Category: navel gazing

Posted on

Gen X Is Sick of Your Bullshit

Wow it’s true:

Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?

Whatever. It’s cool.

I especially like this bit:

But that’s okay. Generation X is used to being ignored, stuffed between two much larger, much more vocal, demographics. But whatever! Generation X is self-sufficient. It was a latchkey child.

Generation X is used to disappointments.

Oh yes we are.

Posted on

& So It Begins…

… Football season, that is. For those of you who don’t live in Wisconsin or in some other place where football is de rigeur, I’m not sure you can understand exactly how awesome a beast football fandom is. I manged to avoid it for 40 years of my life, happily. I’ve never liked the violence of football; I’ve never been comfortable in a room where people are yelling violent things at a TV screen. It’s just not my cup of tea, & never has been. That’s not to say that I don’t attend Superbowl parties – I do, and always have, because the ads and the Half-Time show are entertaining – and I’ve certainly decided to watch with friends who love the game but didn’t have anyone else to watch with. I know how the game works, for the most part, or did: I used to play football, tomboy that I was.

I’m glad that it gives some people joy & camaraderie. The Packers, for instance, are actually owned by the people of Wisconsin, which I think is a damned cool thing. There is something to be said for a sport that helps people bond. There’s a lot of to be said for the lessons of winning and losing graciously, and learning how to put ego aside for the sake of a group effort.

But I am still a Gender Studies professor, and it’s nearly impossible for me to shut my critical eye. It’s not that I don’t have guilty pleasures – porn is certainly one of them – that I have conscientious qualms about enjoying. But I can’t say I partake in anything so mainstream, so culturally-validated, so intensely insisted upon. And I certainly don’t insist that anyone else who might have objections to porn like the stuff in order to hang out with me.

People might assume – because of who I am, because of what I do – that I’m somehow immune to feeling left out. I’m not. Since I think a lot too about bullying, and about how queer kids are often made to feel like they don’t fit in, I’ve been paying close attention to the things that make me feel both lonely and isolated here. I’ve considered doing an “It Gets Better” video, but this past year was not one that made me feel like it does. No, in new, acute ways, even as an adult, even if you’re known as a bit of a firebrand, a crank, or eccentric in whatever way, standing down peer pressure is still difficult. Sometimes it taxes me in ways that sadden me; I would have expected, by now, not to feel that kind of sting. But I do. I wish I didn’t. Continue reading “& So It Begins…”

Posted on

In Mimicry of Life

It is hard to describe the sheer brutality of mourning, the distractedness: it will be a miracle if I hold onto my wallet & keys for a month; it’s as if half of my head isn’t there at all. I am astonished by how little I have to work with; I stop talking mid-sentence, mid-thought, and don’t even notice. And it’s not just memory, scenes of remembrance, it’s the emotions of them, too: how clear what it was like being taught to ride the yellow Schwinn I received for my 7th birthday; my dad was only 48 then and that seems miraculous, somehow, in retrospect. I wish my 42 year old self could talk to his 48 year old one. I recall so many moments, so many of them blurring together, like the numerous rides to my favorite record store when I was a teenager, which was called Slipped Disc but which he called Broken Back, and suddenly too the memory of which awful car we owned at the time, and the mismatched sneakers I was wearing, on purpose of course, and even what I had written on the thick white rubber wall of the right one. The tiniest details come back that I had wholly forgotten: how the fabric of one car’s interior had come undone and hung like some kind of harem tent.

It is astonishing how each detail opens up a hundred more, and so on & so on, until you’re lost in an ocean of it: not bad, not good, but absolutely overwhelming.

So if you see me looking around distractedly for something, or just standing stock still, it may be that I’m remembering some shirt my dad was wearing in 1979, or it may be that I’m looking for my wallet, or my keys, or maybe, even, I will just be remembering my own name or looking at my own hand & noticing, for the first time, how much my fingers are like his.

Posted on

Friday Cat Blog: Aeneas.

Look at those eyes, would you?

What a beauty. Rest in Peace, SpideyCat.

The other day I really saw the pile of prescriptions and pill bottles,the syringes, the plastic bags and pages of Discharge Instructions. My poor boy went through a lot of meds in a dozen weeks. That was when the tumor on his leg really went nuts, & we had to decide to amputate or not. We did, which is probably what gave us the two months we had with him. I think it might have been quicker otherwise, because it was an aggressive cancer.

But it was in late December that he first had a thing on his leg, and because it appeared so overnight, we thought it was a sprain. We didn’t even wait to take him to the vet. We did x-rays, blood tests. The blood work turned up nothing weird – which, interestingly, it never really did. Our vet here couldn’t find anything, so I sent the x-rays and blood work to a vet friend in NJ and she didn’t find anything either. Because it turned up out of the blue, it looked like a sprain, and everything you read about cats & sprains is that they take a long time to get better, because cats tend not to rest. Now, I feel stupid for waiting as long as we did for this thing that wasn’t a sprain to heal. We iced it, and it got smaller; other days it was bigger, which is what you’d expect of a sprain on a patient who couldn’t be told not to jump up on the sink. I feel stupid for not realizing it wasn’t a sprain sooner, but then I think that even if we had caught it sooner, there was probably another in him ready to go.

Still, it’s hard not to wonder if we could have done anything differently. Really, really hard. & That’s the thing about parenting, furry critter or human: you do your best, & sometimes that’s not enough, & the powerlessness & pain that causes is pretty fucking tremendous.

So I’m happy the 6 months is over, but terrifically angry the 11 years is. It’s very hard to find balance in that equation. He put me to bed every single night – climbed up when I got into bed and got under the covers to be petted and when I was just dropping off he would leave quietly, stepping around my head or Rachel’s. I’d hear the soft thump of him jumping from bed to floor, and go to sleep smiling. Every single night for 11 years until the last few months. How do you not miss that kind of gentle loyalty & affection? It is especially hard because Endymion was always Rachel’s cat, as is Aurora. Aeneas was entirely mine. Of course I take care of the other two, but it’s not the same. I used to call Aeneas my shadow, my heart, my momma’s boy. He was my own Great Stone Face, my tiny Buster Keaton. He loved me so much – sat on my desk next to me for hours, usually in my inbox, which he didn’t really fit in.

Because they don’t speak, you always have a flawless, empathetic relationship with them, sensing moods but never knowing. He was such a stoic – the vets were regularly amazed over these past months at how high a pain tolerance he had, & how much poking he tolerated, too – and I cried on him too many times. He’s been my deepest friend for all these years, when others were busy, or perplexed, or judgmental, or too tired, when I didn’t want advice but only company. Trans people out there know what I’m talking about, and so do all of you others who have been through it in one way or another, who know what it’s like to come home at the end of a day whether you’re 14 or 40 and feel like you just don’t fit into the human race very well. These furry kids remind us that if you have food, a place to live, and someone warm to sleep near, or even two out of three, life is good.

When I didn’t even know how I felt or what I was thinking, he made me laugh and smile. He was a sweet, sweet kid. Some days, I have longed to be the kind of person who can live in shallower water, but Aeneas made swimming in the deep currents something like joyful.

Posted on

Two Tune Tuesday: The Pretenders

First: no listening until you go VOTE.

I have always been only a little bit Chrissie Hynde fan, but recently she’s hit me exactly the right way: every song, every lyric, every everything is just right. Maybe I had to get old enough to get her delicate mix of melancholy & anger, but either way: these two songs are very much the two moods I feel like I’ve been switching between for a year or so.

i shot my mouth off & he showed me what that hole was for she sings, which has to be one of the ruder lyrics ever sung by a woman: changing tires is slang for oral sex.

Posted on

Personas

I’ve always joked that my using a pen name connects me to the trans community in a way I never expected: I have an “old” name and a current name, and people get irritated if they feel I haven’t told them my “real” name. Transitioned people tend to get similar questions, albeit the gendered version. But this whole idea of having a “real” name is a funny one to me: Helen is my real name, in that it’s what people call me, and also it’s my legal middle name.

But the naming issue is really the tip of the iceberg, where the issue is more about having a “real” life compared to a persona’s life, and while I’m sure many people experience and understand this idea now, what with online handles and Second Life avatars, there is something about the aspect of being a public person that’s specific:

This fictional version of you is additionally compounded by the fact that, if you’re a writer, the version of you they’re building from isn’t the experience of you (as in, you’re someone they know in real life), but from the fiction you write and/or the public persona you project, either in writing (in blogs and articles) or in public events, such as conventions or other appearances. The fiction one writes may or may not track at all to one’s real-world personality or inclinations, and while one’s public persona probably does have something to do with the private person, it’s very likely to be a distorted version, with some aspects of one’s personality amped up for public consumption and other aspects tamped down or possibly even hidden completely.

All of which is to say these fictional versions of one’s self are to one’s actual self as grape soda is to a grape — artificial and often so completely different that it’s often difficult to see the straight-line connection between the two.

I might posit grape juice instead of grape soda, but you get the idea.

Posted on

Wicked

I went to see Wicked tonight – not intentionally to avoid football, although that was a benefit – and it was pretty damned amazing. That said, the story line goes: odd, earnest woman who doesn’t fit in grows up, falls in love with a handsome man who seems to be shallow and happy but is actually quite sad and serious, and he in turn is enamored with the pretty, but they do finally get together, but handsome man is magically transformed in order to save his life, and the new couple have to go into exile and leave their beloved city.

It sounds vaguely familiar but I can’t quite put my finger on why it seems so eerily familiar… wait… no. Hrm. It certainly does remind me of something.

(Now someone hand me my broom.)

Still & all, it wasn’t the easiest play in the world to watch at this point in my life: fitting in has never been my strong suit.

Posted on

Two Tune Tuesday: What You (Didn’t) Say

I heard the Toby Lightman on an episode of Bones the other day & the lyrics leapt out at me — as lyrics will when they are so close to what you’re already feeling. In looking for a song to go with it, I wanted Elvis Costello’s cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and found instead Via Tania’s — and I’d never heard of her before but was pretty stunned with how gorgeous and different her cover was.

Everyday is a struggle between what I wanna say
And what I should keep to myself
And the words that manage to leave my lips
Don’t hurt me, but they hurt everyone else Continue reading “Two Tune Tuesday: What You (Didn’t) Say”

Posted on

Update: Life in WI

Before I came to Wisconsin, the most common use of the word “packer” in my life was for these little dudes. Not so much anymore. Even the local gay bar is showing the game tonight. I find myself more cautious around the subject of football than of Christianity.

I have not seen any live music that wasn’t jazz, classical, or world music. No punk, no alt, & definitely no pscyhobilly.

I find myself talking about the envelope of warm air I can create around my head & face with the clever use of a large hat & my coat’s hood. I have actually thought, “Oh, 15’s not so bad” when getting dressed to walk to my office.

For the first time in my life, when people find out my name is Kramer, they assume I’m German — not that I’m Jewish. Similarly, this is the first year I was not wished a Happy Chanukah.

After speaking with a woman from Chicago visiting this past week I realized I have not had a conversation with a woman in dreds and/or mudcloth since I moved here.

I have considered invitations to go snowshoeing (but haven’t yet).

I found out that ducks eat fish. Who knew? I thought they ate bread/grasses & assumed they were vegetarians.

I’m sure there will be more, but it really is a pleasure to discover that life really isn’t the same elsewhere, despite mass commercialism, cable, & the internet.