A Break Up Learning Curve

Despite being Out for a while, I have done a pretty good job of staving off The Big Bad Lesbian Breakup. I've seen it all around me in the lives of my friends and peers, the breakups that just shake you and break you, to a degree that the entire phase of your life in which it takes place is marked primarily by The Breakup itself. But I had never felt it myself until recently. I shielded myself from it easily early on in college by simply not knowing I was gay and dating men. Then, I let the relationship with my first girlfriend fly so far to the brink of death that all we could do was High-5 each other and wish each other well on our life journeys when it finally ended (Obviously, being lesbians, it wasn't that easy, but we managed to hate each other enough during our relationship that we didn't leave a lot of hate for the end).

The Big Bad Lesbian Breakup though, is quite the lemon of a juicy time in life, stuffed with so much pain, angst, self-deprecation, douchey-phases, special-places, drunk nights, inappropriate lays, and foot-in-mouth phone calls, that it is really not something you can just see to believe- it is something you have to live. Like I said, I've watched it unfold around me. Whether it was one party's major-cheating-fuck-up followed by a 2 year song and dance of alternately trying to hurt each other and get back together, or the slow demise of a beautiful domestic stead that everyone thought would last forever. Whatever the gamut, these dissolutions are all around us, blowing things out of the water every year or two, affecting friend groups and making Urban Family holidays awkward. It takes quite a bit of time to get to the part where the Bad Breakups slowly renegotiate themselves in part of daily life and the upheaval has subsided.

The shitty part about the Big Bad Lesbian Breakup, is that, from all I've seen and gathered, it is the one that is required to become a fully jaded, yet relationship appreciating, eyes-wide-open lesbian for all potential lasting partnerships. It's the necessary evil, the Big-Gay-Right-of-Passage that comes in your 20s somewhere in between Searching, Lost and/or Finding Yourself. I have always had an inkling that this might be true. Like when you think you have a cavity, but dance around making the dentist's appointment, or, when you don't want to check the weekend's damage to your bank account. I knew my BBLB was coming sometime, but I didn't want to see it.

Instead, I thought that I could slowly deflate the air from the tires of my relationship with my second girlfriend and avoid the Big One with passive comments like "what if I got a job in such and such city?" Or, "I can see us together forever, but what will we do for the next couple of years?" Or, and I don't see how I thought this wouldn't lead to catastrophe but, "I have feelings for ____, but it's just a friend crush."

It turns out that a clean slice heals a lot better than a haphazard, messy gash. In my version of this breakup, the messy, not-so-clean-slice adaptation, the let down became slow to the point of complete cowardice. In reality both in-denial parties were steamrolling their way towards the Big One with their unsuspecting thumbs up their asses. Try and avoid getting bitten, and you'll probably get maimed.

Maimed. There really isn't a better word. And its the kind train wreck you just don't know until you know, and when you feel it, its all you have room for for a while. You have to just give in and spend a little time in the weeds, which was something I never wanted to do. Silly me. Luckily, nothing lasts forever, not even a shit storm, and eventually learning begins. It starts with licking your wounds, then maybe with thinking about stitching them up, followed by a lengthy healing period, and then- the eventual scars. Not only is it a killer, but there is a wry irony to the reality that all the foot dragging and avoidance of facing the Big One now serves to just makes the whole process last longer.

As someone who is sitting pretty in the "stitching themselves up" phase, I cannot proffer wisdom, I am, after all, not on the other side yet. But there is an unforeseen peace in knowing right where you are at, even if it is not where you want to stay. I can see the stitches I've already completed, I can see how far I need to go. If I take baby steps and keep my eyes open, the weeds will be a distant memory in no time. For now I'll pat myself on the back for my acceptance of my Big Bad Lesbian Breakup, I'll laugh at myself for trying to avoid it, I'll forgive myself for being naive.

It is always said that you never stop Coming Out, which is true. Coming out includes years more work than just finding out in college that you have a palate for vagina. It includes a lot of unlocking, figuring out how to properly love and feel pain, and how to offer compassion when it is someone else's turn in the weeds. Despite how badly I fought having to go through this part, the storyteller in me is ready to embrace the dredges because when everything does shift and it's my turn to see some other sappy lesbian through their own Big Bad mess, I'm going to start out by saying: "Take a look at my awesome scar."

Baby Dykes

When I came out, I was told by my very dykey first girlfriend, who at 22 years old must have been the last word in lesbians, that I would be a baby dyke until I had either A. Been out for 3 years or B. Been with 3 women. I don't know where this barometer came from, whether she made it up of her own reasoning, or if some loud-mouthed-lez imparted this to her earlier on in her own Baby Dyke career.

I threw this information right out the window with all my lady dresses and makeup, there was NO WAY, I was going to be a clueless lesbian God Dammit, and I just didn't believe that those rules applied to me. I engaged in a series of actions thought to make me look less like a baby dyke: cutting my hair, dyking up the clothes, I came-out to my parents ragin' and demanding their acceptance.

It's too bad, that thing about hindsight.

Who knew that characteristic #5 of a Baby Dyke, after all the haircutting and Tegan and Sara is that complex about having something to prove. My complex was visible 3 gay bars over: I was such a baby dyke.

Looking back at that Kaisa I realize I couldn't have emerged from 19 years in my straight cave anything but a red-faced and wailing little infant. It's like rebirth in Christ only a lot sexier. And I don't even know if 3 ladies OR 3 years changed much. Despite my perpetual desire to be in-the-know or ahead of the game, I probably spent a good 4 years and 1 or 2 women more than that truly growing my way out of baby-status. It turns out all the haircuts in the world don't make up for the experiences of love, breakups and heartache.

Perhaps 3 years or 3 women should be all it takes to make you go through it all at least once: in-love and on cloud 9, devastated by heartbreak and loss of love, and built back up into a deeper, more mature, less baby-like queer. If so I guess I was a little late to that game. I am venturing now to say that I think I'm seeing my way out of Baby Dyke status, and maybe the biggest indicator that this is true is that I'm tired of having something to prove. I'll probably always rattle off advice to young lesbians, and make fun of their newbiness to a degree, I'm too obsessed with gay things to ever stop that. But my advice and musings can only serve to celebrate and engage in discussions of queerness rather than to be true advice or woman-loving-wisdom; because if hindsight really is so clear, in another few years I'll probably realize I was full of shit all over again. Plus, if the Baby Dykes are anything like I was, they aren't listening anyway.

Thoughts on a Hangover

My first real hangover hit me during the summer when I was 16. If you ask me, I usually say that I was still 15 when I started drinking, but I don’t think you can actually count much before your first hangover. Whatever happens before that is the overly cautious foreplay leading up to your first naïve fuck-up and subsequently horrible next-morning.  Sure, getting buzzed off of a couple stolen Mike’s Hard Lemonades seems daring at the time, but it hardly constitutes heavy experimentation with drinking. Heavy drinking most often results in a hangover, and before you have one, you just have no idea.

My first hangover happened, as I said, the summer I was 16, a work party, the kind of lifeguard posse summer party that I would one-day host. After a few excited shots, some green, and a couple of keg-cups, I became the newbie-drunk the baby of the party, and the one who flew the furthest when bouncing back off of walls that I had run into. I had to be put to bed by some of the more responsible folk more than once, because I kept getting back up and trying to rejoin the crowd and then of course, a wall or table would get in my way again.

At 16, "calling in hungover" to work isn’t even on the radar, plus it was a work party so everyone would know what had happened. So I showed up in 85-degree weather with the rest of the crew the next morning to lifeguard in the heat for 8 hours. They may have had the same alcohol-parched-skin and headache, resonating with every step, like I did, but if so they were used to this game and appeared fine.  I, on the other hand, looked, felt and acted hungover all day. I couldn’t stomach food until about 3 in the afternoon, but no one warned me that it was essential for hangover food to be greasy or bland, so I mistakenly ordered a deli meat-filled Subway sandwich on jalapeño cheddar bread, dooming it to be left, uneaten. It was a miserable day, but by the end of the day I was a member of the club of hang over pros.

I don’t think often about what the early days of drinking were like, beer is so beholden in my heart, it is easy to forget that I didn’t drink it out of a sippy-cup as a child. Yet sometimes I get too comfortable, I forget that I wasn’t born drinking, and I find myself in a drinking snafu that reminds me that I am no better than a wasted little 16 year old. This usually happens if there is tequila, or a generous well-pour by the bartender. Last night there were both.

Reading over the texts messages I sent, full of periods in places that there should have been apostrophes, is the evidence of the far reaches of my stupor, and also serves as a reminder for parts of the evening that I may have forgotten. Not that I can forget too much, the pounding veins in my head are persistent at reminding me. 

You can learn so much about yourself and your drinking limits with each hangover, and I think that many of us believe that we will someday hone in on our perfect recipe to drinking success: 1 part perpetual fun buzz, 1 part enough-to-sleep well, 1 part no hangover. I wonder if we think that someday we will know that perfect combination of alcohol to make fun minus-shitty-the-next-day a 100% guarantee. Looking in my cupboard for something I could stomach at 8 this morning and settling on a bag of chips that has been open for weeks told me no, I will never rid myself of hangovers. Crunching on a chip to test its relative freshness I thought that f I haven’t learned by now, 7 years into the game, how to avoid the occasional slip-up, then I probably never will. And why? My coffee and chips tasted delicious, I got a day off work, and my friends (and hopefully my girlfriend) will forgive me for being wasted because they got to see me pee on a sidewalk, in front of the taco place we had just walked out of, and that shit is just funny.

O lord, did I just say that I’ve been doing this for 7 years? Well shit n fire, pat my liver on the back and pass the sauce. 

My First Regret

I don't make a huge habit of regret, there is always a reason, lesson, or something greater to come out of every mistake. Plus, if I personally took up the habit of regret for all MY mistakes, well, it would certainly not make for a life of good living; so I try not to do it. 

Right now, I feel real and palpable regret for not being stateside in a major city for the protests tomorrow morning. I am lamenting that I will not be among my girlfriend, my friends, my community to send this message, the message that our relationships will count and fuck anyone who says otherwise. I am sorrowful that I wont have that moment in person with that community as a whole nation says, "enough." I believe that what will take place tomorrow will be history making, because we are a nation on fire, people hungry for change, and we are riding high on the idea that we can affect change after the election. The power of those people is incredible, and it is an energy that we haven't had in ages. Tomorrow Barack Obama will hear that message that while to win this election he had to run on a platform that did not support marriage equality, he will face a nation that will require him to change his tune if he wants to win the next one.

We are at the helm of this movement, and I am in Guam. And fuck, I'm too tired to even get out what is in my head, because I was damn hungover today. Lame.

Where is My Mind?

I haven't been posting anything. I have still been writing, either for realz on paper or theoretically in my head  pretty much non stop, but not much of it has made it here. This is why....

"Meanwhile, farther up the literacy scale, many thousands of would-be writers display their tragically unrecognized wit and insight... using mass-distributed blogging software on mass-produced computer hardware... (the prevailing assumption being that an audience, however small, is proof enough of authenticity and individuality). They sound like a motley bunch, but they share one modern characteristic: Now one of them made up his or her identity from scratch."-Joe Bagent, Deer Hunting With Jesus

I am feeling a little sheepish thinking that anyone would give a shit what I have to say, and since reading that passage have kept my thoughts down on lined paper in an orange notebook rather than online. Unfortunately, I am also bursting with all these crazy thoughts, observations, questions and criticisms of the world around me, and it is sort of making me nuts NOT to rethink them where someone else can comment back. Maybe, more than anything, this feeling is the beginning of really missing college, and will become my slow but eventual return to intellectual responsibility, ideally in some grad school program or at the very least in some slightly more stimulating job than this. I don't know.

 For now I need to just suck it up and write again, because I sit on a lifeguard stand for much of the day concocting full length essays that often escape into the oblivion of both my boredom and my ever day-dreaming-mind. So, "audience, however small," please stay tuned to continue to be "proof enough of authenticity" while I muddle through the randO descriptions of this, 6 months already whittled down to 5.

Thoughts on Some Crazy Cats

As the stories emerge in this 6 month stint, it is only fitting that characters do as well. I do best surrounding myself with people who are caricatures, over the top versions of themselves that make life hilarious and allow all experiences to be richer based on each individuals awkward/weird/dorky contribution to life. My life is full of caricature friends back home, and no one could ever take their place; similarly here, each person is so crazy individual that when I leave I will lament the loss of each true and wonderful gem that I will never meet again. 

The Hippie Scientist is one such friend whose keen personality I need to soak up as much as possible while we are still only living one floor away from one another, as is her roommate, my pal, whose name I haven't come up with yet. A true cross section of nature and nurture, Hippie Scientist is by nature wired for science, detail, facts, particulars, reason and no nonsense. Raised in Berkeley, she was nurtured to connect to her environment and universe, to think globally and act locally, to appreciate love in all forms and human bodies in their most natural state. In practice these dichotomies equal sheer brilliance. While at first glance she may come off to some as slightly studious and hinting toward know-it-all status, a second look reveals a true fascination with nature, particularly the ocean, and a sharp and fast mind that holds such a vast body of knowledge that the know-it-all label can be applied for its sheer truth and not for pretentious fluff. 

"Look at this shirt," she said to me last night, pointing at her own Tower-Hangout-Attire. She was wasted, as was I, and while our conversation at the moment probably had no ties to science, this was the kick she latched onto after 2 grown up lemonades, Kaisa-sized vodka sprites, somec*, and beer pong. "It has all the phylum of animals on it. Look at the mammals...there are only four," she put four deliberate fingers to her chest, where all the phylum were listed on her dorky shirt.  "Four. That is pretty insignificant. Makes you think, doesn't it. " She shot me a triumphant look that seemed to say, in its inebriated body language, "I know, right?", which is what any of my Seattle friends would have ended that point with, and then she headed back to the beer pong table. I laughed, because it was clear that she had thought of this before, this imbalance of taxonomy and the hierarchy of species, probably while stoned. The way feminism is my drunken soap box, the animal kingdom is hers- her politics is that of nature. I don't know shit about animals except for what you have to know about primates for anthropology, so I can only smile and acknowledge how profound her little statement was, with little to no understanding of the greater implications of there only being four phylum mammals on this planet.

The Hippie Scientist is one of the leading characters in this weird act, this "Real World Guam" experience, and there are many others, some whose names are yet-to-be-determined. A couple of others to chew on for now are "Lisa," named for his similarity to the Lesbian Man on the L Word, Captain Planet, who was incidentally not named for any Green Planet promoting, and Princess, who was fittingly named for acting like a Princess. All the time. It may not be of pressing importance for me to make a character summary for each individual here, because I hope I follow through with writing enough for them to reveal themselves, so for now, the Hippie Scientist is as much detail as I can muster. 

Besides, the Gold Mine is The Stoic Korean. I promise.

Forgetting How To Read...An Old Blog I Didn't Post Because I Was Probably Drunk and Fell Asleep

Its a pretty stellar thing to live in a place where a plethora of languages are spoken around you and where your job requires so much guest interaction that you are forced to learn those languages. The list of Korean words floating around in my brain is growing by the day, and while I haven't set my sights on Japanese yet, I can most certainly pick it out when I hear it and respond with the appropriate hello or goodbye. Learning to communicate without a common language is also a crazy-satisfying endeavor, because you realize, after struggling through instructions to people who speak one of three different languages that aren't English, and wrestling through a nighttime conversation with your roommate about where furniture in the room should go, that communication is bigger than a common language. Hurray.

The flip side to all that learning is a loss of the eloquence of your native language, and an overall simplifying of communication on the whole. I already find it appropriate to make whole sentences out of two words, "No more," "everytime" "ok," "Off today?" etc. A complex sentence sounds something like "You going dinner?" "Where are you from?" and "No fighting/running/diving," which is then followed by a very obvious no-n0 hand motion. I think a lot of us have a secret fear of degrading our English to a point of permanence. This carries over into reading, because I am finding my attention span is waning when I sit in front of my computer to catch up on the world. It may not just be the language issue though, but the constant kind of stimulus that this job requires is making it hard to engage in any other kind of continuous down time besides sleeping and drinking. Regardless I am suddenly an impatient child with ADD, and it is a miracle that I can even write this blog and an even bigger one if I bother to post it.

 

It doesn't end here. Not only are my English skills possibly sliding away, so are my skills at reading people, that, or my entire cultural competency meter is getting shaky. Specifically, while in Seattle I know how to not get hit on by guys, and they also have the sensitivity in Seattle to pick up the gay vibe and generally not hit on me. Mutual happiness. In Guam, where all the ladies harbor a slightly harder, get-shit-done look and attitude, the dyke/femme binary has to be thrown out the window. Pair that with the over friendliness and slight feminization of the men in Chammorro culture, and every interaction is one big grey area where you can't rate the amount of sexual interest existing in a conversation to save your life. 

Until they call you- at 3 in the morning. 

I was so full of codene for my hacking night coughs that I didn't even understand the noise blaring from the phone until the 3rd ring, and I was even more confused when I answered and a male non-korean voice asked for ME, using the correct pronunciation of my name. 

"Who is this?"

The unknown on the other line told me his name and it meant zero to me, and it continued to mean zero for all the times that he repeated it until at last he gave up and said, "Ah you don't remember me...from the surf party. I told you I would take you surfing. I don't usually call people at 3 am, I just wanted to make sure you didn't fake number me. Have a good night. I will call you tomorrow." 

The end.

What the fuck? It was brought to my attention by my friends after that party that maybe when I said I met someone that would take me surfing I had the wrong idea. Damn, I guess I did. Why didn't I fake number that guy? Because I really believed we were going surfing, I was at a god damned surf party, everyone there was in this surf club and that is the reason I went in the first place. Out here you can't just find a beach and surf on it if you are white, you have to be invited along with a local or just wait until you vacation in Hawaii- these beaches do not belong to us. The only way in is to know somebody, and holy hell that was what I was looking for. So i read it wrong, just like when I read my contract wrong and missed the part that said I had a drug test. When I met this guy he reminded me of someone that I work with out here, and was just totally friendly and chill  about taking some rando clubmates to good surf. Give him my number? SURE! And the poor fucker thought I was fake numbering him because I gave him an extension at a damn hotel. No no guys, really, I live in the hotel.

Anyway, I solved the guy mis-read by just never calling him back, and the only other awkward time that I had to talk to him was accidently answering the phone thinking it was a friend of my roommate, The Stoic Korean. He asked about dinner and I pussyfooted around the truth that I didn't want dinner, just surfing, and then "accidently" threw his number in the trash. As for my slowing demolishing reading and speaking skills, I probably can't just ignore those like I ignored the guy. I have to motivate back to writing and reading and editing and critical thinking, and I need to do it quick, or else learn another universal language fast to aid in my communication. 

Maybe I'll learn the language of dance.  (If Erika and Kate don't read this that reference is pointless)