier mom's stocked their fridges with and what kinda bike or skateboard they rode. Unfortunately, when 6th grade hit, so did the crush. They call it a crush for a reason you know. I was thoroughly, entirely crushed that all of a sudden I wanted to be the girl he liked, instead of making fun of the girls he liked. It fucked up my whole game. I dreamt about him at night and then became certain he could tell in the daytime. My face would burn when he tried to talk to me about playing basketball after school or going to the corner store, for no reason other than I was harboring this awful hateful secret: I loved him. I loved him so much I wanted everything in the universe to cave in on us and let me have the chance to be with him - without the unbearable weight of what that would mean to our friendship, and what people would say about me, how much they'd make fun of me, and how he would most likely be forced to reject me, even if he did like me, to protect himself from what people would think if he went out with me...ME, the one all the boys kicked it with but would never KICK IT with and who was probably a dyke anyways and seriously pretty weird even if she wasn't.

For an entire year, I thought of nothing but being his girlfriend. I wrote about it and sang about it and cried about it and lost sleep over it, but through all my pain and suffering, I never told a soul. I watched him fall for other girls, often being forced to act as a liaison to tell the girl he liked her and ask if she wanted to go with him. I let him be on the playground, watched from the corner at dances and the skating rink while he put his hands on hips and shoulders and necks of girls I had nothing in common with and didn't want to be friends with, but envied with my entire being nonetheless. We still hung out almost every day; I knew him like a brother - actually I knew him better than my brother. I'd hang out at his house, shooting hoops in his driveway, playing with his two little shit tzu puppies, talking to his mom, watching cable that I didn't have, till I couldn't risk being any later getting home without getting grounded and therefore being kept from spending more time with him. I remember trick-or-treating with him and going into the only haunted house I've ever been in (I still can't go, they freak me out) even though I was terrified, because I didn't want him to see me acting like a baby. It felt like nearly everything I did that year was for him or about him, until one day he came to school and told me his dad got a new job and he had to move to Indiana. I was crushed.

Before Tony left for Indiana, I somehow summoned the courage to tell him how I felt. I guess I figured if he wasn't around anymore, no one would find out and ridicule me for making my grand declaration of love, and if he rejected me, well at least I wouldn't have to see him every day in school. He would be in an entirely different state and gossip couldn't possibly travel that far, right? So I waited until the day he was leaving. I told him in his empty basement. I can't remember what I said or how I even managed to say it, but he told me that he had liked me the entire time too, but now that he was leaving there really wasn't much to do about it. He would go to Indiana, I would stay in Michigan, we would go on with our lives and stay friends. He would visit, keep in touch, whatever, but that was that. I remember being completely stunned. I don't know if he said that because he wanted to make me feel good and he knew he could and it wouldn't have any consequence because he was leaving, or if it was actually true. Either way, he left me feeling loved and hopeful - hopeful that love could happen in impossible situations and that all I needed was the courage to love out loud. I also felt kinda ripped off and pissed that he never said nuthin or made a move, but I moved on after a few months and loved someone else even harder and faster, because that's what you do in middle school when love is enough to make u get up in the morning and go to school and enough to make u never want to get up again.

Re: sentimental fool

2007-12-31T01:27:00.000-08:00

The Movie: An American Tail

The Song: Somewhere Out There

sentimental fool

2007-12-30T17:24:00.000-08:00

Cold, bitter days, when the sun shines through but does little to warm your extremities or your heart, always remind me of past lovers. I walked the Lake today, listening to Sade and Jay Z, toying with the idea of not being angry with D anymore. Not being angry for the 2 1/2 years I wasted being in love with him. Not being angry for being so silly and wanting so badly to have faith in something, that I put all my trust in him even though I knew from the start exactly how it had to end. Not being angry for his lies, his deception, his selfishness, his betrayal, his ignorance, his secret. I was walking past the swings, pissed that there were too many little kids on the playground for me to ethically take a swing for myself, thinking about how little I trust people, and why on earth I chose someone who I knew would disappoint me, who I set up to disappoint me, as the one person I would put so much faith and love in. It was about 4:15 and the sun was on its way down. When the sun gets in my eyes and momentarily I cannot see the ground below me as my eyes recover, I notice that I instinctualy hesitate to move forward, as if I don't even trust the ground to be there for me the very next second.

When I was small I used to hide in my room sometimes and listen to that song from the Disney movie with Fifel the mouse in it. I can't remember what it was called, the movie, but the song was about looking at the moonlight and taking comfort in knowing someone you desperately needed to be with was under the same sky and maybe looking at it too and so you were connected even though u were far apart. I used to listen to it and think about my mom and cry. I thought she was my soulmate and that we were supposed to be together. I knew that when I grew up and found her, everything would make sense and she would understand me and love me and I would forgive her for leaving. I never told anyone that I did this with the Fifel song cuz even though I was like 4 or 5, I knew/thought it was really sentimental and cheesy, and besides that it was just private; it was like my time with her.

I am not weak but I have weak moments.
I am so grateful every day that I moved out here, away from dead ends and going nowheres, and have an amazing life, friends, love, and job.

"The best revenge is having the time of your life." - Bettina (Kathy Bates) from Six Feet Under

girl fight

2007-12-28T22:34:00.000-08:00

Good day today. Any day on vacation is a good day. I did nothing but eat, nap, write, watch tv and chat on the phone with girlfriends. I did go out into the real world for about a half hour to pick up a package waiting for me at the post office. It was my Christmas present from my biological dad, his wife and kids. They have a tradition on Christmas Eve that everyone (all 11 of them, 9 kids + mom and dad) gets to open one particular Christmas present that contains a new set of Christmas pajamas. Then everyone puts on their new Pj's and watches movies together until they zonk out and have to be carried off to bed. They have included me in their tradition now for about four years which is really nice and special. So even though I'm 2000 miles away now, I still get a Christmas package each year with a new set of cozy sleepwear. After I got home from the post office, I put them on and wore them for the rest of my lazy day.

Today is one of my best friends from high school's birthday. She is 28 today. I wonder where she is and what she's doing to celebrate the tail-end of her 20's. I haven't talked to her in 10 years. I met C when she came to my school in 6th grade for a visit because she planned to attend the following year. She was like nothing anyone had ever seen. She was half Irish and half Italian with long, thick firey auburn hair, perfect olive skin, dark brown eyes, dark eyebrows and eyelashes and a perfect body - I'd never in my life imagined a redhead could look like that; I thought they all looked awkward and pale and freckled like me and my brother. She carried herself like she was in high school, at least, and she was charming. Everyone was in love with her and couldn't wait for her to start school with us the next year. When she finally came to stay, she began hanging out with the group of girls I ran with. We learned very quickly that her outsides matched her insides. She was great at sports and ridiculously smart and fun and her parents had money and she had great fashion sense and she was so super sweet that kids from every social clique wanted to be friends with her, and unlike every other cool girl at our school, she was willing to be friends with everyone that was nice to her. She never got in trouble, always did the right thing and everyone either wanted to be her or be with her. I was no exception. I tried to dress like her and talk like her and be around her as much as I could manage. We remained friends through 7th and 8th grade and then ended up going to the same all-girls high school after that. I got to know her a lot better during high school. We went through a lot of shit together. Even though people often thought we were sisters or twins (because people are stupid and think that everyone with red hair looks alike) I really felt like we were sisters sometimes. We spent a lot of time at each others' houses and with each others' families. People referred to us as "the redheads" - she was "the pretty one," I was "the funny one." I learned from her that being perfect has it's price and that no one is perfect, everyone is human. I think that she perhaps learned how to let go a little bit from me maybe. I might have been a little bit of a bad influence. We saw the Grateful Dead for the first time together. Towards the end of high school I really drifted into a lifestyle she wasn't interested in - got more into trouble than she cared to and we weren't super close by the time graduation rolled around, but she was still very much my sister and I would have done anything for her.

I left home right after graduation and when I came back the next fall to make an attempt at going to college and doing right by my family, I naturally called her to see her. I was excited about a lot of things going on in my life. It had only been the span of one summer that we hadn't seen each other, but much had changed for me, not the least of which, I'd came out of the closet. I had never told C that I ever had any inclination towards liking girls because, although I loved her, she was a bit of a goody-goody and she also still considered herself Catholic. It was never really personal though, I never said shit to any of my friends about it. The only people that knew was my brother and friends out of state that I had met over the course of that summer.

C and I met for lunch at a Big Boy's resturant, a family joint close to where we had gone to high school. She looked the same, told me how she was about to start her freshman year at U of M to study business, what sorority she wanted to rush, how her sister and her parents were. Then I told her how I'd been traveling over the summer and was about to go to school at Western but that I wasn't really feelin it and just wanted to play music and write. She told me she was still dating the same guy she was with at our senior prom and I told her I was dating someone too. At the time I was madly in love with my first girlfriend S. She was a Scorpio and a poet and an art model and fucking tragic and hot. I honestly thought that at that point we were grown ups and that C loved me as much as I loved her and it wouldn't be an issue. Plus I was riding on the high of spending the summer around people who I was out to and had been able to shed some of the Catholic shame and guilt I had around my sexuality. I was feeling proud and invincible.

She was stunned. She asked me if i was gay because I had briefly dated a couple guys while we were in high school so she was confused. I told her that I was bi and that I was still attracted to men but that I was in love with this girl. She asked me what she was supposed so tell her parents. Then she said something to the effect of: Oh so all those nights you slept over at my house, you just wanted to fuck me, great. What? She was like my sister. No, it wasn't like that! Who did she think she was? She told me that there wasn't any such thing as being bisexual, that we were just sluts and wanted to be able to fuck as many people as possible. Funny, because I was actually still a virgin at the time. I just sat there as she processed this information out loud to me and became more frustrated or angry or disgusted, I'm not sure. She got money out of her purse, put it on the table, got up and walked out of the restaurant. I never heard from her again.

The end of relationships are always so fucking weird. When you look back on something you had with someone and hold it up next to how it ended, if it ended badly, and you can't seem to connect the two. How did we get here? That wasn't the last person to reject me for being queer, but it was the first and I'm still angry with her for it. This year was our 10 yr high school reunion, and although I figured she wouldn't go anyways, I thought about what it would be like to see her there and I felt enraged. I felt like I would want to spit in her face or beat her ass and I was surprised at myself for still feeling so strongly about it. I didn't end up going to the reunion because I honestly just didn't care to see anyone that I don't already keep in touch with. Not at 10 yrs at least. 25 years will be so much more interesting. Maybe by then I won't feel like fighting her anymore, but considering how well I've dealt with and let go of other rejections in my life (insert sarcasm here), who knows.

"It's about to be a girl fight" - Brooke Valentine

bastard nation

2007-12-26T22:22:00.000-08:00

Woke up today at my parents' house, the day after Christmas, ready to drive home, ready to be alone again. J and I drove down the coast to Mom and Dad's house on Sunday evening for the holiday. We haven't spent any time together since I moved to the other side of the world/Bay, so it was a nice drive down, catching up. He's doing well at the G-Plex and I'm really proud of him, but he's frustrated with dating. He says he knows the Bay isn't a permanent place for him because he's been here over two years now and still hasn't met anyone he really clicks with. He has tons of hook-ups, and even though he is the hook-up kind of guy, he's also craving something deeper. He wants some guy to sweep him off his feet; he wants it to have a soundtrack.

On Christmas Eve, Mom cooked our big dinner and we exchanged gifts. There was talk of midnight mass but after an enormous dinner, my parents couldn't even get it up for Jesus. They went the next morning instead. While they were at mass, I was fast asleep until the phone in the backroom began ringing and was so headsplitting I had to jump up to grab it and make it stop. In the fog, a voice I hadn't heard in years rang through the other end. "Merry Christmas!" It was K; I'd know that voice anywhere and for as long as I live. "You don't even know who this is, do you?" I told her I did, but that I was just out of it because I was sleeping.

K is the only person I've ever truly hated. Her secret was unforgivable. When my brother was a junior in high school, he met K. He worked with her dad at a fish and tackle supply place. It was up on 5 Mile Rd. and overwhelmingly smelled like the rubber they use to make fishing lures. My brother was K's dad's boss. K's dad (B) was a father of 5, my brother was 17. B had secrets too. He set them up on a date - my brother and K. My brother was, is, and always has been in love with fishing and hunting and everything woodsy. Since he could walk and grip a pole, he's been at the edge of a lake, pond, or stream with undivided focus and adoration. Teenage girls don't really dig a guy in waist-high waterproof boots. He was always a great guy, but he was just so focused on something that had nothing to do with anything most girls were into, that he just didn't really have much luck with the ladies. In fact, as far as I can remember, K was the only girlfriend he ever had in high school. She dug him, and he dug the fact that she dug him.

My brother and K dated for about 6 or 8 months before I eavesdropped outside his bedroom door one day and overheard a conversation that would change our lives forever. I was 15, a sophomore in high school, and a complete nuisance. I kept thinking I wasn't really hearing what I was really hearing. My stomach turned, my throat began to close up and I was paralyzed. When I heard him hang up the phone, I knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for him to answer. He was sitting on his bed with a completely blank face. I asked him what was happening and he told me. K was pregnant. I never saw him cry until now, not since we were little and he stepped on the yellow jacket nest in Hines Park and he was screaming and I ran towards him to see what was wrong and then they attacked me too. He got it worse. He screamed and cried all night long that he was gonna die. He was 7 and I was 4. I'd only got one sting in the head and one on my arm, but ended up with a debilitating fear of bees. He's never been scared of anything in nature. Respectful, but never scared.

He didn't know how to tell Mom and Dad so he didn't, for awhile. Eventually he told a couple friends, I told a couple friends, and word spread through his all-boys school and my all-girls school until it became clear that he had to say something before someone else did. Our parents were and are still extremely religious, of the Roman Catholic variety, and although the Romans left behind one of the most sexually deviant histories known to mankind, Roman Catholics loathe and shame nothing more than anything sex-related. Telling them their teenage son, who himself was adopted and the product of a teenage pregnancy, had knocked up his teenage girlfriend, was an understandably daunting task for my brother to undergo. Nonetheless, it had to happen.

He told me when they were going to do it and I made sure I was out of the house. I went across the street to my neighbor R's house and sat up in her bedroom and waited. I honestly never wanted to go back. He still hadn't told me what they were planning to do with it. I mean, on one hand she was already 18, a year older than him so it's not like she was super young. But he was still in high school and had just gotten into the Wildlife Biology program at Lake Superior State for next year - he can't be a father. I don't think he believes in abortion which is what I wish they would do. It seems like the only thing that makes sense at this point. If it was me I woulda had that taken care of weeks ago, but he was different. Our parents were hard core pro-lifers. They were Catholic and parents of two adopted kids, abandoned by their teenage mothers, who out of wed-lock, gave them the gift of life. We were the poster children for pro-life - look what can happen if you make the right decision - life! Really aborted fetuses (who i always thought looked more like burn victims staged to look like fetuses) were the poster children for pro-life, but that's because pro-life isn't about life. We were made to feel like it though. Your mothers could have made the wrong decision and you wouldn't be here, can't you see? Yes, well we saw, but we saw things differently. My brother always toed the line a little more than I did, though I think his rebellion was just more underground, while I was obvious and needed to draw attention to myself. Sitting in R's room in the upstairs of her two-story house I was always so jealous of, I imagined my brother and K giving their kid up for adoption, continuing the cycle, the tradition of catch and release in our families and our lives. It just wasn't going to happen. I knew it. If they kept it though, that fucking ugly bitch K would be around forever. God, what if they got married. I never liked her from jump. She was fake. She was always comin around being sugary sweet to me one minute, sometimes even buying me something, and then she'd turn around and be a complete cuntrag in the same breath. There wasn't room for both our nasty attitudes in my house and so we played nice on the surface but shit was always hostile underneath. I started seething as I sat there thinking about her being in my family forever. I gave them a few hours, but once it got dark and I got tired, I went back across the street to my house.

That night they had told my parents K was pregnant and that they'd decided to have and keep the baby. I remember an empty Kleenex box and that the living room felt like someone had just died in it. For whatever reason, and I still don't know if this is true or not, they told my parents that they'd never actually technically had intercourse, but somehow, she'd ended up pregnant anyways. Miraculous. So they decided to keep the baby and eventually my brother did "the right thing" and proposed to her. I knew he wasn't in love with her, I think he knew, and she was stupid if she didn't know. I never saw any spark, but maybe I was just 15 and didn't know what spark was, but my parents had spark, I knew what spark was and they didn't have it.

The pregnancy seemed to last forever and everyone talked about it in school. Eventually this became a problem because we went to very strict Catholic schools who did not look favorably on any student engaging in pre-marital sex. A teacher at my brother's school overheard some students gossiping about his situation and immediately called my parents in for a conference. He informed them that he really liked my brother and didn't want anything else unfortunate to befall him, but that they should know the school had policy against anyone known to have impregnated anyone, and that if anyone in the administration found out, my brother would be kicked out of school. He was 4 months from graduation, but apparently that wouldn't matter. And so began, Operation: Hide the Baby. My brother laid low, didn't talk about it, didn't go to prom because she was showing too much, didn't get into trouble, and just generally tried to blend into the background. My parents tried to get us family counseling. May came and went, he graduated and on June 4th, A was born. She was beautiful, everyone was healthy. My parents traded in their mantra of being failed parents for being proud grandparents, I was an aunt, and I still have a picture of my brother that day in the hospital looking like he'd barely reached puberty and with the wildest look on his face and in his eyes as if he was acting out what a crazy person would look like for a game of charades. He looked like a cartoon.

K and Baby A came to live with us for awhile. I'm not sure why but it may have had to do with her parents' neighborhood and her sister who was in a gang and still lived at the house. There were definitely guns in and around that house and there were definitely other things that might make a mom not want to bring her newborn there. Like her Dad, B, who used to call my house on the phone and ask me to giggle for him and make up nicknames for me, and whose penchant for young girls was allegedly nothing new and who eventually ended up leaving K's mom and their family right around the time he quit the fish and tackle shop, got arrested for tax fraud, and came out as a transvestite. B had secrets and made me nauseous. K had plenty of reasons not to be at her house, but maybe she just wanted to live with her baby's dad, I don't know. True to form, my parents would not allow my brother and K and the baby to sleep in the same room. K and Baby A slept on a pop-up bed and in a crib in the breezeway and my brother was in his room because it wouldn't be appropriate for anyone unmarried to sleep in a room together. Obviously.

Things eventually went sour with my brother and K - no spark plus baby equals nightmare. They broke up, moved out, my brother started paying child support and more child support. He wasn't able to accept his offer from the college up north to go away to study and he had to get another job to be able to financially take care of A. We still had A at our house 3ish days a week. At some point my brother had become close friends with K's best girlfriend, also a K, we'll call her K2, and K and K2 had "drifted apart." K2 and my brother started dating and continued to do so for a couple years. At some point K2 sat my brother down and said something to the effect of: I was K's best friend when ya'll were dating and I know for a fact she cheated on you and that baby is started not to look so much like you anymore, so you might wanna get that checked out. It was true; she didn't look like him anymore, at all. So my brother confronted K and asked her about the cheating allegations. K admitted to sleeping with 5 other guys and claimed she was raped at a party by a 6th. My brother didn't want to tell anyone until he knew for sure, so while he continued to pay child support, he saved money to get a paternity test. He told me what was going on shortly before the results were due, again my parents and everyone else were kept in the dark.

The day the results came in the mail, I was waiting for the postman in the living room and immediately ran out to grab it as I heard him shut the box on the deliverables. We knew it was coming. My parents weren't home and my brother was in his room with the door shut. I flipped through the mail quickly, picked it out, threw the rest of the mail on the floor and took it to his room. I gave it to him, walked out and shut the door, but I couldn't move away from it. I just stood there, waiting. He did it quickly, wasn't but 30 or 45 seconds before I heard something big crash into the wall and I knew he'd thrown something. I backed away from the door as he opened it and stormed out of the room down the hall into the kitchen and out the side door. I waited a few minutes, grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from my room and headed outside. We sat in a couple of lawn chairs on the grass right next to the side door underneath the crab apple tree, didn't talk really, chain smoked and cried until my parents pulled up in the driveway. I remember sitting there thinking about how not one single person in our family shared a drop of blood now. We were just a bunch of bastards. Baby A was 2 1/2.

After the results were in, K said she'd make sure my brother never saw A again if he told anyone he wasn't the father, or about her numerous indiscretions, but considering my brother had never been anything but an exemplary parent, I don't think he was too worried she'd be able to follow through on her threats. My parents were crushed, but since their own children weren't biological, they rebounded pretty quickly using the blood-isn't-love rally cry as a crutch. I was angry. I was seething. I spent months and months doing nothing in school but scribbling half-baked plots for revenge on K in my notebooks and journals. How could she do this to my brother? To us? To A? She knew the whole time. She knew it was a one out of seven shot my brother was the dad, but she choose him. She knew he'd step up, do the right thing, move her out of the hood, take care of them; and he did. He sacrificed his plans, his life, his future, everything that was supposed to be, only to get completely blindsided, used and set up in the worst way. That baby was never gonna know who her father is and it was all K's fault. I was so angry at the time when my parents didn't immediately admonish her. They weren't just civil, they were nice to her, like nothing had happened. I thought they were pulling some turn-the-other-cheek Christian bull shit, but I see now they were sacrificing the satisfaction of stewing in their anger, in order to keep their relationship with A. After everything, K still looked to them and trusted them and would bring A over to their house at least 2 or 3 days a week for a long time. I didn't see that though at the time; I was so angry. As I was prone to do, I focused on my anger so intently, the sadness never had the time to sneak in.

I don't remember a whole lot after that. I remember my parents, sadly and shamefully sharing the news with other close family members and people not know how to react or act. I remember everything being really awkward as they tried to transition a toddler from calling my brother Daddy to calling him Chris. What could she possibly understand about what was happening? What would her Mom tell her? Who's place was it to dictate these things? I left home shortly there after, but when I would occasionally come back through town I would still see A for a few years as she grew up. As she grew though, she looked more and more like her mom each time I saw her, and I hated it. The more she looked like her, the more I found myself not wanting to be around her. I felt terrible. I knew it wasn't her fault, nothing was her fault. People have babies, they make choices, and then the babies grow into live-action reminders of those choices, indiscretions, mistakes. Sometimes it's hard to look at them.

K and A lived with a man that K hooked up with shortly after her and my brother broke up. He seemed like a decent man and from what I could tell was a good father figure to A. She called him Dad. My brother had wrestled for a long time with what to do and in the end decided to take K to court to get his name off the birth certificate, so he wouldn't be financially responsible for A any longer. I wasn't living in the area for years so I don't really know what the gradual separation looked like and he doesn't talk about it. He moved on with his life. He went to college, didn't have to work multiple jobs, traveled, fell in love, and did all the things he wanted to do. He eventually moved to Alaska, K and A moved to Illinois, and my parents, and then later I, moved to California.

The last time I saw or talked to A, she was probably 6 or 7. Until I answered the phone yesterday and K was on the other end. I asked if they were having a nice Holiday, if they were in Detroit, etc. Then she put A on. I felt bad because I had to ask her how old she was, but she just sounded so different. She is 13. She sounded like she coulda been 18. I mean, she just sounded like a teenager, almost like a grown up. Her tone, inflection, everything was different. I was in awe. She seemed happy to be talking to me, but in the back of my mind the whole time I kept thinking that I should apologize for missing her entire life or something. I didn't, instead I may have tried a little too hard to push forward. She told me she was gonna be starting high school soon and that she was thinking she wanted to come to California to go to art school after that for Photography. I asked her if she liked taking pictures of people or places. She said animals. I immediately thought of my brother. I told her she should come out and visit us and we could look at schools for her some day. She was really excited by this. She said she'd never been to California yet but she wanted to. She said it'd be great to come out and go to the beach, maybe meet guys there. I laughed. I asked her for her email and told her I'd send her some pictures of California.

A bumper sticker from BastardNation.com: "Honk If You Might Be My Daddy!"