Big Man

My kid lives in a very black and white world. Things are right or wrong, by instinct. People are friends or enemies, despite his very logical brain knowing that other relationships exist. Lord Smalldemort simply doesn't think that way, and it will take years of conversations and therapy to get him to think quickly enough to fake that he does. Anyone over 5 feet tall is perceived as a potential friend, which was a big motivator for my partner and I to move to the suburbs. He feels more at ease with adults than most children.

His likes:
1. Shadowiness (read: Gothic clothes, decor, trappings)
2. Spying (an imaginative game at parks where he evaluates who else is a spy)
3. Cats
4. Reptiles
5. MMO computer games (World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic)
6. Chocolate: Chocolate Chip Pancakes, cake, ice cream
7. Star Wars
8. Science (biology, chemistry, physics, engineering)
9. Totally Spies (TV show)
10. Being in control
11. Having and wielding power


His dislikes:
1. Anything that gets in the way of any of the above
2. Other kids

Forget everything you think you know about children when you talk to him, except his age, because his language skills will fool you. He speaks like a 15 year old, but he has been on this earth for less than a decade. He is a very sensitive, anxious, fragile 8 1/2 years old. He is one of the most delicate children I have ever known, despite his strength and courage. He has felt "wrong" his entire life, and there is a lot of pain there. Through a wonderfully bizarre set of circumstances, he is at a good school with teachers and staff that care about him. He likes school...except for the kids. (See #2 under "Dislikes.")

Kids, as a general rule, are unpredictable. They are fast, noisy, imaginative, snatchy, teasing, shoving, pulling, roaring, growling, smelly little beasts. Lord Smalldemort is no exception, but he doesn't see that. His brain is very different than most. Imagine your brain as a computer: it's got a hard drive (long term storage and instructions), memory (the day to day, short term memory), video card (vision), sound card (auditory/vocal systems), and a processor (the cortex, which is a thin sheet of tissue folded up to fit inside of our heads; it's what gives the brain its wrinkled appearance.) Social behaviors and impulse control are thought to be run by a section of the cortex called the "orbitofrontal cortex," conveniently located right above our eyes. It's where the social imagination lives, where we anticipate the rewards and consequences of our actions. It is also thought to house our capacity for empathy. Speed really counts here.

You know what your kid probably has, that mine doesn't? A fast responding cortex, that talks to other parts of the cortex instead of just itself.

Imagine your child hanging up her school bag outside of the classroom. She's thinking about her pet, or you, or her favorite toy at home, and pulling out her folder to take inside to her desk. Maybe she's a little sleepy, or hungry, but she thinks about snack time in 2 hours and lunch in four hours. She thinks about her friend she is about to see, and how eager she is for recess so they can play together.

Lord Smalldemort hits her. In the face. He walks up, his backpack still on his back, and hits her. My kid hit your kid. I dislike it almost as much as you do. It infuriates me when he puts his hands on anyone, and even more so when it is random. I'm only glad she was not hurt, and I'm grateful in those moments for his lack of coordination. Here's what happened for him, if you even care at this point. I wish you would, but I understand if you don't.

He has been up since 4:30am, from the pure anxiety of existing. We put him to bed around 8pm, so he has gotten about 8 hours of the 11 hours a child should get. He sticks to himself for about an hour, window shopping on Amazon and looking up engineering videos on YouTube. We load him full of food, chat incessantly with him about making good choices, and after he brushes his teeth and gets dressed, we leave the house at 7:15am. It takes us 20 minutes to get to school, which doesn't start until 8am. We get there at 7:35am and sit outside so he can cope with the fears and anxieties he has about facing other children, and the daunting task of controlling his impulses for 8 hours. We sit outside on the bench, talking about his day, strategies for dealing with unexpected feelings, and at 7:45, we go inside and see the school social worker. I do most of the talking at his request, because by this point, he is so anxious that he can't acknowledge his feelings for fear of losing control of himself. We walk up stairs, hang up his backpack, and he goes inside to a lot of quiet stares, as he walks to his desk, uncomfortably close to the other students.

The morning my kid hit yours? I was sick. His mom did me the favor of letting me sleep in a little, and took him to school. She didn't know these little rituals, like talking on the bench or staying to talk with the social worker or walking him up to the classroom. She walked past the bench, led him in to the social worker and left, because she did not know. The waves of anxiety and fear began washing over him, sadness, then anger: anger always feels better than sadness. By the time he reached his classroom, he was enraged and had no idea why or how to let it out. His mom didn't know. She knows everything else, because that's what we do as his parents: we constantly strive to be experts on him, because it changes so quickly and we are his advocates. The bench that was comforting before school, for the last month? Now it feels scary, because you loudly confronted me, in front of him, about last Thursday when my kid hit yours.

Today, I hope he doesn't hit your kid. I hope he keeps his hands to himself, and monitors his feelings. I hope he spends the next 8 hours doing everything that we ask him to do, though 75% of it is beyond his comfortable capability. Please know that he will attempt it, and be held accountable for his performance, even after witnessing an adult loudly losing control during our decompression time.

He will be held accountable, because that is the kind of person we are raising. We both have the same goal, you know: we want to protect our kids. Your enemy, however, is not my child. The world is not so black and white. I happen to be an expert of shades on gray.

Contributing a Verse

I'm a Shakespeare fan, and like all nerds that are enthusiastic about a piece of culture, I notice when people take something that I enjoy and use it inappropriately. A popular abomination is from a line from "Romeo and Juliet" in which Juliet says "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" Romeo, as you may remember, is down below listening, hidden in the courtyard beneath Juliet's window. (There was no social media, else Romeo could have avoided the label of literature's oldest stalker by compulsively refreshing Juliet's Twitter feed from the privacy of his smart phone.) People hear the word "Where" in that sentence, and assume it means that Juliet is searching for Romeo, but they are wrong. She isn't looking for her new lover; she's lamenting that she has fallen for him. "Why are you Romeo? Why couldn't you be anyone else, rather than the son of my family's enemy? This is why we can't have nice things."

"All the world's a stage," William Shakespeare also famously wrote. People often misinterpret this phrase, when embroiled in conflict with another person or themselves, to mean "people play roles and wear masks." It's a poetic way for some folks to call others fake, or to reassure themselves that the disingenuous part they are about to play is a normal part of humans being. Just as in the first example, that's not what Shakespeare meant by that line. Sure, we have to do things against our nature throughout our lives, but the full passage of that quote is about something deeper. If you're a Clif's notes kinda cat, feel free to skip:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

-As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

It is about how many changes we go through as we live our lives. Our priorities shift, our bodies swell and shrink. Should we live a long life, we become what we were in the beginning: toothless, helpless, and fragile. Life's scenery changes and requires new things of us, and we must adapt, or else our story is written by others who must make us fit somewhere. (Don't want to pay for the things you want, and decide to steal? That doesn't fit into the scenery of adulthood in our culture. The police will find you a place where you fit, and you will have to write the rest of your story on toilet paper that they must legally provide you.)

When you spend almost 35 years pretending that you don't exist, that life really is a long string of performances you must put on for survival, breaking the habit is hard. It's like waking after too little sleep, and it leaves me blinking in the blinding light of authenticity. To be true, to be good, to be sincere, to be present...I manage one at a time, intermittently, on my best of days. But I aspire to be all of those things, all of the time: to speak gently but intently, with a full voice given words by clarity and sincere awareness. To listen as hard to another creature as a parched tree may listen for thunder; as carefully as Kanye listens to Kanye.

DISCLAIMER: Authenticity cannot be a constant for everyone, all of the time. Boundaries must be erected to protect pursuits like employment; anyone ever fired for a Facebook status about their job can attest to that. Unfiltered thought and authenticity are not the same thing for most human beings; compassion and kindness spare our fellow travelers on this journey from every jaded, bizarre thought we have. e.g. I do not tell my stepson that a new pet he tamed on World of Warcraft looks exactly like the last 8 sporebats he tamed. I act interested. Because family counseling is expensive.

I'mma tell you, like Wu told me...

Anyone who was not a member of the Lucky Sperm Club at birth can attest to this fact: There are many levels of poverty. If non-rich people got together and released a studio album representing the full range of their financial experiences, the playlist would look a lot like this:

1. Newspaper for Coupons, feat. Sunday Only
2. Paycheck 2 Paycheck
3. Stairway to Leaven (See You Never, Restaurants)
4. Out of Deferments/Eat Your Diploma
5. My Budget is My Balance
6. Tax Refund/My Only Savings
7. Underemployed: Just The Tip
8. Paper for Plastic (Protein's A Luxury Now)
9. Pay Day Loan feat. 400%
10. The Unemployment Office of Unemployment, feat Under The Table
11. My Payment's Late...So Is My Period
12. Bad Credit feat. FICO and Bad Choices
13. Rubber Checks, Rubber Sheets
14. Crippling Debt/Ain't No Crutch For Me
15. ForeClosure (from the motion feature soundtrack "Repossession")
16. Bankruptcy: Monopoly Has No Broke Ass Token
17. Homelessness (Change Your Box, Change Your Life)

What to Expect When You're Suspecting

I have always felt desperate to not be left out; my urgent desire to be a member of a group doing something secret and exciting often spurred my adventures as a kid. That held true even when what I was doing was not a secret nor particularly exciting, when exclusiveness was the option offered. When my best friend and I got chosen in the 6th grade to work on a special project in my elementary school, I was elated at the prospect. It unfortunately meant skipping classes (which we enjoyed...because we were nerds), but we were entering the inner sanctum of knowledge at our large Catholic school: the book room. The book room housed all of the school's text books and workbooks, located in the same building that housed the principal, administrative offices, the first graders and the kindergarteners. It desperately needed organizing, and when our teachers were asked for recommendations for hard working, smart kids to tackle the task, he and I got selected. I was elated to hear our names called over the intercom when the school secretary summoned the two of us after recess. We left class to the confused looks of our peers, school bags on our shoulders, and walked along the breezeway that oversaw the vast parking lot and playground, which was vacant save one P.E. class running laps around the lengthy field. We were positively giddy, and struggled to walk slowly, with the strict and solemn dignity befitting impending 7th graders. I can't even tell you who it was that walked us into the room and explained the job, because I was blinded by the awesome.

I remember tiny kindergarteners walking by in a line as we stood outside of the door, looking up at us with urgency and admiration. Or maybe they had to use the bathroom. I remember that the room was locked, and required a key to open...this was just too wonderful to be true. It had no windows, no other doors, and the smell of the books only added to the wave of frenzied seduction that I had only ever felt on Christmas morning. Before us, as the florescent lights flickered on, were stacks and shelves of books emanating a sweet, warm aroma that mixed pleasantly with the vague food smell that was ever-present in the cafeteria on the other side of the wall. As the faceless authority figure left us, she closed the door and we stood there for a moment. The pale blue painted cinderblock wall was barely visible for the teetering skyscrapers of science and literacy. My best friend claimed all math books in virtually the same breath that I claimed the English books, and we dove into our claimed sections. It didn't take us long to discover that these books were somewhat familiar...we had used some in past grades, re-discovering old favorites and even our own younger, sloppier, handwritten names scrawled on the inside covers. We re-read short stories and remarked on how little we knew in the earlier grades, largely shunning the books that we would be using in the future. A sense of accomplishment washed over us, feeling that we were no longer the clueless larvae that read these simplistic works, A child experiencing nostalgia is a mixture of premature wisdom and naive arrogance. As such, we neglected to realize the chrysalis that we were weaving as burgeoning pre-teens; that we were just a different stage of ignorant.

The job ended up taking four afternoons, and not for lack of focus. While we occasionally fell enamored with a particular work, we quickly came to our senses and went about the business of being diligent workers so as to merit the trust of authority. More projects came, and each time, the mixture of inclusion and exclusion was a cocktail unlike any I would ever experience. My constant need for approval compelled me to accept any and all honorific duties offered me; nothing was too hard or menial. Choir, debate, library cleaning, prop creation, plays, team sports, working the ice cream machine during lunch, teaching CCD, lunch at the convent, peer ministry, babysitting, window painting. Everyone wants to be accepted. I took it to extremes...I needed to be acknowledged and well thought of, and when I failed to achieve those goals, I tried harder amidst crushing heartbreak. Nothing ever filled me up, not merit points, kind words or new assignments; I had something to prove and god damn it, I would keep pumping quarters into that slot machine until it hit, because the rush of trying was enough to make the possibility seem tangible. I bent until I broke, placing the satiating of that hunger above all other pursuits and punishing myself for any perceived selfishness. Any criticism or critique shattered my self esteem, and grades became the harshest thing I could handle; imagine my surprise when I finished school and the critique of my person didn't stop. I don't know the exact moment that I broke, but I hadn't realized that it had happened until I began coughing up the shards in 2014.

I still want to be well thought of; it's a deep part of my make up. I fear anything that might make people think less of me, be it my snoring, the way I chew my food, or not fitting into a comfortable category. But it's morphing into something else, into new discoveries about myself and boundaries that have to exist. I feel like every few weeks, I am straining against the confines of the story I had told myself about who I am and what I'm comfortable with. As it turns out, self discovery banishes comfort to the balcony like a smoker at a party, to ruminate and reflect on its choices. I have long favored comfort-seeking over facing the reality of who I am and what I need.

"Transgender" is not a comfortable word for me. Not anymore.

I have used it, fluently, for about nine years. That was about the time I got involved with the queer community in New Orleans, and more specifically when I met the drag kings in my life. I threw myself into that world, pursuing the same fulfillment I have always chased. The opportunity to portray a masculine character in a largely queer female space attracts all kinds of gender queer and cisgendered folks.  In my view, the troupe is an identity lab, where folks come and explore a side of themselves they don't often get the chance to experiment with. As a result, I have witnessed lives changing in many ways. Young, aimless kids become salon stylists, nurses, small business owners. Drinking and drug use wax and wane until it gives way to partners, ambition, and higher expectations. I've also watched people crack under the pressure of being a Z-list celebrity, placing themselves under a microscope when they have no firm sense of themselves to cling to. Pathological liars become combustible, thieves become pariahs, and the overly-ambitious come undone. When you strip away the artifice of PacSun, Hot Topic and spirit gum, what you are at the bottom of everything dictates what you grow into. Hard workers are hard workers still, but work smarter for the strain. If you were a con artist, you probably still are, but take more or less pride in it. If you were friendly and generous along your journey, you're likely still that way but far more thrifty with your friendship. Many things change, but not the original material of your character that you were born to sculpt with. If you were hiding from yourself from the start, discovery flanks you slowly, astride self doubt. Make no mistake, it will run you down in the end.

Among the many paths and choices I have witnessed, I've also watched people declare for the transgender draft, and attended numerous T Parties to wish them well as they departed for that war. "Transgender" was a unique, formidable, respect-driven word in my mouth when I was first introduced to it. I viewed these individuals with an air of wonderment, as I would a person whom travelled the world with $20 in her pocket. I was supportive of those I ran across, with a sense of uncertainty about what it was they were going through, and what it said about me that I was not. I offered support and brotherhood...from behind my D cup breasts and shaven legs. I became aware when they stopped shaving their bodies, and wondered, fleetingly, how they dared to do it. I swallowed my inexplicable anxiety when they announced that they had contacted a surgeon for top surgery, not daring to show how left behind I felt. I was the scarcely-walked dog perched on a dusty couch, peering through a dirty window, watching a stray living the dream. I eventually came to the conclusion that I only felt envy because of this thirst to be included. That was my assertion, for a moment, because I felt so broken and desperate to be involved that I would put nothing past myself. Eventually, though, I started to think it was because top surgery would make drag easier, and my dress shirts fit better. (Not necessarily in that order.)

I know things now that I didn't before, but rather than reflect on what a fool I was for the earlier denial and ignorance, I look to how much more I have to discover. I also consider questions of identity and acceptance every day, and chief amongst them is how legitimate the word "transgender" is when I try to relate to it. It's awkward and clumsy, a shoe in an unfamiliar style that I am not sure will fit no matter how I tie it. This may end up being yet another party I am not comfortable at, but I never much cared for formal parties. I will try to make the changes that matter, to seek that deep internal comfort I never attempted, and pay less attention to the label. No one is going to eat me; I don't need a label describing exactly who I am. Perhaps all the inclusion I truly need is on a porch with a beer and those other people who realize the chrysalis we have all woven.

"I said 'There are two types of men in this world, and you're neither of them.'"

As a young primate, I took cues about my development as a human being from my peers and popular culture. I watched My So-Called Life, and developed an affinity for dying my hair red and wearing flannel. I listened to my friends gabble on about boyfriends and school and drugs, an endless cycle that repeated itself via handwritten notes passed between and in classes. (These have been replaced by texts, in which teens now try to reveal their souls to one another in 160 characters or less. Yes, I'm judging.) I heard the rebellious music of my generation on pop radio stations, sandwiched between commercials for jewelry stores and weight loss drugs. Every so often, a story about someone leaving home and adventuring in a far off place would surface, and the person would claim to be "finding themselves". I found the proposition of finding one's self absurd, even offensive. Find yourself? Your actual self? Life is not an Easter egg hunt, with your rightful sense of person concealed in purple plastic, hidden just in that bush around the corner.

I also found the phrase "time heals all wounds" equally maddening, as well as its illegitimate cousin, once removed, "it will feel better with time." The "wounds" and the "it" being something fairly devastating, like the death of a young child in my family. To look at someone who feels as though their heart has been ripped out, and say it will take time to feel better, is essentially the same thing as looking at a person who owns nothing but an oven and saying "bread will happen." You know what time gives you? Nothing. You have to keep going, and find your way through the brambles of the wilderness that is your life. No one else has lived it, you are the first one...you thought the path would be cleared for you? Grab a machete, rookie. Survival situations tell you who you really are, whether you eat the priest or the nurse first when you run out of coconuts on the island.

There are stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, as we travel through our lives and try to learn who we really are. I have spent the past 35 years telling myself a story about this straight lesbian queer woman gender queer trans? person.

I first knew something was amiss in kindergarten. I learned the word "gay" at 10, at some other kid's expense when I was listening to my friends talk about him on the playground at school. I learned it meant me when I asked what "gay" meant. (I was devastated, until I convinced myself a few sleepless nights later that I was being imaginative and lying to myself to make myself more interesting. To myself. Just to myself, because I had ZERO intention of sharing this knowledge.  I realize now that this made no sense.) After six years of denial, shame, and confusion, I settled on "lesbian" as an identity after a lot of time spent in (useful) amateur counseling in an AOL chatroom called "Ask A Lesbian". I read the conversations for a while, and began asking a question after 3-4 days of just watching. I was racked with anxiety and uncertainty, which I thought I was hiding fairly well via black and white text. However, a profound bit of advice came from one of those women, when she whispered to me in a private message "Heterosexual people don't ask themselves that question THIS hard." She said it, because I needed to hear it. I needed someone, who was not assaulting me, to say "You are gay." I needed permission. It took my breath away. I laughed. I cried. I heaved. Twice.

I came out when I was 17, and I felt more free than I had felt since before I had grown breasts and lost the boyish frame of my youth. I didn't tell anyone how the relief of coming out began to mildew as time went by, because it did not feel like the entire truth. I internalized that confusion, telling myself that I was just feeling conflicted to make myself more interesting...to myself, because there was no way I was going to make myself more of a freak by telling other people. (Shut up.) I thought my brain was fucking with me, that I was just kind of broken that way, and this confusing feeling was part of the process of my brain being a pathological liar. Like my mind was telling me, "Hey, you know you're gay, right? Okay, maybe not. Wait, no, definitely gay. Tell everyone you're gay. HAHAHA, just kidding. You're something else and you just made ALL of these people believe you're gay. What are you, really? Um, we don't know, but gay isn't the whole story. Have fun with your lie, you lying liar."

Now if you would, please direct your attention to the first sentence of the previous paragraph. For my lazy folks:


"I came out when I was 17, and I felt more free than I had felt since before I had grown breasts and lost the boyish frame of my youth." When I say that I grieved over these two things on my chest, I more mean I lost myself in a kind of identity crisis. Up until that point, I thought every girl wanted to be a boy in some capacity; I sure did. But as my friends went through the same physical changes, they embraced them. THEY WERE ENJOYING THIS? Now I was really confused, and growing more concerned by the day that I would not be able to play the part of female. (Um, what?) To the more self-aware individual, this recognition would have set off some kind of alarm, but this was my normal. My body had stopped being home when I was about 7 and realized that I dreaded hand me-downs from my two older sisters. I was having to look in the "boys" section for clothes I liked. This wasn't just preference...it felt like a violation every single day that I had to wear that girl's school uniform that included a plaid skirt. I just had no language for it. I still struggle with the language, after years of exposure to the LGBTQ community and months of therapy. If confusion were a flashlight, I keep shining a flickering beam onto the same deeply rooted, pale and sickly question in my gut...am I transgendered? I have asked it for years, in the most silent, private, desperately sad ways possible.

Cisgendered people do not ask that question this hard. But I am filled with hesitation. Even now, I feel like admittng that I am transgendered is just a way for me to make myself more interesting. To myself. I never wanted to tell anyone. I still don't. I never wanted this, and I would change it if I could. But at this point, it is hurting me, and I need to stop hiding from it before I hurt myself in irreparable ways. I have many questions, but only one matters: what will I do with my one wild and precious life?

En Mute

I was born in the Deep South, the youngest of three kids, with what felt like a hundred cousins and a Grandma who ran a daycare center out of the large-ish, old fashioned family home. We were ate up with kids. I watched crazy amounts of VHS movies and TV cartoons every day, to cool off from rowdy outdoor games, to ease me into a nap, or to unwind after school as I grew older. We were, by all accounts, a huge Disney family, and I was a Disney kid. (We still are.) I remember putting my little cousins to sleep to Cinderella, and each one of them usually nodded off by the time she finished "Sing Sweet Nightingale". Hours of the Disney cartoon shorts were at our tiny fingertips via VCR, in addition to the daily variety network TV had to offer us in the afternoon. He Man, Transformers, GI Joe, Bravestar, Gummi Bears, Rescue Rangers, and on and on. Each holiday had its own wonderful cartoon version of a tale about that time of year. (Disney's Halloween Treat was, hands down, my favorite. Mickey's Christmas Carol was a close second. I fondly remember Pacman Christmas Specials, and lamented that there were not more/better Easter offerings.) I loved TV. I loved going to the movies, too, and always walked out feeling inspired to be a better hero. Or villain, as I always found them much more compelling. I watched so much television that I knew what was going to be on each night, even as I aged into my mother's sitcoms and dramas. My sisters and I would tape them for her to watch over the weekend, as she worked all day as a paralegal, and went to law school at night. We'd lovingly edit out the commercials, when we thought about it, and label each tape for the show she could expect to see when she popped it into the VCR and sat in her recliner. We were DVR before it was cool. Like DVR, we weren't always perfect. We (I) accidentally taped over her favorite videotaped possession...sorry, Mom. I thought Rosann was more important than the M*A*S*H finale. It was a judgement call.

TV became my refuge, from a young age. I didn't have to think about my parents' divorce, or how hard and long my mother was working, or any of the loneliness, anxiety or depression I was experiencing. I did my homework as soon as I got home and ate a snack, so I could watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles uninterrupted. Alone.

The beginning of the end was when I discovered that the TV I was randomly gifted with for Christmas in 1991 had a sleep mode on it its remote control. I remember cautiously considering it, playing with it by the safe light of day, wondering if it would freak me out to have the TV suddenly shut itself down while I lay falling asleep to I Love Lucy, Doby Gillis or The Patty Duke Show on Nick at Nite. Instead of filling me with dark terror, though, I liked not waking up to the TV on. My mind felt more focused on the day ahead if I didn't start it with the leftover, excluded feeling of the world of television already in progress. I began watching less and less reliably, opting to drift closer to the family computer my grandmother had bought for us. By the time I hit my late teens, I was no longer a big TV watcher. My family was astonished at this slow transformation. Numerous gift-giving occasions came and went with my family offering to buy me televisions for my various apartments, but I only ever had one in my home, and didn't use it much.

"What about your bedroom? I sleep with mine on, really low, just for the light and sound." My middle sister offered this in a helpful way, as if I was having trouble sleeping and this would comfort me. I had no trouble sleeping. I could sleep for days. The idea of a TV in my bedroom, while luxurious, would encourage my night owl tendencies...I might never sleep again.

Their horror at realizing that I did not have cable was hilarious, until I realized they thought I was judging them for having it. I don't think I ever did find an adequate way of convincing them that I wasn't, but I never have felt negatively about their enduring love of TV. I just started to feel like I was neglecting something by letting myself escape the way I did into it, like I had mental homework to do. I felt so deeply engaged in whatever it was that I was watching that I forgot everything else...and that no longer comforted me. Videogames and the odd DVD binge became the only thing I really used my roommate's abandoned TV for...until I got a partner. Diehard Saints fans, I got an antenna for the TV, so we could tune in at home instead of noisy bars. It worked well enough, I suppose. However. watching episodes of the odd show on my laptop wouldn't work if she wanted to watch too; not the way it would if we were watching it together on the couch. So I got a Roku, which allowed us to watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go and more over our wireless connection, on our TV.

One day, not long after that Roku purchase, some knowledgeable, caring asshole was all: "If you have a cable modem for your internet connection, do you know what that cable also carries? Basic cable." Because I adore my partner, and want her to have ALL the things, I felt it necessary to make this inexpensive upgrade. With a moderately heavy heart, I got a cable splitter and an extra coaxial cable, That was late fall of 2013, and we have not watched cable much. Roku is where it's at. Then the Saints season began, and this was the first commercial I saw in what has apparently been a very long time:



Seriously, this kind of advertisement got approved? That women are so stupid that if you smell like a product, even if you're a robot, they will want to have sex with you? But it didn't stop there. Every other commercial seemed to be about making someone seem like an idiot, like they were ugly, unclean, or somehow unattractive without their product. It was so body focused, nay, body negative, I found myself trying looking away when commercials came on. See Rob Lowe's DirecTV ads, in which "less attractive Rob Lowe" has cable.



It kept going on and on, with bodies that didn't look like anyone I know being touted as "the perfect body" and women being objectified and mocked repeatedly. Men were portrayed as lunks and louts who lack complexity and control over their sexual urges. It's probably a small percentage of folks who feel the way I do, but I am disgusted at the state of advertising. How gendered it is; how unfunny, snide, and condescending it is. Commercials, I thought I knew you, but I guess I didn't. And my, how nasty you have gotten with age.

I need to stick to Netflix and Amazon Prime. For a price ($7.99/month and $99/year, respectively) I can largely shield myself from the world of televised/video marketing, for my sanity's sake. I am safe from corporations hurling misguided stereotypes at me. I feel like enough of an outsider as a gender queer person without every commercial telling me that I don't fit into their extremely narrow idea of the mainstream world. They don't even manage to sell to their products to their target audience (straight people) with wit and dignity...how could they ever sell to me? They shouldn't, I suppose. I used to find it odd that my uncle muted TV commercials...now I totally get it.

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
-William Shakespeare

This quote helped me to realize, throughout the losses I have gone through, that my heart and soul had needs that were not satisfied by the initial, overwhelming sadness of the wake, funeral and burial. Those days, which bleed into one another and are separated only by fits of exhausting sleep, are filled with a contemplative determination to keep going. I just keep moving through the haze of responsibility to breathe and do what I must to keep my mind from tearing apart. They are marked by memories of the past few days, not the past few years, which I had spent with that person, and the taste of finger sandwiches and donuts brought by the great uncle that always does such things. I wonder who will think to buy the finger sandwiches and donuts when he passes, but banish the thought for now; it will probably be me. I like having things to do in the face of loss; my grief prefers errands over words.

The sickly sweet smell of flower arrangements, stiff but stately furniture, and the dull, soft light of the funeral homes are meant to be comforting; the funeral home itself is a casket for the living. They leave me aching for the fresh air and harsh light of day. Upon arrival at the cemetery for the internment, I marvel at this accidental effect the parlors have on me while taking in the unappreciated beauty of such a sad place. This grass is watered with tears. The casket, concealing my loved one from me forever, becomes symbolic in that mournful ride from parlor to grave. I like watching it lowered to the ground, reassured that it has been seen through to the end: there is no more I can do for that person. Prayers are said, hugs and reassurances are exchanged, and family gathers at a house to offer some normalcy at a party no one ever wants to have. Once the initial shock of the death of a loved one wears off, and the lovingly prepared casseroles are eaten and dishes returned, I have found that the actual grief begins.