What I Desire

It is yes and please and may I and even no

It’s stop and go, it’s no and ok but I might cry

It’s kissing pea-soup breath cause I’m not sure if it’s ok to ask him to brush his teeth. It’s waking up in the dead of night and knowing the difference between me and the night by the ache in my sternum, the one clearly indicating something didn’t work. It’s getting out of bed alone, while he snores on his side, cause I don’t know if it’s ok to ask for comfort and I don’t believe anything he could give would feel like that anyway.

It’s will you fuck me, and will it hurt, and can I hurt you, and can we hurt together,
Here in the dark, holding hands and nothing more.

What I desire are big, messy, intense conversations on our first real date cause I thought making out in someone else’s bathroom leap-frogged all that small talk shit. It’s here are my demons and will-you-make-love-to-me eyes while talking about boundaries, and being bad at them. It’s you inviting a friend into the date cause this shit just got too intense and there’s no way your going to fuck Mr. Touble-Knowing-My-Own-Boundaries now. It’s drinking wine on the peer cause it’s knowing how to make the best of it cause it’s knowing there’s more than one way to love a cat out of it’s skin and into my heart.

It’s Pride at the White Horse, oldest gay bar in the Bay Are, 6 people on the dance floor and only one person I really want to fuck, two if I count myself. It’s the same the feeling as the first time I ever danced with a boy. It’s loving that feeling and nurturing that feeling and defending that feeling against the history of how that first time ended. The bloody reality of cliché.

It’s personal dates before I knew there was such a thing. Walking along 16th from Mission to Castro past all the hipster bars holding my own goddamn hand cause I just had to go dancing tonight and this is the era of no-more-friends. It’s know how to dance alone in the black like of the Bar, in the crush of a crowd, dancing with my eyes close for 5 seconds every 5 minute and wishing I felt comfortable enough to never open them again.

What I desire is finally learning to dance with my eyes closed cause it’s finally learning to trust that enough people love me cause it’s finally learning there is a power in being spent, through and through and knowing I already gave all I have to give. Tonight I’ll just be and those who want can be with me.

What I desire is standing in circle with young people and being people. It’s telling them stories of gender fucking cause I know violence isn’t the only way to end a queer love story and mine is a love story. It’s them saying gay people are problems in our community and having the courage to say “no we aren’t but lets keep talking”. It’s offer queer 101 to homophobes too young to have made up their own minds and it’s them asking “can I be queer when I grow up” and having the privilege to say “yes”

What I desire is to say yes

A Poem

Here is a poem that came to me yesterday on the way to a date (which by the way was really nice.) Feel free to let me know what you think, what parts work for you and what parts don't. I'm especially curious about whether the title works?

Smoke

Sometimes you need little poison
Sometimes walking alone at night is lonely
And the ache inside feels like death awaiting
And sometimes you aren’t ready to give up on life
But sometimes life alone isn’t working
So Sometimes you just need a little poison

Cause sometimes you need to hurt yourself
Sometimes you need the pain out in the open
And cutting yourself isn’t what good-boys do
Isn’t what mamma’s-boys do
Isn’t what golden-boys do

Cause sometimes it makes marks they can see in dance class
And that’s not what pretty boys do in dance class
Cause than they look at you funny in dance class
Their eyes look confused in dance class
And their minds whirl with wonder in dance class
And then their eyes pop in dance class
And their minds judge in dance class
And they think “how sad you did that” in dance class
And “how sad you are that in dance class
In my dance class”
And sometimes you just need a little poison

Cause sometimes you need the pain on the outside
Even if just a hairs breathe away
Even if it hurts you
Even if it damages you
Even if it fucks you
And leaves you
Fallen, wet and rotting on a bed,
Brown and dirty quilt with flowers patterned
Never having meant to live much less die

Sometimes all you need is a little poison
Cause pain unseen is a wild child
With long nails
And sharp teeth
With lots of energy and no where to go
But through you

You see, sometimes a little poison’s the answer
Sometimes you need to suck it down
Suck it in
Suck it up
And hope it leaves you wholer than it found you
Cause cancer tomorrow
Ha
That sounds easy
That sounds outside
That sounds finite
Like you wish you were
Right
Now

And sometimes a little poison‘s the path.
Sometimes between death and feeling lies the bearable
And sometimes a little poison is the only way to go
To get
To get there
And sometimes a bearable hope is only found in the black dank smoke of a Luck Stripe
You etch across your lungs
Cause the stripes across your arm are unseemly
They declare your sick
Unhealthy

When really all you need is a little poison
Not to much to ask
Or expect
Certainly not sick
Maybe a little old school
But societies always appreciated an obscuring smoke
Over revealing wounds
Dark and smelly, much preferred
Keeps distinct their role in life
And your death

And sometimes you really just need a little poison
Sometimes uncertain friends aren’t the answer
Sometimes uncertain friends aren’t salvation
And won’t bring you closer to jeasus or muhamed
And sometimes friends don’t want to see
What lies behind the smoke
Cause sometimes they’d rather share a drag
Than risk being a drag
Or being dragged
Or feeling nagged
Cause sometimes we all have our own pain
And sometimes that pain’s an abyss
And sometimes I can’t get over mine
To save you from falling down yours
And sometimes the only hope we have is a little poison

But take hope
However you can
In a drag or a shag or even another fag
Falling down a similar hole
Cause it might not have a bottom
And we might not be able to fall together
But if you bang your story on your wall as you pass
I’ll bang on mine
And we can know we do not fall without notice
And we can rest assured that although the dark may swallow us
It need not consume us

And sometimes a little poison can be the largest salvation
And sometimes all you really need and all there really is and all there will ever be is a little poison
To share among friends

So suck it on up and pass it on down
And I’ll make a toast to the smoke
And the little poison we all sometimes need

Gay is Not the New Black, Why the LGBT Movement Needs to Get Off its Racist Asses and Deal with Race

This is a really excellent article about how LBGT racism is hurting our organizing efforts. Mostly dealing with the fallow-out around prop.8, the article takes the critique beyond the racist backlash of LGBT commentators fallowing the November or the failure of No on Prop.8 to reach out to communities of color. The analyzes the structural racism in our community and how it is crippling our organizing efforts and dividing our community.

I found it on the Facebook page Gay is Not the New Black.

Two choice nuggets:

"But Kate Kendall, (of) the National Center on Lesbian Rights,... “The reason [the Black community] was an easy target (around,” she bluntly explains, “is that there continues to exist among many white LGBT folks outright racism or at least a relentless otherness when it comes to people of color.” (P.2)"

...

“Lawrence Ellis is among the LGBT organizers of color who saw the failure Kendall describes up close. He says that as he watched the campaign unfold from his perch in the Bay Area’s grassroots, he got mad: “The thought came into my head, ‘I don’t want to be a part of the world they are creating.’ ” So he took off work and began building connections among the small gay and lesbian organizations already active in Black, Latino, Asian and Native-American communities. They looked at data showing Blacks and Latinos to be a trouble spot and rounded up big names, including people like Huerta, to speak out in ads.

When the campaign declined to air those ads, they turned their attention to doing get-out-the-vote work in their communities. “With two days notice, we got hundreds of volunteers,” says Ellis, suggesting what would have been possible had the No on 8 campaign resources been better used. “Any campaign has to make strategic choices, but not building a true coalition, where you get to leverage existing networks—that is a fatal flaw.” (P.4)”

Maybe Marriage isn't the Answer?

There’s a really interesting article at the Bilerico Project by Yasmin Nair about why we should abandon the marriage equality fight. I’m not sure quite where I feel about fighting for marriage equality, although I know it doesn’t feel like a fight for my rights. I like how Nancy Polikoff points out that although Prop. 8 was an attack on all lgbt people it doesn’t mean that marriage should be the national focus of the gay movement. Here are the nuggets from Nair’s piece (The comment section is actually impressively interesting):

The recent ruling will re-energize gay marriage advocates, but I suggest that we use it as an opportunity to drastically alter our course: Dump marriage now.

…

Today, the biggest rationale for gay marriage is that it would provide health care and benefits for spouses. Over the years, we have seen the gay movement withdraw its support for universal health care - which is what we fought for in the years of the AIDS crisis.

…

Over the last many decades, gays and lesbians were beginning to forge interesting and productive social networks outside marriage. Remember when domestic partnerships were actually seen as sexy and desirable and a really good alternative for those who didn't want to marry?

…

As we quibble about marriage, it's easy to forget that a rise in poverty and the lack of health care means that large segments of society are already denied their rights to decent education, housing, and a sense of security about their well-being.

…

As for the famous line about the 1000+ benefits that can only come through marriage - what about those who are excluded from those benefits simply because they're not married? And here's the basic question: Why should marriage guarantee any benefits that aren't available to those who don't want to marry? Why build up the power of the state to coerce people into marital relationships they don't want just so that they can get the basics like healthcare (sic)?

Image: http://www.familyequality.org/images/index_16.jpg

Labor Queer and Youth Online, Thoughts on my Mind

There are two major avenues of thought that are going on in my life currently.

The first is an investigation of queer notions of family and how we fight for them. By this I mean a definition of family that moves beyond the two adults, monogamous, kid oriented definition. I was really excited to hear that the SEIU just embraced a more queer friendly understanding of family and has committed to fighting for it. (PS. the article is from BEYOND (STRAIGHT AND GAY) MARRIAGE written Nancy Polikoff, a really excellent blog about these issues [I haven't read the book yet, but really want to])

Laws and policies that narrowly define “family” as limited to two legally-married adults of the opposite sex raising their biological children are often used against immigrants, people of color and the working poor who are more likely to live in family structures that differ from this model.

Narrow definitions of family exclude many relationships that our members call family, including relationships with individuals for whom we have primary care-taking responsibility and relationships with individuals with whom we share economic and emotional interdependence.

Government and employer-provided benefits should support individuals with day-to-day responsibilities to care for and financially support minor children and dependent adults in all family forms, and should protect interdependent adult relationships.

The second thought going around my mind is an interrogation of the norms for youth-adult contact within the youth services non-profit world. This is especially tricky in the context of social network site like Facebook and Myspace. I've been fallowing danah boyd for awhile now because of her really insightful work around youth use of social networking. Today she posted an article about when, why, and how teachers should interact with their youth online.

All too often, there is an assumption that when teachers interact with students out of the classroom, they have bad intentions. This breaks my heart because, for all of the fear, most of the teachers that I've met in my line of work have really meant well by their students and their engagement with their students has helped their students tremendously. I've heard so many stories of teachers intervening and helping kids who really need it. Stupid things like giving them lunch money or being there to listen to their woes or helping a first generation kid learn about college.

Two Talks Worth Listening to: Ownership and Cultural Gentrification

I’ve been listening to two talks (1, 2) from City From Below through Groundswell.

The first talk is the problems of architecture in late-capitalist society through an anarchistic analysis (I think.) The first presenter, Shiri Pasternak, offers a short historicized analysis of property in a colonial setting (focused on the US.) She makes an interesting comment about the difference of capitalist notions of land ownership, in which decision-making is based on the needs/desires of the landowners, versus the more indigenous (northwest Canadian) notion of the people belonging to the land.

Now I have no idea what this means to those people (don’t really know which indigenous people she works with exactly) but it reminds me of the Land Group (ask me about it if you don’t know.) It makes me think about how “ownership” is an inaccurate description and ineffective mental paradigm in which to understand our relationship to the land. Our relationship to the land (at it’s ideal) has been based on a historic understanding that that ecosystem has evolved around human intervention for centuries. That for better or worse humans are intimately intertwined into the healthy operation of the natural systems in that area and as “owners” we have responsibility to continue providing the “services” (god damn this language) we humans have provided for centuries. I wonder what this would look like in an urban context? What would it look like if people felt responsibility to there homes? What about to the buses/trains or to the parks or the sidewalk?

This also connects to a conversation I was having with Sherry Wolf (of the Socialist Worker [I know scary]) about the use of “queer” in the LGBTQ liberation movement. Within a discussion about the effectiveness of reclaiming the epithet “queer,” Sherry mentioned being done with the “language war” between “gay,” “LGBT,” and “queer,” that there is a point where if you are not doing things it does not really matter what you call it. This is very true, however the property discussion reminded me of the importance of understanding where our language falls short. In both personal-spatial relations (“ownership” being one form) and LGBT liberation the real point is that there are not words that concisely express those ideas. It took me 66 words to briefly explain the Land Group’s beliefs about its relationship to the environment. Imagine if there was a one word that got even close to what I’m talking about and this is why it remains important to continue to analyze our language and how it impacts our ability to talk about the work we do.

The second talk is about gentrification, pointing out how as artists our job in capitalism has become to brand places as “cool” and then sacrifice them to gentrification. The talk also discuses means of creative resistance. Using the community determined zoning struggles in Williamsburg as a point of departure, a woman from Not an Alternative (I can’t tell who she is [from Dave at Groudsweel, the speaker is Beka Economopoulos]) began by discussing the popular story of Williamsburg as hipster-fucked gentrifying neighborhood devoid of any other population, which is inaccurate. She then broke down the traditional narrative of hipsters as a perpetually displaced people moving from one neighborhood to another acting as the protagonists in the story of gentrification. Not that pleasant if you ask me.

Using the cult classic The Warriors, Not an Alternative and the Williamsburg Warriors designed posters that cast hipsters (and other community groups) in a new narrative of “rebel outcasts.” Through this they provided a vision of the community the hipsters could not only identify with, but could also lead to transformation of the hipster identity. I think this is a great example of the ways cultural production can be leveraged to build coalitions between people who in the popular understanding are advisories, gentrifying hipsters and longstanding community members of color.

One great nugget from the talk was the line “It was our sense that any narrative has the potential to be misread in a useful way.” She talked about the computer mockup that developers created to present the “new” Williamsburg, she pointed out that the faceless “anybody” quality of these marketing campaigns present an opportunity for us to engage and rewrite the narrative of these advertising in ways that highlight the alienation of the community inherent and leverage them to activate the community. In the end all this work points Not an Alternative to move outside of the identity of counter culture or “not mainstream”, and instead step into the role of cultural producers and stand with the communities against gentrification and other forms of oppression.

Some Thoughts on This the National Day of Silence

This is a letter I wrote to co-workers which I thought I would share with you all:

Dear co-workers, friends, and allies,

Yesterday a friend sent me a Facebook link about an 11-year old boy, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who hung himself on April 9th, after enduring bullying at school, including daily taunts of being gay. Needless to say this really hit me. As someone who has suffered LGBT-based violence and harassment, it pains me to hear our children continue to be threatened by this hatred and bigotry. Since today is the National Day of Silence, which tries to raise awareness about LGBT-bullying and harassment, I thought I would send out this invitation for further dialogue.
As K pointed out in our staff meeting, our lives continue to be affected by wide spread injustice and oppression. I have had a similar struggles to celebrate with a good friend who is engaging in growing the love between her and her male partner through marriage, while being barred from expressing my love through that same institution. There is amazing courage to be found in publicly committing one’s love to another person as there is in admitting to oneself and one’s loved one’s that in this society some of us don’t have that opportunity (at least not in the same way.)
This is an invitation to dialogue, so what do you think? What is your history of violence and oppression? How do you think we continue to struggle against this and all other forms of bigotry? How do we redouble and refine our efforts to help our young people find new ways, ways of love and compassion, understanding and opportunity for all people? These are a couple of the questions on mind this day of a heavy heart; and questions the Hegada teaches us are good things. I invite anyone to share with me any questions or ideas you might be having about LGBT issues (or anything else for that matter.)

If love, compassion, and hard work are the answers it is heartening to be daily in such inspiring company.

Thank you,
Eli