ariel? ariel!

I never knew Grace Paley. She was someone my friends knew. She was an older generation. An activist. A Jew. A genius Jew activist who stood for hope and faith and loss and fighting. She was born in 1922; the same age as my grandmother. She started organizations I work with and she was a leader and mentor to people who are now my leaders and mentors. When she died people I knew were stricken. But I didn’t know her.

Regina Shavers passed away. She doesn’t even get a Wikipedia article, which is bullshit. She is another community elder — she founded GRIOT circle, she stood up for people. I don’t know her but people I know know her and they are stricken.

This is what happens. Wise elders get older, and then they die. The rest of us and the movement has to keep on going. At some point the movement, the work, gets passed on. People do work, get wiser and wiser, and then at some point they die. No one can pass on all their wisdom. All we can do is hope we got enough to keep going.

I can’t write either of them an obituary full of personal anecdotes. I am embarassed to admit I didn’t even know who Regina Shavers was before she died — and I barely knew who Grace Paley was before she died. It’s now, it’s later, it’s looking up and realizing that I am in a place where these leaders are real people. Someday the people that I know and think of as political and artistic mentors are going to die. I have always known this but suddenly I am realizing both that this is inevitable and that somehow it falls to the living to keep doing the work. It’s part of the cycle.

My roommate and I were talking once and she said something to the effect of, “You know, I just realized — I’m not the bright young thing any more brought to the table to be quick and clever. I’m supposed to be a different kind of leader — not the kind of leader you are when you’re a bright young thing — but I am expected to hold back, and let other people figure things out, and provide guidance.”

For the past few years I have been part of a huge Purimshpiel production as part of a team of genius artists and activists. It was started by two scions of Jewish arts — Adrienne Cooper (you need to go watch this video of her right now.) and Jenny Romaine (go watch her!) They did the whole thing, a to z, and visioned this enormous and beautiful surreal space. It is a mindblowing huge production — expect to hear more about it later — it is huge. It is beautiful. It is transformative. It is chaos and carnival in the best and most challenging way.

Adrienne hasn’t been involved in the major organizing since I have been, or she has been but in an advisory role. Last year, Jenny was in India and couldn’t participate. But this year, she is choosing to step back. It is not her life this year. But I have another friend, someone who I do think of as a kind of a mentor — she can’t do it either, not in the same way. Somehow, the guard is changing. Suddenly we are working without a net, or it feels like it to me — even though everyone will be around, even though everyone will be helping and working, even though Jenny is going to come back and do work. I am feeling the weight of it this year and that is terrifying me. I know that this group of artists is a group of genius genius genius workers, and I am just a tiny piece of it. But I am a part of it nonetheless and I keep getting caught in fear. Who am I? Who am I to help lead? I know I cannot fill any of these shoes but I don’t know if my own footprint is the right shape.

I turned 25 two weeks ago and I am unexpectedly feeling a need to be responsible. It’s not funny any more that I don’t know how to cook and spend my money on gold boots rather than paying my bills on time. I have a job, a good enough job, and I feel responsible to it in a way I never would have expected. But more than that, here and there, I am beginning to feel as if people actually listen to what I have to say; that I might say things right as often as I say them wrong; that I might know some things. That one day, little by little, I will creep up on being someone wise and smart and brave and willing to work in spite of fear. I want that. I want to be that person. But I am not sure I am ready for it.

But we don’t get a choice in these things. It’s easy to try and dodge responsibility forever and I admit to being tempted. But Grace Paley dies, or Regina Shaver dies, and this next generation that I am a part of runs up to try and hold the torch to keep this path illuminated. I don’t know how to commemorate the deaths of these women, these leaders, these people who are just as human as the rest of us and still managed to do some good in the end. I know that I have to keep doing this work in their honor, in the honor of everyone older and wiser who tried to make some good in the world.

Maybe someday someone will think the same about me; maybe not. That can’t be the point. And that’s not the point today. The point today is looking at this road, without these people. The point is how scary it is to realize that that moment will come, the moment when the tools fall into your hands and you realize there is no blueprint. There is no guidebook. You close your eyes, you remember what everyone who came before has told you, and somehow you start to build.

plainsong for everyone who was killed yesterday — david wagoner
You haven’t missed anything yet:
One dawn, one breakfast, and a little weather,
The clamor of birds whose names
You didn’t know, perhaps some housework,
Homework, or a quick sale.
The trees are still the same color,
And the Mayor is still the mayor, and we’re not
Having anything unusual for lunch.
No one has kissed her yet
Or slept with him. Our humdrum lives
Have gone on humming and drumming
Through one more morning.

But for a while, we must consider
What you might have wished
To do or look like. So far,
Thinking of you, no one has forgotten
Anything he wanted to remember.
Your death is as fresh as a prize
Vegetable — familiar but amazing,
Admirable but not yet useful –
And you’re in a class
By yourself. We don’t know
Quite what to make of you.

You’ve noticed you don’t die
All at once. Some people like me
Still offer you our songs
Because we don’t know any better
And because you might believe
At last whatever we sing
About you, since no one else is dreaming
Of singing: Remember that time
When you were wrong? Well, you were right.
And here’s more comfort: all fires burn out
As quickly as they burn. They’re over
Before we know it, like accidents.

this is the top layer of a very complex costume. i will be performing on friday at outpost cafe (fulton more or less at classon in clinton hill/bed-stuy, off the c to franklin or the c to clinton-washington) around 10pm. you should come!

This is what I like to dress like: there was a time when I wore garters, stockings, and silky thongs. Now I wear tighty whities and leg warmers but sometimes I wear fishnets. I own one black bra, one bra to wear under light things (white person colored?) and one leopard print padded pushup. I flirt with different kinds of faggoty now, except when I am a glitter princess. The pair of shoes I was most excited about owning was a pair of gold glitter slouch Steve Madden ankle boots — until I found, free, a pair of really nice motorcycle boots. I intend to wear them all next summer — with lightweight knit dresses. I am never fully dressed without black eyeliner, glitter, and my cadet hat. I wish that my hair and my breasts were like those My Little Ponies — you know, the ones where you could make it longer (or make them bigger!) and then roll it back in. My friend Daniel has a theory that people have quantities of gender as much as orientations in any one direction — so you have a lot of gender and you like feminine things, or a little gender and you like feminine things, and so on and so forth. I have a lot of gender but very little direction.

And this is who I sleep with and wish I was sleeping with: femme tops. Femme bottoms. Faggy tops. Butch tops. Faggy bottoms, sometimes; butch bottoms, less so. Lots of switches. Boys. Girls. People who don’t like either category. Trans. Non-trans. I start thinking about who I have made come, and who has made me come, and the list of genders and bodies and roles is like some kind of funny word game of picking from a list. I think this is awesome; I love my queer life and all of the ways in which I let different people in. I revel in this playground most of the time. Sometimes honestly I find myself baffling. I don’t know how to market myself, aside from “sometimes I like to bottom,” and honestly I think that is at least in part because the power of topping still intimidates me. (That’s another post.)

There are some roles I know. I grew up very identified with the femme renaissance of the late 90s/early 00s. I learned how to put the outfit together, wear the red lipstick, push my mouth just so to hook me a big masculine top. But it never felt quite honest, and I think the people I was hooking picked up on that; things never quite stuck in that role. It was acting — hot acting, but acting. I still go there when I don’t know where else to go; I know how to paint my mouth and show the side of my throat. I love the attention and it’s hot as hell — hello, please say hello, please tell me I’m pretty and that I’m a good girl and that we are going to do some very bad things — but I am learning that it is okay to want that only sometimes.

Scarier for me are all the OTHER situations — what if I am the boy scout bottom. What if I am the butch top. What if I am the femme top? What do I even get from all these words and roles and identities? What if sometimes we’re just fucking and hands and cocks and mouths are everywhere? I can’t even articulate how this all makes me hot and scared. I don’t even know where to begin answering all these questions — or rather, I don’t know with whom.

This is where I end up every time I talk about gender — sex, as in fucking, as in how do I like to fuck and with whom and how do I like to present at any moment. Who am I trying to attract and what am I trying to do or have done to me? That list varies from moment to moment, from mood to mood, from date to date. I create outfits gender coded on a level that probably does not read to most people (or maybe it does): delicate balances of breasts, eyeliner, ties, vests, hair, earrings, nail polish, nail length, socks, ratio of jean tightness to shirt tightness. All coming down to “what kind of person do I want to be read as tonight?”

I don’t want this to be a journal to process long-ago exes who are now my friends. But I had an ex, who is now my friend, and one thing that I felt was really incandescent about the whole thing was the way in which my gender got to go in five hundred directions. Put me in a shirt and tie and sweater and flip me over, hold me down, and fuck me? Awesome! Have me tie you up in a slip with fringe? Right on! She was femme but the kind of femme who knew something about gender circuses and it was one moment in time where I felt like I could come up with anything and we could do all these things in all these different ways. That was the moment when I started saying “woah, I can top. And it’ll be hot.”

So I don’t know where that leaves me. It leaves me feeling like if I am going to continue to craigslist date I have to pick one part of me and go with it. It leaves me feeling like I have to have ten flags in my pocket if I am ever going to cruise. It leaves me worrying that while I will have a lot of hot sex, it will be rare for me to have hot sex repeatedly with any person who gets it, who gets all of it.

It’s not like I don’t get it done in the meantime — and I mean, I don’t want this blog to make me sound like such a precious flower that I kill off any nascent blog crushes that will one day turn into torrid cross-country affairs (dear blog readers: please, let’s!) or make me sound like a grumpy gender outlaw. I think this shit is FUN. But sometimes, I read blogs of the high femme bottoms or the butch tops or these people with coherent gender packages or at least gender packages that aren’t turning 180 degrees every ten minutes and I think “oh dear. What about the rest of us?”

What about the rest of us, everyone? What do you have to say?

Hi to so many people — Joy and Plum and Dylan and Kiern and Autumn and Curvaceous Dee and Jen and Viviane and everybody else — all of you commenting and reading! Man!

These posts are happening, soon:
* The first of many posts on Gender And How I Like (to do) It;

* Something about NYC and what it means to be me, living here;

* A review of a sex party, except I might decide to stay home and practice for my show next week and so it might not happen;

* A discussion of the flogger I almost bought;

* A discussion of why I feel like I am not so queer and then I realize, oh right, look at America.

But for today, I want to point you all instead to some really amazing work that kids I know who are part of the Lesbian Sex Mafia are doing in order to organize for the right of trans women to participate fully in LSM events and parties.

Briefly: LSM has in its mission statement a specific sentence supporting and including trans women. They also speak at length about how they exist to encourage all of its members to explore and embrace their sexuality….

and yet they require that trans women who haven’t had surgery keep their genitals covered at parties, making it impossible for some of the women they are welcoming to, in fact, be sexual people at all.

For those of you who think this doesn’t compute, you should go over to   www.circlesoffireproductions.com/cc4d/petition.html and sign the petition.

For those of you who don’t see a problem with this, I invite you to read their arguments, linked here, and then let me know what you think.

Or just let me know what you think anyways, in the comments. The meeting deciding this is tonight — if you’re an LSM member, you should go! — and they are bringing the petition. Every signature counts. I won’t be there — I’m not an LSM member, at least in part because of this discriminatory policy (oh, I guess that’s a post too, why I am a little intimidated to really step up and join the kink community) — but I hope, if you are a member, you go.

People are writing back and telling me that that post I made is important to them. Evidently people want to hear about hope and love. People want to hear about non-monogamy and loving every cell of the world and being wide open to what happens.

But it is not always like that. Sometimes it is like this: you are at your birthday party. You have so many beautiful friends, and you love them all very much. But then there is the friend, that friend in particular, that friend you kiss and make out with, and despite all of your work about radical love and every relationship is equally important there’s a different shine around that friend.

And then there is that friend’s primary partner, another best friend of yours, someone who makes you renegotiate all of your rules about not really caring about people’s other partners because this is actually one of the best people in the world. You’d give him a kidney or your last piece of toast. And so now you are making out with a hot girl but you are making out with your friend’s hot girl and as much as you would like to smile and relax into it you can’t. Too many Hollywood movies? Too many high school romance novels? Whatever it is you keep looking up and waiting for the other shoe.

They are, formally, monogamish. Monogamish enough to make room for your hijinx; monogamish enough that there’s a point where you have to stop and pull away, adjust your shirt, her skirt, your pants, refasten bras, and remember that you only get to go so far. Monogamish enough that even though this is hot and you trust her affection you have to remember: they are not just primary partners in the practical way, the checkbook brushing teeth together way. They are actually in love, incredibly in love, stunningly in love, right down to the bottoms of their soles. You are secondary only because everyone is secondary — secondary not as a judgement. Just as a statement of fact.

There is no etiquette guide for this. Anywhere. There is no instruction manual for how you stop making out with your friend at a party and turn to have a conversation with her fiance. For how to do this without turning into a homewrecker, the other woman, a hussy, an asshole. For how to talk to one of your best friends about how you want to make sure it’s okay with him that you’re making out with his fiancee. For how to talk to one of your other best friends about how you want to make sure you know how far is too far and you’re not trying to be disrespectful or casual about the stated limitations. Everyone says it’s fine, it’s fine, but you need more reassurance. You are, after all, the homewrecker, the hussy, the one with everything to lose. They will still, always, forever and ever knock wood kennehore amen, have each other.

And so you guess. You try to be confident but part of confidence is feeling entitled or at least pretty certain that you can have what you want. And you can — you have been invited in, invited up, invited over, invited beside, et cetera, et cetera — but you can’t ever, really. Rules change. Fights happen. You are not secondary as a way of saying she’s not hot for you, not into you, does not love you in an important way. But you are secondary as in you are being invited. Trying not to break anything. Trying to keep things hot and heavy while remembering that at any moment you are going to have to stop.

This is not the fault of nonmonogamy. It is not the fault of anything. It is only the fault of being afraid of what happens when you define something that has existed in the space between defined roles — and that’s a fear everyone knows no matter how many or few complicated partnerships they do or do not take part in. That space between is where things happen. It’s how you end up at parties with your hands behind your back, held there by your best friend, drunk on wine and winning a wrestling match by getting pinned. But it’s how you don’t know what jokes you’re allowed to make. It’s how you don’t know what’s okay. It’s how you, secondary partner, get nervous because you don’t want anyone to think you’re being shady. Everything is above ground and with consent. But the risk is all yours; you, after all, are the one coming into a system that works. At the end of the night you put on your hat and you walk away and so far the door hasn’t slammed behind you. Popular culture — the culture of romance — does not do a lot to make it easy to believe that it is going to stay open.

How can you be the other woman, the side dish, without being a homewrecker? Without being disrespectful? Without worrying you’re being unfair, being unjust, being a bad friend, taking too much time, showing too much interest, not showing enough interest, being a bad friend, being a bad hot date, being a bad friend, being an inconsiderate nonmonogamist, being greedy, wanting too much, not wanting enough, being too forward, being too timid?

They’re getting married this spring. I’m one of the bridesmaids.

I am a big drafter, not a confident writer, and Sinclair linked to me and suddenly people are saying hello!

Never fear, there will be more rambling soon. I do not know comment etiquette really but hi, everyone! I’m really touched by your presence.

I love craigslist personals. I love the game. I post ads a lot — reply to ads less — and I have had pretty good success, by which I mean I’ve gone on some dates and I’ve had some hot sex and more than that I’ve had a lot of fun and gotten some good stories.

Mostly, I post in the w4w section. I do not think of myself as a “woman seeking women” really. I am a woman and all but I am not particularly just seeking women. I am seeking all kinds of people and that is how I like it — that is another post, the ways in which sometimes I remember that I am a little more fluid about this stuff than many people — but that is nonetheless the section I post in. Somehow, it feels safer, or it’s less overwhelming. I’ve placed w4m ads and HOLY CRAP, it makes a girl feel awfully attractive until you realize that actually, it’s just a bunch of guys sending the same thing to anything that moves. w4w, it’s less daunting, and I like operating in a queer context.

And yet even in the w4w section, most of the responses I get are that bane of craigslist — the unsolicited straight nontrans male. And these are not usually the quality guys who I have had reply to my w4m ads before — the ones worth meeting — these are the guys who send one line of text and a picture of a penis.

But I get replies from trans guys, too. And this is where it gets tricky. Most people in the scene I run in are very adamant — trans guys are just guys, treated the same way, same rules, same regulations. No difference between trans guys and nontrans guys! Because there isn’t one, because making one is transphobic.

But i tell you what, the one guy I have ever hooked up with on craigslist — trans. I thought about this, a lot, as we were negotiating: would I be negotiating this kind of situation at all with a nontrans straight guy? Would I be going for it? Would I let it move so fast? Would I let him come over after meeting him at a bar? Precaution, caution, and more caution.

Now, the guy I have hooked up with seems to be a good guy and I wouldn’t've brought him home with me if he set off my weirdo radar. But I have to acknowledge the truth that if he had been nontrans my due diligence would have been so much more rigorous. And it’s funny, because it’s not like he’s a queer I know from around, and in ways our play and fucking is so normative and scripted and dare I say tending towards a cliche heterosexual narrative it makes me feel a little strange. But it is a little strange in a way that breaks towards “hot and I’ll keep doing it” rather than “creepy and too sketch to keep calling.” And I don’t know if that would be true if he were not trans.

I feel like a hypocrite about this and I have been trying to tease it out. It is not an aversion to penises in general* or flesh issue penises** in particular. It is not an aversion to masculinity or manliness or being a man. Is it a combination of social conditioning and transphobia — guys are just not safe, and despite myself trans guys get some kind of pass because I don’t think of them as “real”? Is it that I expect that, because he is trans, he will understand my beautiful and complicated queer sexuality better than a non-trans guy? I cannot imagine that; I know plenty of straight nontrans guys who “get it” and being trans does not make you particularly queer until, well, you’re queering. This guy was a dude, just some guy on the street, and yet somehow his being trans gets him a little more access. I don’t know what I think about that.

Recent hijinx have led me to think a lot about considering nontrans men as partners — as in, sexual partners — more than I do now. That leaves me expecting a lot of pushback from my community. Everyone wanted to know about this recent guy I was hooking up with — was he trans or nontrans? And I am not sure why — because I talked about the size of his dick***? Because they wanted to check on me? Because somehow, no matter how much we talk, it still matters?

And a sidebar, for another time: if I hooked up with a girl, I bet you people would not be asking if she were trans or nontrans — they would just assume. And I run in a crowd that I think, as a nontrans woman, is still pretty friendly to trans women, I’ve slept with women who were trans before, it is by no means a ridiculous assumption and yet I can’t imagine that question being asked.

Craigslist is so fun because it is such a shopping experience. I have been joking about my dial-a-top situation — that guy, I hope we hit it again — but it is fun to think about exactly what you want and put it out into the world. But I wonder about the underlying politics. I don’t think attraction is separate from politics — they’re not married but they are related. If you were to look at my scorecard I have a lot of different “kinds” of partners but I am not so evolved as to trust that that would still be the case if I was not fortunate enough to live in a community where people embrace that kind of thing. And even working inside that tumbly community, on Craigslist you don’t get to wait and see where there is chemistry. It is about shopping, and you have to put out in the world what you are shopping for. When I get replies from nontrans straight guys from a w4w ad I put up, I pretty much hit delete — even if it is a nice reply — just on the principle that people who do not qualify should stay out of the section. But when I get a reply from a trans straight guy, I look it over — I’m willing to consider him.

And in the end I am not sure about my own hypocrisy.

* because i have been there and done that and i will be there and do that again on all possible ends of the business, i hope.

** been there and done that too! fun!

*** Yes it may not have come factory standard but it is still his dick. Also it was RIDICULOUSLY HUGE, by which I mean things like “my poor cervix and gag reflex.” I’ll tell you more later!

Lately I have been thinking about love. About radical love. About polyamory and nonmonogamy and the in the middles. About monogamy. About love, big love, lightning bolt love. About sex and casual sex and aftercare. All of these things about love.

1) Radical love. Falling in love with everyone. Opening your heart to beautiful things. I went to see Wendy-o-Matik talk and she was so west coast but she said some amazing things that I was ready to hear. Things about taking care of each other, of your community, of having lots of kinds of lovers and friends. That every relationship is a relationship, even if it is not what a lot of people would call a relationship. That you should honor your friends and your lovers equally, that your friends can be more important than your lovers, or can be your lovers, or not be your lovers, and that all of that is okay. That you can have snuggle friends and romantic friends and hold each other’s faces and it is not a fake relationship, it is not something to mourn or fret over — it is something to celebrate, all the delicious and infinite ways two people can fit together. Sidebar: I never thought I would use lovers seriously and OH MAN I am embarassed by myself a little.

2) Having friends that you talk to every day. Friends with whom you have ambiguous boundaries? Friends for whom you have ambiguous desires? Romantic friends that aren’t sexual but you court each other, hold each other’s faces, smoke each other’s cigarettes, participate in grand plans. Good solid friends whose babies you will diaper. Friends who are your permanent affairs behind the backs of everyone else. Friends you know you will play hearts with, drinking and swearing, at 87 years old. Friends you never see but love very deeply even when you never talk on the phone. All the different beautiful kinds of friendships and how they change and morph. It’s delicious. But what do you do about friends + desire? You work it out, right? You let nature take its course. But is that escalation ruining the friendship, or saving it? Making it right or breaking it? Can friends do that without everything changing in a negative way?

3) What do you owe the person you fuck? What do you owe the person you let fuck you? What do they owe you? Should we talk about anyone owing anyone? Is that a healthy economy ever? A true one? Why is it that “good girl” are two of the hottest and most compelling words in the English language, in the right context? What makes them so addictive? Is it wrong to find your friends who you love very much and trust very much and let them pet you back into your skin instead of the fuck who sent you so far out of it? Is that just displacing too much? Is that breaking down things too much? If we do not accept obligation as a requirement, only desire and mutual caring, are we ruining society or are we fixing it? And who tells me I’m good after I’m no longer naked, no longer sweating and swearing and coming, but in my pajamas and worrying it wasn’t okay after all?

4) I believe in lightning bolt love. I really do. Right down to the soles of my feet. I talk about polyamory and nonmonogamy but really if I found someone who lightning bolted my heart to the sky I wonder if these would become theoretical discussions. It is funny to be so full of so much of this big talk and still remember that being true to myself is acknowledging I am a big romantic when I let myself trust the emotions. I am not so tough and badass as I like to pretend. I kind of love romance. I’ve ridden subway trains for hours out of my way just to leave presents. Driven cars at 2am to say hi at lunch. I send poems.

I want to believe in big lightning love, in what happens when electricity passes through two people. It has happened before for me, and it will happen again, and until then I don’t really mind revelling in this huge and wide-open field. There is too much love here to ignore it and I want to roll in it and I guess when the lightning bolts come for me again, I will figure out what I do next. I do not feel a need to “date” as in shop around for a person to be partnery dates with. When it happens, it’ll happen, and I will not have a choice.

5) People say “Ariel, do you want to date? Who yentas the yenta?”
And I say “When it is inevitable what will be will be. Until then I want friends and I want romance and I want sex and I want it all in delicious and infinite combinations. I want to be able to be at a party and be everything I want. I want to expand endlessly. I do not want to feel any obligation to another person because of commitments I made just because I felt like I had nothing better coming.”
And they say, “You haven’t met the right person yet, have you?”
But not because they don’t understand. Because they do.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. <– Anne Sexton understands too.

It is no surprise that here I am. I am almost 25, I live and work in New York, I fancy myself a “creative type,” and also isn’t my generation the generation where blogging is like breathing? I thought so. We all think we’re precious.

I’ve had a livejournal for a long time but this feels different. I am trying more longer-form writing, just like everyone else, but I have been thinking about things lately and I want to try them out. RSS feeds are also the new LJ friends’/friend’s/friends list (pick one) so you know, now my pals can keep in better touch.

Things I will write about:
* radical love and sex and community;

* sex;

* social justice issues, especially as someone of a lot of privilege;

* my inability to give more than a cursory shit about the presidential race;

* queers;

* gender;

* et cetera.

This blog might die a quick death but who knows, maybe I’ll be like my dreamy pal Sinclair* or my dreamy pal Jaclyn or my dreamy pal Holly* or my dreamy elementary school acquaintance Jill and start having a lot of awesome things to say.

Here is a picture of a great moment I will try to write about:

* It is so funny to realize now that I am In The Blogosphere, I have to remember everyone’s noms des plumes! noms des guerres? noms de plume/guerre? Maybe I should also work on remembering my French.