Love, Me

So, I joined this project called “Love, Me”, which is essentially a project with women bloggers writing love letters to themselves. Cherry Bomb, a blogger and burlesque performer that I met at Mondo Homo came up with the idea and I thought it would be an awesome idea to join. Why would you do this? Read on, friends:

The idea came to me the other day, when a person I don’t know very well said something terrible about me. I gave it some thought, started to feel broken up about it, and then I realized: I know perfectly well all of the things I don’t like about myself. So why are other people are only too happy to volunteer what they don’t like about me? Hating yourself should be passe by now, something as 1997 as brown corduroys, so why is self-loathing still en vogue? Loathing yourself makes it just that much easier to hate other people. Especially other women. Hating yourself is easy; what would truly be subversive and challenging is admitting to loving things about yourself.

So, I decided I would write a love letter to myself and publish it on my blog. I am nervous because it is a difficult task, and one that makes you vulnerable to attack. The moment you admit to loving something about yourself, you are subject to the animus of others who may want to take you down a notch. We, as female-bodied people, are not typically taught to love ourselves. We are taught to demur when given compliments, to write them off with a laugh and never absorb their true meaning. We put ourselves down for the sake of making others feel better about themselves. Admitting to loving things about yourself is egotistical, the cardinal sin of “femininity.” But what if we could articulate those things? And even more so, what if we could support other female-bodied people in doing so?

So, here goes. I am going to edit a poem I started writing a few years ago during the last breakup I had before Special Lady T popped onto the scene. As I recall, it was with La Carpentiere–who I actually SAW last week in Th’ville. Small world–and I was feeling like she was an idiot for dumping me and was trying to define myself.

Love, Me

I love solid. Midwestern
serious work ethic; I love doing
what you love as long as
what you love pays
the bills. Sometimes
you have to suck it up.
The crops must be sown.

I love salt of the earth
no airs about anyone
Or when airs are put on
airs, I love the laughter
that follows–from the gut.

I love being balls out
and the beauty of solitude and privacy.
Hiding and revealing
like a morning glory
innermost stamen thrust
to the sun on brightest days.

I love comedy and tragedy
rolled into one. Emotions
fleeting like clouds on
an overcast day. I love overcoming,
I love persevering, I love
laughing at myself.

I love romance and
old-fashioned ways–doors being opened
satin and pumps,
and manners. Yes, manners.
It’s important to be polite.

I love close families.
Cousins and kids running ramshod
through the house. Loud volume, chaotic.

I love the power of generations:
a German hat with a thousand pins on it,
a volume of Irish folktales,
a Celtic knot painted on the ceiling of the
oldest Catholic parish in town.

I love coming from women
five sisters, grandmothers, aunts,
small girl cousins–we rule the roost.
My family: mostly mom and sister
for years no men, only my brother
feminist; how to treat women drilled into
his thick head.

I love capable.
Working hard not
hardly working, I can
handle most of what
gets thrown my way.

And I love sensitive. I
love listening, even when it’s
hard. Leaving emotions checked;
I can hear most things,
recover. Empathize.

Love, Me. I love
me: a million contradictions
complexity, emotions,
depth, humor, beauty.

OK, that was very hard to write. I’m going to go back and do some edits over lunch…I’m really worried about putting myself out there like this. But I guess we shall see what comes of it.

Here’s the list of other gals doing this project:
This is Where I Write – http://rantsnotdrugs.blogspot.com/
Twenty Twenty Hindsight – http://twentytwentyhindsight.com/
Rollertrain – http://rollertrain.tumblr.com/
Fluid Pusher – http://fluidpusher.blogspot.com/
Cherry Bomb – http://www.cherrybombnyc.com

Those Moments of Joy

Every so often, I have one of those moment where I step outside of myself and feel extremely thrilled with what I am doing.

It happened once about seven years ago, one night at Dyke Mic, when we were ensconced in the upper level theater in the back of Bailiwick. There was a drumming group and the audience was PACKED in, filled with all kinds of characters. Anyway, the drum group started and everyone started jamming–just dancing so freely and there was this collective joy in the air–and I thought to myself, “Man, I can’t believe I’m so lucky that I get to instigate all of this and take part in it.”

Last night was another one of those nights. I left my Board meeting for my jobby-job and drove home a Board Member, her husband and a colleague of his. The mood in the car was gay (not homo, just lighthearted) and I dropped them near my house. They are neighbors of mine, and we bumped into one another all over Clark Street last weekend. They invited me to come out and join them on my favorite pub patio on Friday for drinks n’ burgers. Nice.

They are really amazing smart people my age who have cool jobs and read books and who seem like both good contacts for me to have and people who have the potential to become actual friends. Good build-up to the rest of the night.

So then I booked it home, changed, grabbed my costume, and headed for rehearsal. When I got there, the Theatrician was hard at work choreographing the 12 cast members in our opening number. Amazing.

Anyway, I had this moment where I realized that everything I wanted and everything I worked for was materializing in front of my eyes and I felt LUCKY. And blessed, if we can go there. When La Directora said, “Let’s show Bea what we’ve been working on!” and everyone showed me a carefully choreographed opening number for our show, I was in heaven.

Yes, we can. And we will. And we are.

Those moments make all the hard ones completely worth it. Is it sometimes hard to work two full time jobs–getting up early in the AM and ending the day with six more hours of work in-between which I am expected to pay close attention to another career? Yes. Is it sometimes overwhelming to stack show after show on top of one another? Yep.

But it is totally, totally rewarding in the meantime to see a show materialize, to find a new and very trusted collaborator (the director of the show I’m producing in July is an amazing woman), and to feel like what I am working towards may actually happen. Because I work hard, I want it to, and I have a great team of people standing behind me who believe in it and will make it so.

Sometimes…

…living in close quarters with other people in a City gets on my last nerve.

8PM Toddler in building next door–first floor: screaming interminably; this is a nightly ritual.

9:00 pm Jackass across the alley neighbor who suddenly has a PIANO–playing for last 40 minutes. I mean, it’s nice piano-playing and all, but it’s Sunday night at 9:43 and the TODDLER just stopped screaming, which probably means that s/he is asleep.

Hello? Piano Man? Let’s get a clue.

His window is open, so if it goes much past ten, I’m gonna lean out and ask him to stop. I gotta work tomorrow and I can’t sleep with the windows closed tonight.

Special Lady T says that the next place I live needs to not face an alley and I think she’s right about that. There is also some band of merry teenagers who own a terribly annoying-sounding tiny motorcycle that they ride up and down the alley whilst yelling at one another. The ride-on cycle sounds like a cross between a lawn mower and a leaf blower.

I spent my evening trying to figure out how to build a website from scratch. Not a good idea if you don’t have web software, so then I got all sidetracked by photoshop brushes and the plethora of them online. I downloaded some ones that look like chains and others that look like glitter. Pretty cool and probably my next small obsession. I probably should have spent some time actually doing some work-work, but I decided to zone out and do something time-wasting instead.

Today was fun–me and T went thrifting for prom duds and she found a fantastic white tux jacket with black lapels. Very Love Boat. Then we went to my poet friend’s baby shower. It was great to see said poet friend and her partner and the adorable new lil dude they adopted. It was great to reconnect with her and hang with some old friends and some new people I met there.

Then I went to Photog and his wife Natashnik’s party thing. Well, actually, she has started this vintage business and she is having these bimonthly salons to sell her wares. It was pretty great–there were a LOT of nice pieces in a variety of sizes. She also wrote down my measurements and she’s going to help me find a costume that I have wanted for a long time (sans the beading/sequinning) which is a garment that can serve as a foundation for a Roxy Hart number. She has a great eye, so I’m pretty excited to keep going to them. Also, she dyed her hair a nice vintage platinum and got it cut and she looks fantastic. (I kept mentioning so many times…She was probably sick of me by the end of the afternoon).

This evening, my stepsister found me on Facebook (?) and invited me to my stepnephew’s bar mitzvah in September. I’m not all that jazzed for another round of orthodox bar mitzvah-ing (Especially since my step-sister is a bit of a teetotaller…) but I guess I will go.

In other news, I had a fantastic night last night doing my geek act (in reprise) at the Beastwomen show. It was a big hit. People love fake blood and nakedness.

OK. Gotta go retrieve my laundry from the basement.

Friends in Need, Friends in Deed

Do I really have time to write this? Probably not–I have a 9:30 meeting downtown this morning and I need to leave in about 45 minutes. But I want to get back into the flow of writing.

Last night I went to visit a friend who is in the hospital. She is a new-ish friend (friend of friends) who I have some ties to through performance. She is my age and she had a stroke–no warning, no drugs involved, she just up and had a stroke. Her doctors are trying to figure out why.

This is a scary notion. That you would just be living your life pretty healthily and you might somehow just have some kind of crazy medical emergency. Luckily, she was with some other pretty responsible people I know (again, through performance) and they took her to the emergency room, remaining calm through the experience.

The other thing is that she doesn’t have insurance. That is even scarier. I offered to help, writing a letter or somehow putting together an event to help her with funds. But it’s very frightening, the state of the medical field. The idea that someone (who does not have insurance) might choose or elect to go without something that might keep them alive (she is not considering that–but I know that people do) because they are not insured for it–well, that is just downright disgusting to me.

She was saying that one of the nice things about being in the hospital and being incapacitated (in some ways–and yes, she is looking on the bright side. Seems like she does that. I’m glad to see it.) is that you begin to know who your friends are or at least who can handle real problems. You learn to accept help when it is needed.

I told her that I came because last year I went to the emergency room by myself (Bell’s Palsy) for about 13 hours one day and it totally sucked. The experience was more lonely than I care to focus on (I slept a lot because I was so overwhelmed and scared that day…) and I would never want someone else I know to have to go through that. And that I like her and that I think that she’s a good person and I want to make friends.

I feel a new expansiveness and a sense that if someone I know is in need, I need to answer that call. I’m not sure where it comes from–I was pretty tired last night and I came close to blowing it off (there were a litany of good excuses I could come with). But then I thought about it and I decided that wasn’t who I am trying to be these days. I am trying to make different choices about these things and I remembered the time in the Emergency Room last summer.

That did it. I hopped on the bus and went to the hospital.

And so on…

This blog sure isn’t getting updated very often these days. I must have a girlfriend…

The weekend was fun. It was an epic one–packed with activities. I’m actually looking forward to a relatively mellow week this week, by contrast.

It started on Friday at noon. I went to see my friend’s klezmer band at the Cultural Center with Special Lady T for a luncheon. That was pretty fun, although the propensity of me and SLT is to stare at one another longingly, which we could not do, on account of all of the people in and out of the space where we were sitting.

Then I went back to work and went home around 5. SLT came over on Friday night and despite our best efforts, we could not just watch a movie and chill–we ended up doing it a long time instead. I still have not seen “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and I have tried to watch it like five times now. Maybe tonight.

Then on Saturday, I worked on some resumes and went to an audition. I auditioned for the Revelettes, a go-go troupe. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. It was challenging and exhausting, but still super fun. Then I gathered some laundry and went back to SLT’s place in the gayborhood to make dinner for some of her gays and go to a wine and cheese party.

Dinner was amazing. I made a chick pea stew and this salad that everyone could not stop eating/talking about. It is well worth the small amount of time it took to make it: I chopped up mint, parsley, cucumber, and arugula. Then I blended up olive oil, white wine vinegar, orange juice and some honey for dressing. I let it marinate for an hour or so and then SLT added some goat cheese. Sweet, minty, and a little tangy. It was the perfect compliment to the chick pea stew which was hearty and a little spicy. Overall, a tasty, delicious and hearty meal. The gays loved it.

Then in the AM, SLT went to the gym and I made some brunch for us. Another delicious meal: a potato and egg skillet thing and some chopped mango/avocado with lime and chile. Then we went to Sissy’s.

It was really fun to go to Sissy’s with SLT. The girls loved her and we painted/colored for a long time. We also watched CSI, Sissy’s favorite, and ate like crazy. Sissy’s a big snack spread kind of girl. She had this amazing cheese dip that she makes (super duper yummy). We also spent some time having a dance party in the living room with the girl (after I suggested that they get dressed up in dress-up clothes–dance party was held with a cheerleader and a princess. Then a cheerleader and a care bear. Hilarious!) Then the youngest, Jubie, “dressed for dinner” which cracked us up.

She put on her most fancy dress and her sparkly shoes. You have to admire that kind of dedication to ritual and formality.

Then we drove back into the City and I dropped off SLT at the L and went to SJJ’s for the L Word. The L Word, by the way, is gearing up to be a great season. Although I try hard, I can’t really seem to shake off my devotion to the show. Then it was early to bed (after talking once more on the phone with SLT) and up early to send resumes.

Phew.

This week, I am looking forward to TCB-ing. I get paid and I have to tend to my bills. Also, I have a ton of laundry to get done and I should probably grocery shop.

Guess I will jump here. More soon, lovers.