what's good for you is bad for me.
So I bought Stone Butch Blues while I was out with my brother on Saturday, and got about a hundred pages in over Saturday night/Sunday. When I got home last night, I made some dinner and sat down with it in the living room. I put on Scrubs and decided to read a little more.
Cut to one-thirty in the morning. I'm just finishing the book, the bf is just coming home from work.
I think. This book split me open, in a way only a couple others have. It's the first time a first-person POV felt less like conversation, like confession, than like some sort of mirror. Some kind of psychic connection. Ha.
Especially the beginning, you know, with the growing up and the being--the never fitting anywhere. Always being alone. Knowing people, but not being known. Being recognised, though. Everybody always recognises it. Everybody always sees, no matter what you do.
And I'm not--I'm not like Jess. I mean, I would never have gone to the bar that first time. I couldn't have. I couldn't have--I had a completely different family. They didn't hate me, even though they saw. I couldn't have run away, and all the things after. I guess I'm not--I want to say I'm not desperate enough, but maybe what I mean is that I'm too desperate to keep what I've got, to not lose even the littlest bitty bit of the little things I have.
But the way she loved people? I think I love people like that. I've never bled for it, never had my body violated for it, but I think I've got the same heart. I'm happy I get to keep it as it is, the way the older butches wished Jess could keep hers.
There's this line. A paragraph, really. Near the end. She says--fuck, I wish I'd brought the book with me so I could quote it exactly. Whatever. She says that the question of "man or woman?" has defined her life, and she can't see how she or anyone can answer it. She says that if the question has to be asked, it can't be answered.
When I read that I touched the page and I started crying, really hard. Not for how beautiful and sad it is, but for myself. Because it's just completely futile, you know? She's right. If you have to ask, I can't possibly explain it to you. You don't know the words, so you have to ask. I don't know the words, so I can't tell you. And it's not--it's not bad. But it hurts, because I love language and--I've always believed in its power, in its precision and function. I always felt like if I wrote enough, typed enough, talked enough, I'd find the words to make everybody understand everything.
It's not possible, though.
And, really, what I gain through trying is probably a hell of a lot more important than success would be.
Anyway. I can't really say anything else about the book, except for the Scooby Doo ending kind of bothered me (why yes, I am a hypocrite). Other than that. Yeah. Split from skull to pelvic bone.
Bye.
Cut to one-thirty in the morning. I'm just finishing the book, the bf is just coming home from work.
I think. This book split me open, in a way only a couple others have. It's the first time a first-person POV felt less like conversation, like confession, than like some sort of mirror. Some kind of psychic connection. Ha.
Especially the beginning, you know, with the growing up and the being--the never fitting anywhere. Always being alone. Knowing people, but not being known. Being recognised, though. Everybody always recognises it. Everybody always sees, no matter what you do.
And I'm not--I'm not like Jess. I mean, I would never have gone to the bar that first time. I couldn't have. I couldn't have--I had a completely different family. They didn't hate me, even though they saw. I couldn't have run away, and all the things after. I guess I'm not--I want to say I'm not desperate enough, but maybe what I mean is that I'm too desperate to keep what I've got, to not lose even the littlest bitty bit of the little things I have.
But the way she loved people? I think I love people like that. I've never bled for it, never had my body violated for it, but I think I've got the same heart. I'm happy I get to keep it as it is, the way the older butches wished Jess could keep hers.
There's this line. A paragraph, really. Near the end. She says--fuck, I wish I'd brought the book with me so I could quote it exactly. Whatever. She says that the question of "man or woman?" has defined her life, and she can't see how she or anyone can answer it. She says that if the question has to be asked, it can't be answered.
When I read that I touched the page and I started crying, really hard. Not for how beautiful and sad it is, but for myself. Because it's just completely futile, you know? She's right. If you have to ask, I can't possibly explain it to you. You don't know the words, so you have to ask. I don't know the words, so I can't tell you. And it's not--it's not bad. But it hurts, because I love language and--I've always believed in its power, in its precision and function. I always felt like if I wrote enough, typed enough, talked enough, I'd find the words to make everybody understand everything.
It's not possible, though.
And, really, what I gain through trying is probably a hell of a lot more important than success would be.
Anyway. I can't really say anything else about the book, except for the Scooby Doo ending kind of bothered me (why yes, I am a hypocrite). Other than that. Yeah. Split from skull to pelvic bone.
Bye.