I am no longer the black sheep of the family
my cousin is gay.
Coffee and confession, round three. I need to stop doing those.
He takes a different approach than me to the whole thing. Namely, he doesn't care. Nothing to lose.
Parents divorced when he was young. That shattered his sense of family, duty, obligation, all those trappings.
He's a kind of "don't think about it, shit happens, keep moving" kind of guy. The opposite of me.
Told me he's planning on coming out to his father, but not his mother. Strange how our situations mirror each other.
I feel vaguely comforted by this, but I'm mostly confused.
...
Yeah. Mostly confused.
---
Sometimes I find it extraordinarily hard to say what I'm thinking
I feel like I have a spider web of things to say, but I'm only allowed to verbalize one strand
Open my mouth and instead of threads coming out thin and clear, the web collapses
And I'm left with spider webbing on my tonsils, sticky on my tongue
Eventually I choke on everything I wanted to say and my mouth snaps shut
It's different with writing.
Ten fingers, two hands, writing is like weaving. Like an arachnid's eight legs.
And me at the center, the corner, wherever I choose. Eleventy eyes watching
Feeling thoughts woven together, strands sagging and singing
Playing a three hundred string harp with my hairy feet.
Open my mouth. Web collapses. I feel like I'm spitting silly-string.
Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I manage to speak as I write.
I see hands come out of my voice and sew words to make sentences,
Cut the cloth of paragraphs, exclamations like four-holed buttons
Zipping and unzipping to send a garment, fully bodied, to say what I mean.
Although, I've never had a problem using words as weapons.
In a fit of rage, webs disappear and I have penknife and I can say exactly what I want
I might even revert to my first language. When I'm angry, it pours out
Like it was shackled and so uses the chains to strangle.
Imagine. Strangulation by a spider.
---
Spiders are related to my cousin because we sat there not knowing what to say
Two gays in a coffee shop do not excellent conversation make, in this case.
He made it sound like the process I'm going through is curve, and he's simply farther along:
It's all about letting myself accept who I am, letting things happen, believing it'll work out, etc
Maybe he's right. I still couldn't relate to him (why did I expect to in the first place?)
I told my sister via text, after coffee.
She replied:
"I knew it! tell him he has my
support 100% mucho love.
going out tonight. rar."
In the end, despite confusion and falling over tripwired words (mostly on my part, I think)
Coffee was good. He and I are really different people, with different things at stake
But we're not alone. Sometimes I forget that the message isn't always in lexis and syntax
Sometimes I forget that communication breaks down, but something meaningful's still been said
Like hands coming out of voices to touch each other and say, "you have my support 100% mucho love. rar."
My sister's always had a gift with texts.
--
One of my favorite texts from her:
A rar is a rar of sincerity.
A rar is a rar of courage.
A rar is a rar of love. :)
No joke.
So rar.
Coffee and confession, round three. I need to stop doing those.
He takes a different approach than me to the whole thing. Namely, he doesn't care. Nothing to lose.
Parents divorced when he was young. That shattered his sense of family, duty, obligation, all those trappings.
He's a kind of "don't think about it, shit happens, keep moving" kind of guy. The opposite of me.
Told me he's planning on coming out to his father, but not his mother. Strange how our situations mirror each other.
I feel vaguely comforted by this, but I'm mostly confused.
...
Yeah. Mostly confused.
---
Sometimes I find it extraordinarily hard to say what I'm thinking
I feel like I have a spider web of things to say, but I'm only allowed to verbalize one strand
Open my mouth and instead of threads coming out thin and clear, the web collapses
And I'm left with spider webbing on my tonsils, sticky on my tongue
Eventually I choke on everything I wanted to say and my mouth snaps shut
It's different with writing.
Ten fingers, two hands, writing is like weaving. Like an arachnid's eight legs.
And me at the center, the corner, wherever I choose. Eleventy eyes watching
Feeling thoughts woven together, strands sagging and singing
Playing a three hundred string harp with my hairy feet.
Open my mouth. Web collapses. I feel like I'm spitting silly-string.
Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I manage to speak as I write.
I see hands come out of my voice and sew words to make sentences,
Cut the cloth of paragraphs, exclamations like four-holed buttons
Zipping and unzipping to send a garment, fully bodied, to say what I mean.
Although, I've never had a problem using words as weapons.
In a fit of rage, webs disappear and I have penknife and I can say exactly what I want
I might even revert to my first language. When I'm angry, it pours out
Like it was shackled and so uses the chains to strangle.
Imagine. Strangulation by a spider.
---
Spiders are related to my cousin because we sat there not knowing what to say
Two gays in a coffee shop do not excellent conversation make, in this case.
He made it sound like the process I'm going through is curve, and he's simply farther along:
It's all about letting myself accept who I am, letting things happen, believing it'll work out, etc
Maybe he's right. I still couldn't relate to him (why did I expect to in the first place?)
I told my sister via text, after coffee.
She replied:
"I knew it! tell him he has my
support 100% mucho love.
going out tonight. rar."
In the end, despite confusion and falling over tripwired words (mostly on my part, I think)
Coffee was good. He and I are really different people, with different things at stake
But we're not alone. Sometimes I forget that the message isn't always in lexis and syntax
Sometimes I forget that communication breaks down, but something meaningful's still been said
Like hands coming out of voices to touch each other and say, "you have my support 100% mucho love. rar."
My sister's always had a gift with texts.
--
One of my favorite texts from her:
A rar is a rar of sincerity.
A rar is a rar of courage.
A rar is a rar of love. :)
No joke.
So rar.