ways of healing: a chronological photo essay

get a spirit haus
get angry
get metal
get witchy
get drunk
get a role model
get tender 

what a terrible boy I would be

At some age I can't remember, my post-shower ritual included scrunching gel into my long, wavy hair and throwing it up in an old beach towel. Without visible head hair, one of the only signifiers of girliness on my relatively unadorned pre-teen bod, I would stare at my face in the huge rectangular mirror and think,

"What a terrible boy I would be! Such a heart-shaped, girly face."

 Instead of thinking "what a nice-looking girl I am!" I thought "What a terrible boy I would be."

This is not-insignificant. At whatever age that was,  I was already beginning to recognize that

a) being a teen girl is really fucking difficult and affords you very little respect (social capital, yes, because VIRGIN TEEN GIRLS ARE HOT WET HOLES JUST WAITING TO BE FUCKED!-- respect, no.)
b) and that maybe being a teen boy is hard but ultimately lends you more power in whatever sad parade it is we have which constitutes a human community, so perhaps I would like that better?
c) I was not ready for either and would maybe like to be a koala bear instead, or a book or a honeybee

What a terrible boy I would be!
What a terrible boy I would be!  
What a terrible boy I would be.

The only realistic option for me would be to make do with my body (the hand grenade). Before I was naive enough to think I could (or wanted to) bend "it" to my will, I tried not to think about "it" ("it" being my body, which I incorrectly understood to be a separate thing from me, m-e).

What a terrible boy I would be!
What a terrible boy I would be!  
What a terrible boy I would be! 

 

predatory lending praxis

It takes a while to not want all of the aesthetics that are lent to you by x,y,z boring old-hat kultural institutions. 

I was lent this one at age 12.



I thought I wanted to have mermaid hair until I was 23 (I didn't, all I wanted was a babybulldyke pillowprincess bratty blonde crop that is impossible to run your fingers through-- all the better of a base for long candy-colored Cher wigs)

I thought I wanted an arsenal of facepaint for DL drag-queening.

I thought I wanted to have dark, mysterious aesthetic vibes (I didn't, I wanted to be a sunny, short-haired, short-tempered Manic Pixie Dykemare Girl)

I thought I wanted sweat-free, hair-free, musk-free armpits (I didn't, I just wanted everyone to leave me alone)

You think you want all of these things, until one day you find yourself sitting in a seminar called "Perversion" on the 7th floor of a building in Manhattan, reading a short story about a girl who kills rabbits with her father and then wears the skins around.

Then you read some Irigaray.

Then you read some Freud.

Then you read more Freud.

Then you make friends with artists who don't even call themselves that, they just are because if they didn't make things they wouldn't know what to do and would probably die (alive to their banks but dead to the world)

Then you make friends with a fat Canadian genius-babe who is quite obviously a high priestess/radiant ball of healing blue light/angel from another plane of existence, and she teaches you that being fierce and being tender are not mutually exclusive

Then a thought slowly starts to slug into your head:

I don't want any of the aesthetic ideas that have been lent to me. But where from here?

Now the fun part begins!