boysssee not boyzzzeee

my four days here have so far consisted of:

*breathtaking views of snowcapped mountains and glowing sunsets

*crystal clear night skies with more stars than i've seen in a long time (full moon tonight i think)

*not only the constant background noise of fox news and bill o'reilly, but my mom and her fiance verbally haranguing the "liberal" commentators

*watching so many episodes of weeds with the fam, listening to "little boxes", yet i seem to be the only one noticing that this neighborhood we're in looks eerily familiar. not so much with the giant mansions but very cookie cutter. the only way i can find my mom and boyfriend's house is because my mom tied red velvet ribbons on the garage lights and the glowing sponge bob nativity across the street.

*my mom saying "sometimes is just better to not say what you are feeling" after i nicely asked my sis if she would ask me first to drive her all over town picking up her friends and dropping them off downtown instead of just presuming that i would answer to her beck and call. a distinction that she didn't quite get. she burst into tears and i'm an asshole.

*drinking my friend's homemade honey (from his sister's bees) rose petal (from his mom's small-house-sized rose bush) mead that had been aged for three years

*sleeping in a room with no windows, giving me the weirdest dreams

*working out at the best ymca ever - they have a cedar sauna and a steam room! not to mention a few giant pools and a swirly slide

*being the only female bodied person under 50 with hair this short (getting sir-ed left and right)

more to come..stay tuned for tales from the other side of the fam.

off to pick rose up at the airport. hopefully a breath of fresh air - we can fight this family dysfunction together, instead of recreating it, right?

oh and i was searching for some fun idaho pics for this post and found these ;D

Hanging out along the Aqueduct...

(wrote this for Aqueduct's upcoming newsletter)

Exploring the architectural masterpiece that is Seattle’s downtown library, I emerge from a stark white hallway full of mysteriously locked doors into the blazing red insides of this great beast. Curving corners and ceilings give this level an intestinal feel. Suddenly, I’m a kid again, sneaking through secret tunnels, and I dash down the stairs to peruse the fiction section for my next journey.

Scanning these stacks I remember the pleasure of knowing shelves of books like the back of my hand. Working at a bookstore was heaven and hell – so close to so many stories yet cracking a book was only allowed as a pretext for selling it. I spent almost two years shuffling books for one of the corporate chains. Surrounded by the shining worlds of authors like China Miéville and the inane drivel of Anne Coulter (often obliged to sell more of the latter), I still reveled in the opportunity to spend all day discussing books. This hyper-capitalist context was my first encounter with books treated as pure product. Sometimes I found this intriguing: the size, shape, color, even texture of a book were significant factors in whether or not it would sell. Though these accoutrements are peripherally important to the story or ideas contained within, I began to see books in more complex light.

Yet many booksellers and even our general manager never really read books. And sometimes being someone who did could be a detriment. Why waste time talking to a coworker or customer about your latest favorite when you could be organizing the displays into corporate-designed pyramids or replacing stale books (those that haven’t sold in a week or two) with fresh new ones? Although bookseller recommendations, particularly of titles from smaller presses, do play an important role, it felt like the majority of people followed a predictable pattern in their book purchasing: Was the author on Oprah? Has it recently been made into a movie? Has it stirred up controversy? Has the publisher paid our bookstore to place their book front and center on the table? In corporate bookstores, these questions hold much more sway than, say, what would the bookseller recommend? Luckily, my move to Seattle introduced me to the rich, if not lucrative, world of local bookstores with staff that will spend time sharing their latest find.

The stories spun in books hold a special place in my life. Sometimes they can be healing journeys that will shed new light on my life and experiences. Sometimes they are innocent escapes where I can dwell in the heads of others, instead of my own, for a while. And sometimes they take over, sucking me away from friends and family, seeping into my dreams. Books are my security blanket – when there’s not a person occupying it, a pile of books takes up the empty space in my bed. They have the power to lull me to sleep and captivate my consciousness. Some tales so strongly demand my attention that my daily routines shift to accommodate the story that must be told: holding the book in my left hand while I brush my teeth with my right, trying not to splash soup on the pages as I eat dinner, tilting my body at odd angles to catch the beams from streetlamps as I walk home in the dark, nose in a book. I bemoan the tasks that cannot incorporate my book: bathing, chopping vegetables, riding my bike.

As the pages trickle from my right hand to left and I near the anticipated yet dreaded end, my next book is often waiting in the wings. This time, however, I'm in limbo between books, hoping something will pop out at me from these library shelves. My eyes fall on Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat tales and I remember my childhood obsession with anything that came in a series. The unambiguous order made the selection of the following book so simple. Hence, The Boxcar Children, Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew – I always knew what came next. The perpetual decision of what to read next is more complicated these days, with the dearth of series for adults and the abundance of tempting solitary novels. Though, like a series, my subsequent choice often depends on what came before. After reading too many fluffy texts, for example, I’ll need a hearty dose of something along the lines of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell or House of Leaves. When I’m distracted by life and prefer less of a commitment, short stories are in order. Unlike the predictable sequence of my childhood choices, there is not much consistency or logic to these decisions. Sometimes I will jump right in and read a book that someone hands me, regardless of what’s on my proverbial “to read” list. Other times I will approach all books with trepidation, knowing that once I crack the spine, it could be a while before I reenter the real world.

What about you – how do you decide what to read next? Do you have an actual “to read” list and do you stick to it? Do you read multiple books at once? Mix fiction and non-fiction? Do you seek recommendations from librarians and booksellers?

Speculating Gender: an Interview with Kelley Eskridge

by Jesse Vernon

The captivating stories in Kelley Eskridge’s Dangerous Space were my gateway into the wonderful world of Aqueduct Press. A good pal of mine, who works at Bailey-Coy Books in Seattle, handed me a copy and insisted I read it immediately. Being a former bookseller, the first place I glanced was the copyright page to discover the publisher. I was delightedly surprised to find that not only was the publisher local, but focused on feminist science fiction. I’ve been a feminist since I understood what that meant and an avid reader since the age of three but only newly converted to the worlds of sci-fi and even more recently to the genre of speculative fiction.

After re-emerging from this collection of literally personified cities, gender queering actors, and music that flows through your body and encircles your heart, I emailed L. Timmel Duchamp, one of the editors at Aqueduct. Though I had dabbled in editing throughout college and worked at a bookstore for a couple years after, I have only begun to come to terms with my need to be constantly surrounded by books. So I asked if could help out at all and here I am, the new editorial assistant at Aqueduct.

The following interview was conducted for the upcoming release of The Aqueduct Gazette. Throughout the many enthralling dimensions of Dangerous Space, the character Mars was particularly intriguing to me. Three of the seven stories in this collection are told from Mars’ point of view. They are tales of tangible desire, theatrical visions becoming real, tumbling bodies, and creative collaboration rife with tension and connection. After the individual publication of some of the Mars stories (most of them have been published individually, the oldest dating back to 1990), a peculiar thing started happening in reviews. Some reviewers used the pronoun “he” for Mars, while others used “she.” You see, Mars, being the first-person narrator, never uses a third-person pronoun as a self-reference. And none of the other characters explicitly say, “Mars, you are a man” or “Mars, you are a woman.” But very few people picked up on this fact until the publication of Dangerous Space, when Kelley began discussing this aspect of the stories in her publicity materials. So, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kelley over a pint and ask her some questions about gender as well as other experiences that had influenced her telling of these stories. The following is that conversation.

******

How has your own experience with gender/your gender identity influenced your writing? And conversely, how has the creative space of speculative fiction influenced your experience of gender (your own or others’) in everyday life?

I see them as an endless feedback process. So my response is a) not so much and b) completely. What I write comes from who I am, and to me almost everything is an issue of identity. It's why all my stories start with character and build out from there.

So, I’m intensely interested in notions of identity. But I don’t go through the world thinking of myself as a woman, or as white, or as 47, or as…I don’t know, fill in the blank. I think of myself as Kelley. I identify as a writer, and as Nicola’s partner, although I don’t necessarily identify myself as a lesbian.

Uh-huh.

In fact I don’t identify as a lesbian. I’m bisexual and that’s how I identify myself when I find it necessary, which is very rarely because who cares?

(laughing)

I believe, for writers or readers, fiction informs identity. We look for text that interests or challenges us, that we connect with in some particular way. We look for things that tell us stories about what we long to be or what we’re afraid to be.

My parents were activists in the south during the civil rights era, including helping black activists get out of Florida when things got a little too hot. So we always had people in and out of the house – black, white, gay, straight, rich, poor, people who owned slum tenant houses, and the people that lived in them, sometimes at the same party. I knew black men who spoke seven languages and white girls with dreadlocks who were always stoned out of their minds. So my notions of identity in general were pretty flexible.

All the stories that I loved as a child were stories specifically about girls who did transgressive things – things that girls in the 1960s in Florida certainly didn't do. Girls didn’t dress up as boys and take off across the English moors, or run around the neighborhood and spy on their neighbors. The whole list of things that girls didn’t do was a very long one. I loved those transgressive books. The first story I ever tried to write was about girls having adventures.

Gender is a completely real thing in the world. The world is gendered; culture has notions of gender that limit both men and women. The culture is very confused about differences between gender, sexual expression, biological identity, etc. I wish people well if they want to struggle with those distinctions, but I tend to take people as I find them. I hope I make fewer assumptions than I used to.

Because I had confused you with someone else that I had met, when we continued exchanging email and arranged this meeting, I had no idea whether you were a woman or a man because your name is gender neutral.

Yeah, I thought about that.

I imagined you both ways and I just thought, well, we’ll see. It’s not important for the purpose of the conversation. It’ll just be interesting to see who you are, and your biological identity will be a part of that.

Uh-huh. Context.

So, I had early exposure to the idea that identity is fluid and that, in fact, culture doesn’t determine identity. People can step outside the lines of what’s acceptable or what’s appropriate in their own culture. And when I started reading science-fiction and speculative fiction in particular, that was reinforced in many, many ways. Speculative fiction is the perfect territory for anybody who wants to explore the power of difference and it’s fertile ground for any writer who enjoys metaphor the way I do. I like to say that speculative fiction is the place where we can make metaphor concrete. I don’t have to be J.D. Salinger and write from the perspective of an alienated youth, I can write about real aliens if I want to. I can put the reader into the head of the alien or the head of the person who represents the norm, or I can even turn all those paradigms on their head.

I started seeing [authors doing this] – and I saw all kinds of [it], because I read everything: Heinlein, Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, Suzy Charnas, Vonda MacIntyre, Ursula Le Guin, the list goes on – and I thought, well this is amazing. It made me understand that in the same way it was possible, although not always easy, to step outside the boundaries of cultural identity, it was also possible, although not necessarily easy, to step outside the boundaries of "literature" [said with a British accent].

Uh-huh.

I was at dinner recently with some friends, one of whom had read Dangerous Space and one of whom had not. And the person who had not read the collection couldn’t understand the fact that Mars is not gendered as a character. And said to me “But…but…but…whether someone’s male or female is the first thing we notice. The first thing we ask about a baby is, you know, is it a boy or a girl. And if you’re going to meet someone you want to know, if you can’t tell from the name, is it a man or woman. How can you possibly create a setting or a situation in which none of those cues…where people don’t talk to someone as if they’re a man or a woman? When it's so important! How can you do that?!” [This person was] pounding on the table and I finally got a little irritated and said, “This is speculative fiction – I can do whatever I want.”

Exactly! (laughing) That's great. It's perfect.

And then we changed the subject…

These things go deep.

They do go deep. I understand that there are folk in the world who walk around with biology and gender so closely intertwined for them that they are inseparable. I know it’s true, but I don’t get it. I don’t have a hard time imagining a fictional character doing that, but I certainly have a hard time imagining me doing it. And I have a lot of behavior and presentation that people will regard as gendered – my hair is colored, my body is waxed, I wear make-up when I go out for nice dinners. I do that stuff. And I’ve also been through significant periods in my life where I did none of those things – I had very short hair and wore big boots and had my labrys and shocked the hell out of everybody in Atlanta with my hairy legs. But I didn’t do that to shock them and I don’t do this to pass. I do what I want. I do what feels good to me and what I think best expresses me. So I don’t have a problem with people having a gender or expressing gender along expectation lines. I think people should do what they want and be who they are.

That's one of the biggest myths about feminism, which I've never understood – that feminism calls for androgyny or that feminism is against any gender expression. I've never understood that misconception. It's about choice.

Exactly. It's about informed choice.

Yes, exactly.

You’ve said elsewhere that some readers view Mars as a puzzle to solve, as if somewhere, hidden within mannerisms and conversations, is an authentic gender identity. You’ve responded saying,

By refusing to create a gender context for Mars, and by doing my best to remove any cues in the story that support assumptions about Mars' gender, I was trying to create a character whose experience any reader might be willing to access. It's too easy for people who subscribe to expected gender norms to then use gender as a way of denying that a certain experience is possible to them.*

Will you explain more of this process? Are there many subconscious cues that you find yourself including when writing a gendered character? Intentional cues that you add later to gender a character? Like, when you wrote Mars, did you need to later go back and take things out that might gender Mars? What was that process?

I’m hearing it as a two-part question, so let me answer the first part first.

Definitely.

The conversation with my friend at dinner brought home for me in a very real way how much we – the cultural ‘we’, the generic ‘we’ as readers – want to hang labels on characters. We want to codify a character so that we understand how to respond to that person, so that we understand whether that person is being appropriate or inappropriate, if they’re being a rebel or if they’re going right along the party line, etc. And I get that. That’s what we do. Human beings make assumptions about the world in order to get through the day. But it's too easy for people to conflate cultural expectation and human possibility.

I believe no emotional experience or human intention is denied to anyone because biologically they’re female. I probably will never have a morning erection, but that’s a biological experience that’s hard-wired into the body, the same way that most men will never have the experience of menstruation. (I say “most” because I like to leave a little door open…) My ability to be human isn't compromised by my chromosomal make-up. I don’t think anybody's is.

I had an experience when I was in my twenties and living in Chicago. A man I worked with asked, “What are you doing for your vacation?” and I said, “Well, I’m going to drive to Florida to see my mom.” He said, “You can’t do that.” I just didn’t understand. I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “You can’t do that, it’s dangerous.”

So I said, “Of course I can,” and he said, “No, you can’t,” and I finally just had to say, “Watch me” and get in my car and drive to Florida. This was one of my first direct encounters with the idea that somehow because women didn’t do ‘x’ that I was literally incapable of doing it.

I had another of these conflation experiences with a very lovely, very religious, straight woman who told me that she had gotten to grips with the fact that my partner was a woman, and didn't hold it against me, but she was so sorry that I could never have children. And I said, “Well, thanks, and you rock, but this part of my body works fine. If I want to have children there are many ways in which I can.” And I could literally see her brain rearranging itself – because for her it was an absolute truth that if there was no man involved in a romantic way, then I couldn’t have children.

So, my process with Mars is to not get into those kinds of conversations. I create a context where people are accepted for their skill or talent, for fitting in to the world in which they find themselves. They're not accepted because they conform to cultural expectations of men and women, per se, but because they meet the cultural expectation of Can you do your job? Can you hold your own? Can you be with us? That’s how I’ve always approached my own personal experience, so being able to do it for Mars is a joy – to find the reality in which it really doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of time having gender-norming conversations.

Honestly, the hardest part of writing Mars is when there’s any kind of sex involved. And mostly that’s just a question of not naming body parts: of focusing on emotional responses to sex, or finding the ways of describing the physical experience that don’t turn into gendered cues. So we don’t talk about breasts, we don’t talk about penises.

I really believe that human experience is possible to everybody. If a human being does something, it’s a human thing to do and it’s possible to any of us. It just is. I resist notions of norming, that there’s this group of us who are normal and then there are all these other people who aren’t. The human pond is big, and I think it ought to be. I think that we’re all swimming together here. And that’s the pond I’m trying to swim in with Mars – the human pond, where the point is “What kind of person, what kind of human being does it take to have the experiences that create this story?”

And it doesn’t matter what kind of body the character is wearing. We all live in our bodies, absolutely, but the big moments in life – love, death, sex, joy, fear, loss, being given everything you’ve ever wanted – those moments of feeling too big for the world or feeling too small for the world – those are all human moments. And it doesn’t matter whether we are a boy or a girl. Everybody feels those things.

So writing Mars is not that hard to do. I appreciate when reviewers talk about the skill or the difficulty, but for me it’s really not that hard. It’s just a question of balancing. In “Dangerous Space” in particular, which is the longest of the Mars stories, I made a very deliberate effort to balance anything that might lead people down a gendered path. So, for example, Mars is introduced as a sound engineer. That’s a typically male profession. But at the same time that we learn this about Mars, we also see Mars being attracted to a man on the stage...a rock-and-roll singer, so everybody assumes a boy/girl dynamic and now maybe Mars is a woman. Except then we see Duncan Black [the rock star] kissing a man as well as a woman, so now who the hell knows what’s going on? Mars is a character who ends up against a wall with a man’s hand in his or her pants at one point, and has a bar fight at another. So now do you hang a male tag or a female tag on this person, based on your own experience of the world? Based on my experience of the world, I can see it going either way. That’s really how it is for me.

And it’s not a game. It’s not a game. There is no right answer except that Mars is human. And hopefully anybody who is adventurous can slip into Mars’ skin for the duration of the story and just feel what it’s like to go there.

Yeah, that was, in some ways, the experience that I had reading these stories. And now I'm understanding it a lot more because it's not necessarily absence of markers, it's balance...or this amazing...I can't quite figure out the word. This wonderful confusion. Confusion without any negative connotation. Like this great freedom of humanity.

It's absolute freedom.

Because it's that back-and-forth, back-and-forth and if you keep searching for [gender markers], then you find that you have to step away and just experience [the story] and not be like [making air tally marks] tally, tally, tally.

If people are consciously searching for cues throughout the story, then either the reader is really not the right reader for my work, or I haven't done a good enough job as a writer. The reader ought to be pulled right into the story and go there with Mars. And based on how the reader is choosing to read Mars, at some point they’ll come up against a place in the story where they go, “Whoa...whoa, okaaay.” But hopefully, if I’ve done my job right, they’ll just go with it because they are already connected to Mars on an emotional level, a human level, that has very little to do with, “Well, a boy wouldn’t do this” or “A girl wouldn’t do that.”

What other kinds of feedback have you received about the perceived gender (or lack thereof) of Mars?

People simply read the character however they want, as male or female. And proceed from there to look at the more obvious explorations of gender or contravening of gender convention. In the first Mars story [“And Salome Danced”], the antagonist literally changes gender in the beginning of the story, so reviewers focused on that and were interested in the fact that no political point was made about it. In “Eye of the Storm,” Mars is part of a group of four people who are all fighters, men and women who sexually pair off with each other in whatever combination they happen to. The assumption in the world-building is that this is common; nobody makes any remark about it. Feedback often focuses on that, and also on the coupling of sexual expression with violence and aggression – which I think is why most people assume that Mars is a man in that story. As if a woman is incapable of being violent and finding violence sexually exciting. Go figure.

I want my stories to be emotional experiences for people. I want them to fall in love with the characters and care about what happens to them. I would love nothing better than to have readers leave the Mars stories with a sense that some space inside them is opened up a little bit more. Something that says, “Well, okay, if I’m a woman reading this story and Mars is a woman, what does that mean for me? If I’m a man reading this story and Mars is a man, what does that mean for me? How could I bring that character into my world and into my identity?” I would like nothing better than to touch people that way.

How has creating Mars affected the way that you gender the rest of your characters?

I’m not really sure that it has. Mars is the only character with whom I consciously check for gender cues. I’m very happy writing about characters who have gender identities and who are gendered in their behaviors in ways that are appropriate, or not, to their biological sex or class or race or age.

We’re skirting the edges now of a question that Timmi [L. Timmel Duchamp] asked me. I’m paraphrasing now, probably reducing it a little bit more than she would, but it's the question of whether or not a writer writes in a gendered voice. She talked about quotes from both [Joanna] Russ and [James] Tiptree[, Jr.] which had to do with writing more truthfully by finding a “male” voice, given the time and place in which they were writing, and who they were as people. Timmi asked about my response to that. And my response is that I acknowledge that gender has a huge influence on the way that we respond to each other. Gender expectations and the choice to conform or not to conform to those expectations is a decision that affects everyone who makes it in one way or another.

But, having said all that, it’s not important to me as an "issue." I don’t write about issues or themes. I don’t write about gender. I don’t write about politics. I write about people. Everything to me is character and that character’s human experience in the world. If that experience is gendered, then that’s what I write, but I’m not interested in educating anybody about anything. I will leave that to people who are better equipped to do it. I find theme fiction uninteresting to read, and I don’t write it because I don’t know how to shape a character to the needs of cultural debate. I do know how to articulate the layers of debate that go on within our private selves. That’s what I do.

I don’t worry about gender role of characters being correct or incorrect. I don’t feel a lot of responsibility or compunction to explain why character are or are not acting "masculine" or "feminine," and I don’t feel any need to apologize. As long as it’s understandable in the context of what the character is experiencing, then it should work. And if it doesn’t, then that’s my failure as a writer.

The next fiction project that I’m working on, probably my project for next year, will probably be a young adult novel.

Cool.

Those years are so much about identity and fluidity. And worrying, of course, about what’s appropriate because that’s a huge time of being subjected to peer pressure. And at the same time, it’s also understood that in high school there will always be people who fall outside of what’s expected. You have the example of difference all around, people trying on different sets of images. I’m interested in exploring that in ways that are both very gendered and very much not gendered.

Wow, that sounds really exciting. I love young-adult novels.

I'm really excited about it.

Have you ever heard of Born Confused?

No...

It's a really good young adult novel by Tanuja Desai Hidier. It's about an Indian-American girl that grows up in northern New York state and her best friend is this skinny beautiful white girl – it's all about growing up and dealing with her family and different cultures. It's amazing. The epigraph is by Nietzsche. It's a really rich young-adult novel. It was one of my favorite books to recommend [while working at a bookstore].

I love young adult novels; I've been reading a huge amount of them. There's a novel called Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson…

I remember seeing the cover.

An amazing book about – and I'm not really spoiling it because it becomes pretty clear early on – a girl coming into high school who has been raped at a party and can't talk about it. She doesn't know how speak about it. Now there's a gendered experience. Anderson does an amazing job of writing a girl's story, and at the same time she's anybody. I have to believe that any man who loves character-based fiction who read Speak would identify with the experience of being hurt in a way that he couldn't talk about – because it was too unexpected or frightening and it turned the world inside-out.

It goes right back to what you were saying earlier about what it means to be human. That's exciting. ::sigh:: I just want to read all the time.

So, going back to the idea of conflations: many people tend to conflate sex, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation – i.e., a biological male will necessarily identify as a man and will necessarily be ‘masculine’ and therefore attracted to women. Your characters tend to challenge these assumptions across various lines of identity. Can you talk more about encountering these assumptions (in readers and perhaps yourself) and what it’s like to play with those boundaries?

Boy, it's a big question.

Some of us like to live out on the edge, but most of us, I think, like to operate from our zones of comfort, and categorization of other humans is a very comfortable thing to do because then we know how we’re supposed to behave with them.

I found pretty early on in my own life that I got tired of people making assumptions. I got tired of people assuming that because I didn’t have a boyfriend, I was a lesbian. I got tired of my lesbian friends assuming that because I didn’t have a girlfriend, I was straight. I spent a lot of time alone before I met Nicola, so I got very tired of people assuming that I must feel lonely. Sometimes I was, and sometimes I really wasn’t. I found out that making assumptions about what people will or won’t do with their feelings or their bodies is pretty much a fool’s game. It really is. Because we never know. If we’re open at all to the world, we just don’t know what we’ll do. It’s nice to have rules and feel safe and to have a sandbox within which we play, but I’ve learned that most of those limitations are self-imposed. If one were going to characterize my life, one way to characterize it would be that I have crossed categories in so many ways. I’ve jumped [economic] class. I’ve been identified as straight, as lesbian, as bisexual. I like to drink beer in pubs and very expensive wine. I travel well between various cultural groups – I’m good at picking up cues, and at participating as fully as I can within different cultures. And because that’s been my personal experience, I tend to write about people who do that. Because I think it’s fun.

So what’s it like to blur those boundaries? It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s freeing. It feels naughty sometimes. It feels transgressive. And I like being transgressive. And I don’t do it for its own sake, but if I can be myself and raise someone's eyebrow, that’s fine with me. I enjoy confounding people’s expectations. And I hope I’m enough of a grown-up that I won’t just do it for its own sake, but I also hope I’m enough of a grown-up to say, “Yes, this is who I am right now. This is what it is.” And to no longer feel compelled to apologize. And so I’m having enormous fun with my fiction – to cross boundaries, to push back on assumptions.

I’m writing a commercial script right now, and Hollywood’s very, very, very antediluvian about these things. It’s just astonishing to me, actually. I’m working very closely with a producer who I really like. We have an intense creative relationship, and I’ve learned so much from him. He, and the people who read for him and give him feedback, have some very serious notions about what men do and what women do, especially in the movies. It's been interesting to push back on these boundaries with him, and the thing I like about him is that he listens.

An example of this is: I wrote a scene in which a woman is arguing with her boyfriend, trying to make a point that’s important to her, a point of identity, a point of self. The feedback I got from my producer was, “Well, the readers think she’s awfully tough and aggressive, and he seems a little weak. So maybe we can have him have the last word or tell her strongly to calm down.” And I said, “Okay, let me just make sure that I understand correctly. You’re saying that it’s okay for him to yell at her, but it’s not okay for her to yell at him?” There’s was a silence on the phone, and he said, “Huh, point taken. Never mind.” And off we went to the next thing.

That's great. That's a good producer.

It is great and it's why I like working with him.

I wasn’t writing a scene where a woman was being aggressive, I was writing a scene where a person was pissed off at another person. And then here come these assumptions about gender… I thought, okay, I’m not going to have the gender argument. I’m not going to say, “A woman can do anything she wants.” I’m going to say, “Are you telling me that it’s okay for one human being to do something but not another? Because you’re going to have to help me understand why this is the case.”

I like that approach. It seems that initially he or the readers saw it as you being the one that gendered [the situation]. And to pull that back on him, ya know?

Exactly. I'm sure they think I'm this right-on lesbian feminist writer pounding the table… I've tried to explain over and over again that I have no agenda about this. I need the character to be strong because she's the hero of the movie. She needs to act like a hero. Another one of my arguments when we get into these conversations is to say, “Okay if this were Tom Cruise in this role, wouldn't you expect him to do something like this? So why can't this character do it if she's the hero?”

I’m just not interested in fighting for “the cause.” I would rather model the behavior.

It sounds like everything that you do is really grounded in experience – personal experience and, more generally, human experience.

Personal experience is the wellspring of identity. I grew up relatively poor. I grew up as an only child. I grew up in a house where all different kinds of people were welcome based on who they were as people, how they behaved, what they did, what they brought with them, and it wasn’t about anything else. I learned pretty early on about the effects of racism because the little girl whose grandmother lived across the street suddenly wasn’t allowed to play with me anymore because there were black people in my house. It wasn’t the same kind of experience for me as it was for the black people, but it was my doorway into the experience. And it was the beginning of the opening up of my imagination as to, “Well, okay, so what must it be like for these people?”

But I really do have a horror of the co-mingling of art and politics. A lot of people do it and they do it very successfully, but it’s not part of my process at all. I think that conscious theme is the death of good fiction and good music and good art. But that’s just me. Mileage varies hugely in this regard.

My work is for me. The things that I want to explore and express are about freedom. I want to take a reader, metaphorically, by the shirt, pull them up close and say, “Imagine…imagine a world where it wasn’t about who was normal and who wasn’t, it was about the spectrum of experience – here’s one experience of love, here's a different one, and here's something else….” If we can find doorways into all those different experiences because they are all human experiences, maybe at the end of the day we can sit down and think, “Holy shit, those people are so different from me and, you know what? I get them. I am not them, but I get them.” Or even, “I don’t get it but at least I see what is. I don’t get it but, wow, isn’t that an interesting way to be human?” Even if there’s just that amount of connection… and so I’m not about polarizing. I’m not about the lens of harsh reality. I think there’s enough harsh reality in the world. I’d rather just look at human experiences: how are they congruent, how do they flow together, how can I relate to that?

There is a place in our world, a need in our world for people who make the argument on a global scale, who fight for the cause, who proselytize, who take the issue out to the people, and god bless those people. Actually, I don’t believe in god so I shouldn’t say that. Bless those people. But I’m not one of them. My way is through relationship and personal experience, through making connections with people and asking them to re-imagine the things that they do.

Have I answered your question?

Oh, yes.

******

For more information about Kelley Eskridge, check out her website. To purchase Dangerous Space, go here.

*Kelley Eskridge, “Identity and Desire,” Women of Other Worlds: Excursions Through Science Fiction and Feminism, ed. Helen Merrick and Tess Williams (Australia: University of Western Australia Press, 1999), http://www.kelleyeskridge.com/essays/identity-and-desire.

the haphazard house, more than just a clever name

Dear Landlord,

Thank you for your prompt response and repair of the stove circuit breaker. We really appreciate the ability to eat cooked food.

As J. mentioned over the phone, there are a few more issues with the house that we'd like to bring to your attention.

Following, listed in order of importance, are the issues faced by the house:

Gas leak: the heater downstairs is leaking gas and carbon monoxide through a vent to the outside of the house, directly below the kitchen window. It wafts through the window and gets us high while we do dishes, making the task a bit more pleasant. We contacted PSE and they certified that there is a leak. Enclosed are copies of the corresponding paperwork. Please have this repaired as soon as possible.

Water heater leak: The downstairs water heating unit is leaking one gallon of water per day (we figured this out by how quickly the bucket beneath it fills up). Please have this repaired as soon as possible.

Toilet leak: The upstairs toilet is leaking from the piping (clean water) onto the floor. We are actively catching the leaks at the moment. For some reason, our cats have become water snobs and will only drink this water now. In spite of their preference, please have this repaired as soon as possible.

Chimney: The chimney flue is stuck in one position (half-open). We think that this is because it is due for a good cleaning. Not only does our inability to close the flue make the house colder in the winter, our inability to open it makes building fires in it a hazard. Please have the chimney inspected, professionally cleaned if necessary, and the flue repaired as soon as possible. Or we will burn the house down.

Shower tiles: As you noticed the day you came by to fix the stove circuit breaker, the upstairs shower has broken and unsealed tiles, causing a leak into the room below whenever the shower is used. We have temporarily taped a plastic trash bag to the area but we would like you to repair the tiles or replace the surface at your earliest convenience. We heard a rumor that you are considering putting vinyl over the broken tiles and this does not meet our aesthetic standards.

Downspouts: Multiple downspouts around the house leak badly when it rains, especially along the walkway. Although we thoroughly cleaned out the gutters this fall, they often overflow. We were confounded by their shallowness and are baffled why someone would install gutters like that in ::clearing throat:: SEATTLE. We've noticed that the downspouts are corroding and detaching from the roof. We would like you to replace the downspouts at your earliest convenience. We are also excited about the possibility of starting a greywater system. A friend gave us a rain barrel to catch rainwater for use in the garden. In order to install the rain barrel properly, it must be fitted to a downspout (we are thinking the southeast corner of the house). So we would like to work with you when you replace them so that we can install the rain barrel as well.

Black Mold: In the southwest corner of the house (B.'s room), we have noticed the growth of black mold on the wall. After repeated cleanings with bleach, the mold magically reappears (even when we're sober). Last winter, this same problem happened in the southeast room (we thought it was an isolated incident). We think that the problem is poor insulation, particularly the old windows causing dampness on the walls. Several of the windows in the house (including B.'s room) often fog up and have condensation on the inside when it is cold outside. We have done our best to insulate the house for winter including sealing the doors (with bike tubes) and covering the windows (with old blankets and t-shirts sewn together). We would appreciate it if you would look into this problem and consider adding additional insulation to the house and replacing some windows if necessary.

Maggots falling from the ceiling: in the kitchen and in the upstairs southwest room (B.'s), maggot-like worms have been spotted falling from the ceiling into our food. We have captured two of them in a jar (after an arduous chase), if you'd like to see them. At first we guessed that they were in the kitchen because of improperly sealed food but after finding one in a bedroom, we are concerned that it is a problem with the house (and we're not that messy). We know that you may not be able to take a specific action at this time, but we wanted to let you know in case it becomes a bigger problem. Like the house being eaten from the inside out.

Phew, that was everything but the kitchen sink!!

Please let us know how you plan on addressing these concerns. You may call us at the house number, but if no one answers please do not leave a message as our machine is broken (or only likes loud people). If we are not home, please call J. (feel free to leave a message on his voice mail).


Hugs,

The Haphazard House

Enclosed:
PSE gas leak form


P.S. Oh wait, the kitchen sink is busted too: The enamel coating on the kitchen sink is badly chipped from normal wear and tear. Not only is there a risk of paint chips in our food, but water can soak into the porcelain and cause permanent damage. Please have the sink refinished at your earliest convenience.

fried complexity

yes this holiday is beyond fucked up and i'm also beside myself with excitement about this menu:

i'm joining my sis (r.) for this feast with 8 or so other friends. r. and i are in charge of the mimosas, deviled eggs, clam dip, whipping cream (the good ol' fashioned kind mom used to make), mashed potatoes (idaho represent!), candied carrots (with butter and brown sugar), and (drum roll please) creamed corn clam casserole — which, in its entirety, consists of creamed corn, clams, butter, eggs and ritz crackers (it's a family recipe).

our post-vegan bodies may be in shock afterwards but a blissful shock it will be.

this anti-american life

every listen to this american life? well, check out my pal's spin-off, this anti-american life.

really, make yerself a cup of tea (or if you don't enjoy flavored water ::wink::, coffee then), get comfy, and listen to the full 45 minutes. i promise, it's worth it. (and if you've heard Ira Glass, you'll appreciate the imitation)

here's hopin they'll be more this anti-american life to come...

virtual nature

the romance of nature. although wilderness is disappearing, it persists as an idea. and nature as a paradigm of beauty and harmony is a construct we cling to. but nature can be scary and unpredictable. i want a secure and finite place, where i can have a dangerous experience, where i can spontaneously combust. virtual nature might be safe: a bed quilt covered with tiny flowers, a little garden on a sampler where there are no deer ticks, no copperhead snakes, no poison ivy, no flash lightening bolts frying the fax machine, no escaped convicts lurking, nothing to fear.
~from I Am Not This Body, a collection of photography by Barbara Ess

i don't particularly relate to this fear of nature but i love the idea of escaped convicts lurking in my quilt.

check out the book, it's amazing.

old dream

found this in an old journal...no date (i'm thinking maybe last winter)

it's snowing.
we're on a bus, sitting in the very back.
a man is helping us pick out a CD to play on the bus speaker system that would be appropriate for the public.
he has large brown eyes, a scruffy beard and
shoulder length brown/black hair.
hanging near him is his black hair net
with a black ponytail extension attached.
he is the bus driver.
but the bus is moving and he is in the back with us.
the bus is being pulled (in the snow) by a bicycle with no rider. somehow the attachment between the front and back of the bus
(the part that moves when we turn a corner) is johnny's bike.
blue and yellow.

now close your eyes and imagine that i have a cell phone and that i took a picture of the sketch accompanying this dream—it includes the hairnet/ponytail extension and the riderless bike pulling a bus attached in the middle by another bike and little specs of snow falling all around)

my sister, the fag

disclaimer: if you don't know me very well, you may be shocked, offended or confused by this use of the word "fag"...well if you don't already know that i use this label to convey utmost respect and adoration, now you do. problems, concerns, clarifications? comment, please..

bikes, bikes, bikes!

first check out these local events, thanks to the bikery:

and

also, i've been enjoying this free (if you can find a distributor) canadian biking magazine, momentum (available in pdf online). here are some highlights:

i want this to come to seattle!



ever wondered what the internet sounds like? then listen to this (still bike related)

for more info, go here.

this next bit reminds me of my amazing sister (a.) who rides her bike in heels..check out Copenhagen Cycle Chic for amazing pics like these




























and as much as i loathe all things ipod, i would totally rock this if it weren't so damn expensive.

ok, that's all for my bike paraphernalia-and-plugs post. now i'm going to go get on the bus :P

the eventfulness of the last few days started with hippos refraining from flinging their poo at us and ended with the some of the soberest silliness ever to grace the haphazard house (which, if you don't know already, is chez moi)

it all started on friday during an adventure to the zoo with my lovely charges (what a weird word), h. (2yrs old) and l. (4yrs old). after climbing around the creepily decorated zoomazium (the all-seasons play area at the zoo) and wishing i was small or the giant fake tree with the swirly-slide snaking through the middle was much bigger, we ventured out to eat lunch and find some animals. we were at the zoo after all. it had already been over 2 hours so i let l. pick two animals to visit (h. is still a bit too young for the complexity of this decision). she chose the hippos and the farm (which is technically more than one animal but i'm just the nanny so i get to have flexy rules).
so we meandered through a few different exhibits in the "african savanna" that contained the hippos. the sadness (mine, not theirs) began to set in after we visited the giraffes...they were wandering listlessly outside (it was like 40 degrees outside! savannah my ass). later a friend told me that the giraffes at the zoo have arthritis so they don't move much. i hurried them along, eager to leave the misery emanating from these restless prisoners, pasting on a fake smile and deliberating how much to say if l. asked me what was wrong. i mean i remember what it's like to be a kid and how fun the zoo is and i don't want to ruin that for her—what good will it do anyway?
next are the hippos. l.'s attitude seems to have shifted a bit—to a mixture of nervousness and excitement. i'm excited too since i don't remember the last time i saw a hippo (pretty sure the boise zoo didn't have any). there are two huge creatures bobbing in the water and, like most of the other zoo creatures, not moving much. we walk along the path to another viewing spot and notice one of them slowly swimming toward us, wiggling its ears. now i distinctly remember my mother warning me that hippos wiggle their ears when they are angry (such an essential piece of information for surviving in idaho) so i'm just a tiny bit worried. l. tugs at me and asks, "are they going to fling poo at us?" only phased for a moment (you get used to out-of-the-blue-questions with a 4-year-old), i reply "how would they do that? they don't have hands..only really big paws." without missing a beat she responds, now covering her ears and backing away in terror, "with their tails!"
now, counter to her representation on this blog (see previous post about the wind), l. is not a timid child. she is known for being the "tougher" of the girls at school (a very gendered label if you ask me but i didn't say it) and just earlier that day she pulled some kick-ass self-defense moves when some kid grabbed her at the zoomazium. and she has no fear of falling when she clambers all over the playground. but i think that poo is a sensitive subject for her—see she's not potty-trained to poo in the toilet yet (pee yes, poo no). did i mention that she's 4? or that her 2-yr-old brother has already pooped in the toilet twice?
but i digress.
turns out the hippo is not swimming toward us, per se, but toward the spout of water spewing from the rock near where we are standing. it opens its fucking huge mouth (see exhibit A, reenactment courtesy google images) and drinks some water. i am fascinated. really, top to bottom the open mouth is at least 4 feet tall. it has two huge tusks, one of which is laying horizontally in its mouth. its tongue looks like a giant slimy sea creature. l., on the other hand, refuses to believe me that it will not fling poo at us and is begging me to leave. i'm in a weird state—in utter awe at this creature and its closeness and power and bewilderment at her fear. i would understand if she was afraid of the big open mouth (about the same size as her body) or the giant tusks, but poo? i ask where she heard this and she says that she overheard another kid say it last time she was at the zoo. maybe she's confusing hippos with monkeys? after watching a minute more i reluctantly leave with her to check out the kimono dragons..which i reassure her are not the fire-breathing kind.

that evening, after an exhausting day, i pedaled like the wind to westlake for critical mass. i met up with some pals and enjoyed gawking at the costumes (halloween ride!), which included the entire cast of alice and wonderland and a tandem turned into a pirate ship (a big painted wooden board was attached to either side). we didn't ride for long though 'cause we broke off to grab food before seeing Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps.

what an amazing show. check out clips here and here. it included, but by far was not limited to, fort-building, story-telling, beer-chugging, nekked-getting, aerial acrobatics, and temporary-tattooing. his stories shifted from hilarious to horrific to heart-warming to disturbing, and somehow the shifting tones made sense..they weren't forced or awkward. they just were. highly recommended—not sure where he's performing next but i'll let ya know.

then (still the same night, mind you) s. and i went ice skating up north at the highland ice arena. by now it's like 10pm and we don't get there 'till like 10:45 but they don't close 'till midnight. so i haven't been ice skating since i was like 12, when my fam used to go up to sun valley. my mom was really into watching figure skating on the olympics and we would usually watch with her. and we got to see bryan boitano and kristi yamaguchi skate at this little rink in sun valley. luckily bodies retain memories better than minds and my feet and legs basically knew what to do. it was so fun and i used all these muscles that i'm not used to using. before we left s. tried to steal pizza from 500 missing christians. hehe, ask and i'll tell you the story.

so then saturday i got to make a yummy stir fry for dinner with the homemade tempeh that my housemate, b., made. a bit freaky (what with the fuzzy looking white mold growing all over it—that's what makes it tempeh) but scrumptious nonetheless.

i quickly packed the steaming hot food into glass jars (didn't have time to eat) and pedaled like the wind (but less so than before 'cause it was uphill) to ballard to meet s. (another housemeat—oohh i like that typo, housemates, you shall now be housemeat) for a show. the performers were amanda from dresden dolls (check the link, it's a beautiful site) and estradasphere at this amazing new venue called 608. these guys, estradasphere, just moved up here from santa cruz (where they were apparently pretty "big"). mmm, violin. the venue looks like maybe used to be a bar but a bunch of folks live there now. check out this tour of the space:


phew, okay there's more that i initially planned on 'talking' about like sunday's secret cafe for CCEJ and our house's crafternoon, but ya know what? the extent of this post is daunting me and it's my blog and i'll do what i want to, even if it's not what i initially planned. harrumph. plus once i finish this giant post, i can talk about other things.

oh, and i want go watch buffy before the kid wakes up. **

ever heard of wind anxiety?

'cause the four-year-old (l.) that i nanny/babysit has it.

i had an inkling of her concern but didn't know the force of her worry until a week ago, after a trip to the seattle children's museum. while parking, i noticed a raggedy pillow in middle of the parking space. i made a comment about it as i parked over it. "oh, that's funny there's a pillow under our car." l. got really worried about it and asked me to retrieve it. she was worried that it would blow away. i reassured her that it wouldn't go anywhere while we were parked above it and she forgot about it. but as we returned to the car after our face-painting, scary improv-theatre-for-kids adventure, she asked about the pillow again. she wanted to take it home. this raggedy, dirty, probably oily pillow didn't quite fit the aesthetic of their ginormous-house-on-a-cliff-overlooking-the-sound. so i again reassured her that as we drove away, someone that actually needed the pillow would find it and put it to good use. as i'm trying to buckle her and her two-year-old brother into their car-seats, she is getting panicky, begging me to move the pillow so someone else doesn't park there and smoosh it. really, on the verge of a tantrum. after a couple minutes of back and forth i acquiesce to the tears in her eyes. i back out of the parking space, move to the one next to it and move the pillow to the base of a tree next to the sidewalk. as we're finally pulling out of the parking space she's repeatedly asking me if the pillow will blow away.
the other day i rode by that spot and the pillow was gone. i will tell her that someone who needed it took the pillow to sleep on.

so then today (un-seattle-ably gorgeous weather, 65 degrees and sunny!) i'm trying to get the kids outside. she notices the trees moving a bit in the wind and, at first, refuses to go outside (just into the backyard). i finally convince her to come kick a soccer ball around with me but she fixates on the idea of the wind blowing everything away again. this is not just a curious, inquisitive four-year-old concern. she's getting really upset and panicky about a plastic kids basketball hoop, that has already blown over, fretting that it will get picked up and carried over the bank. she's worried the soccer ball will blow away as we are playing. we collect leaves and twigs for art making and later i suggest that we put the extras that we didn't use back outside and she frets that they will blow away. yeah, the dead leaves that we just picked off the ground cannot go back there because they will blow away into the ocean. she asks if they will dissolve in the water. i say i don't know probably (trying to figure out in my head if she is worried that they will or that they won't). she keeps asking and i have no idea what happens to leaves when they get blown into the ocean.

later, we walk by an overturned plastic chair in a yard in capitol hill. as soon as i see it and hear her say "jesse..." with an anxious tone, i know her question. "will that chair blow away?"

you think your youth a permanent truth

saw itty bitty titty committee last night at the closing show of the seattle queer, oops i mean lesbian and gay film festival. many mixed feelings still rolling around in my head. it was entertaining and full of hot folks and some good sex scenes (though after seeing shortbus the bar has been set pretty high for good sex scenes in non-porn, feature-length films). also super problematic. my hesitancy about ranting on about how fucked up this movie was (which i would have done in a second without blinking an eye a year or two ago) comes from my thoughts around context, perspective and complexity.

first here's the trailer:


so the plot is that Anna, this 18-year-old "latina baby-dyke" (as she's dubbed in the press about the movie), works as a receptionist at a plastic surgery clinic. one day after work she catches a obnoxiously button-nosed tiny blonde (as she's dubbed by me) spraying feminist graffiti on the front of her office. Anna, the ignorant baby-dyke is radicalized and educated by a cadre of radical white queers. see what i mean? here's some breakdown...

racist/white supremacist - although the main character is a QWOC (queer woman of color), all the other main folks are white (or pass as white). we do see one instance of Anna dealing with racism but it's coming from another woman of color ("does she speak English?") - nice diversion. and this "radical" group is taking all these legal risks in a way that only privileged white kids can - with abandon and ignore-ance of racial profiling and the violent role that police play in so many communities of color. lots more i could say but i wanna move on to

ageist - this is a huge theme of the film. the subtitle is "every generation needs a new revolution." the main characters are all 18-25 and the one who's not (the partner of button-nose blonde) is made to look super old(er than she really is). you can tell that her wrinkles are exaggerated with make-up and she and her mainstream non-profit running friends are some of the enemies in the film. now don't get me wrong, i hate the non-profit-industrial-complex as much as the next guy but to draw this brightline between the radical (young, hot, angry queers) and the liberal (old, ugly, conformist, pant-suit-wearing lesbians) doesn't really do any of us any good (see the title of this post).

tongue-in-cheek radical politics - so yay there's all this radical name- and quote-dropping throughout the film but it's so surface and cliche. i feel like the directors were like ok we wanna appeal to a wide(r) range of folks so we're gonna throw in all this "radical" stuff for the young folks to keep it hip but really we're gonna be making fun of their passion and anger and cast it as a silly phase of youth. blarg, am i making sense (to folks who've seen it at least)?

hmm, my rant could go on and on and on but here's what i hinted at above...yes, it's fucked up, yes there's a lot of oppression justified and perpetuated and some represented, and (not but) this shit is everywhere. that doesn't justify the gross stuff in the movie, it contextualizes it. on the same note, saying "oppression is everywhere" should never shut down folks' legit criticism and feelings. and i don't really wanna get on a high horse and preach about how fucked up this movie was. (hehe, may be too late for that huh?) it just feels pointless and presumptuous of me. i'd rather have conversations about the complexity of this movie than immediately write it off.

so, go see it if you can. ask me questions (whether or not you've seen it). share your thoughts. this would also make for an interesting inter-generational discussion group.

good beer, sarah silverman, and idahomos

had a loverly evening with my sis drinking the yummiest beer from Dogfish Head and watching sarah silverman's jesus is magic.

highlights include: (warning not work-safe unless you have headphones)

and

and

the evening was concluded with this riviting interview with idahomo senator larry craig

oh, and on the gay note...dumbledore is gay!!!

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

did you watch Aladdin as a kid? watch this

thunderstorm in seattle?!

so i'm chillin' while the kid naps and all of a sudden the sky starts dumping buckets. yeah yeah, it's seattle, i'm used to the rain but not this. then the huge claps of thunder start. plus i just happen to be in a mansion on a cliff overlooking the sound so there is nothing to shield the wind. it's amazing. i'm enjoying the lull of the pounding rain when, oh shit, kid wakes up. screams and cries till i come up there then doesn't want anything i offer. comfort and rocking? hell no. bottle of milk? how dare i! cuddly animals? ejected from the crib immediately. so, i leave him to cry (which is really hard) and now (maybe) he's back asleep. i actually think that he wasn't really awake just in this semi-conscious daze. this is what my days are like.

nope, crying again. ::sigh::

you know you're from boise when...

(found this online. posting this mainly for my sisters but maybe the rest of you'll get a taste of my hometown. some of this i totally don't get 'cause it's more recent then when i lived there. i left the kinda fucked up things in there so you get an idea of boise mentality)

• you change from your heater to the AC in your car on the same day!
• Everyone's dad either works for HP, Micron, or owns a construction company and the one who owns the construction company is the richest one of them all.
• You can spot a Centennial girl by how big her "Utah Poof" is.
• You know what the "Utah Poof" is.
• You know what real emo kids look like, and know that they all hang out at the Venue.
• You know a family that has more than 8 kids and don't think it's unusual.
• You've played fugitive downtown. (never heard of it but it sounds fun)
• You can drive past a multimillion dollar mansion in Eagle, then see a trailer and an old farm house right next to it.
• You know someone who camped outside the Krispy Kreme when it opened.
• You see a 2C driver and steer clear.
• You can spot someone from the North End in a second by their apparent lack of bathing, shaving, and Birkenstocks.
• You think the Boise Weekly is ultra liberal.
• You know who the "Boys of Boise" are and that they congregate outside The Flying M.
• You have called a van a "Mormon Assault Vehicle."
• You went to the Old Boise Penitentiary for a field trip in elementary school. totally did this
• You participated in the 4th Grade Rendezvous and still think it's great.
• You were devastated or deeply excited when the River Festival was shut down.
• As a member of BARF you helped get the River Festival shut down.
• You still get excited when you see the hot air balloons early in the morning. one of my favorite things about going home
• You are terrified to drive through Nampa/Caldwell because you are scared you are going to be shot…even though it's safer than other cities suburbs. ugh, no...i was born in nampa
• You were pissed when they banned alcohol on the Boise River, so you hid it in Gatorade bottles.
• You know someone who says they made it back from Bogus (the ski resort) in 12 minutes at night when it was snowing.
• You go to Oregon to buy good fireworks.
• You know what "The Inversion" is.
• You get pissed off when people drive badly in the rain even though everyone does it.
• You meet someone from U of I and automatically assume they are a drunk.
• You have been to the Hookah bar and had someone accuse you of smoking weed because of it.
• You have seen "the blue field" a million times and probably played Optimist football on it and you don't understand people in other states fascination with it.
• You get totally annoyed when people call it BOIZE instead of Boise.
• You actually look forward to Boise doing fireworks in the park and you fight for a prime spot near the Julia Davis band stand.
• You have driven the downtown cruise and realized how lame it was but did it anyway.

i wanna be a robot superhero

this, of course has nothing to do with me being a three.

found out my grandpa in connecticut may have had a heart attack today. they're not totally sure yet. this would be his third i think. last time the docs said they didn't think he'd survive another one. my mom just talked to him on the phone (from the ER) and (of course) he was joking with her and acting like everything is fine. i swear he'll make light till the end. he can't walk and might have some internal bleeding. they're still doing tests.

i kinda freaked out. i haven't talked to him since last november. what do i say? yeah, still doing childcare. not using my gazillion dollar degree. not using the brain that y'all are so impressed with. i can't even write him a letter. thought about him lots tho. i think about a lot of people that i don't stay in touch with. why can't i have a little cell phone implanted in my brain that texts someone when i think about them? automatically, with no jesse-insecurity-override. that will be part of my robot powers.

didn't help that i currently have killer cramps and a monstrous tension headache. see, a robot superhero wouldn't have these pesky organs. hmm, 'cept maybe i'd have a few human organs like skin so people would still wanna cuddle with me.

i wanted to be someone he can be proud of. he was proud of me when i went to that schmancy university. probably thought i'd be a nice lawyer or doctor or at least a professor and maybe make enough money to help him not live in gov't housing. instead what am i doing? see, if i didn't have these pesky non-robot, non-superhero, human desires like wanting to be happy or having radical values, i could put up with the culture of law school. or i could put up with working the hellish jobs that could pay off my student loans. i think one of my superhero powers would be a contextual gender: depending on the context, everyone would perceive me as the most credible and intelligent human ever. my clothes would also be contextually impressive and they wouldn't cost any money.

well, at least i have friends that don't think that i'm a failure 'cause i'm crying and staying home instead of stuffing it all in and being productive. hmm, not like my body would let me do that right now anyway...but i can have robot superhero dreams can't i?

really i'm fine. everything is great. no problems here. did i mention i'm not a three?!

seattle queer film festival

so i just attended my first film at the seattle queer film festival - local produce: shorts.

it was horrible. not just bad in the way that many shorts have a tendency to be, nooooo, teeth gnashingly boring sliding into really fucked-up.

so i went to the wrong theatre at first and missed the first one, travel queeries, which was done by someone that i know. i was bummed 'cause it was the main film i wanted to see but you can get the idea by watching the trailer. in the 8 minutes it played (it's a work-in-progress), it was probably more radical and entertaining than all of the other films combined.

as for the shorts i suffered through, let's start with taken.

the plot was decent. two women reunite after 10? years apart. they were both prostitutes together and friends. later it is revealed that they also shared unrequited love. one is black, the other white. their friendship ended when they were both arrested and the white woman used her privilege to get away with only 2 years in prison while ratting on her friend who got 10 years. the black woman reveals that she has AIDS and they discuss that. so fairly interesting plot right? problem is the whole 20 minutes of the film take place in a moving car. just back and forth dialogue for 20 minutes. it was like eavesdropping on an intense confrontation that's interesting at first but then gets boring, but you can't leave! after the first 10 minutes i (and i think most of the audience) couldn't wait for it to end.

it gets progressively worse from there.

next was grizzley men (which is not even spelled correctly!). what could have been a funny and clever mockumentary of bear culture was stupid and in the end offensive. some dude that is a parody of a rural, working class resident of puyallup spends every summer in the wilds of capitol hill, protecting and documenting the "bears" in their natural habitat (read: the cuff, the eagle, etc.). in the end the dude is captured by the bears and the only thing left behind is a tape of his last words. he is saying "no, no, don't take my pants off, no, stop" then a spanking sound and cries of pain which become cries of pleasure. the audience is laughing the whole time.
now i fear coming across as someone on a high horse, judging bdsm culture and whining about my offended sensibilities. but i actually have no problem with consensual violence (though in my mind that's an oxymoron b/c violence implies lack of consent, so maybe i should say consensual simulated violence), in fact i enjoy it myself from time to time. ;D my annoyance with the film becomes ire when bdsm culture is misrepresented as the coercion of consent. fucked up.

next was we are...glbtq. not bad...for a mainstream straight audience who need to be educated about issues around queer youth. which i'm not saying is not okay for this festival. just boring for me. it's about the child welfare (foster) system and how queer youth are overrepresented because they are often kicked out of their homes. i overheard that it was actually made for dshs as a guide for better understanding of "lgbtq" youth. just lotsa stuff i've heard before and annoying yet typical attempts at "mainstreaming," i.e. we're just like you, we're normal, it's important to come out because hiding things about your identity is destructive psychologically (instead of challenging the heterosexist assumptions that construct the closet in the first place, blarg). so maybe i'm just jaded. it was definitely the least bad of all the films.

the description of the next film, too big for this town, says it all: " Billy Bob fought the battle of the bulge, and won!" but i'm gonna say more...wtf is up with a glorified infomercial rife with fat phobia and the obsession with image that saturates mainstream "gay" culture. but, like the others, it starts innocuously enough. this guy starts telling his story, with images from his childhood, about how fat he was and how he always got ridiculed (and put in the attic at school!?) for it. he goes on to say how disgusting he was and then instead of healing and challenging the bullshit messages in our culture he discovers the stomach clamp (or something). it is like a gastric bypass but less invasive and just clamps your stomach down. then with the help of his buddies that also had the procedure done, he lost a bunch of weight and now "looks great" and is oh so happy! it ends with a nice little disclaimer about his "testimonial" and how they are not liable for the product. meh? why the hell is this at the queer film fest?

ok so so far it's been bad, weird, and mildly offensive. (did i tell you it gets worse?)

[warning: disturbing violence and rape described below]

the grand finale is rock zombie, which i was hoping would be a funny and bad zombie short complete with the expected gratuitous violence and bad acting. but from the first scene i was deliberating whether or not to walk out (which i eventually did). it starts with a woman being dragged into a room by a guy (if you can judge gender by clothes, which was kinda implied by the genre). she is screaming and struggling then killed and turned into a zombie. i'm like "ick" but i know it's a zombie flick so it's kinda inevitable. then there's this goth-ish rock band of three guys with pretty make-up. one of them sees the zombie woman outside and thinks she's a prostitute. he chases after her with a ten-dollar bill saying "come on baby" until she turns on him and growls. he sees she's a zombie and runs back to the band. other folks get turned into zombies and there's chasing and eating and blood flying. like i said, expected. another guy in the band gets a gun and shoots the heads off of some of the zombies. but one of the zombies kills the first guy (the one who chased the "prostitute") and he turns into a zombie. then he smiles menacingly and chases after the same zombie (cause now he's dead so it's not gross to want to fuck a dead woman), while she runs from him. he somehow gets his hands on the gun, shoots off her legs, grins at his success, jumps on top of her and proceeds to rape her. people in the audience were actually laughing at the point. here is where i left. and fuck you if you think i'm being oversensitive 'cause it's just a b-movie and that's part of the genre. really.

now i don't know if seattle just has some really shitty filmmakers or if the queer film fest folks just suck at picking films, but i was sorely disappointed. at the worst i expected boring and sappy shorts, but never this.

::sigh::

oh and mercury is in retrograde again. arg.