This morning I was indulging in a bit of self-flagellation about my writing, or lack thereof, and I remembered something cheqyr said to me some months back.

It was something along the lines of "it doesn't really matter how you write, it's the act of writing that's important."

So who cares if I'm not writing my three pages a day every morning? Oh, right, my inner perfectionist, sitting in her walnut-paneled library with her hair up in a bun and her steel-rimmed glasses.

I saw Shortbus last night. Polymorphous perversion, I think that was the term some L7 headshrinker came up with in the 60s to describe anyone who isn't a candidate for membership with the Family Research Council. Polymorphous couplings, real people having unsimulated sex, the importance of female orgasm, John Cameron Mitchell (of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame), a script that was developed by the actors themselves and not approved by a ginormous movie studion -- what's not to love?

Watching it made me feel a bit nostalgic, somewhat regretful. Shortbus takes place in New York City, and in typical New Yorker fashion, the characters and indeed the film itself exudes that confident, annoying assurance that New York is indeed the center of the universe. In my 20s, long before 9-11, I had aspirations to move to NYC. The more I got to know the city, though, the more it overwhelmed me. I grew up in a bedroom community about 45 minutes away by Metro North express train, but very rarely took advantage of my proximity. Later, when I was living at the end of the Hudson line, I fell in love with the place. Later, my love for the place evaporated in the cold, hard light of things like the cost of living, especially compared to my earning potential at the time.

I settled on Boston because it had some of New York's cosmopolitan feel but wasn't as intense and sprawling a place to live. Every city has its sprawl -- its purgatorial rings surrounding its juicy center. Boston may not be as big a Tootsie Pop as New York, but you won't break your teeth trying to get to the chewy center.

Sometimes it seems that people's favorite pastime is to dump on this city, though. While I was waiting for the cross-town shuttle in Harvard Square, two folks started in on the old litany of complaints about My Fair City: it's too segregated, the streets don't make sense, it's not as cosmopolitan as New York, bla bla bla bla bla.

Maybe it was the annoying timbre of the woman's voice, maybe it was that I was going to be late for my meeting, maybe I hadn't had enough leafy greens. Maybe it was because I, a white woman who actually enjoys talking to people of different nationalities, had engaged both of these brown-skinned people in conversation only to watch the conversation devolve into a diatribe about how generally inferior my chosen home town is -- and how racist and segregated to boot. Whatever the reason, I got fed up. And I didn't want to keep silent.

"They want it that way," said the pleasant young man (possibly Latino or Pacific Islander) on his way to work in Central Square to the Indian woman on her way to Beth Israel for a cardiac stress test.

"Who is this mysterious they?" I countered. "Did to think that maybe the white people in this city don't want it to be segregated either?"

They looked at me in shock.

"People love to complain about Boston. It really irritates me. I chose to live in this city, not New York. And you did too, apparently. If you hate the place so much, why don't you leave?"

"I don't think that's very fair," countered the woman. "You can't just follow it up with a prescription like that. It's free speech, you know. You don't have to talk to me."

"You're right, I don't. But it is free speech, and I'm free to tell you how annoying it is when people come along and complain about my town. It's not New York City, it's Boston."

"Oh, I love Boston-" said the nice young man, the same nice young man who'd been complaining about the pattern of the streets and the nasty Powers that Be intent on preserving their lily-white neighborhoods. But his attempt at peacemaking got lost in the shuffle. The woman didn't hear me.

"I wish you luck with your appointment," I said, firm, final, trying -- for my own sake, not hers -- to return to some level of cordiality. And stormed off until I was out of earshot.

What does this all have to do with the movie Shortbus? At one point, one of the characters, suffering under the weight of a profession she's grown to hate, agonizes over her predicament.

-What if I don't have enough money to live in the city? Where would I go? Fresno?

I have no strong desire to live in Fresno. But I'm sure that there are people there who make art. There are people all over the world, and there are other cities too. New York is awesome. I know that. It's got things you won't find anywhere else on the East Coast. But it's not the only game in town. Even in Fresno, I'm sure you can find artists and kinksters and perverts. Thanks to the power of the Intartubes, you can probably find them that much faster.

The reason why this issue affects me so much, of course -- the reason why I raised my voice to some poor woman at a bus stop -- is because my relationship with New York is deep, complicated. Long-standing. In another life I may have ended up in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. Riverside. In another life I would be able to take mass transit 24 hours a day. Would smell that particular salty-muddy smell of Long Island Sound, the confluence of fresh water and salt, that smell I remember from my childhood. Smell it and live in it, along with the smell of hot dogs and car exhaust and hope and desperation. Would live and work and walk and fight and elbow my way through crowds of people, a different mix of people, brown and blue-black and lily-white and all the lovely tones in between, live in a place where the Boston Irish don't predominate. Live on a grid.

But I don't. I live here, a gentle little city built on cowpaths, a conglomeration of villages still with their separate boundaries, a mass transit system color-coded and sprawling like a web built by a drunk spider. A place where you can drive 20 minutes up the road and go cross-country skiing for $30, or live your whole life jammed up against your neighbors and car-free. A place where gay couples can legally marry, where indy bands and artists thrive and work and play, a place where health care is a right and not a privilege.

But I grew up in the shadow of New York City. It's my white whale. It's a dream I used to have, a fantasy that needed to stay a fantasy. It's someplace I like to visit once or twice a year. It's not my home.

My home is here, with all the web of community and love and memories I've built here for the past decade. My home is here, with Army Guy.

Which is the other reason Shortbus makes me nostalgic. Nostalgia isn't the same thing as memory. Nostalgia filters memories through a pink filter. It erases all the angst and loneliness, all the alienation and uncertainty, and leaves just the glamour, the excitement. The fantasy of youth.

Youth isn't wasted on the young. Only the young have the resilience and the stamina to put up with it. As much as I like to look back fondly on my 20s, I wouldn't relive them.

And I wouldn't re-make the choices I've made. Well, maybe the ones around unsecured debt. But not the lovers, the relationships, the moves, the experiences. I don't regret my wild and crazy past, and I don't regret my commitment to Army Guy.

"I'm afraid you're going to build up a head of steam over all these parts of yourself I'm asking you to give up," he said.

The fact that he even cares about that makes me love him more. He'd never steal the skin of a Selkie. He'd sit on the shore and talk with her until she folded it up of her own free will and tucked it into the thatch of their house.

Apparently, yes.

According to his book, there's a lot of gay people in hip-hop. Just like every other part of the world. Because being gay is... normal, and it happens everywhere.

[...]

Hip-hop has a whole lot of baggage around the topic of homosexuality and manhood in general. So anything we can do to spark some serious thought and conversation on these issues... the more we can do things like that to challenge ourselves, the better.

Cause when we find ourselves thinking that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it's time to reexamine our criteria for manhood.

'Cause see, the real reason why I shy away from embracing hip-hop wholeheartedly is videos like this one. 'Cause when men find themselves thinking that hitting it from the back makes them more of a man, but loving a woman from the front (and back!) makes them less of a man, it's time to reexamine their criteria for manhood.

Also, you'd be surprised at how many women would totally jump in the sack with you if you just gayed up for them.

The video blog:

The link for RSS feeds that don't like my video embeds

Subject: What a real man dreams about

  Hot yellow Sun. Virgin sea shore.
Together You and your girlfriend. In private.
Surf and swim, play beach games, relax.
And when the Sun sleeps, have the best sex ever...

She'll love You more:
Grow up your Love Banana. All girls LIKE BIG.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Actually, a real woman dreams about the same thing. And I can just go out and BUY a love banana. Good to be a girl sometimes :)  

The Couple on the Beach

She has hips unfashionably wide
but tanned, bikini-clad,
and capable of carrying her body
back and forth across the sand.

At the ocean, the clap of a hand,
the crack of a ball against a paddle
breaks above the shushing of the surf,
which drowns out murmuring voices,
erases names, words, whole sentences,
whole narratives.
It drowns out
who their parents are
and where they come from
and what they do when they are not here,
at this moment,
on this beach.

He cries in a register unfashionably high,
diving into the sea.
She waits on the sand for him,
watching with the love eye
and when he crawls back across the water to her,
she greets him with a towel,
picking up an empty wrapper as she goes.

I can't stop thinking
that the way he places his hands upon her hips right now
will be the same way he places his hands upon her hips tonight,
in some private room,
before leaning down to kiss
the underside of her belly.
I can't stop thinking of the moment
when he will dive into her,
what he will say to her
in time to her burgeoning moans.

I am in love with them both at this moment—
I love them with a swelling heart,
an open hand, an unfurling love
which encompasses all the animals on this beach:
the shrieking gulls and the children and their parents,
the young girls in their bikinis,
the zaftig woman in her two-piece,
the barrel-chested men with hairy backs,
the loud ones and the quiet ones,
the families and the lonely ones,
all that beauty,
all those rolls of flesh
all those crooks of nose,
all here on the beach,
loved by the ocean,
moved beyond the sound
of our own voices.


— Frances Donovan
August 2004
February 2008

in that bustling room you found me
couched and alone
you gathered me up
pulled out of me the luscious I thought I'd hid
sweet brother, all innocent
                          and carnal
love without the arrowroot of sex let's talk
about other men's cocks
reclining on your balcony
in the fading light

Frances Donovan
February 7, 2008

Bright bright
both sides: look
I loved you in an instant
you pressed up on me in public
announced my sleeping habits to the world
then went to flirt with strangers.
Bright bright
                 both ends.

Later, we took him home
but you didn’t want to share
when you leaned across the couch,
we both saw the gather in your side:
not a roll of fat but old scars from childhood
(you told him the story but never told me)
full-figured little girl
                             smocked and flowered
whose haystack room I never entered--
Fun to play with
though I never understood the rules
and refused to follow them.
(I did bad things)

Bad match, fun to play with
You left a trail of toys across my house
and never spoke to me again

Frances Donovan
Feb 1, 2008

1. I got a manicure/pedicure at my favorite place today: Brookline Natural Nails in Coolidge Corner. I used to live just down the street from there, but now that I live on the cooler other side of the river, I find it harder to make the schlep on a Saturday morning. Mani/pedis are a wonderful way for me to treat myself for a very nominal fee. It's sort of like the poor woman's spa. Except that no one who gets their nails done in Brookline is exactly poor. I have the usual mixed feelings about uneven distribution of resources and the tough scrabble new arrivals to our country make. I've been on both sides of the distribution fence. And my ancestors were not exactly welcome when they first arrived on these shores either. That doesn't change the fact that my life is a lot more comfortable (right now, anyway) than the Vietnamese women who clip off my cuticles and paint my nails so beautifully. They really are artists. A mani/pedi from Brookline Natural Nails will last for weeks if not a month.

2. Despite what the last poem might imply, I am in fact very happy with the way things have worked out with the new boy. I'm not in love. We have a very friendly rapport. Sex and sushi, a nice hug, and then a see you later. And frankly, I'm more likely to go mad from loving a woman than a man. This whole business with bisexual identity and the personal and the political has been with me since I first came out. What's new this year? I've come to accept that I'm into guys right now. Oh, and still attracted to women. I'm not ashamed about it. It's part of who I am, and it doesn't define me.

3. Had a good session with my specialist on Monday. He's been tracking my chronic illness since the turn of the century. After 17 years of having it, I know a good doctor from a bad doctor, and this doctor is amazing. I see him in person about once a month, and he's more than happy to do phone consults for minor medication adjustments. I'm incredibly lucky to have him as a doctor, especially since he's not taking any new patients. Among other things, he's on the faculty of the Harvard School of Medicine, but that's not what makes him a good clinician. It's his warmth and his belief that I ultimately know what's best for my body; he offers his expertise in one particular aspect of caring for it, but he sees me as a complete human being and not a disease to be treated. He reminded me that while I may very well need to be on medication for the rest of my life, it doesn't mean that I can't move to China if I want. He has clients who live all over the world. I love that man like a father -- well, no. He's a hell of a lot more consistent than my father ever was.

Three Gifts of the Past from Three Lovers

Elsa
Smell of goat hair, horse piss.
Rough hands clenched in my hair,
moving above me. Unexpected softness
at the hips, the breasts,
the smooth of the waist beneath the armor.
Sliding into you like oil,
sword beside the furs.
My people in ruins and chains.

Daniel
Footsore and merry
a lute and a knapsack on my back.
Rushes on the floor,
bread and milk from the cook.
Bright fabrics in the court:
brocade and cloth of gold.
Your throne solid and carved from oak,
same beard, same heaviness. Same caress.
The parting, the return, the parting:
We'll meet again, we said
and we did. It was not the throne
that took you from me this time.

Robin
Hot sun in the field,
a pail of dinner. Remove the jacket
and fold it carefully,
sun-wrinkles at the eyes when I see you,
picking your way across the furrows.
My wife, my helpmate,
my killer of Indians
my cooker of meals.
Under the maples of this New World we sit,
not touching, and balance the heat between us.
You bear me sons.

Frances Donovan
May 12, 2007

I haven't updated in a while. I suppose I have a lot to say, or nothing to say, or too much to say, or something, I'm not sure which.

Tomorrow is Pride. Two years ago this very evening, about five or six hours ago, technogoddesss and I were making out in the grass in front of the Gazebo on the Common after the Dyke March. It wasn't our very firstest ever kiss, but that moment definitely marked our passage into total coupledom. I still have a photograph of her, taken on my cell phone, sitting in South Station with a big crinkly-eyes grin on her face. Then la_directora arrived from NYC and I literally squeeed all the way across the concourse to meet her.

It was a happy, happy weekend.

Things have changed a lot since then. I'm obviously not in that being-in-love-is-totally-punk-rock state of mind this year, but I am feeling better, enormously better, than I was six months ago.

Tonight, instead of going to the Dyke March, I went to the Women's Sacred Circle, which always conflicts with the Dyke March, since it meets on the second Friday and Boston Pride is always the second weekend in June. I find myself avoiding a lot of activities in which I might run into technogoddesss. Seeing her is painful, because when we were together her face and her heart center were all open and crinkly-eyed, and now they're painfully, painfully shut up behind a big redwood fence. She also refuses to coordinate with me about events that we might both show up to. So I guess it's really up to me to just cut the heartstrings loose and, as she said so succinctly via email, "deal with it."

I think marching with the femme contingent in Pride this year will help with that. The fact that I'm beginning to look at women again (in that way, god bless me) is also probably another good indicator that I really am getting over her.

I'm having some femme performance anxiety, though. Ideally, I'd strap on my high-heeled sandals and get all glittered up, but I got heat stroke at the last Pride I attended, and I'm thinking that Birkenstocks and a pretty skirt might suffice.

Hee. I'm'a meet some girls tomorrow morning at the BBWN brunch. And I'm going over there with a girl whom I think is pretty cute, too. The possibilities!

So the story of this recipe goes like this. I was dating Dan, who had a good friend Dave, whom I never met because he was living in Colorado and dating a mean Russian girl. Dan gave me the recipe for Dave's Daal, because, frankly, Dan is more of a chick than I am. So the recipe for Dave's Daal sits in my recipe tin, and every time I'm ready to cook lentils (which usually coincides with a complete and utter lack of funds, cash-money or otherwise), I pull it out. And then proceed to do exactly almost nothing like what it says.

So here is the recipe not for Dave's Daal as given to me by Dan-the-Ex-Boyfriend, but instead, Lumpy Lentils. I name them in honor of technogoddesss's cat, whom I apparently resemble, and because I prefer my lentils and rice to have more substance than drippy Daal.

Ingredients:
~ 2 cups lentils
~ 1 can whole plum tomatoes, peeled. Preferably organic.
~ 2 onions, diced
~ cumin
~ turmeric
~ salt
~ pepper
~ 2 bay leaves
~ olive oil
~ rice

Stuff to do:
In a large pot, heat the olive oil and then sautee the onions for a while. Shake in some of the salt and pepper. Don't be an idiot about it, you know. Just enough, not too little, not too much. Open the can of tomatoes. Pour about half to 3/4 of them into a bowl and loosely cut them up with a knife. Add them to the pot, along with a couple of bay leaves. Stir. Add some cumin and turmeric. Turn down to medium heat.

While that's cooking, sift through your two cups of lentils. Throw away the sticky little things that aren't round and lentil-looking. Rinse them to get off the powdery goodness (unless you can tell me where those lentils have been every step of the way!). Add them to the pot. Stir some more. Add some more cumin and turmeric and probably some more salt, too.

Take the bowl that held the tomatoes and fill it with water. Bring the tomato-water over to the pot and slowly pour it on the lentils. You want approximately a 2-1 ratio of water to lentils, but remember that the veggies factor in additional moisture. I usually go for the sight test: the water should cover the lentils completely, with perhaps about 1/8 of an inch of liquid above.

Stir the mixture. Taste it to see whether it needs more cumin, turmeric, salt, or pepper. If you're feeling adventurous, drop in a couple of cardamom pods. Bring to a boil for a couple of minutes, then bring the heat to low and cook for about 30-45 minutes, until the lentils are soft.

While the lentils are cooking, cook the rice. Oh, c'mon. Don't make me tell you how to cook rice. There's even machines that can help you now! Don't forget the olive oil and salt! I recommend short-grain brown rice with this dish.

More about my lovely weekend in D.C. later. This from one of the hosts now:

Gay, Straight, or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited

(NYTimes online requires you to give them some personal information but the subscription is free)

San Jose is the featured article on the Wikipedia main page today.

I went there looking for stuff I could use to write up Waltham. And Moody street.

Which made me think about Badger.

Watching the Odyssey last night on the SciFi channel also made me think of that... of that/this whole period of my life. All those witches and Goddesses tempting Odysseus into their beds, begging him to forget his wife, while she waits faithfully for him for 16 years. He refuses, of course, and shrugs off the lovely women who care for him like so much chattel. Never mind that he lingers in their beds. He's the victim of their magic.

My story is not identical. I went out there trying to forget about Quick, not the other way around. But I find myself back in her difficult embrace.

And homesick for San Jose, a home I haven't known since I was a toddler.

1. I first rode a motorcycle when I was at the tender and impressionable age between 10 and 13.

2. The man in front was a Vietnam Veteran with a grizzled beard.

3. He took my hands and clasped them around his hard stomach before zooming us down the block.

4. I think it was a Harley.

5. I have never learned how to drive a motorcycle myself.

6. I learned to ride a bicycle at the age of 19.

7. I once fell head-first off my bike and hit my head so hard I had to go to the hospital for tests because I was looking at the moon instead of the road. I hit a parked car.

8. I have ridden bitch with women and men.

9. In general, I preferred riding with the men because they were more willing to accelerate quickly and take risks.

10. It has been years since I have been on the back of a bike or ridden a bicycle.

So I got a call from my ex-girlfriend yesterday. Or, more accurately, we were chatting on IM and she asked me to call her. I've been trying to help her get a Friday receptionist, so I figured she wanted to talk about that... or do some friendly chatting.

But NOOOOOO....

I call her, and she says, "I am very angry at you right now. But I have XYZ client on the other line, so I'll have to call you back."

So then I get to sit in my office and feel like a little schoolgirl about to get spanked by the principal. What did I do? Why is she mad? Okay, it's her feelings, and probably doesn't actually have anything to do with me. Unless it was....

You know. Like that.

So I'm expecting her to bawl me out for taking her umbrella or something, and at about 5:30 PM, she hits me with "I'm mad at you because you left me, and now you're acting like we've never been in a relationship."

Sheesh.

It was more complicated than all of that, of course. You spend five years and a few hundred dollars in therapy with someone and it's bound to be more like a piece of baklava than a plain bagel, if you know what I mean.

But the long and the short of it is that we rehashed all the reasons why I left, why she was mad. And finally, I got sick of being the wrong person (yes, I DID leave her right after her brother died, and yes, she DID come back from his funeral in PR to snoop around on my computer and discover I'd been trolling for cheap sex on Craigslist)--and I reminded her of why I'd felt the need to go trolling for cheap sex in the first place. Can you say "dry marriage?" I knew you could!

There were some voices raised. There were some tears. I got my Irish up, as they might say.

And I felt silly about the whole damn thing because you see, the thing is, it'll be a year ago that I left her come July 4. Independence Day. And I'm dating a nice girl I like a lot. I've even been through the love blender with someone else. But still, for a variety of reasons, I continue to be in contact with her.

This argument of yesterday evening makes me think of two things:
1) Thank GOD I left that woman! All we ever DID was argue about who was feeling what! Our mouths would open and words would come out, but the message never seemed to reach the brain of the other person. And guess what! I'm NOT TO BLAME! There is a NEWS FLASH!
2) I hear from other queer women that their exes are resurfacing. I think what I just experienced might be chalked up to marriage backlash of a different sort than Shitt Romney's camp had in mind.

Okay, that's enough ranting for one day.