Sunday, June 26, 2011

In Time

Rhythm is fingers against the pavement
waving false sentiment into the sun
and forwarding emails,

farewell movie stars,
trailers that live inside populous
falsehood and watery forgiveness,
where I wept inside my jeans
and forgot to make the bed.

Lonely mastery of ourselves,
only makes the landing quieter
and the stemmed borrowing
from this earth that much lighter.

If I were
to weave in and out
enough butchered English
would you love me again?
Would the sun rise just so as
it once had, once more,
once upon a time.
Marry Poppins lost her suitcase again,
and I forwarded an email.

Men are so clean,
so dashing, and so mean,
and I flail like a small child in pajamas,
pretending my cell phone is a space ship,
and waiting for when what have you
is enough.

Well, as long as I wait,
it won't.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

To All Vanilla People: Our Time Has Come

Preface:

To identify as gay, or to have any sort of sexual identity, ostensibly implicates a discourse on sex.  And in the West we are particularly ambivalent about sex and sexuality.  Add to this, that "claiming" is only necessary when one's sexual identity is not given (for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, poly-amorous, transgender people, etc).  We claim our identities, and give them a position, because the mainstream discourse does not inherently provide a position for GLBT people (admittedly less so in the past).  And where a position does exist, it is often comparably asymmetrical--that is, our positions are endowed with less influence or power than those of our white, male, straight counterparts.  By "position" I mean social position--the stance we must take with its moral and cultural scripts that loosely limits how we relate and interact with others.  These moral and cultural scripts are complicated--from the pre- or post-marital sex debate, to debates about monogamy and polyamory, to debates about the actual terms we use to claim a position (Dyke, Queer, Butch, Lesbian, Gay, Homosexual, Trans, Boi, Kinky, Vanilla, etc), and to the strategies we use to stake claims (gay marriage vs. no marriage).  I am no expert on this topic, but in introducing my blog in this way, I hope to demonstrate that what I say next is locked within a foray of flying discursive moments, none of which should be underestimated.  Nothing I say retains a simple, uniform meaning.  And what I write has implications within and without the GLBT community--and such implications often differ depending on the perspective of the community in question.   

...

I am vanilla!  I claim my vanilla status, and I, right here right now, intend to stake a discursive space (a social position) for vanilla people.  Here I am--ramming a big wafer-colored flag into the discursive mound of Queer-eality.  Vanilla will no longer simply mean the absence of interesting sexual activity.  It will no longer be equated with lifeless monogamy or repetitive, redundant sexual activity.  For example, the sex-lives within marriage and monogamy, to remain alive, do not also necessitate menage a' trois, sex toys, role-play, fore-play, and the like.  However, these are not out of the question for vanilla people.  Like a straight man who might cross-dress, or a lesbian who might, for a second, consider wearing lipstick, vanilla people do not by definition reject complicated sex.  

What you do during sex is much less important than the substance underlying the sexual experience, anyway.  By substance I mean the meaning of the sexual experience—the feeling of the sex, the connection derived and enhanced in the context of the sex, the intimacy established and reinforced.  I place kinky on one side of a wide spectrum where vanilla is the opposite bookend.  Both kinky and vanilla are about more than the activity—they are about what the activity does for the people involved.  Kinky focuses on power-play where one person is dominant and the other is subordinate.  Kinky may involve intimacy, sensuality, connection, monogamy, etc, but Kinky does not necessitate these for its focus.  Vanilla focuses on "intimacy-play" where one person is revealing a part of their self while the other discovers it.  Vanilla is about opening oneself to mutual vulnerability in sexual interaction.  Vanilla may involve power-play (vulnerabilities often do), sensuality, connection, monogamy, etc, but vanilla does not necessitate these for its focus.  Vanilla sex may even involve some of the same props as Kinky sex or other types of sex, but vanilla sex manages such props in much different ways and with much different intentions. 

The most liberating thing about defining a positive space for the term “vanilla” is that we can now feel okay if we don’t like to fist, to flog, to use an abundance of toys, etc.  The focus in vanilla sex is on intimacy itself, which does not require complicated activity.  And even if vanilla were to involve complicated activity, such activity is much more likely to be connected to sensuality and to pleasure rather than to pain and to power.   

When I claim my vanilla status, I claim it because I like sex that is soft, sensual, playful, intimate, connected and sweet.  I also like sex constituted within a committed relationship.  It has been my experience that usually (but not always) commitment leads to enhanced trust and safety.  When trust and safety are present and enhanced, a much greater degree of intimacy and connection follows. 


The way we have codified and thereby related to the term "vanilla" indicates the twisted way our society relates to sex.  Vanilla is what you do if you follow the mainstream, and if you don't realize how freeing nontraditional ways of sex (and of being sexual) can be!  Vanilla people are somehow the bad gays, or like those still trapped unawares in The Matrix who, in their ignorance, are more a threat than an ally.  The regulative effect that Christianity has had on the West, has twisted our relationship to sex into a paradox.  We accept that it happens, that it is necessary, but we deny its accompanying pleasure, its utter beauty, and the significance it has (without a doubt) in how we manage and produce meaning.  Still in many liberal communities, there are no terms for relating to sex directly and openly, no ways of managing its pervasive influence in all hearts and minds.  We thus put ourselves in a bind—we hate ourselves for doing the very thing we know we must.  In the meantime, we never develop the proper tools to manage our sexuality safely and with balance.  We thus are forced into exploring alternative ways of being sexual, which are then pushed under the rug.  And although these alternatives are in themselves viable, they are part of a twisted system.  A way that we can dismantle this system is by claiming, as Queers, the oppressive side of sex as well.  We can accept "vanilla" into the fold.  A wonderful program with which I resonate, and which has applications for all ages is Our Whole Lives:  http://www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/ourwhole/

I found myself caught in this twisted system, and thereby torn by the examples set before me.  It seemed that I must either become monogamous and bored, or uncommitted and exhilarated. But these options are false dichotomies.  They do not even approach the full spectrum of sexual vitality and its idiosyncratic wonder.  At the very least, good sex and monogamy are not mutually exclusive.  And whether you are poly, bi, homo, straight or just plain queer, you need also to know that you can be vanilla.  It no longer needs to be a shameful word--a word we use to describe mainstream folk who apparently don't understand the value of sexual freedom.  One can be free, perfectly free, and vanilla simultaneously!  Praise vanilla people! Our time has come.

Friday, June 10, 2011

The Crying Man

My thoughts carried me, I think, more than my feet last night, as I walked to the T-Station to grab a train (and then on to Jamaica Plain).  My hope is that one day I will get sick of hearing myself think, and then I'll just sit and be a stone.  Perhaps this is reserved for death, so.  

I have a fifteen minute commute from my new apartment to the station, and on the way I pass a bridge, and behind, there is Boston's skyline.  That looming machine--a trap, and a blessing.  When my spiritual grandmother died, she told me, her very last words to me were: "I hope you find things you never expected."  Well, Pat, I certainly have!  I miss you, too. 

I wore my shiny, renewed clothes and my cheap, red shoes.  I have torn apart much of my wardrobe--given clothes away, made pants into shorts.  I missed my ex-boyfriend in that moment.  While Boston's skyline diminished from increased distance--closer to the station I became, and more deeply into sadness there I also became.  

You gave me sweetness and now I have this: 
sadness breaths through my breast. 
A far off country 
and the way that we were, 
like sailing for the horizon.

This was some poem I wrote as I walked.  And as I turned into the station, I came upon an important scene.  Seated on the floor against his army-patterned duffel bag and the wall, a man sobbed.  He sobbed into his hand, as the other hand rested palm-down on his head (his fingers tangled into his black, matted hair).  In this moment my sadness was with him, his weeping so touched my own weeping soul. 

The next day I recited the story to a friend who, it turns out, had noticed the same man, also crying, in the same station a few hours before I discovered him.  

What did this mean?  That a person could have stayed in the same spot for three or more hours just sobbing and sobbing?  Perhaps he was an angel--who appeared for the sake of showing us grief, of giving it to us, of inviting us into it.  

I want to make sure that I weep--that I weep for the immense change that represents my existence, that I weep for loss and for tragedy that cannot be undone nor explained.  I want to make sure that I weep, and weep and weep--and in the weeping welcome myself anew. 

With love, 
ZAC


Saturday, June 4, 2011

Imagine: Reflections from the Spring 2011 Young Adult Friends Gathering of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

A version that talks exclusively about Quakerism is available: http://www.pym.org/blogs/sadie-forsythe/spring-retreat-reflection-part-1-progress-certain

I stand before you, so still.  As one would, in the face of fierce landscapes or the sweaty satchel of a lover’s embrace, I feel safe and one.  I am in awe, in your sublime and in your beauty.  Dear God, you cradle me as a child, as a creature disposed to brokenness, and all I can be now is still. 

This is the message I burned to give, and which I did not give for unclear reasons.  And yet, in the last few minutes of worship at the recent Spring 2011 gathering of Young Adult Friends, I think that I am glad I did not stand.  For another Young Adult Friend stood to speak:  to the profound manner in which Quakers create the sacred out of the profane and transcendence from the mundane.  “We have sex, and we drink, and we party, and we laugh with beautiful raucous appreciation!”  We embrace tragedy just the same.  These are not his words exactly, but they are my own reminiscence.  God is an ever-present mystery, unraveled not necessarily from rational stances but from within a house of uncertainty.  We search, that is, for the divine in all things, whilst forsaking cautiously and embracing slowly.  Imagine an entire community, or an entire society, built on some of these values!

Imagine!  Imagine a world without the detrimental effects of social class—without social class altogether.  George Lackey challenged us with these admonishments.  To what do we cling for the sake of ease rather than for the sake of mystery? 

Imagine, more, a robust community not merely of Young Adult Friends!  Imagine a community of all people that embraces the movements of Spirit in all its possible forms!  Imagine a communal operation that is intimate, safe, beloved and beautiful!  Imagine a community whose cultural categories deem humanity a broken and beautiful mess--one which suffices with everyday struggles and meaning-making over battle and war.  Imagine a community whose culture altogether exits dichotomies that presuppose scarcity as a possibility, that presuppose Hobbesian states of nature, the necessity of violence, class warfare, etc.  

The very things which have indicated to us, in this world, that such a possibility is mere dreaming and illusion are those things that categorically concocted them as such in the first place.  For, a world that creates the categories of "barbarism," "primitivism," states of nature, cunning, deceit, etc, must also presuppose such tendencies against which society is then constructed to guard.  There would be no reason to invent them, and to impute onto them such negativity if they were not to have real consequences for how we choose to live.  It is akin to inventing "belief" in God so that we might possibly deny his existence--society seems to have done this very thing.  We manage power so as to guard against the violent and the selfish natures of humanity (where power is defined as the influence one entity may have over the activity of another).  In so doing, we create the possibility for these natures in the first place.  We looked upon "primitive" societies and called them so, and thus made them what they are.  We looked upon violent activity and called it inevitable, a necessity of human meaning-making, and thereby constituted this necessity.  We said God must be believed-in rather than known, and thus created the possibility that his existence could be denied.      

Budget shortfalls, the positions we fill, money, and the manner in which we negotiate power in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is intricately related to the message emanating from within the Young Adult Friends movement.  Young Adult Friends Program Coordinator, Sadie Forsythe quoted me, to me:

I yearn for deeply held, deeply felt, deeply important community.  The PYM Young Adult Friends are at a point now where “it could go either way.”  We could remain mostly disconnected, or we could settle into a well-rounded, rooted rhythm of connection that carries through from one gathering to the next.  So I maintain a cautious optimism.  The Winter 2011 gathering seemed to indicate that we are headed to the latter.  I am anxious to see what happens next. 

These things for which I yearn are characteristics of a beloved community.  To me, the movement of YAF's in PYM and beyond is a message meant not hardly for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting alone.  The message is meant for all of humanity's ears. Our basic attitude is one of imagination--of keeping within our hearts the knowledge that there is an alternative way of defining what we know, of constituting it, and creating a world around it.  All things begin with how we think about them.  Emile Durkheim (Durkheim 2009; 1965) tried to show that Kant's basic faculties of thought (Kant 1999) were socially constituted.  Others critiqued these assertions, and whether such faculties were socially constituted or not, what matters is not how they came to be, but in what way they are applied. 

Our progress is certain, and I am confident that the YAF community will burgeon further no matter the outcome of the recent budgetary conflicts in PYM.  What has “happened next” is beautiful.  More than this the YAF community in its still largely uncertain progress speaks to possibility:  Philadelphia Yearly Meeting could become a place to which we go to see and to be seen; a place where we can speak with passion without having our words catch in our throats.  Let’s constitute PYM in terms of nothing more than a circle of open hands that receives us, where eyes light up as we enter, where voices celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power: a circle of healing, of friends, of God, of freedom (Starhawk 1997:92-96).  When I was a Young Friend, I would have defined the Young Friends community in this way.  It was chocked full of drama, and it was very messy, it was broken, but it was tremendously beautiful.  The Young Adult Friends community is remaking itself into something like this, but it faces the challenges of transience.  How do we create such communities wherever we go?  How do we build-up a system of communal organization that loves life and celebrates cooperation, and turns our current rationally constituted cultural notions on their lovely little heads?  There are things we can learn this day.    

Durkheim, Emile. 2009 [1963]. Primitive Classification. 1st ed. Routledge.
Durkheim, Emile. 1965. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. abridged edition. Oxford University Press, USA.
Kant, Immanuel. 1999 [1781]. Critique of Pure Reason. 0th ed. Cambridge University Press.

Starhawk. 1997. Dreaming the Dark : Magic, Sex, and Politics. 15th ed. Beacon Press.

    

Friday, June 3, 2011

END AIDS/HIV

Help prevent/end AIDS by donating to my friend Sierra Fleenor's Life Cycle participation. All the money goes to the SF AIDS Foundation and other similar organizations. She is sooo close to her goal of $5K. http://www.tofighthiv.org/site/TR/AIDSLIFECYCLE10/AIDSLifeCycleCenter?px=2529593&pg=personal&fr_id=1320