I love this image, & I love the story behind it. Such a simple act, but such an unmistakeable one. Honestly, I think it’s vital to say no even when it isn’t important so that you can say no when it is.

I grew up hard and am still hard and I don’t care. I did not choose this face or this body and I have learned to live with it and love it and celebrate it and adorn it with tremendous drawings from the greatest artists in the world and I feel good and powerful like a nation that has never been free and now after many hard won victories is finally fucking free. I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.

I fly my flag of self-esteem for all those who have been told they were ugly and fat and hurt and shamed and violated and abused for the way they look and told time and time again that they were “different” and therefore unlovable. Come to me and I will tell you and show you how beautiful and loved you are and you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the mirror and truly believe it. If you are offended by my anger and my might at defending my borders and my people you do not deserve entry into my beloved and magnificent country.

Read the whole thing at Jezebel or on Cho’s blog.

I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not pretty enough, that you curse too much, that you don’t like the right things, that you are “‘different’ and therefore unlovable”. They are only keeping you from your freedom.

It’s profoundly moving to see that someone like Margaret Cho – famous, funny, rude Margaret Cho – still needs to punch back so hard against someone who is telling her to be something other than what she is. Makes me feel an ounce better about having felt the need to do the same thing when I was told what I needed to do to fit in here. Sometimes I wonder if those of us who “grew up hard and am still hard” get read as a lot tougher than we are, & so people feel free to critique when they might not if a person were obviously vulnerable. Hrm.

(& He would have known full well what it cost me to say that, too.)

I miss him in ways those of you who haven’t lost parents couldn’t begin to understand – although some people, even without knowing, have been amazing and kind and present in ways that have blown my mind. Thank you, with as much graciousness as I can manage, to those of you who do understand, who have experienced this kind of loss before me, and who have had such helpful words.

I am also in awe of anyone who grew up outside of a city like New York and who has found a way NOT to conform in a small city like Appleton; I find maintaining my independence and artsiness really, really challenging there. I have had to change so much, and only now, back in New York, am I aware of the daily small compromises: no good bagels, no gas stoves, no good cheap Italian food or inexpensive salons for manicures, pedicures, or waxing; no radiator heat. It is often a struggle to explain that “tea” does not mean chamomile to a coffee culture. Add to that not liking beer, being professionally queer and a vegetarian, and having a conscientious objector relationship with football — let’s just say it hasn’t been a tidy landing for me, and I’m sure I’ve complained plenty. This trip home has given me at least some perspective on what kinds of ways I might try to adjust going forward, and in the meanwhile, I am more thankful for the progressive politicians, artistic friends and other displaced coasties than anyone might imagine, but especially to those who have expressed empathy while they watched me try to fit this square peg into the round hole that is Appleton.

So as much as it’s been one  of the most difficult experiences of my life, I still find life in Appleton lovely in ways I could have never imagined as a lifelong New Yorker and alt urbanite.

Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.
This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.

Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.

Myth #4 – Introverts don’t like people.
On the contrary, Introverts intensely value the few friends they have. They can count their close friends on one hand. If you are lucky enough for an introvert to consider you a friend, you probably have a loyal ally for life. Once you have earned their respect as being a person of substance, you’re in.

Myth #6 – Introverts always want to be alone.
Introverts are perfectly comfortable with their own thoughts. They think a lot. They daydream. They like to have problems to work on, puzzles to solve. But they can also get incredibly lonely if they don’t have anyone to share their discoveries with. They crave an authentic and sincere connection with ONE PERSON at a time.

Myth #7 – Introverts are weird.
Introverts are often individualists. They don’t follow the crowd. They’d prefer to be valued for their novel ways of living. They think for themselves and because of that, they often challenge the norm. They don’t make most decisions based on what is popular or trendy.

I’d add that even though he points out that introverts aren’t shy, they aren’t shy because they’re introverts, but sometimes we are independent of the introvert thing.

I am thankful to have known my father for 42 years, and Aeneas for 11. I am thankful, even, for the loss of them both because they’ve reminded me that time speeds by too quickly, and that the small joys of taking care of and being taken care of are what it’s all about.

I am thankful for #OWS and the Occupy movements around the world, and for the people standing in the cold collecting signatures on petitions to recall WI Governor Scott Walker. I’m thankful to live in an ailing but still viable democracy.

I am thankful that my only food concern is making sure I don’t eat too much of the stuff.

I am thankful for daily opportunities to read, listen to music, and learn new things.

I am thankful that – despite distance of various kinds – I have found both solace and joy in conversation and companionship with friends new & old.

I am thankful that someone invented Zyrtec, which in turn makes it possible for me to go out on my bike and enjoy the big skies and quiet roads of Wisconsin.

I am thankful for a body that works well most of the time, the skin I live in, and a sexuality that unites my mind and body. I am thankful to live in a time and place where my body and my sexuality are mine to self-determine. I am thankful to all of those who work to free all of us from shame, trauma, and violence.

Mostly I am thankful for the kind of life that gives me time to look around and think, to write and ponder and feel. I am thankful that my complaints are mostly bourgeois, that my love and friendship is usually returned by those I love and befriend, and that I can still feel a sense of wonder, beauty and joy despite my natural Taoist tilt.

Happy Thanksgiving: give thanks, give love, and do your art.

Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?

Whatever. It’s cool.

I especially like this bit:

But that’s okay. Generation X is used to being ignored, stuffed between two much larger, much more vocal, demographics. But whatever! Generation X is self-sufficient. It was a latchkey child.

Generation X is used to disappointments.

Oh yes we are.

I’m glad that it gives some people joy & camaraderie. The Packers, for instance, are actually owned by the people of Wisconsin, which I think is a damned cool thing. There is something to be said for a sport that helps people bond. There’s a lot of to be said for the lessons of winning and losing graciously, and learning how to put ego aside for the sake of a group effort.

But I am still a Gender Studies professor, and it’s nearly impossible for me to shut my critical eye. It’s not that I don’t have guilty pleasures – porn is certainly one of them – that I have conscientious qualms about enjoying. But I can’t say I partake in anything so mainstream, so culturally-validated, so intensely insisted upon. And I certainly don’t insist that anyone else who might have objections to porn like the stuff in order to hang out with me.

People might assume – because of who I am, because of what I do – that I’m somehow immune to feeling left out. I’m not. Since I think a lot too about bullying, and about how queer kids are often made to feel like they don’t fit in, I’ve been paying close attention to the things that make me feel both lonely and isolated here. I’ve considered doing an “It Gets Better” video, but this past year was not one that made me feel like it does. No, in new, acute ways, even as an adult, even if you’re known as a bit of a firebrand, a crank, or eccentric in whatever way, standing down peer pressure is still difficult. Sometimes it taxes me in ways that sadden me; I would have expected, by now, not to feel that kind of sting. But I do. I wish I didn’t.

What I’ve been thinking about recently is how much my queerness has always been about being an outsider, an outcast if you will. The epitaph on Oscar Wilde’s headstone is taken from his Ballad of Reading Gaol, and reads:

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

And so I start a new football season in mourning, ironic as the case may be, for a man who really loved football, but who, in his turn, loved his outcast daughter. But when it comes down to it, I realize that I’ve put my reflexive “I prefer not to” to good use in my life, whether that’s as a political person, or as a writer, even if and when it has also caused me some pain. I would like to think that those who have been outsiders at some point in their own lives understand how hard it can be for those of us who are not fitting in for one reason or another, and I hope – I aspire – to be more like my father, whose favorite expression was “That’s why they make red cars & blue cars.” Indeed. Except in Wisconsin, where during football season, all the cars are yellow & green.

But with that, here’s hoping Packers fans get to see their team win again, and that their victories bring them all a great deal of joy. My dislike of football isn’t a judgment, or a criticism. I just… prefer not to. Feel free to join me, no matter where you live, in flexing that stubborn muscle, but please don’t tell me that you don’t like football because you’re a woman now, or because only the unwashed masses like sports. I don’t like football because it’s too violent – not because I’m female – and plenty of intelligent, conscientious & interesting people like sports.

It is astonishing how each detail opens up a hundred more, and so on & so on, until you’re lost in an ocean of it: not bad, not good, but absolutely overwhelming.

So if you see me looking around distractedly for something, or just standing stock still, it may be that I’m remembering some shirt my dad was wearing in 1979, or it may be that I’m looking for my wallet, or my keys, or maybe, even, I will just be remembering my own name or looking at my own hand & noticing, for the first time, how much my fingers are like his.

The other day I really saw the pile of prescriptions and pill bottles,the syringes, the plastic bags and pages of Discharge Instructions. My poor boy went through a lot of meds in a dozen weeks. That was when the tumor on his leg really went nuts, & we had to decide to amputate or not. We did, which is probably what gave us the two months we had with him. I think it might have been quicker otherwise, because it was an aggressive cancer.

But it was in late December that he first had a thing on his leg, and because it appeared so overnight, we thought it was a sprain. We didn’t even wait to take him to the vet. We did x-rays, blood tests. The blood work turned up nothing weird – which, interestingly, it never really did. Our vet here couldn’t find anything, so I sent the x-rays and blood work to a vet friend in NJ and she didn’t find anything either. Because it turned up out of the blue, it looked like a sprain, and everything you read about cats & sprains is that they take a long time to get better, because cats tend not to rest. Now, I feel stupid for waiting as long as we did for this thing that wasn’t a sprain to heal. We iced it, and it got smaller; other days it was bigger, which is what you’d expect of a sprain on a patient who couldn’t be told not to jump up on the sink. I feel stupid for not realizing it wasn’t a sprain sooner, but then I think that even if we had caught it sooner, there was probably another in him ready to go.

Still, it’s hard not to wonder if we could have done anything differently. Really, really hard. & That’s the thing about parenting, furry critter or human: you do your best, & sometimes that’s not enough, & the powerlessness & pain that causes is pretty fucking tremendous.

So I’m happy the 6 months is over, but terrifically angry the 11 years is. It’s very hard to find balance in that equation. He put me to bed every single night – climbed up when I got into bed and got under the covers to be petted and when I was just dropping off he would leave quietly, stepping around my head or Rachel’s. I’d hear the soft thump of him jumping from bed to floor, and go to sleep smiling. Every single night for 11 years until the last few months. How do you not miss that kind of gentle loyalty & affection? It is especially hard because Endymion was always Rachel’s cat, as is Aurora. Aeneas was entirely mine. Of course I take care of the other two, but it’s not the same. I used to call Aeneas my shadow, my heart, my momma’s boy. He was my own Great Stone Face, my tiny Buster Keaton. He loved me so much – sat on my desk next to me for hours, usually in my inbox, which he didn’t really fit in.

Because they don’t speak, you always have a flawless, empathetic relationship with them, sensing moods but never knowing. He was such a stoic – the vets were regularly amazed over these past months at how high a pain tolerance he had, & how much poking he tolerated, too – and I cried on him too many times. He’s been my deepest friend for all these years, when others were busy, or perplexed, or judgmental, or too tired, when I didn’t want advice but only company. Trans people out there know what I’m talking about, and so do all of you others who have been through it in one way or another, who know what it’s like to come home at the end of a day whether you’re 14 or 40 and feel like you just don’t fit into the human race very well. These furry kids remind us that if you have food, a place to live, and someone warm to sleep near, or even two out of three, life is good.

When I didn’t even know how I felt or what I was thinking, he made me laugh and smile. He was a sweet, sweet kid. Some days, I have longed to be the kind of person who can live in shallower water, but Aeneas made swimming in the deep currents something like joyful.