Category: queer

Ramblings from your favorite three-dollar bill

Laura Wild1 Comment

One of the less encouraging things that happened to me this year was when I got fired from my first writing internship. It had been an unpaid internship, and I’m not sure if that fact made my dismissal more painful or less. The position was at a quirky little agency in Portland where I was tasked with sourcing content for a new literary database, the eventual use for which I am still unclear. Naturally I was about as gung ho as any intern could be; I was stoked about shadowing an author of such apparent caliber, and every time I heard my then-boss drop a big name in the business I became more convinced that he was not a human, but a literary deity. Unfortunately, as I have found to be true before, my first impression was misguided. I held the position for about three weeks, for which I had uprooted my entire life, until suddenly one morning I was called into my superior’s office (a sick treehouse-like writing oasis) and sent on my way with an obviously repurposed Starbucks gift card.

 

This, of course, was shortly after I had begun working as a barista. In all fairness I had already come to terms with the fact that my position was not very rewarding for me anyway, and I guess my boss agreed that it was unfair to keep me on any longer. That I respected, but he also told me that if I had only had about ten years’ experience under my belt I would have been much more useful to the agency. I’m sure I don’t need to detail the irony of that statement. Alas, since I was in the fragile position of being a lone sojourner in a new city I had no choice but to look at the positive. I was happy that this internship had at least brought me to Portland, where for the first time I felt like I was more or less home.

 

I lived in the attic of a house that I shared with several other dudes in Alberta Arts district. I loved the area and rent was cheap, so I went for it without giving it too much thought. I spent my first Christmas away from home exchanging white elephant gifts with my roommates, and everything was just dandy until the perpetual rains of the Northwest produced a multitude of insect refugees that decided to hunker down in my attic. At first it was just an ant here or there, but little did I know my abode was soon to become a winter wonderland for microscopic squatters that would leave the scent of citronella ant guts lingering in my nose for months to come.

 

By March I had ants sharing my bed with me. From the windows to the wall, they could be found in every nook and cranny of my room. Ants manifested two of my space heaters to the point that they no longer worked. The worst part of it all was that my very lifestyle enabled their presence, and though I wasn’t opposed to using traps and poison to get rid of them, I was simply up against too many. Seasonal affective disorder had never felt like such a tangible illness and soon enough the madness had me tearing off the plastic around my draftiest window, the one with tiny cracks all around the edges, just to let a little light in. I think this was a turning point for the ants; were they really living in my room or in my head? I still can’t say for sure.

 

Luckily cannabis is legal in Oregon, and it can’t be surprising that a river rat like myself has been known to indulge in the substance from time to time. But was it coincidence that these six-legged fiends somehow seemed to show up every time I opened my window to cheef a quick bowl? I think not. I became convinced that those little fuckers were drawn to the aroma of a good dank herb just as much as anybody. They knew that a rainy day off for me meant a time of rich abundance for their colony, and so they eagerly awaited the mass of crumbs that fell from my bed like a feast every time they got a whiff of that botanical kryptonite. It was a vicious cycle; my frequent binges were their greatest and most reliable source of food.

 

A saga that is so comical in hindsight was at the time a small devastation to the fantasy I had envisioned for myself in the City of Roses. I had landed in Oregon during one of the coldest and rainiest winters in years, failed at a job that I considered to be a shoe-in to the NW writing scene and was subsequently displaced from my home by an army of tiny vermin. Always a sucker for drama, I can’t say I don’t at least appreciate the poetic value of my misfortune, but it’s taken me a while to get to this point. Ten months ago I made my last blog post, and since that time I have been struggling to find my way through this enduring creative dry spell. Last month my neglected website descended into domain purgatory and I nearly lost all of its content. I am beyond happy to have it back in working order, and though my stories may be less compelling than I had hoped, I feel lucky that I still have the opportunity to release them into the wild. The fact that my closest friends and family take the time to keep up with me on my journey makes me feel as validated as any readership could, and I’m just so thankful for you.

 

As I sit in my cozy gypsy caravan in the snow flecked foothills of Mt. Rainier, I feel more at peace than I have all year. I don’t know how I managed to score a life partner like the one who built this home with me, but every day that I wake up next to her I know I am doing A-okay. I am currently without a permanent residence, unemployed and unable to start school until next year. I am absolutely dripping in privilege, and the last thing I want to do is let these precious few months go to waste. Do I batten down the hatches and travel up and down the west coast? Write that novel that has been occupying the whole left side of my brain? Roll a few dubies down by the river? I only know what I’m definitely not going to do, and that is to let shame and insecurity get in the way of being my true self. In this time of corruption and uncertainty we can do nothing but assert our humanity, and I have found no feeling to be as liberating as giving in to my imperfections, hopefully finding the humor in them.

 

So much more easily said than done, the road to self-acceptance extends far beyond my vision and I’m sure I’ll be traveling it for some time. The past few months have been a whirlwind of both anticipation for the new life I am building and the reflection of the fast, fleeting summer I leave in my wake. I am no longer a lone sojourner in a new city but one half of a partnership that seems to grow stronger and more powerful by the day. It’s never been so easy to share everything that I have. Jenny possesses the same bold sweetness of that 12 year old girl I befriended ten years ago, but now holds in her presence a mysterious wisdom and poise that is both terrifying and electrifying. I did it, I got mushy and sentimental, but I’ve honestly never felt more entitled to it. Just the other day we were perched up on our rooftop patio in the prime real estate area of King’s Heights, where we were parked for the night above a city that seemed a hell of a lot smaller than it used to. It was one of the many times in my life that I became aware of the fact that I have everything in the world; that knowledge has so far been my best defense against the inevitable lows of adulthood.

Finding hope in the moderate male.

Laura WildLeave a comment

Over the past few days I’ve been at a complete loss for words. In a state of shock, I went to bed on Tuesday night feeling alone, but knowing that I was far from it. I was completely shaken by the knowledge that America had elected such an ignorant and inane POTUS as Donald Trump, and I struggled to find any kind of silver-lining. Hillary Clinton’s concession speech helped to relight a fire in my soul, and I realized that this disappointment and setback was merely a taste of what women and minorities before me have felt since the dawn of time. As I watched my friends and family dust themselves off and begin to rally, I realized that wallowing in my fear was not going to make me any safer. My voice as a queer female has already been suppressed by that fear for too long, not to mention by the very demographic who have enabled this disastrous outcome.

What I found as the initial shock of the election faded was that these results are not as unbelievable as they first seemed. We live in an incredibly backwards country, one that has systematically oppressed racial minorities, immigrants, women and members of the LGBTQ community for too long, indeed. While we have made significant strides of progress, we are still embarrassingly behind many of our Western counterparts. This is the same rhetoric that has been flooding social media all week, I know, but there is good reason to keep the discussion going. If we (liberals, activists, decent human beings, etc.) intend on turning the tides once and for all, we have to convince the other half. I urge those who are privileged enough to threaten to pack up and move to another country and those who have gone on an unfriending-rampage against all Trump supporters to please think twice. There are people in this country who are desperate to stay here, terrified of being deported, and who need the support of their allies now more than ever. In order to turn this country around again in 2020 we can’t give up on each other, and we especially have to find a way to reach those who were so blinded by party loyalty that they couldn’t even vote against a poorly spoken nutcase.

In all honesty, the moderates have been more than a bit of a frustration for me during this election. There are some situations where it is great to stand in the middle of the road but I don’t think there is ever a time that it is morally valiant. That said, I know the two-party system is a huge problem and I wish our democracy worked better, but I’m not even going to go into how maddening it is that some democrats voted for a third party in this vital election; we already know what a mistake that was. Instead I am going to address the non-voters; what were you thinking? If you are young and uninformed or too lazy I can at least understand your excuses for being idle in the face of adversity, but to those who didn’t vote because “both of the candidates were so bad”, you seem to be hindered by sexism. There is no other explanation for even equating an intelligent and qualified albeit shady women to the highly under-qualified travesty that is Donald Trump, besides an intrinsic prejudice against women. You may try to hide it, you may not even be fully aware of it, but it’s there, and it’s just as toxic as outright male chauvinism if not worse. I’ll tell you why:

  1. The sexist in denial is the same person that enables male chauvinism by not condemning their peers, often defending them with a certain brotherly support that is as petty and juvenile as peer pressure.
  2. Female misogeny is a word that is becoming more popular than ever, stemming of course from the privileged white women who is in denial of the oppression that non-straight or non-white women face. Not to be confused with misandry, the female misogynist is a women that is hyper-feminized and condones the polarization of the sexes. The outdated belief that men and women are drastically different from one another is hugely detrimental to both genders, and once again enables intrinsic sexism. These are the type of women that voted directly against Hilary Clinton.
  3. Lastly, the ambivalent majority will continue to oppress minorities as long as their beliefs are backed up by conservative religious ideologies. It’s like a socially acceptable excuse to treat women poorly. Unfortunately, religion is at the root of many people’s prejudice toward women and is also to blame for demonizing the word “feminism”. It’s hard to combat this, because holy hell if people aren’t sensitive when you attack their religion! Sorry, I’ll attack any institution that threatens to limit women’s access to health care. *cracks knuckles*

I may sound like I am attacking only a specific group of people, and that’s the last thing I want to do. In fact, the straight white male demographic may itself be facing prejudice for the first time ever, and I know it’s not a good feeling. I already see a lot of my male friends on social media feeling obligated to prefix their entries with things like, “I know I am privileged and may not be able to relate to systemic oppression, but here’s why I’m saddened by this election.” I would hate for my anger to add to a new stereotype that labels a whole group of people as ignorant. Of course, social psychology tells us that all stereotypes are rooted in some kind of truth, and that truth is stemming from the fact that straight white males are largely responsible for the election of Donald Trump. Even so, we know that not all men find him acceptable. In fact many straight white men are appalled by all of the same things that I am, and it is those men that I urge to speak up! We want you on our side, we will not lose faith in you, and we need your support. Please don’t let defensiveness get in the way of activism, we feminists certainly don’t.

Last week I returned from my journey across the deep South expecting to find a much more enlightened pre-election atmosphere up here, but I was wrong. As I drove home I passed by one of the most disgusting displays that I have seen all year. A scarecrow tied to a cross with yellow caution tape had a picture of Hillary Clinton’s face stapled to it, had slurs written across the body and had its feet bound to a tire. A cardboard cutout of Trump has since been stolen from a makeshift podium that stood nearby, and several of the many campaign signs from the yard have been taken down. Still, the display remains in broad daylight, where children walk home from school every day and can often be seen pointing to it and laughing. The disservice many Americans have done to our country’s children is perhaps the saddest part of this election. I can only hope, as many generations before me have, that things are different for my own children one day. This is one story that I never wanted to be able to tell to my grandchildren, but now all I can do is join the fight to make something good come out of it. I hope we can all fight together, so that one day our Muslim, Hispanic, African American and LGBTQ brothers and sisters no longer have to live in fear.

 

 

The article I should have posted a week ago.

Laura Wild1 Comment

The fear of being labeled, judged, misunderstood or receiving any kind of unwanted attention has kept me quiet for a really, really long time. But I’m a big girl now, and it seems like the rest of the country is moving on without me, and I don’t want to be left behind. So I’m going to digress from the chronological account of my bike trip just to say a little something about what happened a week ago today… when marriage became an all-inclusive word and everyone I knew was really happy about it. None of my friends went off on a rampage of hate, in fact nobody really said anything to me at all.

I first saw the news while scrolling through Facebook last Friday, and my initial reaction was just short of an eye roll. I was one of those people who was kind of bitter about the whole thing, to the point that no date would be soon enough for the country to abide by it’s own law of the separation of church and state. It took a while to sink in, but soon enough it hit me that history was happening around me and I could almost feel a collective sigh of relief coming from all the people I knew that it affected. Including my girlfriend, and I didn’t know how to express how happy I was that I felt like we were whole humans all of a sudden. I felt like we were finally on the road to being normal.

I had never posted about her before, even though we’ve been together for over a year, so I didn’t really know what to do apart from changing my profile picture. That felt so lame to me, so I changed it back after only a couple of days. I didn’t celebrate at all, I just kind of told myself to stay true to my relationship philosophy- that my private life is nobody else’s business, and being in love with another woman only concerned me and her. Only now can I finally admit that this philosophy was rooted in bitterness as well- opposite sex couples didn’t have to come out so why should we? That was a selfish thing to tell myself, because it meant that for a long time I was asking my girlfriend to stay quiet for me, which wasn’t fair. Thank you Jenny for being so patient with me, if we ever did have to stay quiet, we certainly don’t any more.

I was so weird about my sexuality for such a long time, let me tell you. At first I was obsessed with asserting the fact that I was indeed still attracted to boys too, that I just didn’t want to limit myself, and that I thought everybody was innately bisexual and it was society’s fault that we conformed to binary gender roles. I didn’t really know what I was talking about. Even at the time of my bike trip I was still calling Jenny my friend, which I am completely ashamed of. One of the few people I did tell was my friend Ariela, who is the next person I want to thank and the person who told me that people fall in love with souls, not bodies. Thank you for listening to me when most of what I was telling people was outright lies and and thank you for helping me get my shit together.

I also can’t thank my best friend Ellie enough, for still bearing with me even after all of this self-created drama. And I want to thank my family for being cool about everything and everyone else who has put up with me. This post is a long time coming, I know. Besides the fact that I was raised christian and live in a conservative state I don’t have any real excuses for hiding my relationship, I guess I was just too afraid of what people would think of me. Thank you, Lena Dunham, for writing a book that inspired me to be honest about my own human nature. Thank you, Hozier, for writing music that perfectly captures just how tragic daily oppression can be. And thank you America, for, as Jenny would put it, coming over to the correct side of history. I think I would like to join you.

It’s so hard to fully grasp the idea that someday I could be telling my children about this, and I can only hope that it will seem unfathomable to them that marriage was once an exclusive right. For now, though, I’m pretty happy with the way things have turned out. I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a fourth of July unlike any other.