I’m sitting naked in Kenny’s living room, listening to Ziggy Marley. Kenny’s playing video games, red and golden beets are roasting in the oven, and we both have cinnamon tea. Out the window I can see lovely gray skies and the neighborhood trees. One of them is a palm tree, gently moving with the wind.
This year was a mixed bag. My very small personal realm is pretty good. Kenny and I are deeper in love than ever. I have concerns about living together, because we have different cleaning habits. Kenny cleans everything approximately 1/7th as I clean things. The things I do every day, he does once a week. If I do it once a year, he’ll wait seven. I’m not a clean person, really, but I’ve developed habits living with roommates for the last ten years. If I lived like he does, I would have been kicked out.
I’m not sure what we do about that. I can’t concentrate or feel at home in a house that is this dirty. I feel slightly better because I wiped down the stove, but the piles in the living room are disconcerting. He is a grown up in many other respects. He’s a leader in the dance scene, he’s who his boss counts on to run things when he’s on vacation, he pays his mortgage and taxes, and he knows how to cook and do laundry. It isn’t that his way is wrong, it’s that I wouldn’t be able to adjust to it. I’m also not sure if he’s even comfortable living in a clean house. Would that feel oppressive and fascist to him?
What else? I stopped teaching belly dance. I hadn’t had more than one student in months, and I was dreading it every week. I told myself that I’d try out one of the other classes in town, and I did. I just didn’t connect, not on the first day anyway. I can’t smoke pot before dancing. Grapes are not a carb that anyone should worry about. The instructor didn’t have change for a $20, and forgot her music.
I feel vaguely obligated to do something physical. There’s a disconnect with my brain that allows me to spend $80 on an eye cream to live forever, but not work out.
The roads here are so fucked. There’s traffic everywhere. It makes it hard to want to rush to get out of work and rush through angry people in cars to somewhere to go through pain and suffering to fit into beauty standards that aren’t applicable to men.
I do want to be strong, though. There is some serious shit going down politically. I don’t know if every adult goes through a mourning period of ignorance and starts believing in fear that the world is about to end, but there’s a non-zero part of me that feels like we’re on the edge of an apocalyptic landscape. What does one do? I’ve debated getting a gas mask, and making a survival go-bag. I’m not sure how paranoid I’m being. I would perhaps worry less if Twitter shut itself down, for the good of mankind.
Another part of me worries that people will think that this presidency didn’t work out that badly after all, unless a really scary bombing war happens, or a major depression in the economy.
I care about a lot of people. I think it’s a moral failing of our country that we have so many resources, and yet there are hungry people, sick people, dying people. Police killing black people. Homeless people. Mentally disabled people, physically disabled people, so many people that don’t need to be in pain at all.
I disagree with the “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” mentality. I don’t know how to make a better system, but I know this one keeps a lot of people powerless.
Climate change. There’s another thing that we need to fix. I’m with the scientists, that shit is fucked up right now.
As far as gender goes, I think there are a million ways to live. I think everyone needs to be treated well. I don’t mind using the pronouns that people want. I’m glad transgender folks are starting to be in the conversation of people that should be cared about, and that non-binary is starting to be acknowledged.
I wish all genders had equal rights. If I thought changing my pronouns to “he/him” would get me 25 cents more an hour, or would give me any advantage other than fewer cat calls, I might consider it. As it is, “she” is a badge of honor, because even though the odds are stacked against me, I’m doing ok. I still have cis white straight-passing privilege, so I’m only so impressive.
I wish there was a way to convey to cis men what it’s like to have a vagina. I have a different perspective. I have a life and death grow inside me every month. I’m always reminded that we are not immortal. Our blood is all temporary. We come from blood, we die with blood, and and we end up as worms first, then stardust. Birth is gory. Life is messy, and complicated. Creating and building life comes at a cost to the mother, so we can’t take it for granted.
Every globular of blood clots and tissue that gets ripped out of me reminds me how incredibly ordinary we are. And how lucky and meaningless. We are fuzz on a rock in space, worrying about signs of aging. Are trees embarrassed at their rings? Do stars worry about how long and far their light has traveled? Is there a magazine that black holes read that make them self-concious about their weight?
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