October 17, 1989, San Jose, California, early evening. I am sitting at the desk in my bedroom, my senior year of high school, and my mom is in the room next to mine, playing Boggle on our now ancient Mac. I am working on a homework assignment (I don't quite recall which) when the house begins to shake, and shake. My mom and I both yell, "Oh Shit!" in unison, and then I scream, "Get into the doorway!" and we stand there, in the doorways of the rooms side by side, waiting for it to be over. The quake kills 63 people, injures more than 3,000 and leaves even more homeless. The Bay Bridge and the Cypress structure collapse.
Ten years later. I work at a natural foods deli in Santa Cruz, and I'm fetching some items from the case for a customer who looks familiar to me, a friendly middle aged woman, all smiles and silky grey hair. I figure she's a regular. My co-worker and I are having a conversation on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Loma Prieta temblor. "Where were you during the quake?" I ask from behind the counter, including the shopper in on our chat. The customer thinks on it, and then offers in good cheer, "I was giving a pelvic exam at the Women's Health Center!" We all laugh, and then she and I beam at each other in embarrassed recognition.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Tuesday Evenin' at Home
Astrid and I had tender conversation over fresh rice paper rolls tonight. Now we're buying tickets to travel to the Mojave to visit her family for xmas, my second year with Astrid's folks on the holiday, and my third celebrating it with her. Even though I'm a secular atheist-leaning Jew, I've really come to love celebrating xmas in the desert with Astrid's once-fundamentalist and still conservative parents: not the exorbitant gift-buying, or the huge heaps of sugar, really, but just the being with them, the warm exchanges, the awkward exchanges, all the relating through chit chat, and playing dominoes, and long silences, and the buzz of Astrid's rowdy toddler nephews, and the love.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Progress Report # 3ish
So, not surprisingly, with outbursts like last weekend's fried food extravaganza, and owing to my slacking off from gym and bike alike (my brand new bike is broken at the moment), I've gained more weight in the last couple months. I'm now 224, four pounds more of me since I started this here blog. All in all, up 9 pounds from where I was about a year ago, which is roughly about 20 to 30 pounds more than I'd ultimately like to weigh. I'm telling you, the goal here is not to be thin, the goal is to feel physically and emotionally better about my relationship with food and excercize, take some weight off my bad knee, and eat more healthfully (and ecologically-friendly).
So how have I not been accomplishing these goals? I'm overeating, per yooszh, dining out too frequently, and not exercizing nearly enough. I was getting really consistent with the gym for about three months there, but as school wound down and my brief summer break and subsequent two-month job search began, I lost focus. Then, sometime in August, I got a new bike and I think getting back on it distracted me further from the additional exercize regimen of gymming. So I'm looking forward to building in a routine where I'm both biking and gymming, as well as getting more of a handle on the food situation. It's a lifelong process. I'm hoping at the very least to get back down to 215 and then see what happens from there.
Sigh.
So how have I not been accomplishing these goals? I'm overeating, per yooszh, dining out too frequently, and not exercizing nearly enough. I was getting really consistent with the gym for about three months there, but as school wound down and my brief summer break and subsequent two-month job search began, I lost focus. Then, sometime in August, I got a new bike and I think getting back on it distracted me further from the additional exercize regimen of gymming. So I'm looking forward to building in a routine where I'm both biking and gymming, as well as getting more of a handle on the food situation. It's a lifelong process. I'm hoping at the very least to get back down to 215 and then see what happens from there.
Sigh.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Preach Beyond the Choir: NO on Prop 8
The following is an email I sent to a conservative person in my life who is very dear to me. Please consider writing your own message, or cutting and pasting this message into an email and sharing it with your conservative or religious friends, family, and colleagues--especially those you think might vote in favor of Prop 8. We need the message to reach beyond the converted.
Hi ____________,
The reason I'm emailing you is because I want us to have a conversation about marriage rights for same-gender couples. As you probably know, the California Supreme Court recently made same-gender marriage legal. But now, there is a State Constitutional amendment on the ballot called Proposition 8, which will write into the California Constitution that marriage can only be for a man and a woman. If it passes, it will permanently ban marriage rights for same-gender couples. Most people I know are already committed to voting NO on Prop 8 to protect marriage equality. But I suspect that many people you know will be voting for the proposition.
I'm asking you a favor: will you watch the video below and consider voting NO on Prop 8? And will you pass this message along to your friends and family so that they can hear a humane message from the "other side" as well? The video is a message on same-gender marriage from clergy and faith leaders. I just watched it this evening, and it was so powerful, it made me cry!
A link to the video is here:
http://noonprop8.com/multimedia/video?id=0001
You don't have to tell me how you're voting - I respect your privacy. But I can't in good conscience not make an effort to reach people beyond the little bubble of San Francisco I live in.
Okay, that's enough for now. I really appreciate you taking the time to read this message and watch the video. Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions. I like talking with you! And above all, please know that I love you and respect your decision to vote however you like.
Wishing you the best,
--Bree
Hi ____________,
The reason I'm emailing you is because I want us to have a conversation about marriage rights for same-gender couples. As you probably know, the California Supreme Court recently made same-gender marriage legal. But now, there is a State Constitutional amendment on the ballot called Proposition 8, which will write into the California Constitution that marriage can only be for a man and a woman. If it passes, it will permanently ban marriage rights for same-gender couples. Most people I know are already committed to voting NO on Prop 8 to protect marriage equality. But I suspect that many people you know will be voting for the proposition.
I'm asking you a favor: will you watch the video below and consider voting NO on Prop 8? And will you pass this message along to your friends and family so that they can hear a humane message from the "other side" as well? The video is a message on same-gender marriage from clergy and faith leaders. I just watched it this evening, and it was so powerful, it made me cry!
A link to the video is here:
http://noonprop8.com/multimedia/video?id=0001
You don't have to tell me how you're voting - I respect your privacy. But I can't in good conscience not make an effort to reach people beyond the little bubble of San Francisco I live in.
Okay, that's enough for now. I really appreciate you taking the time to read this message and watch the video. Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions. I like talking with you! And above all, please know that I love you and respect your decision to vote however you like.
Wishing you the best,
--Bree
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Opening Up*
L's visit from Germany is now a few weeks passed, and both Astrid and I are in a good place about all, but it was somewhat of an emotional blender while she was here. The blender contained the following: major portions of sexiness, excitement, love, and wonderful communication, one part confusion, a generous dose of longing and disappointment, dash(ed) expectations, and a pinch of loneliness. And I'm not just describing my feelings being in the spectator role of Astrid's renewed connection with L., but the collective feelings of Astrid and I as they mingled together in the rich concoction we created together with her.
It had been a long time since Astrid or I had had other lovers. My last significant involvement was with Dax, which ended about 2½ years ago when she entered into a more or less polyfidelitous relationship with a couple, and then wound up in a monogamous relationship later on with her current sweetie. I had had a make-out and one awkward date sometime after that, but nothing noteworthy. I think it had been about three years since Astrid was with another lover. And since then, we have developed and deepened our relationship, and we have been discussing our feelings and dreams about polyamory and nonmonogamy quite consistently, the identity and style of loving being at the core for both of us. "Opening up" as a theme is very apt: the opening up of possibilities between Astrid and I; the opening of our hearts to new loves; the opening of our bodies to a new vibrancy and new experiences of pleasure; the opening of our spirits to loving each other in an even more intimate and honest way.
The week didn't progress in the way either Astrid or I had hoped it would, based on the excitement of Astrid's interaction with L. the first couple days. When L. arrived in town, she and Astrid got to reestablishing their rapport and becoming lovers again very quickly. The energy between them was high on the night of Astrid's poetry reading, and after we all got home, they stayed together on the couch while I went to sleep in my bed. When I woke up at about five a.m. to pee, I heard wonderful moans coming from the living room and felt this amazing mixture of vicarious arousal and joy for Astrid, as well as a subtle anxiety that I knew I wouldn't be able to process in such a sleepy and excitable state. When Astrid joined me back in bed not long after that, it felt warm and sexy and connected between us as we snuggled and talked a little about everything that was happening. I was thrilled for her, and so turned on, and felt very grounded about giving them space to be together. And then the next day, L. and I had dinner and talked for a long time about the situation, and I made it very clear to her that everything was cool with me, and that she should feel free to be affectionate with Astrid around me and essentially entitled to take up more space (in fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I told L. it'd be my pleasure if she were affectionate with Astrid in my presence. I got a chuckle out of her on that one--I'm an unrepentant voyeur, it's true.) She said the situation was very unusual for her, and she felt a lot of discomfort with it, having no exposure to open relationships, but said she was really impressed with how Astrid and I were handling it, and that she was learning from it. I assured her we were learning too.
But then, sadly, for the rest of the week, L. was distant from Astrid, and I found myself there in Astrid's disappointment, feeling it with her, and feeling the years of my own start-and-stop polyamorous leanings being dashed. It is not wise to put all eggs in a basket, as the cliché goes, and so wisdom knows that L. was no wicker for our whims. When Astrid came to bed the next night, curling into herself and feeling rejected by L., I felt disconnected from her and alone, knowing it wasn't me she wanted that night. We slept lightly and proceeded awkwardly through the next day, and then Astrid and I took a walk together up to Dolores Park late in the evening, and had a radically honest talk about everything we were both feeling. How glorious it was to share my intimate joy and pleasure and sadness and fear with her, and to be fully open to hearing Astrid's specific pleasures and pangs, even as they were about another woman.
But radical honesty is more multifaceted than glorious: it's tiring. It's exposing. It's relentless, and once you start, you can never stop, because anything less feels inauthentic and flat. This is the precious and frightening underside of opening up.
________________________________
*This entry is named after the new book of the same title on nonmonogamous relationships by Tristan Taormino, out now on Cleis Press.
It had been a long time since Astrid or I had had other lovers. My last significant involvement was with Dax, which ended about 2½ years ago when she entered into a more or less polyfidelitous relationship with a couple, and then wound up in a monogamous relationship later on with her current sweetie. I had had a make-out and one awkward date sometime after that, but nothing noteworthy. I think it had been about three years since Astrid was with another lover. And since then, we have developed and deepened our relationship, and we have been discussing our feelings and dreams about polyamory and nonmonogamy quite consistently, the identity and style of loving being at the core for both of us. "Opening up" as a theme is very apt: the opening up of possibilities between Astrid and I; the opening of our hearts to new loves; the opening of our bodies to a new vibrancy and new experiences of pleasure; the opening of our spirits to loving each other in an even more intimate and honest way.
The week didn't progress in the way either Astrid or I had hoped it would, based on the excitement of Astrid's interaction with L. the first couple days. When L. arrived in town, she and Astrid got to reestablishing their rapport and becoming lovers again very quickly. The energy between them was high on the night of Astrid's poetry reading, and after we all got home, they stayed together on the couch while I went to sleep in my bed. When I woke up at about five a.m. to pee, I heard wonderful moans coming from the living room and felt this amazing mixture of vicarious arousal and joy for Astrid, as well as a subtle anxiety that I knew I wouldn't be able to process in such a sleepy and excitable state. When Astrid joined me back in bed not long after that, it felt warm and sexy and connected between us as we snuggled and talked a little about everything that was happening. I was thrilled for her, and so turned on, and felt very grounded about giving them space to be together. And then the next day, L. and I had dinner and talked for a long time about the situation, and I made it very clear to her that everything was cool with me, and that she should feel free to be affectionate with Astrid around me and essentially entitled to take up more space (in fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I told L. it'd be my pleasure if she were affectionate with Astrid in my presence. I got a chuckle out of her on that one--I'm an unrepentant voyeur, it's true.) She said the situation was very unusual for her, and she felt a lot of discomfort with it, having no exposure to open relationships, but said she was really impressed with how Astrid and I were handling it, and that she was learning from it. I assured her we were learning too.
But then, sadly, for the rest of the week, L. was distant from Astrid, and I found myself there in Astrid's disappointment, feeling it with her, and feeling the years of my own start-and-stop polyamorous leanings being dashed. It is not wise to put all eggs in a basket, as the cliché goes, and so wisdom knows that L. was no wicker for our whims. When Astrid came to bed the next night, curling into herself and feeling rejected by L., I felt disconnected from her and alone, knowing it wasn't me she wanted that night. We slept lightly and proceeded awkwardly through the next day, and then Astrid and I took a walk together up to Dolores Park late in the evening, and had a radically honest talk about everything we were both feeling. How glorious it was to share my intimate joy and pleasure and sadness and fear with her, and to be fully open to hearing Astrid's specific pleasures and pangs, even as they were about another woman.
But radical honesty is more multifaceted than glorious: it's tiring. It's exposing. It's relentless, and once you start, you can never stop, because anything less feels inauthentic and flat. This is the precious and frightening underside of opening up.
________________________________
*This entry is named after the new book of the same title on nonmonogamous relationships by Tristan Taormino, out now on Cleis Press.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Biting the Hand, Part One
Friday was my first day at CompuTrap*, the new company of my employ (yes, I got a job, after two months of looking.) It is helmed by Doug Muñoz*, a Type-A overworked middle-aged golf enthusiast who seems very chill as a boss excepting his ease in letting me know his business philosophy up front: I am to be his right-hand man, as it were, reporting everything I hear from the rank-and-file and encouraging a workplace culture of secrecy around issues such as compensation and employment status. He says our salaries are no one's business, and as the bookkeeper-slash-office wonk (he is generously calling me the Office Manager) I will be privy to all that top-secret information, so I need to keep a lid on it (which I will), and let him know of any rumblings (which, if I can help it, I won't.) It sets the teeth of my inner union agitator on edge. I don't think this is a big feature of the job; mainly, Doug hired me to do the accounts payable, stay on top of billing and collecting payments from clients, and to take all the busy work off his desk so he can focus on finding new clients and growing the business. I'm perfectly willing to do this, especially since it's in a casual environment, a fifteen minute bike ride from my apartment, and he's giving me the hours and pay I need to eek out a living in the next year while I continue working at the clinic.
As Morrissey once said, "I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable now." I get no end of pleasure in this quote. I'm so grateful to be learning to do the therapy work that allows me to find so much personal growth and meaning, and gives me a future to look forward to beyond the crunching of numbers. But, goddamnit, I was really ready to kiss bookkeeping good bye. If nothing else, I feel this year is the home-stretch.
________________________
*Name of company changed so's I don't get fired.
*Name of boss changed so's I don't get sued.
As Morrissey once said, "I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable now." I get no end of pleasure in this quote. I'm so grateful to be learning to do the therapy work that allows me to find so much personal growth and meaning, and gives me a future to look forward to beyond the crunching of numbers. But, goddamnit, I was really ready to kiss bookkeeping good bye. If nothing else, I feel this year is the home-stretch.
________________________
*Name of company changed so's I don't get fired.
*Name of boss changed so's I don't get sued.
Fried Food Frenzy
Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. Except that I'm not Catholic, and my father is dead, so I don't think he would mind that I've had chicken strips, french fries, and breaded, fried cauliflower today (eating this last delicacy as I type before you now.) Yes, all in one day. Maybe this has to do with my vegetarian girlfriend being out of town, thus I'm eating to alleviate my missing her, and eating decadent meaty things 'cause, really, I just can. It feels wonderful momentarily and then feels awful, physically, not long after such binges. I should really be asleep now, but this cauliflower is fucking tasty.
Does it exonerate me when you know that I breaded the cauliflower in matzo meal?
Does it exonerate me when you know that I breaded the cauliflower in matzo meal?
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Back in the Swing?
For those of you who missed the 13-episode run of Swingtown, a racy and stylish homage to partner swapping and finding yourself in suburban Chicago in the '70s, now's the chance for you and everyone you know to throw your keys in the bowl and join the action. The CBS summer replacement series that couldn't pull enough viewers to stay on the air passed its first season arc is going to be rebroacast on Bravo this month. Please watch it and if you dig it, tell CBS and Bravo that you want the series to continue. Though I think the CBS run suffered from uneven writing, the premise--a conventionally stifled couple moves on up to a nicer suburb and across the street from a pair of swingers who school them not only in free love but also in how to honor their deeper desires for authenticity--is a winning one. Likewise, the characters, the excellent acting, and the amazing sets and costumes are exactly what this series needs to see new life on a cable network that can take the provocative material and make it juicier. Check out the Save Swingtown site to get involved in the fan-driven effort to keep the show in production and keep positive portrayals of open relationships and unconventional lifestyle politics on the air!
Peace & Love,
Bree
Peace & Love,
Bree
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
You Will Submit to 80's Music
Working on a longer entry at the moment, but thought you might like a real-time update of the sometimes fantastic and sometimes awful 80's playlist at the café where I'm currently writing. Look for updates over the next hour or two!
So. Central Rain by R.E.M. (when this wonderful old R.E.M. song was playing in the café, I thought it a good sign. Little did I know I'd have to be assaulted by infuriatingly catchy Billy Joel and Hall and Oates tunes for the remainder of my stay.)
Jeopardy by Greg Kihn
It's a Mistake by Men At Work
Family Man by Hall and Oates
People Are People by Depeche Mode
some godawful George Thoroughgood song
Pulling Mussels (From the Shell) by Squeeze! (pretty obscure, right?)
Don't Be Cruel, as peformed by Cheap Trick
King of Pain by the Police
Our House by Madness
Tell Her About it by Billy Joel (ugh!)
Manic Monday by...um...the Bangles (did I get it right?)
A Million Miles Away by the Plimsouls (sounding very Replacementsy)
Come Dancing by the Kinks (was this released in the 80's? maybe...)
Saved By Zero by The Fixx
I Know Tonight by the Cars
Let's Go Crazy by Prince
Mayor of Simpleton by XTC (nice to hear this one! Been a long time.)
Show Me by the Pretenders (Yay!! I have to say, I think the Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde are really underrated by retro-appropriating hipsters everywhere. They quite rock, IMHO)
Express Yourself by Madonna
Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House
Freedom by Wham! (not to be confused with "Freedom 90" by George Michael, solo, songs of the same title and quite different in theme. Very self-aware, George.)
So. Central Rain by R.E.M. (when this wonderful old R.E.M. song was playing in the café, I thought it a good sign. Little did I know I'd have to be assaulted by infuriatingly catchy Billy Joel and Hall and Oates tunes for the remainder of my stay.)
Jeopardy by Greg Kihn
It's a Mistake by Men At Work
Family Man by Hall and Oates
People Are People by Depeche Mode
some godawful George Thoroughgood song
Pulling Mussels (From the Shell) by Squeeze! (pretty obscure, right?)
Don't Be Cruel, as peformed by Cheap Trick
King of Pain by the Police
Our House by Madness
Tell Her About it by Billy Joel (ugh!)
Manic Monday by...um...the Bangles (did I get it right?)
A Million Miles Away by the Plimsouls (sounding very Replacementsy)
Come Dancing by the Kinks (was this released in the 80's? maybe...)
Saved By Zero by The Fixx
I Know Tonight by the Cars
Let's Go Crazy by Prince
Mayor of Simpleton by XTC (nice to hear this one! Been a long time.)
Show Me by the Pretenders (Yay!! I have to say, I think the Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde are really underrated by retro-appropriating hipsters everywhere. They quite rock, IMHO)
Express Yourself by Madonna
Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House
Freedom by Wham! (not to be confused with "Freedom 90" by George Michael, solo, songs of the same title and quite different in theme. Very self-aware, George.)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Dispatch from the Cruz
Hello one and all,
I'm spending the weekend with my pals Exene and Oliver here in my erstwhile hometown of Santa Cruz. Once E & O's friend S. gets here, we will sup downtown at a new Pakistani restaurant, new since I last lived in this town some eight years ago. Astrid is on a teaching gig in Oklahoma, and I miss her. There's so much to tell, and I'm working on an epic blog entry about some of the thrilling updates in our lives. Mainly, I'm referring to the whole polyamory thing, blown wide open since L.'s visit from Germany. Suddenly I have tangible glimmers of life as I've ideally wanted to live it my entire adult existence: to be very committed and still head-over-ass in love with Astrid, and to experience the incredible joy and titillation, and also the struggle of owning all my own authentic fears about sharing the woman I love with other people who she might grow to love as well. There is something both altruistic and keenly selfish about cultivating my polyness: I get to support Astrid in her loving adventures with other people, and of course, I get to have some of m'own.
Goddamn, I'm hungry. Pakistani food sounds just right.
xo
Bree
I'm spending the weekend with my pals Exene and Oliver here in my erstwhile hometown of Santa Cruz. Once E & O's friend S. gets here, we will sup downtown at a new Pakistani restaurant, new since I last lived in this town some eight years ago. Astrid is on a teaching gig in Oklahoma, and I miss her. There's so much to tell, and I'm working on an epic blog entry about some of the thrilling updates in our lives. Mainly, I'm referring to the whole polyamory thing, blown wide open since L.'s visit from Germany. Suddenly I have tangible glimmers of life as I've ideally wanted to live it my entire adult existence: to be very committed and still head-over-ass in love with Astrid, and to experience the incredible joy and titillation, and also the struggle of owning all my own authentic fears about sharing the woman I love with other people who she might grow to love as well. There is something both altruistic and keenly selfish about cultivating my polyness: I get to support Astrid in her loving adventures with other people, and of course, I get to have some of m'own.
Goddamn, I'm hungry. Pakistani food sounds just right.
xo
Bree
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Vagina Dentata!
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The Germans!
Four lovely German dykes are staying with the us this week - a friend and former make-outy person of Astrid's, L., and her three traveling pals. We had a grand night out on the town with them last night which consisted of Indian food at Pakwan and much alcohol at the local dyke watering hole. Then I walked back to the apartment with some of the ladies and Astrid and L. continued to catch up at the bar, and it seems that L. is quickly becoming a current make-outy pal of Astrid's, too! This is really hot and fun for me to hear about and I'm definitely experiencing some nice compersion, picturing Astrid and L. getting down and wondering about how the group dynamics around it will unfold during the week.
Today, the girls are off exploring the Golden Gate Bridge, and Astrid and I are lunching and taking a bike ride. And then later, we'll all convene to watch Astrid perform some smutty poetry at her very first public literary reading! Yay sex! Yay creativity! Yay Germans!
Today, the girls are off exploring the Golden Gate Bridge, and Astrid and I are lunching and taking a bike ride. And then later, we'll all convene to watch Astrid perform some smutty poetry at her very first public literary reading! Yay sex! Yay creativity! Yay Germans!
Thursday, September 11, 2008
September 11 - how many dead?
It's the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Bush, Rumsfeld and crew held a "somber" ceremony at Ground Zero this morning, lamenting the 3,000 American deaths from the attacks. And these deaths surely should be remembered, but no national tragedy can justify the violence we have returned in kind.
Why aren't our elected officials, and the presidential candidates, and the mainstream media mentioning the more than 20,000 Afghan deaths and the more than 1.2 million Iraqi deaths in the wake of the comparatively minor suffering we've endured on U.S. soil?
Why aren't our elected officials, and the presidential candidates, and the mainstream media mentioning the more than 20,000 Afghan deaths and the more than 1.2 million Iraqi deaths in the wake of the comparatively minor suffering we've endured on U.S. soil?
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Where Fat Meets Butch
I've always hated shopping for clothes. Even now that I really enjoy dressing up and looking all hot and shit, finding clothes that fit me, particularly button-down shirts, the staple for all my biz casual and dressy wardrobe needs, is elusive and irksome. The experience of finding a great shirt at a vintage store, a western style collar shirt, in worn cotton with mother-of-pearl buttons, say, is more often than not completely demoralizing, as I slide into the sleeves, noticing that the fit of the shoulders and collar and tits are perfect, but the lower two buttons, the ones situated over my distended belly, will not, no matter how I strain, fasten or stay closed. This happens over and over and over again.
My hatred of shopping is perhaps more deeply rooted in my gender nonconformity than it is in my fatness. When my mom and I went to the department store together, I loathed every moment of getting into the changing room with her to try on blouses and dresses and cute little girly shorts with matching flowery tank tops. "Butch" is a shorthand, and not a label I strongly identify with, but it gives you an idea. I've always been a tomboy, ever since before I can remember. I rode bikes on the creek path, played with Star Wars action figures, dug in the dirt, eschewed Barbie and make up and all things pink and purple. My favorite article of clothing when I was a kid was my precious Zoom shirt.
A handsomely androgynous striped rugby, I wore it practically every day of my fourth and fifth years. At right, I am receiving the Zoom shirt on my fourth birthday. The eyes in the photo say it all: "I can't wait to get outta this cutsie sundress and into that shirt!"
My mom had a theory about why I didn't like to wear pretty clothes, which she didn't hesitate to share with me during my adolescence. She said she thought I would like wearing dresses if I lost weight. I told her to shove it, but politely. The theory doesn't wash, considering I was a tomboy before I became fat, but it fits nicely into my mom's ideas about my sexuality, and into her self-hating narrative about her own fatness. So much precious life could be lived if fat women could love their bodies instead of being eaten alive by self-hatred.
But being fat certainly contributes to my dread about shopping, my anger that "plus-sized" clothing for women is usually feminine, and often so fucking ugly besides. And the problem with shopping in the men's department is that the cuts are not tailored for womanly curves, not to mention the big ol' belly. There is a fucking gold mine awaiting the clothing designer who will create an inexpensive butch clothing line, with ample size options, and there are rumblings about this online, but scarce proof of anything out there yet. The cutest plus-sized clothes I've seen online are from Torrid, but the products are still overwhelmingly girlie. I have no problem shopping in the men's department, and feel pretty safe and unharassed about it since I live in the Bay Area. But the belly conspires to keep me wearing stretchy polyester for the long haul.
My hatred of shopping is perhaps more deeply rooted in my gender nonconformity than it is in my fatness. When my mom and I went to the department store together, I loathed every moment of getting into the changing room with her to try on blouses and dresses and cute little girly shorts with matching flowery tank tops. "Butch" is a shorthand, and not a label I strongly identify with, but it gives you an idea. I've always been a tomboy, ever since before I can remember. I rode bikes on the creek path, played with Star Wars action figures, dug in the dirt, eschewed Barbie and make up and all things pink and purple. My favorite article of clothing when I was a kid was my precious Zoom shirt.
A handsomely androgynous striped rugby, I wore it practically every day of my fourth and fifth years. At right, I am receiving the Zoom shirt on my fourth birthday. The eyes in the photo say it all: "I can't wait to get outta this cutsie sundress and into that shirt!"
My mom had a theory about why I didn't like to wear pretty clothes, which she didn't hesitate to share with me during my adolescence. She said she thought I would like wearing dresses if I lost weight. I told her to shove it, but politely. The theory doesn't wash, considering I was a tomboy before I became fat, but it fits nicely into my mom's ideas about my sexuality, and into her self-hating narrative about her own fatness. So much precious life could be lived if fat women could love their bodies instead of being eaten alive by self-hatred.
But being fat certainly contributes to my dread about shopping, my anger that "plus-sized" clothing for women is usually feminine, and often so fucking ugly besides. And the problem with shopping in the men's department is that the cuts are not tailored for womanly curves, not to mention the big ol' belly. There is a fucking gold mine awaiting the clothing designer who will create an inexpensive butch clothing line, with ample size options, and there are rumblings about this online, but scarce proof of anything out there yet. The cutest plus-sized clothes I've seen online are from Torrid, but the products are still overwhelmingly girlie. I have no problem shopping in the men's department, and feel pretty safe and unharassed about it since I live in the Bay Area. But the belly conspires to keep me wearing stretchy polyester for the long haul.
Vintage Bree: Who Killed Roy Orbison?
It is early December, 1988. I am in my high school chemistry class, junior year, chatting with my lab partners as we mix some concoction of stuff in order to make a polymer or some shit that I didn't understand then and certainly don't understand now. We are chatting about this new supergroup called the Traveling Wilburys, and all of us agree we really dig their single Handle With Care, which has been ubiquitous on the radio lately.
Then I chime in that although I really like the song, I can't stand Roy Orbison's vocals and wished he wasn't in the band. Most of us are in agreement about this as well.
The next day we all come running into class, shocked at the news of Orbison's death. All eyes are on me as the group collectively charges "You killed Roy Orbison!" And while the news was unfortunate, indeed, given the '60s crooner's renewed fame with the Wilburys, this becomes a running joke for the rest of my high school days.
Jump to the year 2000, my ten-year high school reunion. I'm having pre-reunion cocktails at my good friend Gabe's apartment in San Jose with a few other high school pals that Gabe has kept in touch with. Of these friends is one of my former chem lab partners, Tom, who somewhere between high school and adulthood has grown to a towering 6'4 from his 1988 height of about 5'6. Tom was one of the truly sweet guys in high school in a field of obnoxious rich jocks and stoner wasteoids that made up the major portion of the dudes I went to high school with. So as we get to reminiscing, Tom and I both start telling the story about that fateful conversation in chemistry class. We take turns telling pieces of the narrative, and then Tom claims that he is the one who had wished Roy Orbison's departure from the band: by his own account, Tom was the one who killed Roy Orbison!
I sit there blinking as everyone laughs at the story. Over the course of the last dozen years, Tom and I, and our selective memories, have taken credit for the uncanny wish that coincided with Roy Orbison's fatal heart attack on December 6, 1988. I decide not to correct Tom's version of events, and take another sip of gin and tonic. Wouldn't want to be Petty about it.
Then I chime in that although I really like the song, I can't stand Roy Orbison's vocals and wished he wasn't in the band. Most of us are in agreement about this as well.
The next day we all come running into class, shocked at the news of Orbison's death. All eyes are on me as the group collectively charges "You killed Roy Orbison!" And while the news was unfortunate, indeed, given the '60s crooner's renewed fame with the Wilburys, this becomes a running joke for the rest of my high school days.
Jump to the year 2000, my ten-year high school reunion. I'm having pre-reunion cocktails at my good friend Gabe's apartment in San Jose with a few other high school pals that Gabe has kept in touch with. Of these friends is one of my former chem lab partners, Tom, who somewhere between high school and adulthood has grown to a towering 6'4 from his 1988 height of about 5'6. Tom was one of the truly sweet guys in high school in a field of obnoxious rich jocks and stoner wasteoids that made up the major portion of the dudes I went to high school with. So as we get to reminiscing, Tom and I both start telling the story about that fateful conversation in chemistry class. We take turns telling pieces of the narrative, and then Tom claims that he is the one who had wished Roy Orbison's departure from the band: by his own account, Tom was the one who killed Roy Orbison!
I sit there blinking as everyone laughs at the story. Over the course of the last dozen years, Tom and I, and our selective memories, have taken credit for the uncanny wish that coincided with Roy Orbison's fatal heart attack on December 6, 1988. I decide not to correct Tom's version of events, and take another sip of gin and tonic. Wouldn't want to be Petty about it.
Monday, September 08, 2008
The Grind
The job search has been kinda depressing. Usually, I'm able to get a bookkeeping gig within a week or two of looking, but it's pretty competative out there right now. Got a very humane rejection email from a nonprofit that got over 200 applications! And this is just for a tiny 10 hour/week gig. So I might have to adjust my rates to get more responses on my résumés.
It looks like I did land a short-term job with a small home-based company starting tomorrow. It's not what I ultimately want, but I'm grateful to have some money potentially coming in during the next couple weeks. I'm actually at the point of not being able to come up with rent if I don't start earning something, so this is a life saver. As much as she'd like, Astrid just can't be my sugar mamma for long. Sigh.
It looks like I did land a short-term job with a small home-based company starting tomorrow. It's not what I ultimately want, but I'm grateful to have some money potentially coming in during the next couple weeks. I'm actually at the point of not being able to come up with rent if I don't start earning something, so this is a life saver. As much as she'd like, Astrid just can't be my sugar mamma for long. Sigh.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Seattle bound!
Despite the blahs, which have abated somewhat for the moment, and being too broke for travel, Astrid and I are off to the great Northwest today. We'll be visiting friends in Seattle and attending the wedding of my dear erstwhile lover, Callie, who lives with her six year old daughter and partner in a tiny town on the Olympic Peninsula. Some of you read about my last visit with Callie way back when in the old blog days. I'm excited to meet her love, whose thoughtfully powerful musings can be found here. Funny that jacket uses "Callie's" real name, so there goes the mystery of my fool-proof pseudononymous system! Anyway, yay!
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Blahs
Feeling inexplicably morose right now. The first couple weeks after graduation were relaxing and wonderful, and now I'm settling into a bit of a malaise, probably owing mostly to being unemployed and having only shitty bookkeeping work to look forward to as I continue on at the clinic two days a week. I will get a lot out of working at the clinic for another year, but this decision to stay on was a really stupid thing to do in terms of finances. It leaves me with bookkeeping as the only way to make enough money part-time to live on. If I had found a full-time mental health internship, I could have been accumulating clinical hours while getting paid, but I just didn't have my shit together enough, amid the massive chaos of my school tanking, to procure myself a full-time gig. Now I'm kind of stuck having made this committment to be at the clinic for a whole second year. The good thing about it is that I love working with my clients there, and I get excellent supervision, so ultimately it's not all bad. I just wish I could be doing full-time work in my field this year instead of waiting to really start cranking in the hours and getting paid.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Vintage Bree: The Cult Meeting
This is not a timely post, but the anecdote came up a while ago, and I realized I really needed to blog it. This prompts me to think about other classic Bree Lore that may be included in the blog over time. So let's call this the first installment of Vintage Bree.
So in the summer of 1994, AstroB, Lola, and I were trying to amuse ourselves in downtown Santa Cruz. We were walking around on a beautiful sunny day, some of us stoned, when we passed by the local library branch. A flyer posted on the bulletin board outside the library caught our attention. It said:
It was advertising a community meeting in which we would find out the fate of the human race! How could we not go?
We entered the meeting room at the library. It was packed with students and townies, maybe fifty or so, and at the front of the room was a panel of men and women, all around middle age, all white, all with shorn hair, most wearing fleece sweatshirts. They said they were the "Away Team" sent by their leaders, Ti and Do (pronounced "Doe," like "Doe, a deer") to educate us about how we could leave our "Earthly shells" and move on to the "Next Evolutionary Level Above Human."
I've given something away in that last link, but for those of you still scratching your heads, yes, we had stumbled upon a Heaven's Gate cult meeting three years before they would make headlines as the largest group suicide on U.S. soil. The shit they were talking about was weird, but it didn't occur to us, or apparently to anyone else in the meeting, that this was a suicide cult. There were definitely people there for the same reasons we were: to gawk, to be amused. And there were people who were dead serious and listened to the Away Team like they were speaking the direct word of God.
There was unfortunately at least one woman at that meeting who would go on to join Heaven's Gate and kill herself along with her fellow cult members at Rancho Santa Fe on March 26, 1997. Her name was Gail Maeder, a woman in her late twenties from Sag Harbor, New York. One of my friends in Santa Cruz had grown up with her.
One of the men we saw at the recruitment meeting in Santa Cruz who later took his own life in the group suicide.
So, back at the meeting at the Santa Cruz library, you can imagine the kinds of rumblings that were going on in the audience. The Away Team likened their leader, Marshall Applewhite to Moses and Jesus (though not to Mohammed). Not only that, they insisted that these religious prophets were direct representatives from the Next Level, sent to Earth to recruit humans in their time, just like Do was. I scrawled a note to B. – "Did 'the next level' send any representatives to Earth before the Judeo-Christian era? Or to Africa, the Far East, S. America, etc.?" We snickered. Apparently most of the world's population, the poorest people, incidentally, were not ready to evolve.
They kept going on about how when the comet Hale-Bopp arrived, we would know it's the time to depart our earthly existence aboard a great spaceship. They talked about what we would encounter when we got to the Level Above Human: there would be no war and no suffering. It was a realm beyond temporal and spatial reality as we knew it. It was beyond the realm of the sexual, and when we joined the Next Level, we would no longer need our bodies (a.k.a. our "earthly shells") or feel sexual desire (and, no, they didn't happen to mention that many of the male cult members had elected to castrate themselves, possibly an elaborate and ugly manifestation of Marshall Applewhite's shame about his own homosexuality.)
At this point in the talk, a woman stood up from the audience. She was someone I had encountered in town many times before, a local eccentric-with-a-capital-E named Elana Smith who went by the moniker "Clitora Cummings." Anyone who's lived in Santa Cruz in the last thirty years probably has a story about Clitora (you can meet her for yourself in this video interview). She stood up at the repetition of the mantra about the Next Level being a "non-sexual realm" and shouted to all who could hear, "Fuck this shit! I'm gonna go get LAID!" and, most appropriately, she stormed out of the room.
Maybe she saved some lives that day.
So in the summer of 1994, AstroB, Lola, and I were trying to amuse ourselves in downtown Santa Cruz. We were walking around on a beautiful sunny day, some of us stoned, when we passed by the local library branch. A flyer posted on the bulletin board outside the library caught our attention. It said:
It was advertising a community meeting in which we would find out the fate of the human race! How could we not go? We entered the meeting room at the library. It was packed with students and townies, maybe fifty or so, and at the front of the room was a panel of men and women, all around middle age, all white, all with shorn hair, most wearing fleece sweatshirts. They said they were the "Away Team" sent by their leaders, Ti and Do (pronounced "Doe," like "Doe, a deer") to educate us about how we could leave our "Earthly shells" and move on to the "Next Evolutionary Level Above Human."
I've given something away in that last link, but for those of you still scratching your heads, yes, we had stumbled upon a Heaven's Gate cult meeting three years before they would make headlines as the largest group suicide on U.S. soil. The shit they were talking about was weird, but it didn't occur to us, or apparently to anyone else in the meeting, that this was a suicide cult. There were definitely people there for the same reasons we were: to gawk, to be amused. And there were people who were dead serious and listened to the Away Team like they were speaking the direct word of God.
There was unfortunately at least one woman at that meeting who would go on to join Heaven's Gate and kill herself along with her fellow cult members at Rancho Santa Fe on March 26, 1997. Her name was Gail Maeder, a woman in her late twenties from Sag Harbor, New York. One of my friends in Santa Cruz had grown up with her.
One of the men we saw at the recruitment meeting in Santa Cruz who later took his own life in the group suicide.So, back at the meeting at the Santa Cruz library, you can imagine the kinds of rumblings that were going on in the audience. The Away Team likened their leader, Marshall Applewhite to Moses and Jesus (though not to Mohammed). Not only that, they insisted that these religious prophets were direct representatives from the Next Level, sent to Earth to recruit humans in their time, just like Do was. I scrawled a note to B. – "Did 'the next level' send any representatives to Earth before the Judeo-Christian era? Or to Africa, the Far East, S. America, etc.?" We snickered. Apparently most of the world's population, the poorest people, incidentally, were not ready to evolve.
They kept going on about how when the comet Hale-Bopp arrived, we would know it's the time to depart our earthly existence aboard a great spaceship. They talked about what we would encounter when we got to the Level Above Human: there would be no war and no suffering. It was a realm beyond temporal and spatial reality as we knew it. It was beyond the realm of the sexual, and when we joined the Next Level, we would no longer need our bodies (a.k.a. our "earthly shells") or feel sexual desire (and, no, they didn't happen to mention that many of the male cult members had elected to castrate themselves, possibly an elaborate and ugly manifestation of Marshall Applewhite's shame about his own homosexuality.)
At this point in the talk, a woman stood up from the audience. She was someone I had encountered in town many times before, a local eccentric-with-a-capital-E named Elana Smith who went by the moniker "Clitora Cummings." Anyone who's lived in Santa Cruz in the last thirty years probably has a story about Clitora (you can meet her for yourself in this video interview). She stood up at the repetition of the mantra about the Next Level being a "non-sexual realm" and shouted to all who could hear, "Fuck this shit! I'm gonna go get LAID!" and, most appropriately, she stormed out of the room.
Maybe she saved some lives that day.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
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