Better

My mother calls me to tell me about the three-inch-wide, deep-to-the-bone gash she got falling down the stairs yesterday and the five staples now holding her arm together.

As the conversations ends she says on the phone “Well, your father…” and then trails off.

She pauses, then says “Well, he’s home, so I have to stop talking now” in the tone of voice that means she needs to go do something so she should get off the phone but what she really means is that she wants to say something about him that’s negative, that might hurt his feelings, that might let him know we all talk about it and it’s actually a problem, that it actually has consequences for the rest of us. She couldn’t do that, though, because he could hear her and he’d be upset. Which is a code word, because everyone gets upset and what he does is more than that.

“Has he been grumpy?” I ask, which is another code word. It’s also a yes or no question. That way she can give me information without tipping him off, clue me in so I know what’s happening, so I’m warned when I come home this week after months away, so I can call my little sister and hear if she’s okay. So I’ll know whether or not to tiptoe when I enter the house.

“Well, he’s got this surgery coming up on Monday, and that’s a nervous thing. And he’s been worrying about that, and then I had to go and have something,” by which she means the gash and the staples, “and it’s a lot of pressure. We have the Christmas tree, and that’s done—thankfully that got done beforehand.”

By all of which she means, “Yes.”

I hear this and I remember being young, maybe seven years old and my sister was four, and we were sitting in the living room of the house in Massachusetts and my parents were putting up a very big Christmas tree. We couldn’t go out of the room because we shouldn’t be unsupervised and more because we didn’t want to miss anything, we wanted to know what was going on, we didn’t want to overhear it from upstairs.

My mother said we could stay there as long as we were quiet as church mice. Every time I had to help Daddy with a Project, I remembered that phrase, and I knew that I should be a church mouse and that Sis was better at it, which was why he always chose her to hand him the screwdriver or hold the flashlight.

And we were very young and we were sitting in little chairs I think, although we could have been on the floor, but we were wedged right next to each other on the right side of the wide doorframe, and I remember being afraid, and I remember Daddy yelling at us if we made any noise at all or if we asked any questions.

He was using a wire to attach the tree to the wall near the ceiling because it was a crooked tree and it wouldn’t stand up otherwise, and this was difficult and it was a Project, and if we interrupted he wouldn’t be able to concentrate and we weren’t going to help only make things worse, so we had to be quiet.

I remember being quiet, that day. And I remember the fear of what would happen if I made a noise and the equal fear of what would happen if I left and couldn’t keep track of what was going on in that room. And I didn’t like the quiet because I wanted to help, to make the Project over, to make it all okay, to contribute what I had to offer, to make it better. But I was quiet, I did it, I stayed quiet.

“So he’s just been worried about this surgery, but he’s being better now. He is doing better now.”

“Okay,” I say, because better is better. I’m thinking about how this all feeds into it, how we don’t name what it is. How instead we say why it is. How we talk about it only in terms of the causes, of him being stressed or angry or anxious, never in terms of what he’s doing, never in details or actions, never in terms of what it all means to us. We never talk about the fear or the sadness or the anger, not directly. We only all know it’s there because we share it. It’s always implied.

“He scared the dog the other day, scared her all the way down into my office,” she says. The office that is four floors down from the dog bowl in their San Francisco hillside town house. “Supposedly he was just trying to give her dinner.”

The Privilege of Parental Love

Allison Moon wrote a great post about a new kind of privilege she realized she carries.

Growing up I never had to wonder if my parents loved me. I never doubted they respected me or my choices. I never felt abandoned or ignored or dismissed. My folks have had to deal with a lot of information in their parenting lives. I’ve come out as bisexual, then lesbian, then queer, then polyamorous, then partnered to a queer, poly, cis-man. I think they stopped paying too much attention after “queer.”

...Listening to the speeches at the [annual LA Gay & Lesbian Center Gala], I became acutely aware of another privilege: parental love. Parental love means that I never had to apologize to my family for who I was and who I wanted to be. Parental love meant that I was only girl in my catholic school to wear pants, with my mom’s enthusiastic blessing. It meant that when I told them I wanted to quit my job to write a novel, they told me what a great writer I was and how proud they were of me. I means that they still send some of my blog posts to their friends to brag about me, even though a lot of my choices aren’t exactly easy for them to read about. It means that no matter where I am in the world, and what kind of life I lead, I can always, always go home to my parents if I need to.

If there's a single kind of privilege that I feel more definitely than any other, it's this. So many people I've known, including some of the closest friends and lovers I've had, did not have any kind of support from their parents. They had to make their way alone, without any kind of financial or emotional safety net from their families of origin. I've always had that net.

I've got a kind of certainty in my actions that I know leads to my success in many ways. I can approach jobs or relationships with the attitude that I will always be okay. I know that my parents will be there to catch me no matter what happens.

This saves me from an air of desperation that I know can undermine people in so many ways. I come off as confident and capable, which I know is attractive. I've been given a lot--jobs, good grades, forgiveness--as a result. Hell, probably the biggest reason I got out of my abusive high school relationship before it turned physical was that he couldn't succeed in undermining my relationship with my parents. They were too loving and accepting and too much a voice of reason against his attempts at control.

I think this privilege of parental love affects me even more meaningfully than the fact that my parents are wealthy. It wouldn't matter much what their net worth was if they didn't use any of it to support me. I've known plenty of people from families richer than mine who enjoyed less of the resulting privilege because their parents were unsupportive assholes.

This kind of privilege is emotionally fraught. It's even more awkward to talk about my supportive parents with folks whose families aren't like that than it is to talk about having money with someone who grew up poor. I guess, ultimately, emotional wealth does carry more weight than monetary wealth. I'm just glad Allison pointed it out, because I think the most important thing with privilege is to be aware of it and to use it for the greater good. Now maybe I can find ways to do that.

Money

A disorganized and possibly rambling continuation of my thoughts on my privileged stupidity when it comes to money: how did I get this way?

I try to be fairly open about the fact that I come from a very privileged family. For starters: I'm white, started out as Catholic, and my family has a lot of money. My dad is an executive for start-up biotech companies, which means he does very well financially. My mother works very part time and doesn't make much; she could afford to make that choice. Both of my parents are college educated. They both came from upper-middle-class white families. My background is a continuation of theirs.

We did not talk about money in my family when I was growing up. Apparently, it's partly because my father really hates to. I think it's a combination of his being proud of how much he makes and wanting to spend it on his wife and children (quite the patriarchal sentiment, that) and feeling awkward about being richer than most people and living in luxury. Not ridiculous luxury, but luxury nonetheless. There's a nice big dose of white, wealthy guilt in my family and the way it manifests itself is that we DO NOT talk about money.

My dad hands his credit card to waiters at restaurants before they bring him the check, and he just signs it. My mother doesn't check the price tags of things we buy at the grocery store or jeans at the mall. I don't know how much money my dad makes in a year, or in a month, or in a week, or in an hour. I don't know how much our mortgage costs. I don't know how much our food costs. Off the top of my head, I don't even know how much this computer cost.

Maybe sharing all of this is just rubbing the privilege in people's faces, and I shouldn't. I guess my point, though, is that things really shouldn't be this way. One of the things about privilege is that it allows you not to be aware of things like money or race or gender or sexuality.

If you're white, that's supposedly the default race and most white people don't even have to think about their race until they're confronted with a minority person who's bringing it up. I think white people who give in to this option of ignorance are socially irresponsible. I think financially privileged people who give in to the option of ignorance about money are socially irresponsible.

I hate that my parents didn't talk about money just because we didn't have to talk about it. Just because we didn't need to discuss what we couldn't afford or what we needed to miss out on due to lack of funds doesn't mean we shouldn't have been talking about what we could afford and how special that was. It's something I needed to be aware of.

Yes, I heard from time to time that we were lucky people and that we shouldn't take it for granted, but the taking for granted was happening on a daily basis and that's a much stronger message.

I probably won't ever be truly poor. I won't know what that's like. I don't want to let that stop me from feeling empathy for people who are poor or from appreciating what I have. I don't want to let it spoil me, which it seems in part to have done. I don't want it to keep me from being a good, responsible person. I don't want it to stop me from helping people.

So I've got to figure this shit out.

Four Hours

I'm graduating in four hours, and then after all the schmoozing and the getting of that $160,000 piece of paper I have to pack. I'm leaving here early in the morning after that.

I'm going to miss everyone so much, and this place, and my time here. I'm moving on to great things, but I'm having a night of being sad about what I'm moving away from.

I've made such a wonderful family away from home here. I've been slowly spending time with people to say goodbye. I said au revoir to two of my lovers today, and that finally made it hit me. I'm going to be very sad when I drive away from this part of my life in just over 24 hours.

It'll be really something to sit there on that damn froufed-up lawn surrounded by peers that make up the scenery of my daily life and knowing that I won't see most of them again (except possibly at reunions).

What a crazy world this is, with changes that just happen one day and never go back.

Mother's Day

Okay, I know that everyone ever is writing something about their mother today, but I'm just going to go ahead and jump on the bandwagon.

In the last year or so, it's been truly wonderful to get to interact with my mom on more of an adult level. I've found out a lot about her that I'd never known before, like that she never practiced monogamy until she started with my dad at 26, and that she used to have an erotic lit collection in college that she'd lend out, and that she watches porn sometimes today. Turns out I come by all of it honestly!

I've had my share of gripes with my mom, as everyone does when they grow up. I think mothers get a really bum rap, having at least most of the responsibility for child care placed on them and then being held accountable and labeled flawed if they're not perfect moms. The expectations are too high, and the emotional punishments for imperfection are too ridiculous.

Whatever arguments I've had with her, I love my mother very much. I'm so much like her, in mannerisms and personality, and then also as it turns out in my passions and tendencies. This doesn't bother me at all; I may make different choices than she did, but I'm glad I've got this legacy from her.

I owe her for the amazing quality of my sex education growing up, and for answering all my questions about everything ever (including but not limited to sex) with as little discomfort as she could manage. I'm thankful that she learned about feminism and taught it to me as I was growing up, that she had the insight to learn from her daughters and then pass that knowledge to us.

So yeah, happy mother's day, everyone. I can't share this post with her, as she doesn't know about this blog, but I will definitely be sharing the sentiments. I hope you all can find a way to thank the mothers in your lives, even if they're not the biological ones you expected or are supposed to be grateful to. I know it's a Hallmark holiday, but an incentive for appreciation never hurts.

Domination vs. Humiliation

I was thinking yesterday about my kinky proclivities, and the reasons why until fairly recently I've hesitated to act on my submissive desires. I've known that I'm into restraint and submission for a very long time, but I never did much about it. I didn't feel ready, somehow, or comfortable with the idea.

I realized yesterday that a lot of what turned me off of the available images of dominance and submission was the way humiliation is often connected to any kind of sexy power play. Very often along with the spankings and bindings and hittings and tossing arounds, there are words and narratives thrown in about how humiliating it all is. About how the sub is naughty and should be ashamed and needs to be punished.

For me, the desire to be dominated is not at all connected to these narratives of shame. I don't feel ashamed of having sexual desires. It's true that I have been shamed by other people for them and sometimes even felt abnormal and freakish. My response to that, however, was more to say "fuck you" and learn to be proud than anything else.

I grew up in a household where, despite some of the usual discomfort about sex, my parents and especially mother always said "whatever you do is fine by us and we love all of you, including your sexuality." This stood up to my coming out as bisexual, my disclosing that I'm a stripper, and some overnight visits from special friends where we made a wee bit more noise than intended.

This is not to say that I begrudge anyone their enjoyment of humiliation, just that it's not for me. I just can't eroticize words that turn sex into shame. I understand the value of reclaiming these narratives and getting off on them, I just don't do it. It makes me too uncomfortable.

What I like about being dominated is simply the loss of control. I'm incredibly, sometimes destructively self possessed in "real" life. I am able to let go of some of that during any kind of sex (which is one reason I like it so much) but being dominated lets me do so even more. I can hand the restraining of me over to someone else. I don't have to do it, at least for a little while. It actually feels freeing.

I also just love to please and it makes me wet to be ordered around and thrown over someone's knee. I can't necessarily explain the physical response, but as it is, I'm just going to enjoy it. Minus the whole "You've been a naughty slut and need a spanking" part.

Birth Mother

There's an anonymously written post up at Shakesville about the trauma of being a birth mother.

I have given a baby up for adoption, and I have had an abortion, and while anecdotes are not evidence, I can assert that abortions may or may not cause depression - it certainly did not in me, apart from briefly mourning the path not taken - but adoption? That is an entirely different matter. I don't doubt that there are women who were fine after adoption, and there is emphatically nothing wrong with that or with them; but I want to point out that if we're going to have a seemingly neverending discussion about the sorrow and remorse caused by abortion, then it is about goddamn time that we hear from birth mothers too.

Believe me when I say that of the two choices, it was adoption that nearly destroyed me - and it never ends. The only comparison I have is the death of a loved one. The pain retreats, maybe fades, but it comes right back if I poke at it. Writing this has taken me nearly two weeks. Normally, I can write this amount in about thirty minutes, with bathroom breaks. I started to type, and stopped only to reread, then go wail into my pillow. There is no such thing as "over" with this.

My mother gave up a baby for adoption (also through a Catholic service because she was Catholic at the time) when she was my age. It was just one month over thirty years ago exactly, the spring of her senior year in college. It's so unfathomable that if we were to somehow trade places, I'd have just given birth.

My half brother found our family when I was fifteen, so we know him now, but I can see on a daily basis how much it hurt her to give him up. When he showed up six years ago, she went into something of a tailspin of resurfaced depression over it. I think she's just now getting her life back on track with her health and work and writing, and it's been hard to watch.

I'm very glad that whoever wrote this post is speaking out about this. I've heard so much about it from my mother. She too tries to bring it into dialogue by talking about it, and she's heard some of the most heartbreaking stories from other women who shared because she did. It's hard for me to write about this because it's my mother's story, not mine, but I just wanted to thank the anonymous poster for bravely putting her thoughts out there.

National Freedom to Marry Day

Why would you ever want to tear someone's family apart? Why?


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Add your name to the petition begging the Supreme Court not to divorce thousands of families. Support rights. Spread love. Sign here.

Dan Savage on The Colbert Report

Alright, I have mixed feelings about Dan Savage. In case you don't know, he's an openly gay and partnered sex columnist for Seattle paper The Stranger.

On the one hand, he is hilarious as fuck. I've read his column frequently and he's really funny. He's great on some issues, like gay marriage and being understanding of people's kinks. He even gives some good advice sometimes.

On the other hand, I think he often strong arms issues that need a more sensitive treatment. I don't want to be a mushy female feminist (sigh, stupid stereotypes), but in his quest to always be funny, he sometimes becomes a bit misogynistic. He makes no secret of his distaste for women. I mean, "he's gay so whatever," but I think it does affect the quality of his advice.

That said, I absolutely LOVE his recent appearance on The Colbert Report. He is delightfully funny and I think he even made Colbert a little speechless. If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that he says something similar to what I did about the old folks who voted for Prop 8. (He's not as nice.) Makes me feel kind of vindicated.



Go you, Dan Savage.

My Secret Identity

My secret identity is becoming less secret every day. More and more people know about Diana Prince.

I've told most of my friends about this blog. I've got a link up to it on my social networking profiles. It is connected to my real name. Sure, it's in ways that are only accessible to those I allow to see it, but the connection is there.

Since I've told people in my real life about this blog, I feel weird writing about my current relationships. Part of me wants to say "fuck it" and be completely honest. Who cares if people read about themselves in my blog? I'm all about openness. Why not just deal with people in a completely free way? Force things out into conversation.

The other part of me wants to avoid the subject of my personal life altogether. Telling stories about people or sharing opinions about their actions is a quick way to alienate them. I don't always think good things about my friends, and while I can be critical in a kind way, it's harder to do that for a general audience. Tact serves a purpose in my interactions; I can't abandon it entirely. But I don't want to soft-pedal things on my blog.

I can't just stop talking about my life, though. That would kind of defeat the purpose of having a blog, wouldn't it? I love this medium because it's such a revolutionary way of sharing narratives and making connections. I can see that I have something in common with a person who lives across the globe, or learn about our differences. That's freaking awesome. I wouldn't want to cut that off for myself.

It's certainly a conundrum. I could always start a new, more anonymous blog, but I don't really want to do that. I like putting my energy here, and I like the impetus to be honest. It's just a fine line to walk, and a (fascinating) challenge every day.

Blogging, Lack of Sleep, Six Feet Under

I've had trouble blogging the past few days. I think the biggest reason is that instead of sleeping I've been watching Six Feet Under, which I love, but I need my beauty rest to be able to string together any words that make sense.

I finally finished the series, which might mean I'll get some sleep tonight. Once I start watching a show I like, I just have to get all the way through it. Start to finish. I really recommend Six Feet Under to anyone; it's got some great commentary on the family and contemporary culture. I mean, it's made by HBO, I guess you have to expect quality.

The last few episodes of the show, though, were just horribly depressing. It's generally about death, but it's darkly hilarious and I usually enjoy it immensely. I think in finishing the series they felt like they had to bring it to a more serious place. It's put me in a down mood, along with my usual susceptibility to hormones and grumpiness. It's so funny how the lives of these imaginary characters can affect me in real life.

With my lowness, I've been at a little loss for what to write about here. Blogging is such a funny animal. There are actually plenty of things going on in my life right now that I could talk about, but I hesitate to put them here. Enough people read my ramblings now that I am too aware of my audience. I want to take risks with my writing, but I don't want to lay myself completely bare for all to see or step on. It's a fine line to walk, between honesty and needless vulnerability.

I've got a couple of big posts under construction, and after I get a real night or two of sleep I'll put them up. Right now, though, I need to lie down and have a good wank. Nothing better for a little cheer than good old-fashioned masturbation.

My Long Lost Brother: The Note to Ann Landers

When I was eleven, I found out I had a long lost brother.

I was playing Riven. I don't remember what I was stuck on; it was probably the little balls in the puzzle on top of the globe. No matter how many times I went back to the place with the puzzle's clue and how many times I thought I had it right, it just wasn't working. I was close to tears.

My mom, who'd played the game before, wasn't home and she wouldn't answer her cell phone. It was off. I thought I might be able to find her Riven notes in her filing cabinet, where she keeps her personal papers. When I noticed a file titled "Adoption," I was curious.

You can guess where this is going, right?

I found a note she'd written to Ann Landers. The advice columnist had told a birth child not to search for his birth mother, that the mother had given him up for a reason and probably wanted nothing to do with him. My mother wrote back and told Ann Landers how she'd had a baby in college and given him up for adoption. She considered it his right to decide whether or not to meet her. She had given him up, given him the decision, but she would be devastated if she never got to see him again.

His name, when she left him at the hospital, was Michael Patrick.

I stared at that piece of paper. I didn't know when my mom was getting home. She was probably at the grocery store, or paying bills at the bank. I put it quickly back in the filing cabinet and brought the phone into my room, where I had an unused jack for it. My parents didn't think I needed my own phone.

I called my best friend, and cried because my mother hadn't told me. Cried because I wasn't supposed to know; I'd found out clandestinely. I'd been intruding.

Bette Midler had a song called "Lullaby in Blue" about adoption. After that summer, whenever my mom would skip it on the album, I'd calmly ask her why. I asked to see her yearbook photos, since I'd figured out that she must have given birth during her senior year at Notre Dame. I didn't know all the details.

Every once in a while, I'd go back to look at the letter again. I'd wait until she was gone, for sure, for a while, and go back to the filing cabinet, slamming it closed if I thought I heard my sister coming up the stairs. I did this every few months until Mom sat the family down for a macaroni and cheese dinner three years later.

**Update** I was going to continue this story, but I decided I don't actually want to, at least not in this style. The short story is that Michael Patrick was coincidentally named Patrick by his adoptive parents and found my mom and our family about a year after she finally told my sister and me about him. He's a Catholic youth minister and just had a baby girl, I, with his wife, C. They got married as soon as she graduated college. I won't use his full first name after this, but it's a pretty cool coincidence.

Coming Out to My Parents

I came out to my dad about being a stripper on Father's Day.

Aren't I such a good kid?

I'd already been dancing for nine months at school, but I hadn't felt ready to tell my parents right when I started.

I hate lying to them. The lie I told them about my new job, that I was a "cocktail waitress" in a strip club, was the first one I'd told them since high school.

I learned when I was 16 that I only lied to them when I was ashamed or unsure about what I was doing. If I felt that I was right, if there was something I wanted to do that was against the rules or I thought they wouldn't like, I'd come right out with it and duke it out until I had my way. This didn't really happen unless I did have a good reason for what I wanted to do; I'm a relatively down-to-earth girl.

But. When I wanted to let myself get away with something I felt was wrong or at least was ambivalent towards, I'd lie about it. It wasn't about trying to trick them; they're very supportive of me and accept my choices. It was more about deceiving myself. I learned to use this as a moral compass: if I felt like I had to lie about it, I shouldn't be doing it.

So lying about stripping was difficult.

Here's the thing, though. When I started stripping I was ambivalent about it. A big reason for doing it was curiosity. I wanted to know what it was like, to be naked in front of a room of lecherous men. I wanted to know if it was degrading. I wanted to experience sex work for myself so that I could decide how I felt about it.

So I really had no idea what I was getting into.

I couldn't possibly have defended my choice to my parents. Maybe they would have understood the curiosity, but I wasn't ready to explain it. If it had turned out to be degrading and awful, curiosity wouldn't have been enough to justify it. And I knew it could have been bad; I'd heard enough stories. I'm masochistic enough that I didn't care and I was going to do it anyway. That's the part that would have been hard to explain.

I'm not sure exactly what it is that I said that convinced my dad (and my mom, a couple weeks earlier) that stripping was what I wanted to do and would be okay. I do know I wouldn't have been able to say it last October. Because now I've experienced stripping, I know for certain what it's like for me. I know that it makes me feel empowered, that I enjoy it. Without that certain knowledge, I'd have lost the "I want to strip, okay?" argument in a heartbeat.

They still think, or pretend to believe, that I was a cocktail waitress until I came home for the summer and told them I was going to be a stripper. Lying is something I'm ashamed of, so I can't admit to them that I lied. Funny, isn't it, how a lie stays with you for such a long time?

Being At Home

I'm back in San Francisco. Staying with my parents. All I really have to do is unpack. I haven't started summer work yet.

It's funny how I write, think, read, blog surf, etc. so much more when I have a million other things to do. When I'm so busy I can barely breathe, I manage to write, but when I'm just sitting around, nothing comes.

Amazing, the galvanizing powers of procrastination. When there's something I have to be doing, I manage to get all sorts of other things done.

Must get busy again, otherwise how shall I function?