new faces, new friends
So I spent most of yesterday overwhelmed and stressed to the max and nauseated. I decided about halfway through the day that, instead of being neurotic and acting-out-anorexic, I might just have a little stomach flu. Michelle called me at work to encourage me to go home. Twice. Each time, with my eyes buggy in my head and swaying in my chair looking at the computer, where she simultaneously chatted at me "Go home! Go home! Go home!" I begged her off. I actually went home twenty minutes after I am technically free to go. I just needed to finish this draft, get through this, accomodate my supervisor's ridiculous overblown urgent deadlines. This is a whole other conversation -- how I am really mismanaged and am fully aware of that, but also get emotionally caught up in it and continue to accomodate it, in order to assuage my guilt and anxiety about work.
The thing that I really wanted to talk about was how different I felt when I went home, and convinced myself that I would call out sick today. (I didn't. Again, a different conversation.) I felt this lightness come over me going home. And then I met with a new person in my life, Anna. She and I are doing a scene from Two Gentleman of Verona together in this acting intensive I'm doing. The strange thing is that Anna and I went to high school together, both of them -- Riverside High School and C.E. Jordan High School in Durham, NC. I graduated ahead of her because she took a bit of time to sort through some stuff, but only by a year. We actually performed in Grease together in this summer theater workshop back when I was a teenager. These are facts, and she remembers me very distinctly. I'm ashamed to say that I don't remember her from that time in my life, except that she vaguely looks like the very first girl I ever had a crush on. But I remember that girl as being named Stacy. Its amusing to have their faces collide in my memory -- maybe you were the one, I think. But no.
I invited her over to my house in Flatbush. She's new to my life, so she doesn't know that I haven't always lived in this apartment. She experiences its newness completely differently than my other friends who've seen how I've lived elsewhere. She just sees the beauty of where I am now, and the surprised happiness that permeates these walls. She doesn't press other impressions of me on top of it. We sat and talked and I made dinner and tea. Through our conversations, I talked about meeting Michelle and moving in with her, we talked about the stuff around moving in with people for the first time and what comes up with that. She casually came out to me, and referenced her queerness and her queer circle of friends in contrast to the straight-laced nature of her work (a school teacher), and she casually came out as having a boyfriend of three years, and how intense that is to pass completely. Michelle came home and we ate dinner together and laughed and talked about literature and politics and radicalism, and Anna treated Michelle with an unblinking respect and kindness.
After dinner, Anna and I sat together on the couch in my living room and read through our scene a few times. We talked through some basic Shakespeare stuff, scantion and beats and giving words their full weight. She was fascinated, and I got to share my delight with Shakespeare, and a bit of my expertise. She just lit up as she started to hear the way the iambic pentameter worked in the lines, and helped make sense of them. Scantion is just a tool, not a master -- but I do think it really does have value as you're just beginning to figure stuff out about the work. And it really did open some stuff up for Anna, which was fabulous to watch.
A quarter after 10, she leaves, and I realize fully how much of a good time I had. I said to Michelle that hanging out with Anna made me realize that I might need to get some new friends. She laughed and grinned and was super enthusiastic about the idea -- and later she apologized for how enthusiastic she was about the prospect of me getting new friends. That's when I laughed. The truth is that my current friends, with one notable exception, have all responded with varying degrees of really horrifying transphobia and jealousy towards Michelle. Those are two big, separate things -- the transphobic shit and the jealousy -- and both need to be tackled in different ways. They are wrapped up in each other, sure, and it has been nothing short of astonishing to me to witness, and painful. But that pain has echoed out, too, and brought me face-to-face with my own privilege as a non-trans person -- I never had to know the extent of my friends' transphobia. It wasn't a matter of survival for me. While the ways that I have played with my body that may be legible as genderqueer (not shaving for so long, eschewing mainstream definitions of femininity and commonly-held stereotypes about being a dyke) were rather thoroughly interrogated by my friends, that never flagged as transphobia to me. I'm sure they would protest that it wasn't. Many of them continue to insist that they are not transphobic. They just persist in regarding Michelle with huge suspicion -- contrast that with how easily they accepted each other after being introduced through me. What's the difference? How long I knew each of them beforehand? Sure, maybe. But I think it ignores the elephant in the room.
At any rate, this is a much larger discussion, too, and one I've been wanting to have. Part of what makes it so painful to articulate is that I'm talking about people I love dearly, to the core. And yet, they have treated me and my lover quite badly, and for the most part, without apology. It makes me incredibly sad. And yet, hanging out with Anna makes me realize there are other options -- and other dykes living complicated lives who know how to behave themselves and treat us and themselves gently. Having this gentleness and kindness come from a person who barely knows me -- so, in effect, just common decency -- really throws into high relief the fear and betrayal of those who claim to love me deeply.
Anyways, more on all that later. Michelle's eyes were this intensely clear blue this morning. Sometimes I really can't believe how beautiful she is, and how I get to have her face be the first thing I see when I wake up every day. It leaves me all speechless and snuggly.
Why is it so hard for my friends to see that joy, that love, that tenderness in me?
The thing that I really wanted to talk about was how different I felt when I went home, and convinced myself that I would call out sick today. (I didn't. Again, a different conversation.) I felt this lightness come over me going home. And then I met with a new person in my life, Anna. She and I are doing a scene from Two Gentleman of Verona together in this acting intensive I'm doing. The strange thing is that Anna and I went to high school together, both of them -- Riverside High School and C.E. Jordan High School in Durham, NC. I graduated ahead of her because she took a bit of time to sort through some stuff, but only by a year. We actually performed in Grease together in this summer theater workshop back when I was a teenager. These are facts, and she remembers me very distinctly. I'm ashamed to say that I don't remember her from that time in my life, except that she vaguely looks like the very first girl I ever had a crush on. But I remember that girl as being named Stacy. Its amusing to have their faces collide in my memory -- maybe you were the one, I think. But no.
I invited her over to my house in Flatbush. She's new to my life, so she doesn't know that I haven't always lived in this apartment. She experiences its newness completely differently than my other friends who've seen how I've lived elsewhere. She just sees the beauty of where I am now, and the surprised happiness that permeates these walls. She doesn't press other impressions of me on top of it. We sat and talked and I made dinner and tea. Through our conversations, I talked about meeting Michelle and moving in with her, we talked about the stuff around moving in with people for the first time and what comes up with that. She casually came out to me, and referenced her queerness and her queer circle of friends in contrast to the straight-laced nature of her work (a school teacher), and she casually came out as having a boyfriend of three years, and how intense that is to pass completely. Michelle came home and we ate dinner together and laughed and talked about literature and politics and radicalism, and Anna treated Michelle with an unblinking respect and kindness.
After dinner, Anna and I sat together on the couch in my living room and read through our scene a few times. We talked through some basic Shakespeare stuff, scantion and beats and giving words their full weight. She was fascinated, and I got to share my delight with Shakespeare, and a bit of my expertise. She just lit up as she started to hear the way the iambic pentameter worked in the lines, and helped make sense of them. Scantion is just a tool, not a master -- but I do think it really does have value as you're just beginning to figure stuff out about the work. And it really did open some stuff up for Anna, which was fabulous to watch.
A quarter after 10, she leaves, and I realize fully how much of a good time I had. I said to Michelle that hanging out with Anna made me realize that I might need to get some new friends. She laughed and grinned and was super enthusiastic about the idea -- and later she apologized for how enthusiastic she was about the prospect of me getting new friends. That's when I laughed. The truth is that my current friends, with one notable exception, have all responded with varying degrees of really horrifying transphobia and jealousy towards Michelle. Those are two big, separate things -- the transphobic shit and the jealousy -- and both need to be tackled in different ways. They are wrapped up in each other, sure, and it has been nothing short of astonishing to me to witness, and painful. But that pain has echoed out, too, and brought me face-to-face with my own privilege as a non-trans person -- I never had to know the extent of my friends' transphobia. It wasn't a matter of survival for me. While the ways that I have played with my body that may be legible as genderqueer (not shaving for so long, eschewing mainstream definitions of femininity and commonly-held stereotypes about being a dyke) were rather thoroughly interrogated by my friends, that never flagged as transphobia to me. I'm sure they would protest that it wasn't. Many of them continue to insist that they are not transphobic. They just persist in regarding Michelle with huge suspicion -- contrast that with how easily they accepted each other after being introduced through me. What's the difference? How long I knew each of them beforehand? Sure, maybe. But I think it ignores the elephant in the room.
At any rate, this is a much larger discussion, too, and one I've been wanting to have. Part of what makes it so painful to articulate is that I'm talking about people I love dearly, to the core. And yet, they have treated me and my lover quite badly, and for the most part, without apology. It makes me incredibly sad. And yet, hanging out with Anna makes me realize there are other options -- and other dykes living complicated lives who know how to behave themselves and treat us and themselves gently. Having this gentleness and kindness come from a person who barely knows me -- so, in effect, just common decency -- really throws into high relief the fear and betrayal of those who claim to love me deeply.
Anyways, more on all that later. Michelle's eyes were this intensely clear blue this morning. Sometimes I really can't believe how beautiful she is, and how I get to have her face be the first thing I see when I wake up every day. It leaves me all speechless and snuggly.
Why is it so hard for my friends to see that joy, that love, that tenderness in me?