Southern Girls

This morning, I was standing in the kitchen in a towel (post-shower), doing my usual “coffee monologue” and my roomate, Dixie Darlin’, was looking at the computer. She was eating her usual breakfast-grits and eggs.

After I was done, she started talking about how it was definitely spring now. And I asked the temperature today.

“52 for a high.” She said, “But it’s the coldest day in the 10-day forecast.”

I leaned into the computer and squinted at the screen (left my glasses in the bathroom). “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but a few years back it snowed in May.” I laughed. Midwestern accent thick and uncontrolled.

“Sometimes the sun goes around the moon, jaytay.” She drawled back.

Southern girls just do it for me sometimes.

A Shout-Out to Sanity

This morning, I feel lucky. Today is going to be a good one, I just feel it.

Last night, I came home and went straight to the Y and ran again for a half hour. I didn’t want to go when I go home, but I had read somewhere (in one of my roommate’s many fashion magazines) that if you don’t feel like going, you should just go to the gym and then once you get there, see if you still don’t feel like it.

It’s pretty sound advice. Once you get there, of course you feel like it.

While I was walking up the steps to the treadmill, a flash of copper hair caught my eye. I rubbernecked (by then I was past the stairwell) because I have a thing for redheads and it was my ex-boyfriend from undergrad. SFS the Third. The writer. The first one I knew who drank too much whiskey, smoked too much, rode a heartache like his life depended on it, and wrote beautifully. (I know, I read his journals. The last time I ever broke such a trust.) He fucked like a dream and was the first one who showed me the true piggishness of the single male. His bathroom was disgusting and he kept what he called his “fuck towel” under the bed. (He was quite embarrassed–I had found the crusty old hand towel and wondered what it was.)

He recognized me. I recognized him. “Hi! What’s up?” I asked.

He was very sweaty. “Hi! I’m sweaty!” He said. He jogged down the steps. I am sure that I will see him again soon. It’s a small Y.

It made me smile. He’s a great guy and I would like to be in touch. It’s all a part of trying to make my life feel like a connected whole–something that it currently does not. It feels like a series of vignettes and reaching back into the past to befriend someone that I knew way back when would be a good thing. Not that I’m counting my chickens, but I feel sure I’ll bump into him again. Even bumping into people you knew when you were younger, half of your life ago, works in that way.

Then last night, I sent out a confirmation email for the new show I’m working on with Jacket. I asked people to send me manuscripts and all of their technical requirements. This morning, there was poetry and a video in my in-box.

This show is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time–it’s about moving beyond the written word into interdisciplinary expressions involving text. Part of the reason that I felt like I needed to get back to producing a writer’s show was that I was missing the connection and community I felt from producing Dyke Mic.

Dyke Mic was a wonder. It was a show I produced from about 2001-2004. It was a regular weekly thing at a queer theater in Boystown that ran in 16-week “seasons”. I had one writer, one musician, and one “something else” (performance artist, actor-doing-monologue, etc.). It was mildly successful (sometimes as many as 100 people came) and it opened a whole universe of queer lady writers for me.

Eventually, life intervened. I got too busy with grad school to continue, but it was a great community. My good friend Kurt writes sweetly about my efforts on his site, saying something about “catalyzing a new generation of young queer writers.” I don’t know about all that, but it is great to know that you make an impact.

And making an impact, getting people to think about art, inspiring people to make art, and creating community is what I am all about.

One of the great things about Dyke Mic is the lasting impression it made. I had no idea at the time, but I keep meeting people now who told me that they had come to a Dyke Mic (My roommate, my new friend E) and who talk about how great it was. My roommate Karen told me that she used to go when she was 18. She said that it was great and that it was one of her first queer events. That’s special to me.

And the moments when Dyke Mic was great, man, it was the best thing ever. I remember one night, we had this all female drumming group come. It was one of the nights when we got bumped up to the “loft space” in the gay theater, because something else was going on in our main space. And it was packed. I remember that there were some really freaky queers on one end of the space and this really skinny hippy lookin’ dude in the front. And when the drumming started, they all got up to dance. And skinny hippy dude was just jammin’ out. Just about everyone in the audience was dancing (with their whole souls, it felt like) or tapping their feet. And the readings that night were great.

Those were the moments when I sat there and felt glad with my whole being for making that space. And amazed at humanness of the response.

But waking up to poetry and video in my in-box and seeing what other people are working on really inspires me. And moving away from burlesque (and all that it represents–drama, drinking too much, late nights, reckless behavior) and towards writing and what it represents (wholeness, expression, connection with others) feels healthy, centering, and lets me focus outward. And focusing outward, I think, keeps me sane.

Let’s give a little shout-out to the sanity in the back, there!

Smartmouth
Sunday, May 6
Doors at 7, Show at 7:30
HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo
myspace site coming soon