shit piling up all the time.always some junk mail to sort through, my checkbook to balance, my budget to follow, shit to file, email (oh god) email to read + respond to, showers to take, teeth to brush, physical therapy exercises to do, bad tv to watch, good books to read, a job to find, an apartment to find, a madison to negotiate...
today i have: no work, no meetings, no babysitting, and no doctor appointments.
yesterday i had a barbeque with the old crew + kids + husband. it was really nice.
yesterday i had a discussion with ponge about being (uh oh) queer. he cant pronounce the word very well so he kept saying i was gay, then that i was bisexual. all this shit is very complicated to explain to someone who's never thought about it but i really must insist that i am not gay or bisexual but in fact queer. as i define it, which in my usage just means i am attracted to and interested in whomever peaks my attraction and interest. someone who looks female but identifies as male, someone who looks straight and identifies as lesbian, someone who is very religious while i myself am agnostic. its about breaking down these categories, its about re-creating our idiotic languages to handle the complexity and combinations and flows of reality. its absolutely about inclusion.
so ponge was thinking that because we are married now he mustnt be attracted to any other females (he's straight, or at least 100% believes himself to be, which means that he's straight) and he must always in his mind cancel out any attractions he has for other peoples. that im more attractive than anyone else and etc. i think that its lovely to be attracted to people, and that im not going to tell myself im not attracted to someone just because im in a monogamous relationship. i think that this does not mean ponge is any less attractive. ideally we could oggle together.
in his mind, because i was with him in a marriage it was the case that i used to be queer. i really must insist that he understand there is nothing at all used to about it. the fact that my current relationship happens to be hetero in just about every way does not mean i no longer identify as queer, that i no longer get little mini crushes on strangers (like this super cute girl with a mohawk that comes into the co-op). if i like the smell of roses and i also like the smell of lilacs & plant a lilac bush in my yard, it does not mean that roses are obsolete for me. a lame analogy to be sure, but this is about natural attractions, and one such is the sense of smell.
so he tried to tell me that that is super for me and all, but for him its that i used to be queer. and i said, well im sure that makes you feel better and he started to say yes it makes him feel better (his culture and religion absolutely forbid homosexuality) and i said well too bad, i dont want you to feel better. i want you to view me as who i am, which is queer. its really important to me that you understand that.
this whole conversation started out because we were watching a show on "gay marriage" on mtv. he asked me how i knew when people were gay. i said, well, its the sort of thing you dont notice if you never think about people being gay or realize that you know gay people (at this point i was still saying gay because its an easy translation for him - we were speaking mostly in english). i said, well you know gay people, well you know ryan is gay. and he didnt believe me for a really long time. and then he started asking about a bunch of other people we know. becca? lesbian. liam? gay. ariel? mostly into females. collette? lesbian. his little world was spun around.
ryan and i have talked about whether or not to bring it up with him. we decided it was better to just leave it alone and let them know each other as human beings without making a point of bringing it up. this way ponge would see that people are just people, queer or not.
ponge at some point said that he could be friends with a gay person but not really friends-friends friends. and i said that was rediculous because you were married to one. then we got into the whole am/used to conversation.
so i told him he'd better recognize that when he talks about "gays" he is talking about me. and half the people he is friends with here. but i left that last point alone other than to ask if he was going to treat them any differently now that he knew. he said no of course not.
i wonder if it was too soon to un-closet ryan and the other peeps. they were closeted to ponge before due to his english and his total lack of experience with people being open with any sexuality other than hetero. in other words, he simply hadn't noticed or really even thought about it. hetero is the absolute norm for him.
i really wanted him to be able to look at people just as people with out his discriminations getting in the way. then eventually he would figure it out and perhaps that would be a way to put a major crack in the dogma/hegemony he had lived with for so long.
at a certain point in the conversation i decided it was enough for the night, let him digest some of it before moving on with it.
as i went to bed i wondered what this had done to his perceptions of me, if it had damaged his love for me. but i also decided that that was just how it had to be. if that was so, then that was so. for me in part a good relationship is defined by an ability to have honest dialogue even in face of fears of fucking up the relationship. there is no way im going to sacrifice being who i am in the name of maintaing a relationship - it becomes false at that point. there are comprimises to be made in relationships, but denying fundemental aspects of the self is not one of them. i am who i am and i believe very strongly in myself and being honest/standing up for my convictions. if that damages a relationship, well, i'd rather have no relationship than a bad one.
