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)

Marking Our New Territory With Drunken Stumbles

Let me cut to the chase now: I got wasted as fuck last night and it was soooo good.

 Fittingly, last night marked the end of my training and the eve of the true start of me as a worker bee at this establishment. Not only was I about to enter the ranks of routine, but we, "The Fab Four" were disbanding, and after yesterday we were no longer required to be up each others asses everyday as the FNGs (Fucking New Guys. Yea, they really say that here.). We were warned that our first steps alone in this world without each others hand to hold was going to be like that first day of junior high in that episode of Boy Meets World where Cory and Shawn don't realize until school begins to take place at an alarming rate around them that they no longer have every class together. It was said that we would scramble to find each other as we lost our footing, thinking we couldn't handle life without our fellow new hire buddies to surround us, but that eventually life would pick up and maybe we wouldn't even miss each other.

Bah. We had an easy way to deal with all that. At the end of our training the 4 of us just went out to this big surf party on top of a club and got so stinkin' shitty drunk, in that bonding-buddy-forever kind of way, and constructed enough moments of hilarity we were nearly required to find each other for recall the next morning. Despite the fact that we were no longer in each others spaces, we had a blast last night that forced us to seek each other out, laugh and retell our stories to the point of avoiding having to miss each other at all. And let me just say that getting me to remember all of last nights events was a group effort that took all day. 

Its silly to talk about the possibility of missing your friends when you all live on the same 2 floors of a hotel, but it is absolutely the reality that if you don't find reasons to see each other you may go days before re-running into your favorite clubmate/mates, unless you attach to each other at the hip bf style. Which is sort of what we do. Now. 

Day one on our own and we are already up each others asses again, spreading gossip, talking shit, laughing our heads off about the nights events and just overall loving life. The "Fab Four" (our boss came up with it not us) has been here for two weeks now and something is starting to click, we are getting enveloped into the pace of life at this place and to the pace of each other. I've gone out drinking a few times since I have been here, but last night was by far the first time that felt familiar, like I knew the pathway home, or at the very least, the path to the nearest Fujiichiban at 2 am. What makes home? Knowing where the drunk-folk food is at? Maybe. I mean, this is only temporary home, I still have home in the Northwest waiting for me, which is home in the bigger scheme.

But this for-now set up is gaining all the familiarity and warmth of a place that I want to be, and it probably isn't because of a late night noodle place or free drinks at the bar. I think it is because of a dose of karma that I am receiving on credit that led me to this fabulous set of ladies that make up some kind of cracked-out-coconut-style Sex and the City....Although, with the statuses between the  4 of us equaling zero sex for various reasons of perpetual singleness or the practice of that gross word "monogamy," a better suited title for the story of the 4 of us might be "Masturbation and Micronesia." 

I'll let you know when we buy the rights.

A little angst

Some days I don't miss it, I could be so busy that my body doesn't have the energy to yearn for that particular sweet pleasure. I am also doing an ok job of training myself to not think about first thing every morning, to wish for it before bed in all its hedonistic delight, and to forget about the sneaky excitement when it is done in the afternoon. Uhhhhh- right, not thinking about it. But sometimes, or maybe more honestly, often times, the power of desire is all consuming and my faculties are overwhelmed with a vicious need to get stoned. 

Substitute fucked for stoned and I feel pretty much the same way, but as of yet, I am not totally there with blogging about what I miss about sex. In reality I could write twice as much about that, but for now on that subject, I am leaving my intense sexual angst to swirl around on the inside, left to manifest in the few precious little moments that are handed down by god when my roommate stays at her boyfriends house, or when i am off for the afternoon and she is nowhere to be found....I will side track to say that the free nature of clubmates moving from room to room with doors typically remaining unlocked leaves for a slightly stressful session of angst relieving, and that- no no, I was talking about pot, not this.....

As far as my friend Marijuana goes, the yearning is not of the addicted smoker kind, because I was one of those in high school and the kind of addiction that comes from smoking cigarettes is a beast of its own. I read in some Legalize Marijuana literature that pot is about as addictive as caffeine, and my biased opinion is to agree. The careful balance of necessity and delight that exists with my morning cups of coffee is on par with how I feel about an evening bowl: they may not be basic essentials, but life is only better and more relaxing upon their inclusion. Not only to I love pot, but I work a job that nearly requires a weed unwind after a shift, and live on an island in an atmosphere that supports imbibing of the Bob Marley persuasion. The big drawback is the drug testing and the still mysteriously unmentioned results of mine. The consensus is that they are going to stay mum about the results of my test until I pull something that requires some extra ammo for them to get rid of me; basically, if they keep liking me I'm in the clear, but what that probably means is that I should stay damn careful about smoking for the duration of my contract.

So I'm fucked, and not in the good way. I mean sure, I could use break from pot, my intake during my first post college year probably accounted for more smoke in my lungs than all of college put together, but it also accounted for the biggest mellowing out my intense personality has ever made it through. Thank you ganj', and now it is gone. I recognize that there are bigger problems in the world than whether this girl gets to get high at any old time of the day, but it points to something more significant that I had a feeling would happen after being here for a little bit, and that is missing home. I miss Seattle already. I miss an evening with my friends, I miss sitting on a couch and lighting up a bowl and then getting lost in wherever your mind goes in that stoned little space you created until the night is over. Ah man, I miss everything smelling and sounding and tasting so good, and o fuck FEELING so good. Touch IS the best one, and right it is still good without M.J., but o shit isn't it rad with it? Ok, maybe I'm rambling a little here, and maybe I am crossing my physical pleasures a bit too much for the time, but man o man. 

Learning experience. Learning experience. Learning experience.

Dressing Like A Lady, and Everything Else That I Suck At

In situations that you partake in "for the experience" (and good lord am I tired of that phrase) the selfish westerner often reflects on the breadth of experiences around them in terms of what they learned about themselves. That, for better or worse is true of the experience that I am having right now, and the positive or negative nature of that self reflection vacillates everyday. The other night, for example, I was singing my own praises after cracking up a group of 4 on the 2nd floor for hours talking about my childhood as a Catholic, coming out to my family and reenacting the particularly heinous nuances of other clubmates and so forth. On the next day I felt worthless and stupid realizing that I don't know how to dress myself- like, at all, and suddenly the 9th cloud that I was floating on the night before was deflated and uninteresting. 

Admitting that I have zero body of knowledge when it comes to dressing like a girl has little to do with being gay, and more, I think, to do with pure laziness and a lack of visual creativity. I am also from Seattle, where the name of fashion is function, and it is appropriate to spend all night in a bar still wearing your cycling shoes. I have never been particularly over-the-top feminine, petite, cute, soft, or whatever other adjectives you might apply to dressy-tanks and short-shorts wearing girls, which I have been able to shrug off previously; and the type of self-learning that I expected to do here was not of this nature. But that is the learning part I suppose: expect the unexpected and laugh at yourself with your big revelation is just that you are a sucky dresser. 

I learned this due to the evening dress code here, that basically allows guys to dress more casually than women, and I had a mini freak out thinking that I wouldn't be allowed to dress as as casually as the boys. An emergency KMart trip, a borrowed strapless bra, and some overall female backstage support helped me get through my first couple of uncomfortable dress up nights here, but I have been living in a constant state of fear that I will run out of anything acceptable to wear. It is already getting better as I watch all the local lesbians stake claim over their long shorts, their pressed collared shirts, and their stud diamond earrings. Granted, locals hires walk around here with more ownership and leeway than off island hires, but if these ladies can rock the boy dress code, than I think that I can too. I'm loosening up a little and realizing I don't have to look uber femme to look presentably for dinner. 

But more learning comes in here, because as it turns out, even as far as presentable dyke attire goes I'm still pretty out in left field. Everything that I own contains a layer of permanent sweat, rain and grime from Seattle living, and all of the nice clothes I could have afforded this summer were washed down by $5 pints of beer, which left me a little too hippy for some of my acceptable nicer shirts. I wear the same two pairs of shorts from Target nearly every day, and my favorite t shirts number in the count-on-one-hand category. Like I said, it isn't about being gay, its about being a bad dresser, which is why I freaked and bought some lady clothes, because I don't have any of my usual community here to say yay or nay to boy-cut dress shirts and belts that go with large pairs of plaid pants. 

So I suck. Ok. Maybe I will learn and I wont suck when I come back, but that's probably a stretch, and I'm ok with it. I am figuring out though, the truth in things that I didn't believe in before: that there are occasions which rightfully call for a presentable appearance, that jewelry is not always superfluous and wasteful spending (although beer might be), that shoes do make an outfit, and that blow dryers are necessary, even in Micronesia.

 I'm working a job where I get to be a kid all day but I'm still learning to tweak all these little things to make me more adult, or at least cleaned up enough to look like one. 

O yea, other things I suck at....Or do too much

1. Talking shit. I can't stop. New places, new gossip, new conflicts- it is never ending. 

2. Eating. My relationship to my hips is always going to be a struggle.

3. Calling/Writing people back. Some of this isn't my fault, I really don't have time to do anything.

4. Reading the fine print (see last entry). 

5. Going to bed early.

6. Taking the time to write things down. There is just so much, and so little time.

7. Saving money. I left broke, and I will return broke. 

Stoner Tales

Even though I left Seattle on Tuesday afternoon and it is now Thursday evening, I haven't even been in Guam for 24 hours. I am damn exhausted....So much learning and listening today, including the hard reality that in Guam the guy Clubmates always lose weight and the girls gain it--well there goes my plan of losing 9 mo. of beer weight with 6 mo. of island living. Although, based on an unofficial pact, I have to stick to my commitment to lose the half rack hanging out on my hips like an unwanted crying child. I shall prevail.

We drove out (new clubmates and our assigned training leader) in the back of a PIC owned Toyota Tacoma (and yes I mean in the back, this isn't Washington) to Gun Beach to watch the sunset. I will spare this blog the boring details of beautiful soft sand and a slowly fading sun, because yea yea, that is the same anywhere. But I will say that I enjoyed it as much as possible and kicked myself for not bringing my camera, since my stay in Guam is contingent on my passing a drug test, and in this test a positive answer is not a good one. 

O yea, that's right, I took a piss test this morning, less than 48 hours after getting stoned with my regular party of imbibers after drinking away my last night in town. Surprise? Nope, it was in my contract, I just can't read anything longer than a page apparently. I am having a hard time deciding if they are actually going to fire me- one guy fromm Saipan was given a retest, and I keep hearing mixed reviews on how hard line the drug policy is. I'm thinking, it really comes down to whether they like you and how much they need you. Unfortunately for me, September is the slowest month of the year, so I might be quite disposable. 

I can't even guess what is about to happen. Of course, I drank enough water to piss h2o and rehydrate Mars to support the point of supporting life again, but does that really dilute the TCH that is SEETHING through my body? hmmm. Well, I'm either going to remember this as my first-night-freak out, or I'll be looking for a new job, bumming a couch with my brother's friends, and returning in a month or so. Right now I don't care which, because at this point I have no more control of the outcome, I'm just rolling with the punches. I'm learning that I come out alright if I take that course of action. 

Blinded By the bubbles: A microbrew addiction

Alcoholism, a sad an destructive disease when out of control, is thought presently to exist in individuals due to a predisposition. Yet no one can really argue that societal and familial circumstances such as: a lack of economic success, disillusionment through war, bad domestic and foreign policy, a downwardly mobile society, a lack of personal autonomy and freedoms, personal loss, and a general sense of doom probably don't help ease a society or individual from the escape of alcoholism. 

We grow up living with the cliches that surround "admitting is the first step" and staying "clean and sober," knowing about an alcoholics reality, but as members of the educated, liberal classes, the thought that our microbrews have a hand in our own personal over consumption, never stretches to anything more serious than how fat these hefty meals-in-a-pint are going to make us. Yep, we love out microbrews- I was ushered into that snobby culture at 17, when beer was previously $2 for 40 ounces and a shoulder tap away.  Pre 17, and good beer was judged not on its flavor but on its alcohol content, and something as strong as Steel Reserves was as classy as it got, because damn it got you drunk fast. All it took was one visit to a UW college house for a night of drinking at the beginning of my senior year, when those cultured-college-folk shook a pitying head at my reach for, what was it, maybe a half rack of Coors Light? A shadow of confusion on my part and then Duncan, the crusading liberator of my beer-quality-ignorance, simply pointed to that other QFC beer section, the shelf full of 22 and 24 ounce bottles of pure, bitter, microbrew goodness. In quantity you would never have called me an alcoholic, 1 or 2 of those powerful brews was all I ever needed, but a habit was formed that would be fostered by the 4 following years of tasting and falling for every amber, blond, ipa and pale ale that found itself in my reach.

 To that love of microbrews, and the deeply entrenched urban-liberal practice it is to indulge in those local treasures, add the drinking culture that surrounds any sports played beyond high school or college (hello..."my drinking team has a rugby problem????") and before you know it, one would never think that drinking 7 days a week, polishing off a 6 pack of Dead Guy with dinner, making plans to drink at 11 and lasting until the evening, spending money on beer instead of shoes, calling a hangover a regular Sunday morning, or Monday, or Tues..., is anything short of the absolute norm. 

Am I driving at the point that I am an alcoholic? No, not necessarily. Am I one of the heavier drinkers in my little world, quick to the bar counter, the pitcher, the group shots, the second, third and fourth helpings of beer, poured with a steadily trained hand to avoid too much head? Yes, yes I am. Have a been able to count a day where alcohol did not enter my system this summer or even this year? No. Is a night off still a night that included 2 or 3 shared 22 ounces of beer indulgence with dinner? Yes. 

It is a lot, and last night, a wall was hit. It wasn't just me that hit the wall, but also the company I found myself with at the K&K, a bar I've called home since I was sneaking in to pretend I knew about Stella, Hoegaarden, and Smithwicks at 19. The pithy beach scene they had set up inside was a stark and dismal contrast to the August rain outside, and all I could think was that it was a terrible joke to pretend that we were somewhere warm. Depressing. The three of us, over beers we couldn't drink (myself finally succumbing to just water), sank lower and lower toward the glasses that we couldn't finish, tired of the weather, tired of the bar, tired of drinking.  

We left the bar contemplating what we began to think was the reduction of our existence: a bottle, a pint, and memories that grew foggier with each sip. I don't know if any of us explicitly felt that we might call this a "problem," but if 1 or all of us was thinking it, no one was going to say it out loud. "The first step is admitting that you have a problem." In the state of self pity and passing depression that the 3 of us found ourselves in, and the inevitable rugby playing (or softball in 1/3 of our little party) and bar attending years of our 20s that we each had left to weigh our heavy moods against, no one would verbalize the word "problem." 

We walked home and talked about the weather.

In Dreams

I slept poorly last night, possibly a result of too much drinking and fried food, which has been a regular sleep-disrupting pattern of mine of late. I also had a horrendous headache, which may or may not have been drinking induced, but it kept me weaving in and out of consciousness through the sleeping hours and as a result, I woke after every snippet of a dream allowing myself to remember last nights dreams much more vividly than a typical seemingly dreamless slumber.

I dreamt about Samuel in a new way last night, and there was something so prophetic about the dream, it is hard to remind myself that dreams are a very rational, explainable set of images that randomly course through my living brain as a result of my subconscious. What mean is: does it always HAVE to be “just a dream?” Normally, I dream that Sam has come back, that he looks exactly as he did when he passed away, and that we all know he hasn’t come to stay- that he is about to have a brain hemorrhage again. Possibly the way anyone who has been through something traumatic dreams constantly of the trauma, I dream that I am constantly on the verge of re losing my precious brother.

In this dream there was Samuel not Sam- maybe a 6 or 7-year-old boy with the blondest of blond bed head, a little yellow pajama outfit, and sleep and pillow marks written all over his sweet young face. He was a beautiful, golden boy, and nothing could have made my heart swell more than to see him, except that he was sick. His body looked weak.

Beneath his left eye were the red dots that he came out of the hospital with when he had his first brain hemorrhage, and his eyes were tired and heavy. Sam was always the one that we worried about the most: the most close calls, the most emergencies, and here he was, visibly sick. At the same time that my heart was singing to see him there, it also hung heavy with dread.

My baby brother.

Unable to understand why he came to me, to us, at this age, and unable to know how long I had with his sick body, I threw myself into the moment, into the chance to hold him and love him as hard as I could make my body love; I embraced him, pulled him into my arms and held as if there had always been this many years between us, as it appeared there was now, and as if this was how I had always held my baby brother.

I just held my brother.

This child version of his body rested so peacefully into me, like the only thing he could have come back for was to lie in my arms. In his restful state he looked serene and I smelled his young hair and touched delicate, yet already long and slim fingers. As I held him I knew that there was no way he could or would stay, and I sensed, from the initial knowing look and tiny smirk that he gave me, that Sam not only knew he couldn’t stay, but knew some bigger secret. I could feel his frail body getting weaker and sicker by the minute, even in the peace and comfort of my embrace. Before I knew it, I was holding Samuel, a baby, in my arms, and Samuel the little boy was gone. As a dawning of understanding began to take hold of me in my dream, I rushed to talk to him, to hear him talk back to me, before he couldn’t anymore.

“Samuel I love you. I understand that you will always be near me, I know that you are always here. Please brother, talk to me when you are there, because I miss you so much every minute of every day….Tell me how to keep you close to me…..”

No longer a developed enough body to speak, I was still able to feel and understand his messages to me…..He was fine. Life is circular. He had to come back like this, but he couldn’t come back for good. Yes, sometimes it was scary for him too, but really, he was close by and good. Everything around him was good. He didn’t know what happened next anymore than the rest of us, but he was sure it was working out…..He had faith….

Most of his words and love I could feel rushing through me, messages of comfort, strength and love that I was awed to receive from my little brother, who in the end became my teacher.

As my brother aged further in reverse I began crying, and as tears fell from my face to my hands, the baby was gone and all that was left were stars, the earliest glimmers in a parent’s heart for a child they would one day love: Samuel. The tiny stars danced on my palms, some were bright with light, some like humble, strong little starfish, and I couldn’t tell whether their universal origins were from the sky or the sea- maybe both.

I held my brother and his most beautiful spirit in my hands.

“I understand Sam!” I sobbed to him, resisting the urge to hold onto him harder. “It is circular. No beginning or end. You are always here, always you. Like seasons. Like the rotation of the globe, always renewing……I don’t know if I will see you again in the seasons of this world starting over, or if it will be when I go to where you are… But Samuel, I will know you. I will know you the moment I see you again, because I know you now in my hands…You are my brother, there could never be a place or time in this universe where I will not know you immediately. You can go now brother, because I will know you again when I see you.”

Sam’s words. Not mine. I was able to understand them because the patient and generous spirit that I held let me. He could leave me now and I could let him, because I would and will know him when I meet him again, and even now, he’s just not-so-far-away.

They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? ----Dostoevsky

Coherent? Bah, I doubt it

My first incentive for starting a blog came from gay stuff- I like gay stuff, and I like to write about it. Prompted by a couple of friends that believe in me, probably more than I deserve, I dreamt of a place to write down the ever-entertaining turmoil of my delightful, mostly-dyke posse, from the couples who are hanging up their hats, to the singles taking off their pants. It is like free brain stimulation of the most egregiously WRONG kind for me: watching my friend's lives at work and stealing it all for a petty blog. 

 

But damn so much fun. 

Think of where it could all go, the bounty is astounding really. My first thought was to try, likely pitifully, to describe the lesbian aversion to labels, and to comment on the fact that our staunch "non-labels" more deeply engrain us with those forbidden labels, rules, and roles for one another. In THAT blog would contain some kind of example of a conversation, a "non promise" conversation, where two dykes feel each other out for their future compatibility, always referring to their future, imaginary children/careers/dogs/pairs of keens as the "ifs and when" and in "I know I wont be ready for years, BUT-" terms. Sneaking sideways glances at one another they would each emit a series of examples of what they want, thrown out into space side-by-side, and tested for durability against the other's dreams. No labels, no promises, just a conversation that will be read into by both women as a marker, and which will mean the world and be the plan for the duration of the relationship, and carrying even greater emotional significance at the onset of the break up. Maybe that isn't just lesbians, maybe that is just relationships in general, although my thought is that due to the intensity of our domesticate-plan-domesticate-plan-organize-settle-domesticate-talk-it-out-plan-organize-settle-socialization, this conversation between two women often becomes a beast of its own....Ok so that was the start of one idea....

Then, despite all my plans, in true lazy-assed-Kaisa form, I totally forgot or neglected to get with the program. Many, many ideas that seemed great while I was stoned, made their way into my waterproof notebook, but have yet to materialize into the essays that I dream for them to be. Finishing a writing project in general has recently seemed a hopeful endeavor. That was, until this god damn one-year marker of my beautiful brother's passing, where suddenly all that fucking angst and sadness is bubbling up inside me, and I'm stuck in this privacy-less hell called 9007 NE 58th st., desperately seeking an outlet. Hence, the blog. So maybe it will be some gay stuff, and some brother stuff, maybe some travel stuff, the occasional rant...ok, so the everyday rant....it's hard to say. In any case, I feel like my brain is cranking in all these different chambers, with 10,000 thoughts and perspectives that my undiagnosed adult add can't sort out. 

Maybe a blog can to it for me. 

Something new.

Trying out the blog thing maybe.

 Prompted by the fact that when it hits myspace, my parents forward what I write to everyone they know. 

I don't plan on giving them this web address yet.