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“It’s good to challenge people on race and sexuality and other issues where there’s prejudice,” says Alyson. “If knowing my boys encourages anyone to think a bit more deeply about how we label people, then that’s just great as far as I’m concerned.”
- Alyson Kelly on the subject of her twin sons James (“black”, gay) and Daniel (“white”, straight).
There are a number of things about this that are interesting and complicated, one of which being the fact that Daniel, the “white” twin, was the one consistently beat up at school due to the racism of his fellow students. I’m not sure quite what that says about race issues today, but I’m willing to bet it includes something about the insidious nature of contemporary racism. Aggressive and subtly bigoted middle school boys are perhaps less likely to lash out at someone they can tell at first glance is “black”, maybe because they are enraged by the experience of initially viewing someone as a peer, assigning a certain set of (higher) expectations, and then learning they’ve been “tricked” by treating someone “non-white” as “normal”. This is something I kind of wish I knew more about, because it is fascinating and upsetting.
Something this makes me tangentially think of is a specific attitude that sometimes gets directed at bisexuals (especially men) who are initially assumed to be straight. This is way, way, less serious, and please don’t misinterpret me as complaining, because I am extremely lucky in this regard, but I think it relates to something similar about the way
As a relatively femme bisexual woman who dates men far more often than women, people generally assume I’m straight. That seems reasonable enough, since I stopped shaving my head a year or two ago (while I still did that, everyone assumed I was a lesbian and/or in a punk band), and typically show up to social events with a man in tow. People don’t typically know I sometimes get involved with women until I tell them, they meet one of said women, or they facebook friend me. (I’ve been listed as interested in both men and women since I joined facebook in 2005, but even then people are often surprised when it comes up in conversation. I wonder if they are simply feigning surprise?) When people do figure it out, it’s typically not a big deal at all, especially in the 20-something hipster artist circles that I run in, and I don’t consider it a big deal myself. I am obviously very fortunate; I’ve been open about being bisexual for… probably about eight years now, and can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been harassed for it. However, there is this interesting thing that happens sometimes: people who are totally not weird or bigoted towards their gay friends– their obviously, openly, stereotypically gay friends–will be super weirded out and get really uncomfortable and make comments or ask questions that are borderline offensive. There’s something confusing about a person who has no problem or visible discomfort with the friends that they registered as gay from the moment they met them, but then is clearly disturbed by someone they had considered and treated as “normal” revealing themselves as “non-straight”. Hmm.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, and didn’t intend to write anything here when I posted the link, but hey, there are my two cents for the moment.
The monkey’s paw is clenched in my fist. No, no, this isn’t what I wished for. The vengeful heart will get its due in pain.
The poison you tempered in my breast perhaps has slipped in through your ear, perhaps when we are dead it will not matter who is snake and who is garden, who fain would sleep. Perhaps I choke back sobs, or the slashing of a knife. I slowly disassemble my body, tuck the iron shards into the beds of men who treat me with more kindness than you could maintain in the face of our mutual folly.
I look down at the bowl of your face and want to smash my collarbone with a sledgehammer. I want to kick you in the fucking teeth for your insolence. My anger, my hot tears, solve nothing, and most days I have learned this. My life continues on without you, and I typically wish you well.
I pity you. I pity you for both the suffering you cause, and the suffering you endure. This was not the revenge I wanted, this terror, this panicked observation of still-unfounded death. I wanted you to slowly become whole, happy, and utterly separate. To fall asleep, healthy and content, in the bed of your gentle wife, and rarely, when the moon is right, bolt up in the night, sweating and weeping, spitting your apologies to my absence. This drives you to be even more kind to those around you, more thankful for the generosity of time and human affection.
This, this one potential truth, wriggling in your hands, this is all wrong.
To my beautiful daughter Samantha on her 10th birthday, today
November 23, 1997
May you find your passion, treasure it and keep it close to your heart. Peace, wisdom, beauty and creativity are already yours.
With boundless love,
Mom
Unsent birthday card. Year unknown.
Inside, a drawing of a green star, with happy birthday! written across.
I had a dream not too long ago, I was standing by a window in a school, reading a green xerox copy of a poem by the sunlight. I had to read it, some assignment or another, and as I did I realized you had written it. I don’t remember details, except for the first word, A N G E L, spaced bold and above the rest. I’m pretty sure it was a good poem.
No date. Excerpted.
Call me Ishmael. If you are reading this letter I’m either dead or in college.
I swear the stamp is my RA’s.
I miss everyone back home, you especially. Nothing in this world is quite like conversing with a member of the opposite sex that stimulates you intellectually.
My only advice to you is to take a deep breathe and remember that comedy is easier on the heart then drama.
PS: Never laugh underwater.
————————-
Hey!
Been trying to meet you.
Must be the devil, between us,
or whores in my head
whores at the door
whores in my bed, but
hey
where
have you
been?
If you go, I will surely die.
We’re chained.
A playbill, Phantom, New York City, December 2003.
The first dollar I ever earned making art.
Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, New Orleans.
The Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Valentine’s Day 2004.
Every school play I acted in as a child. The Junior Prom.
The New York City Ballet, the Nutcracker, December 9th 1995. Carsick on the way to the city, my Uncle Mike’s youthful laughter.
Chunks of pages of a paperback edition of 1984, found on the floor of my high school, torn apart in a rage.
A valentine from a dead man.
The invitation to a 17th birthday–now, the invitation to a wedding. Time, time, time.
Two glass marbles, and I can’t remember why.
boxes of paper.
11/13/04
I’m writing this as I’m thinking so please try to bear with me. I still don’t think you realize just how much you hurt me this past week. While I’ve been sitting alone in my room punching holes in the wall, smoking, drinking, watching sappy romance movies, you’ve been out with him. It’s not the sex that hurt so much it’s every minute you spend with him laughing, walking next to him has been another tiny dagger in my heart. I’ve done nothing these past six months but put all my energy into making you happy please try to give a little of your energy to try and find some way to make me happy. It’s so hard because I love you so much. Every day, ever minute I spend my time dreaming of holding you I dream of spending all my time with you please be with me please find some way to make this right. I love you with everything I have and there will always be a place in my heart for you. Please call me when you read this.
love always.
Already, now, a distant memory: standing at a sink with your wife, warm soapy water covering our wrists. Perhaps she set her ring on the counter. Perhaps she had forgotten. The fourth of july, blood streaming down your face. You tried to kiss me in the gravel drive belonging to the first man I ever loved. This town gets twisted in on itself. Escape to a home in New Jersey with a woman who will treat you kind. Leave me to do acid on the highway. I will not remember this letter. I will remember mostly the scar on your left arm which no longer can be seen, and the rain that covered us on the beach at night. For whatever it’s worth: the apology of a child.
I return the letter to the envelope, and dried petals crumble in my hands.
Less than 24 hours in suburbia, digging through the drawers of my adolescent bedroom while my troubled brother sleeps. Among pens and rulers and out of date business cards, a folded piece of lined paper written on in pencil:
God, or karmic law, or randomness, please, never let me have an unwanted pregnancy.
love,
Samantha B. Cook
“Oh Sister // Ferris Wheel on Fire” by Neutral Milk Hotel // Ferris Wheel on Fire 10” (1995/2011 re-issue)
Walking Wall of Words premiered a previously unreleased track from the forthcoming Neutral Milk Hotel box-set, and it does not disappoint. At this point everyone knows what to expect from Jeff Mangum’s world, so I won’t bother trying to describe it in words that will surely pale in comparison to simply pressing play.
(listen, order, see) The Walking Wall of Words // NMH Tours, Store, and Charity Info
Jeff Mangum is back. He wrote some of the most beautiful songs of recent years, then sequestered himself away to the nervous breakdowns of a recluse, to emerge only occasionally in a flurry of rumors. He’s recording, he’s touring, he’s releasing songs I’ve loved on horrible bootleg audio for years. Guys, I don’t know if you know how much this means to me. I traveled to a high school auditorium in suburban Massachusetts so see a room of teenagers sing his songs, and it was beautiful. This music is… important to me somehow. Ferris Wheel on Fire is one of those songs I listen to over and over and over again when I’m alone and feel strange.
These nights, I sacrifice sleep to pour my eyes full of the arts of others, a vision of wood and paint and muscle and voice, worked with hands trembling with young love for the world, with full-bodied fears. I give over other hours, many of these few before the dawn, to winnow with my tongue, to rend the air, to struggle into life the ideas that rush me. A hundred pounds of meat and more, crashing to the floor of a train car, sent spinning to press this rib cage against yours. Each night carries its bright promise like a star packed in gelatin, distorting angles and disguising eyes, and the minutes peel the shadows back until the dawn.