To My Sweet Pea,

I haven’t closed my eyes in 52—no 55 hours. I see her sweet face, cupped in between my clenched nails. Water everywhere, swallowing her little heart. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry, sweet pea.

Please believe me when I say that I tried to purge myself of this vile attraction. I never wanted to love her the way I did. That bouncing ballerina: twirling her tutu, dancing through my fingers, slipping back into my dreams.

I wasn’t always like this, though.

I was a knight on a reconnaissance of the playground every day. We were all knights marking our territory. This—the safe zone encircled by our imaginary fences—was our country.

For years, our gang followed Charlie, an older boy from the junior high. He was idolized by all of us. Charlie had, on multiple occasions, invited a select few to join him on secret endeavors. Peeking from between two scrawny shoulders, I was never chosen. I carried a curse between my legs—one that would render me useless to Charlie. That was until I turned twelve.

That August, Charlie hopped off his bicycle and met us at the old pavilion behind the elementary school. He whistled me over. My heart galloped, as he gave me the look I had seen countless times before.

I grabbed my bicycle and trailed behind. He skidded to a halt when we reached the town turtle pond. He asked me to join him on a bench. I did. Then we talked about bicycles and turtles and little sisters. I began to wonder if this was part of the legendary adventures I had always been excluded from. I also began to wonder if I quite understood what an adventure meant.

I remember Charlie turning to me and tucking loose strands of my hair behind my ear. My body was alarmed by his fingertips brushing my cheek. I peered over to the drooping eyelids and pursing lips inching towards me. I clenched my fists. I knew I had to do this. It was Charlie. So I closed my eyes, cringing at the gross heaviness of his mouth on mine.

The rest of the boys heard of this and promptly branded me the enemy—a simple-minded girl. I convinced myself that this was for the best. I felt myself outgrowing it all. I could no longer wear the same clothes as them, nor could I stay out as late as them. Mother completely objected to all the time I asked to spend with those degenerates, as she liked to say.

The remainder of my time in junior high and high school consisted of excellent grades, average participation, and mediocre relationships.

There were two great affairs in my adult life.

The first was Norman, who was leaving one of the libraries at the university. I rammed straight into the pile of books blocking his thick-rimmed chestnut glasses and beady emerald eyes. He was actually very handsome, despite the occasional blemish.

A history major, Norman was an asset during my semester of Ancient histories. He spent many a night with me as I grudgingly drilled centuries of war and kingship into my apathetic brain. He did not want to be a history teacher. He wanted to be a global historian. Norman was a dreamer, if nothing else. Last I heard, he was teaching at the local middle school—wife and kids back home. Funny to think he wanted that to be me. What’s funnier is that I considered it.

It’s been six years since I last spoke to Quinn. I left her at the same building we had met that frosty night in December.

It was my 24^th birthday, and Norman and I had just ended things after his third proposal. I was sitting at a booth in an Irish pub down the street from my apartment, reading Rousseau’s “The Confessions.” A raspy voice interrupted my trance. I looked up from the page and noticed my rail-thin, tattooed waitress. With a creepily crooked smile, she inquired about my drink. Coffee, black. She nodded and fetched me another. Noticing my reading, she offered her opinion—one that I couldn’t have been more uninterested in hearing. It was after this night that I began to frequent the pub, until I became a regular in Quinn’s tumultuous life.

My time with her was everything but romantic. She frightened yet intrigued me. She bored yet excited me. Her enraged screams still echo in my head, banging against my sore eardrums. Quinn was beautiful but not desirable. At this point, I found no one even the slightest bit desirable.

I couldn’t love. I had to accept this.

But then you brought her to my home one afternoon. I hadn’t seen her since her first Christmas, six years ago. She was lovely and perfect and infectious.

It was her giggling that made my heart throb, her strawberry and cream hair that ignited a fire in my throat. I instantly wanted to be her everything, just as she was mine. She enchanted me like a fairy, weaving through every crevice of my mind, ensnaring me in her barbed wire beauty. The closer she was to grab, however, the deeper I locked my desires away.

I begged you not to leave her that night. You remember that, don’t you? I told you I wasn’t feeling well, but you insisted.

My ballerina, she was especially playful. Hiding in the kitchen, I heard the warm water ripple over my bathtub. I gripped my countertop, clamping my jaw shut. I would wait, just as I had time and time again. Donning nothing but a pink tutu and her smooth, tight skin, she scampered into my presence.

It all happened so quickly.

I remember releasing the cheaply tiled countertop, my tingling fingers desperately searching to feel her lacey skin. She leapt backwards, so I grabbed onto her tutu instead, ripping it clean off her tiny frame. She whimpered for a moment before screaming at me. I fell to my knees and begged her to stop. Every time I leaned in to caress her flushed cheeks, she’d stagger away. I apologized until her sobbing ceased. Pressing my hand over her bare chest, she smiled and led me into the bathroom, where she waited to be bathed.

Though there was no sunlight, she still glistened amidst the water running through her auburn locks, lingering over the curves in her fragile, child body. Her belly button sparkled like a pearl in the sea, and her fingers traced tiny dancers along the suds and bubbles floating rhythmically around her. She hummed something.

My fingers slid down her slippery torso, dipping below the water. She gasped and flinched and cried, all before I could register my actions.

I was so enraged. I needed to destroy it. The demon desire was at my mercy, as was she.

She grumbled for a few minutes, bubbles bursting at the surface. Her fingers sank. Her lips pouted. Her eyes ceased to blink.

I never meant to take her from you.

I will not die with this secret, though. 

I pray you can forgive me one day, sweet pea.

Your loving sister

Cabeza de Calabaza.

Feathertop was a scarecrow

with a pumpkin head.

His mother thought he should live

but he thought otherwise.

He looked into the mirror

and broke his pipe in two.

Now, his mother props him up

and says he's better just a scarecrow.

"Such a jumble of charlatans in the world,

yet they live and never see themselves for what they are."

Moma: A Biomythography of My Mother

Moma: A Biomythography of My Mother

---

Sometimes, it can seem like my mother is an average woman. But I know she is a storyteller, she is, much like Audre’s mother, a woman who can command a room and build a home/community out of nothing. Sometimes, I think she has the ability to conjure. This is why I call her moma, a respelling of mother/mama/mom.

---

frost bit banks
hugging a river
dead as leaves rotting in the composts of
Drift Drive.
all the houses were old.
old as the church, old as the graveyard, old as the Swoonig Bar.

moma’s house was old as the river’s name,
even though it wasn’t a river no more.
it was a dry thing
that trickled and curled in, wanting
a name to be called

it was moma’s fifth christmas ever,
when all the lights were being twirled around trees
and the catholic school was trying to teach the littlest ones
like my mother
Jingle Bells

when granma stole them
away to those
frost bit forsaken banks
of that
Used to be River
 

cause grampa left them alone for some frilly little
thing
in a stewardess outfit.

the house. was big    and old      and rickety,
cracks and leaks and no working stove
making good meals was hard.
but it had that long,
sway-side barn that used
to hold twenty shining horses/ ready for pulling, plowing, and showing.

well, one christmas month, a bundle of kittens needed finding,
and some other ghost was found.
cause late one night, moma stayed up longer than she was suppose to
watching snowflakes
and heard a noise in the hall.

a lanky black man with brass buckles on his blue shoes
was standing with horror on his face.
he looked like he had been running for days/    or people
were trying to break down doors.
their eyes met and/        she screamed what he couldn’t

time came left
gran had gathered/   a stranger was roving
through her halls,
and by the time moma’s big brother bobbie searched
the place
that man was gone/ like he never was
moma, auntie sue wiled their way to gran’s bed, all three of them
sharing dreams of memories
they didn’t have

later for december
root beer dropped her bloated belly
but there were no kittens to show for it
all the cousins brought in for christmas dinner demanded to go
searching through snow/ no parent approved
root beer was licking her tail in the barn
and the kids made moma follow her around until the cat
jumped     up the rafters
and went missing
cause there was no attic or loft or
any sort of storage that they knew of.

so they made moma follow her up through that hole.
she spilled up into a secret room.

a molding, carved table
and chairs,
an iron bed,
a bundle of kittens,
white, red, black,
splotched.

and while her five-year-old self was distracted/ she stumbled out into the upstairs hallway
kittens and all/
asking why they never got to play in the room.

turns out, the original owners of that ancient house
had been part of the abolitionist movement
and,
rumor has it,
they helped runaways get across to the Canadian border, right off that underground railroad

moma thinks that that explains the blue, brass-buckle shoes.

when moma was nine, and sue was twelve, and bobby was twenty-one,
gran came home/        holding limes
Key Limes, expensive and precious and smelling like Home,
that the neighborhood gals had all saved up for
so they could have key lime pie at the neighborhood party that saturday.
which was really something
since the apples in quinn’s backyard were already being plucked.

but the pie never got made
and our family never got to party
cause bobby was dead/ on the floor/ of the upstairs bathroom.
we say it was an accident.

between eight dead cats buried in back to railroad spirits to his hands clutching at the air duster bottle/
gran could only handle so many ghosts.

south carolina was a lot more like home.
a lot more rum, a lot more limes.
a lot more of gramps’ calls,
talking always, always about his new son rob.

the old house never left
though
when moma dream walked

moma said bobby liked to visit in her dreams
always in the old house
he wouldn’t say much/ or anything at all
but she knew
when he had advice to give
he told her not to marry that musician

too bad she never was much good at listening

so what had happened was

handsome, moody
guitar strings of shakespeare
heard moma sweet-turning a crowd,
ocean waves background notes
and left her churning

short, she joined the band on escapades across state lines
all the way to alaska and back
one ring in the champagne
a wedding dress, worn, sitting on
a white horse
down a lane, with ribbons

too bad he was cold/ as the banks of that nameless river
twisting and turning
curled in, wanting
there were a lot of whispered rumors
a lotta warnings and tittling tales
before moma finally ripped that dress, beads all strewn on shores
to carolina

sometimes,
it’s letting go that finds you home
though
it took a few years/ a few lost loves before
she walked over nameless banks
again
house as lonesome as before

and found something a lot greater than ghosts
and broken memories
she found dad
the way it’s told, to me, there was nothing that could have held that love back
cause it filled that whole river
bursting

A Closet By Any Other Name is Still a Closet

When I read Borderlands/La Frontera, I was struck by the gravity of seeing things from someone else’s viewpoint.  The victory of “winning Texas” isn’t as glorious once you realize how it affected the “other” (in this case, the indigenous people). If we only see our history through our own eyes, without granting due empathy, we miss an entire story from the other perspective. 

            A year ago, my sister came out of the closet after about two months of marriage.  It shook my family to the core, and we are still feeling the shockwaves.  My sister, as much as we loved her still, became “the other”.  I thought that this would be a great opportunity to try to see things from her perspective, and do my best to give her a voice.  This is her story.

                       

            A Closet by Any Other Name is Still a Closet

I finally snapped.  I don’t know why, and now, it doesn’t matter why.   All that matters is that it happened.  I had been married sixty-eight days.  Laszlo woke next to me every morning, faithful and loving and kind.   I’m sorry, my love, my best friend, but this had to happen.  I never meant for things to go this far. 

            It had been weeks since I slept, or ate.  My already thin frame had lost another 12 pounds, and was wasting away.  I stayed awake at night, doing everything that I could to handle life moment by moment.  Making love was only possible when I was drunk, or high.  Even then, I winced in discomfort. 

            Megan was the first to know.  I wanted to tell Laszlo first, but she told me that, after all, she was still my sister, and I could tell her anything.  So I did.  She didn’t seem surprised.  She said she loved me, and then she cried. 

            I can’t even think about how Laszlo felt.  The moments with him were too intense.  In the weeks that followed, I would avoid him with every ounce of motivation that I could muster.  Everyone though that I hated him, or thought I was angry.  I don’t know why, but I was angry: angrier than I had ever been. 

            And then there was Lacey.  I saw her at work; she was my reason for going to work, my reason for leaving the house.  She was the reason for leaving my husband.   It was bound to happen sooner or later; my sexuality was a simmering pot that suddenly boiled over.  She was the perfect catalyst that I needed to push me over the edge.  And for each other, we would make the ultimate sacrifice: for her, I would leave my husband, and for me, she would always take the blame for the end my marriage. 

            I wish mom would stop crying.  I wish dad would stop crying.  I can’t stop them, though, and there is no way to undo what I have said.  There’s not really such thing as going back and forth on this. But nobody believes me.  I’m being treated like some delicate little thing, with everyone tiptoeing around me.  They are hoping that if they leave me alone, give me space, let me consider things, I’ll change my mind.  I don’t blame them, but that will never happen.  And now, what I need more than anything is to be taken seriously.

  Everyone around me is in pain and mourning, and I know that it is because of me.  It makes me want to turn on my heels and run.  And then, when I do run, they treat me like I’m insane and heartless, like some reckless child that’s about to blow away in the wind.  

            Truth be told, that’s exactly how I feel.  Everything around me is fucked,; everyone around me is falling to pieces.  And I hate to admit, but I finally feel like things are as they should be.  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of my chest, and I can breathe in a way that I never felt was possible.  I wish so much that I could perpetuate this feeling of lightness, and live as I have always wanted.  Reality, however, intervened.  I want nothing more than to run away, to be done with this whole nightmare, this whole marriage and my overbearing, insensitive family.  There is nothing on my mind but her.  She is all that I need, all that I see. 

            Laszlo is gone now.  New York City is a place for broken hearts, apparently.  And now, I am stuck.  Everything that was certain is now uncertain.  Little parts of being an adult are much harder on your own.  How do I get health insurance? Where will I live? What about my dog, my cat?  There are moments, with my family, when I can feel them all staring at me, and wishing I would take it back.  Wishing I would snap out of it and run back to him, say I was sorry and made a mistake and need to stay with him and want it to work and…

            But, that clearly isn’t the case.  This whole SCENE, this whole ORDEAL, took about two months to happen. December and January.  The Christmas tree never got decorated. Or watered, for that matter.  It just stood in the corner of the living room and died.  Actually, drinking Bloody Mary’s on Christmas morning was the only tradition that seemed to survive.  No one even seemed terribly concerned with the gifts; it was straight to the vodka.  Even Grandma got drunk. 

            The next few weeks were back to business: I had my entire life to figure out, Laszlo moved to New York for good, and I began the surprisingly long process of divorce and, later, trying to get my last name back.   SIMMONS. 

           

At one point, my dad looked up and asked, “How did I raise such screwballs?”

           

I don’t know the answer, but that quote is on the fridge.

Self-Acceptance: David and Me

Throughout the class, I had a hard time working up the confidence to express my thoughts and experiences. It amazed me how some of the students opened up, completely exposing their vulnerability and experiences. Like my seven billion fellow humans on the planet, I have my secrets and insecurities. I thought it extremely brave of these students to face their obstacles so fearlessly and proudly. So, that being said, I welcome you into my seldom-shared thoughts for the remainder of this paper.  

                                                                                                                                                

“Eat.”

“You don’t need to.” (The familiar voice assures me with its sneering, painful remarks.)

“Eat!”

“Stop it.”

“Eat! Eat! Eat!”

“You are disgusting, you can’t eat. STOP EATING!”

(My stomach begs, but my brain does not comply.)

115 lbs, 110 lbs, 100 lbs… Keep going.

“You have to do something about yourself now or else no one will ever like you. What have you got going for you? Let me enlighten you. Look at yourself. You’re dumb, talentless and ugly. You can’t focus in school. You struggle to make a C. You can’t even keep a boyfriend. You simply aren’t good enough. Why waste their time with you when they can find someone prettier, smarter and better? YOU MESS EVERYTHING UP!”

Restrictions. Obsessions. Anxieties.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Everything.” (The voice re-visits with more reassurance.)

“I’ll work out, I’ll stop eating. I will do anything to feel better about myself.”

“You will be skinny and lovely and all of your problems will go away. Nothing else will matter because you will have reached your goal. You will have perfection at last, I promise.”

(I’m assured.)

Blood, sweat, tears. Lots of tears.

“You’ll never be good enough. Every other girl can be intelligent, thin and perfect. All of that work and this is the best you can do? What’s wrong with you?”

“Everything.” (This time the voice doesn’t have to say anything.)

                                                                                                                                               

Would you be friends with someone who told you these things? Would you love someone who hates themselves? I hope the answer is no. So why do so many of us talk to ourselves like one of our worst enemies would? Why do we hate ourselves and why do we convince ourselves that we need to be someone we aren’t?

Immediately upon reading Giovanni’s Room, I hated David. He is selfish, egotistical, stubborn and exceptionally good at running from his problems. He hates himself and can’t accept who he is; he is a lost soul. But as I reflected more on David after finishing Giovanni’s Room, I reached a very hard realization: I am David. This may seem a little over-the-top, but I have had my many issues with self-acceptance as well. At the very beginning of Giovanni’s Room, as David looks back on everything he has learned from his time in Paris, David says,” I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. But, again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing when I took the boat for France” (21).

            Though I may not have hopped on a plane to France and gallivanted around Paris with a beautiful Italian man to escape my reality, I too have been lost. What pained me the most was the fact that David was so ashamed of himself and his homosexuality. He loved Giovanni. That’s just how he is, so why fight it? Giovanni puts it perfectly when he finally sees through David’s cold, emotionless exterior when David says he is leaving him for Hella: “You are not leaving me for her…you are leaving me for some other reason. You lie so much, you have come to believe all your own lies” (140), “You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink…You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities…Look, look what you have done to me” (141). The more he believes his own lies, the more he sinks into a destructive downward spiral. Like David, there was a time when I was so unhappy with myself that I tried desperately to be someone else. I felt pressure to reach the goals I thought were expected of me. I became my own worst critic, internalizing my frustrations. I became as cold and detached as David. In my mind, I wanted to get rid of all of my flaws so I could be perfect. The malicious voice inside my head that filled me with discouragement was the same one that motivated me to try harder and be better. I began to feel Gollum from Lord of the Rings; I was going crazy and arguing with myself. This forced me down a miserable path. All of that hard work trying to achieve perfection while running from a person I convinced myself to hate created a vicious cycle of disappointment for me. I would criticize myself, starve, deny I had a problem, and repeat it all over again when I found I still wasn’t satisfied.

            David says on page 21 that he always knew (despite his attempts at ignoring it) that he could not live his life pretending to be what his father and the rest of society thought he should be. I knew deep down from the start that I would always be Peri Nicole Boylan no matter how much I wished I wasn’t, even though I felt by society’s standards I was not smart enough, pretty enough or good enough. I couldn’t avoid being me forever. The journey of trying to prove myself wrong only set me back. While David starved for an answer to finding himself I starved to reach perfection. Though our problems may seem worlds apart from each other, the results are the same. If you can’t learn to accept yourself for who you are, it will only lead to unhappiness in the long run.

Now a few years later and little bit wiser I have been able to take a step back and tackle my insecurities head on (with much help from family, councilors and best friends). As I sit here eating my tasty Pita Pit pita I can happily say that I am who I have always been and will always be and I don’t need to try and change that, only improve in a healthy way. I would like to imagine that after the last page of Giovanni’s Room, David’s story continues and ends the same way my story did. I hope he found peace with himself and began to allow himself to love freely and openly without thinking something is wrong with him.

While some days aren’t as easy as others and I still have to face a few struggles here and there, I push through just like everyone else battling their problems. What is life if you can’t be comfortable in your own skin? It’s exhausting trying to be someone you’re not. You have to do what feels right for you. Too much perfection is an imperfection in itself. There is so much more to life.

Finding My Own Home

Within Alison Bechdel’s novel Fun Home, she appears to draw out specific moment in her past life that help her come to terms with some of the things she is dealing with in her present life. She breaks through barriers and comes to terms with many of her past problems and the way she does that is by connecting herself to the things she feels most distant from. The rest of my paper is to be read without any intention of judgment to be made on others. This is how I feel of myself. This is a reflection of myself, and a personal connection I found within Alison Bechdel’s novel Fun Home.

            It has been hard for me to face my many new responsibilities and challenges that I’ve imposed on myself. Facing identity and sexual confusion has put barriers between me and what I am. I use to hate with a passion who I was, but I can’t help the fact of how I feel about things. My confusion has broken walls down in my thinking, leaving me endless visions. I’m beginning to see things as they are and as they exist, and this is pulling me away from whom I was. Which is now a good thing in my eyes.

Before, I had people telling me what was right and what was wrong and I never had that father figure to guide me on the right path so all I could do was take the word of others and fall into line with their beliefs. Reading through Alison Bechdel’s novel, I could draw similar experiences; from the being told what to wear (99) how to act, the list goes on and on. In today’s society, everything is pushed on you. From where to live, where to sit, where to eat, how to drink, every little detail has been painted on a canvas and we are expected to follow it. Everything seems to be painted, but whos holding the paintbrush?
           I wish, and I say this with a lack of faith, that there was no good or evil, good or bad side, heaven or hell, but this was not a reality, but a mere fantasy of my world. Thinking this way separated me from the reality that I do wrong, especially in my thinking. So, I got caught in these fantasies that separated me from my innate guilt. Handling all these thoughts stressed me out, it inhibited me from my work and studies, my life. These ideas burdened me. They captured me, because what I was wanted these fantasies to exist. They would make my life easier. Such things are foolish thoughts, because “God” was the only one that made things easier.
            And, I say this for myself, with “sinful” experiences and adult responsibilities, come great hardships. My experiences were actions made by impulsive and thoughtless “sinful” motives. This was brought on by my fantasy way of thinking. My responsibilities include all those of adults, which are working for basic needs, finances and miscellaneous expenses. Over all, I had the responsibility to keep what I’ve been internally given safe. That is, safe from my exterior self. My name is Johnny and I have written these words, which have been brought out internally, to free me of my conscious.

On Nov. 27, 2012 at 12:26 a.m. I begin writing about this idea that I have brought on, “What I Am.”

I am a Homosexual being. I find beauty in Men; this is what I am attracted to. This is what I am, in my human interior and exterior. When I see a man, I see his features. I see his structure, stature, composition and poise. I see his masculinity. His aesthetic features, which include physical attributes, which are relatively attractive to me. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be this way. It was built within my cognition, such as common sense, which some don’t seem to have. But how does any of this really connect to Fun Home?
            Sometimes I think about the fact that I’m getting old and then I think about what it was like when I was younger and I remember being an innocent eight year old on Neopets spending four hours trying to make a blue loop between my grandma shuffling me off to eat breakfast and our terrible dialup connection. Then I think about how innocent I was and how I had no idea how much the world could (and does) suck, and how even though the kids my age were bulling me I was still okay as long as I was on the computer, by myself, where I was safe because no one had to know the real me. And now I am an adult with no way to pretend that the world isn’t a terrible place and I lost that anonymity because the dynamics of the internet have changed and then I get really nostalgic and I wish I could just go back in time and take eight year old Johnny and just keep him from getting disillusioned with things because I think I stopped being that innocent little kid way too early on in life…

As a kid, life was just fun and games, nothing was serious and everything and anything could just be pretend. And that’s how it was, at least in my eyes. Bechdel goes through a similar route, growing up, she was young and did things just because. She wore her hair short because it felt good, she played with the boys because it was fun. In the world, nothing is wrong until someone states that it is such. And throughout Fun Home, Bechdel lives through so much of what is “wrong” and experiences this through the novel. Something similar happened in my life and I found this novel to be one that I loved only because it allowed me to connect personally.

After reading Fun Home, I thought long and hard about what so many of the stories she told meant and there’s so much she allows her readers to see and I appreciate it even more. To allow yourself to confess something so personal takes not only courage but also a desire to understand and to be understood. As humans, we find ourselves constantly battling these internal wars that need to be resolved in order to find peace in life. And one can only be so lucky to find that peace in time. This novel has so many hidden messages; not only visually but, physically, mentally, emotionally and literally. The distance Bechdel reveals not only between her father but the distance separating her family links to me personally and others I can assume as well.

With her novel, Bechdel paves way for gays and lesbians to find their inner truths. She answers questions and provides details of her personal life in order to show how hidden things, always tend to come.