Kelli's book is a collection of essays from the life of an ex-Catholic nun, butch lesbian who is often mistaken for a boy of varying ages, a working stand-up comic with a penchant for misadventure, someone who readily and often talks to strangers, who had a really tender D/s partnership with a burlesque queen and legend of her time who passed in 2007 using Oregon's right to die laws, who, against all odds, found love again and her girlfriend died of an incredibly curable form of cancer, who speaks Haitian Creyol and used those skills to go to Haiti to help after the earthquake and is left with little patience for hipster problems in New York City. And who once peed on the B train and makes comedy about it.
A few friends of mine are preparing for their first ever play party, so I've been doling out advice right and left. It's called "play" but sometimes folks interchange the word "sex" or the acronym "BDSM." Whatever you call it, it is a social occasion in which folks are free, perhaps even encouraged, to engage in public sexual or kink behaviors. It's a good place for people who are exhibitionists and voyeurs, as well as people who want a dose of sexual energy in their lives. There are a bunch of different reasons folks might want to go to a sexy party, a few of which I've addressed below.
He loudly said to my back, "You should go on a diet," as I was getting off the train. I had a pause waiting for the doors to open. Usually I ignore these kinds of things, but this time I turned to the 20 something white dude, looked him dead in the eye and said, "My body is none of your business, nor is anyone else's."
I'm wondering from readers what they feel like about wearing make-up, whether they find it compulsory, if they feel comfortable in public spaces or specifically queer spaces without it (if they are a make-up identified person)? In what ways do you feel "in your gender," and how does that present? How does that differ from day to day, moment to moment? How do you respond to weight loss in your life? Are there ways that you make it value-neutral?
I've long postulated that the Park Slope Food Coop, a fairly legendary place in Brooklyn, is teeming with queers I don't know. I mean, it's teeming with people I do know since I can count thirty members who are friends of mine without really trying. But since most of those folks I know from social situations and everyone has to grocery shop, there's probably a ton of members that are hot queers I wouldn't otherwise run into. The event: My friend Victoria needed to get some grocery shopping done for a big party she was throwing and she knew I wanted to come check out the Food Coop. I already know about the strict membership work requirements (if you can't get someone to cover your shift your penalty is two workshifts and it goes up exponentially from there), the abundance of cheaper organic groceries and how you can't shop without being a member. But you can visit.
Set in the late 90s on the Lower East Side of New York City, LESBIAN LOVE OCTAGON follows the journey of Sue, a less than butch dyke with a broken heart, as she tries to cope with losing her girlfriend to her ex-girlfriend. When Sue’s friends (a bevy of ex-girlfriends and ex-girlfriends' ex-girlfriends) come rushing to her aid, they incite a tempest of lust and betrayal as they try to convince Sue that the answer to happiness exists in polyamory, pomade, and online personals. A riotous look at a righteous time in lesbian history, LESBIAN LOVE OCTAGON is a musical for anyone who has ever loved wimmin's bookstores, tofu or cats.
Bandelettes are a strategy that doesn't involve creams, lotions or reapplication. They are bands of stretchy lace 6" long and silicone grippers that fit on your thighs where the chafe is most egregious and prevent the rubbing. I was a bit dubious at first, having been wildly disappointed by thigh high stockings in the past where the silicone gripper was meant to keep them up and failed horribly. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how well Bandelettes performed!
Welcome to Gay Stamina Month. The month in June where every weekend has a pride event in some borough (including Mermaid Pride, I mean, the Coney Island Mermaid Parade). I cut off my schedule early in May. Seeing it swell with events I just decided not to plan anything else. For my sanity!
The past two weeks have been a doozy. My elder cat, Bear, a handsome eighteen years old, got really sick. It's hard to tell when a cat goes from being just an old cat with some bouts of dementia and a propensity to angry poop in the hallway, to actually-really-sick-call-the-vet. There's a subtle shift. He had a really bad accident on a Saturday, the kind that involved a grumpy roommate and me just mopping the whole house. Then he puked, then he just sat still. More still than usual and he sleeps about 23 1/2 hours a day. I put a call out to my friends on Facebook if there was a vet person I could talk to about whether I should go to the vet. I've known so many people who have dumped thousands of dollars into an old cat to find out what's wrong only to have to let them go anyway. I didn't want that to be Bear's experience in his senior years, I just wanted him to be comfortable and happy.
(This post is a series of daily letters from me to my future children reporting from the emerging paradigm.)
Dear Kids:
Last night I was reflecting on having a quiet Friday night in June. How just 10 years ago I would have looked at that as a failure. I was so enlivened by going out and celebrating Pride that I didn’t want it to stop and soaked up every opportunity.
Living in NYC meant a Pride festival pretty much every weekend (and, when we were lucky, the Mermaid parade would land on the weekend between Brooklyn Pride and NYC Pride). I called June “Gay Stamina Month” for a long time.
I was taking last night easy because this morning I did a very Day Gay event (11AM start time). I taught aerobics in a cannabis healing event for LGBTQIA+ folks and their allies as a fundraiser for Project Q. (For more info on Project Q and what they do, check out my podcast episode with Sabine Maxine who is the Director of Programs.)
Rest is an important component of self care for everyone, and especially for me in my healing work. I consider teaching Fat Kid Dance Party a healing.
I was remembering last night I used to live at this pace: going going going burn out / get sick / rest a little going going going / repeat. Now it’s rest, teach/agitate/rebel, rest, heal myself, rest. I’m soooo grateful for the internet that enables me to live someplace where I can rest and heal effectively and still participate in the world and connecting to folks. The internet, our global brain, is what is making this time in herstory so possible.
When I produced my first event at Stonewall I learned from the manager that they call Stonewall a Rebellion not a Riot. It’s an important distinction that I think is important to remember.
Our foremothers (primarily Black Trans women and butches) were rebelling against consistent persistent abuse from the police. Pride began as a rebellion, a protest.
The fact that today we get to “party” for Pride is it’s own kind of rebellion. Queer folks loving themselves and partying and dancing in celebration is rebelling against homophobia/transphobia/systems of oppression. But what’s most important is that we rebel in the spirit of everyone being liberated. I wish I had centered that idea more concretely when I was deep in my plus size party girl days but it’s never too late to learn and live our values.
My hope for you is that you remember that just because something is a law doesn’t mean it’s ethical. (Sodomy laws were still on the books in many states until 2003 when the Supreme Court released Lawrence v Texas.)
And that you know how important it is to distinguish rebellions from riots.
Happy Pride!
xoxo,
Mom
This blog is entirely supported by Patreon. Every dollar counts to making this work sustainable and maintaining the archives of this blog. Thanks to my awesome Patronus supporters (as my mom calls them) for co-creating with me!
(This post is a series of daily letters from me to my future children reporting from the emerging paradigm.)
Dear Kids:
Day three of a new habit. I realized in the past few months that nailing down several daily habits is how I best function low-stress high-productivity. Not “most days”–every day. It’s liberation through discipline (or as Michael Bernard Beckwith puts it in his book Life Visioning–“Blisscipline”).
My intention when I set out to do these letters was to get them done and posted early in the day. My theory is if I center my “why” before I endeavor to get the day’s tasks done, I will be more productive.
Finishing this in the morning hasn’t been the result yet but as I keep working at getting this into a daily habit I’ll move towards shifting it into the “when” I was aiming for.
When I started my meditation practice ten years ago, I barely ever did it. Now I’m a diligent first thing in the morning daily meditator. I realized last year that if, in ten years, I can adopt a life changing habit I do at the same time every day, I can definitely habit my way to more life improvement.
Being willing to do things and not nail it right away has been a growth area for me. Something I want so much for you is to strive for greatness not perfection. I accidentally learned by being an overachiever perfectionist as a young person who naturally excelled in academics, that talent overrides work habit. That’s not true. Talent sometimes prevents us from our greatness because it teaches us to rely on innate ability instead of developing what really gets things done.
Something that has been crucial to my shifting mindset is practicing chunking things down into tiny daily tasks. “Winning the day” by doing what I set out to do and fulfilling my personal objectives.
I think a lot of what has slowed down anti-racism is folks feeling frustrated that the problem is too big for any of us to fix. And it is! It’s a huge issue that requires a lot of work. When a lot of work is spread across a lot of people is very possible to topple.
Unarmed Black people have been executed by police officers many times during my adult life. We have historically had big uprisings followed by petering out of sustained effort. What I’m hearing and seeing that is different this time is a call for sustainable long-term action.
If white folks spend 10 minutes every day focused on unlearning racism or having hard conversations confronting racism we could truly change the conversation and create equality.
So much change has already happened in such a short time! I’m excited for what is to come as folks roll up their sleeves and keep going.
Today is Juneteenth and while I’ve heard of the commemoration of the end of slavery before this year it’s centered like never before. People are talking about it everywhere and folks are having mass meditations, prayer vigils, protests and commemoration. I wonder if this will grow and if in future years it might become a federal holiday?
xoxo,
Mom
This blog is entirely supported by Patreon. Every dollar counts to making this work sustainable and maintaining the archives of this blog. Thanks to my awesome Patronus supporters (as my mom calls them) for co-creating with me!
Released June 18th–podcast interview with Sonya Mendoza, longtime activist, who was willing to come on my podcast and talk about what it looks like to have a world without police and prisons. Here are resources she suggests for folks who want to learn more about this work.
The Juneteenth website for finding protests: https://sixnineteen.com/
Resources:
1. Podcast – Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-makes-the-case-for-abolition/
2. Read – hey look how convenient an entire PDF of “Are Prisons Obsolete” by Angela Davis https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf
3. Watch/study – This was done for Wilderness Torah, a synagogue in the Bay Area but it’s an incredibly great overview on what white supremacy is and how it functions in every day life with a lot of grounding in history so I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn about systemic racism! https://www.facebook.com/wildernesstorah/videos/564074664291521
4. Another podcast, a throwback from a few years ago but I really can’t recommend this highly enough and I continue to push to people, is Seeing White, a 14 part podcast on the construction of whiteness that endlessly helped me formulate better anti racist arguments and has given many white people a better framework for why everything is happening right now is happening. https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/