Can you believe it has only just become officially summer? Sure doesn't feel like it. I hope every body has been staying cool by every interpretation possible.
Me? I've had some good times. I discovered a while ago that June was going to be a total mis-mash of a month , so I just let it happen.
My little sister graduated from high school. That was very exciting and also odd. Feels weird being old.
Then, pretty much, I went on a cruise to Orlando and the Bahamas. Now that was awesome. Ate so much delicious food that I voluntarily fasted for the next day and a half.
Got my personal training certification and may or may not have signed all of my time away to a gym for the next three months. But whatever, it pays like a dream.
I did yoga in Times Square on Monday. One of the weirdest things I've ever done, but also fun. I felt like a skyscraper.
Now this week is Pride and its the first time I've been in NYC and old/aware enough to appreciate it.
in short, running around like a chicken with my head chopped off. AND LOVING IT!
yeah, i know, this is short on the details, but I just wanted to pop in and share the love. Now I'm gonna go drink sangria.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Missing home
I have arrived to Singapore. I got here about 8 hours ago, and spent most of them showering, eating, and sleeping. I should be excited about being here, and I am. I should be excited about (re)meeting the rest of the interns, and I am. But mostly I can't help thinking about how much I miss my girlfriend, and how much I'd like to be home.
This is the first time that being home for a couple of weeks didn't feel like it was enough. I felt like I was just getting started, and that there were so many more things that I wanted to do, and so much more time that I wanted to spend with her, and with my Mom, of course.
Last summer I had the chance of staying home for about a month and a half, but the overachiever in me, and one with a skewed view of reality, could not bear the thought, and so I found something else to do and left. I ended up doing an internship which I did not enjoy, which showed to my supervisors. It ended up not being the experience I had hoped for. And now, although I am so far enjoying my time here, and although I am excited about what lies ahead, I am also really wanting to be home. I think the main reasons for this are that I get to see my gilfriend every day, hang out with her, stay for a long time, without the "oh shit the weekend's over" and a 2 hour commute. I also really enjoyed spending time with my Mom, and my brother for the last day (his first day back home). I enjoyed reconnecting with old friends, and yes, I loved not doing absolutely anything.
This makes me think about what I am going to want to do next summer, but that's too far in advance, plus I don't know if I'll be waiting to go to grad school, waiting for my job to start, or still in the process of finding a job/figuring out what to do with my life. A bit closer to reality, when I get back from Singapore, my Mom and my girlfriend will be in different cities. FUN. So I'll have to budget my time appropriately, and somehow explain to my Mom that she should not be jealous of her. Oh well...What about you? Are you home? Were you/will you be at home this summer? Tell me your summer story (so far)!
This is the first time that being home for a couple of weeks didn't feel like it was enough. I felt like I was just getting started, and that there were so many more things that I wanted to do, and so much more time that I wanted to spend with her, and with my Mom, of course.
Last summer I had the chance of staying home for about a month and a half, but the overachiever in me, and one with a skewed view of reality, could not bear the thought, and so I found something else to do and left. I ended up doing an internship which I did not enjoy, which showed to my supervisors. It ended up not being the experience I had hoped for. And now, although I am so far enjoying my time here, and although I am excited about what lies ahead, I am also really wanting to be home. I think the main reasons for this are that I get to see my gilfriend every day, hang out with her, stay for a long time, without the "oh shit the weekend's over" and a 2 hour commute. I also really enjoyed spending time with my Mom, and my brother for the last day (his first day back home). I enjoyed reconnecting with old friends, and yes, I loved not doing absolutely anything.
This makes me think about what I am going to want to do next summer, but that's too far in advance, plus I don't know if I'll be waiting to go to grad school, waiting for my job to start, or still in the process of finding a job/figuring out what to do with my life. A bit closer to reality, when I get back from Singapore, my Mom and my girlfriend will be in different cities. FUN. So I'll have to budget my time appropriately, and somehow explain to my Mom that she should not be jealous of her. Oh well...What about you? Are you home? Were you/will you be at home this summer? Tell me your summer story (so far)!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
I kissed a boy (and I liked it?)
So I kissed a guy at a lesbian club. Ok, so as well as this being one of the wtf moments that make up my life recently, there was context. My lesbro had promised to take me to this club while I was visiting her, and the night we happened to go (along with her girlfriend and another queer woman) I happened to be with this guy. So, because I have an impeccable sense of context (not), I decide its an awesome idea to go dance and make out with him. Yeah, I'm an awful queer woman...sorry!
So at first , most of the girls there (this was a real lesbian club, like, all girls) didn't give me and my dance partner a second glance. I'm taller than him in my four inch heels, his hair is longer than mine, and his presentation is decidedly androgynous (see the picture!). However, as people got closer, they would do a visible double-take, realizing that, well he was a guy...a lot of girls seemed weirded out, shuffled away abit, so in a minute we went upstairs to find a quiet corner.
I'm used to strange reactions to my kissing people: from friends who didn't know I'm bi seeing me make out with a girl for the first time, to newer friends who assumed that I was gay seeing me kiss a guy, to the general voyeuristic attitude many boys take to girls making out. No, we are not doing it for your benefit, and no you cannot hit on one or both of us because we are clearly occupied. But this feeling of slight discomfort or wierdness was a new one.
At first I felt a little maybe that this was unfairly taking over queer space, but then I decided fuck that, I'm bi and proud and I want to hang with my other queer friends and my choice of make out partners shouldn't effect that. If I want to kiss a girl when I'm at Toads with my straight suitemates, I will. And if I want to kiss a boy when I'm out with my queer friends, I'll do that too.
Anyway, this got me thinking. I have a gay guy friend who, although very open about his sexuality with friends, felt uncomfortable even dancing with his screw date in front of his team. I guess I have never felt this pressure (being part of a super gay friendly team, and with the general reaction to women kissing being more “oh thats hot” rather than “oh thats disgusting”) but how does people in general, or your friends, reactions to who you choose to kiss/dance with/go on a date with etc effect how you act in public? Other bi's would you feel uncomfortable with a guy around a mostly queer group? Comment and tell me what you think!
PRIDE!
Happy summer everyone! :) Hope you're all having amazing adventures and enjoying life. Summer is just so amazingly happy for me right now. I'm working at an LGBT community center with really cool people - just really fun, full of life, jokey hippies who switch between English and Hebrew sometimes so I don't always understand them, but they're awesome. There are also really great queer women always hanging around, so it's just been great. But the real reason I'm back to the Sappho Blog dropping in is to tell you all how excited I am for my FIRST EVER PRIDE!!
Tomorrow I'm driving with some of the staff to a city an hour away to attend the first of many, many events that are going on throughout the weekends of June and July in Israel (where I'm staying for the summer) that we're attending as a group. I bought my first ever rainbow flag, which I CANNOT wait to wear in some sort of crazy way, but I haven't found any face paint anywhere which is driving me crazy!! Ah I'm like dancing with glee in the streets every time I think about it, and I wanted to share with you all my excitement. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes, and how Tel Aviv's is as well.. that one's gonna be amazing - two entire weeks full of events (altho I won't be there the whole time :[). Continue having kickass queer summers! I hope you all find fellow lesbs wherever you are :)
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
So, my dear Daughter, how gay ARE you?
Hi Sappho Blog!
Goodness, I have been soooo MIA from posting. I'm almost ashamed. But I guess now I have the excuse that I'm graduated (like a cylinder, yeah?) so I can post when/what ever I want. Not like that was incredibly different from before, though, despite how often Mariana nagged me to post when I was supposed to :)
Kudos to Ryan. She and I have both decided that we are going to stick around and post occasionally as creepy grads.
So I'm one of the members of the class of 2010 who spent most of her last few weeks at Yale in tears. I just couldn't let go. It took me these four years to build my friendships and become part of the communities I love so much. Pulling myself away from the YPMB and the queer community were the worst. I just did NOT want to go back to Ohio. Those of you who saw the most recent episode of glee (aka all of you) can only imagine how much my heart ached when Finn yelled at Kurt to try harder to blend in. "We live in Ohio, Kurt, not somewhere like New York or San Francisco where they eat vegetables that aren't fried!" Ohio is the place I grew up, and I love so much about it, but my queer little heart has nothing gay to cling on to. Yale brought so much beautiful gayness to my life, and now it feels like I'm very much alone.
To combat the daunting loneliness of gay Ohio isolation, I have established the following objectives for this summer: 1) go to as many Pride celebrations as I can (currently making plans for June 12th in Monterrey, Mexico and June 24-28 in NYC!), and 2) come out to EVERYONE!
Along the lines of the second objective, I first came out to my parents. An elaboration of what I mean by that, plus the story of how it went will come at the end of this post. Beyond that, however, I have already come out to one full family of Russians who have known me since 1st grade (the family of my elementary/junior/senior high school best friend), one family of liberal hicks who have also known me for forever (the family of another dear friend), and one high school ex-boyfriend.
How did these go? Mixed results. The Russian family was AMAZING. I was out to my best friend ahead of time, and she told me to expect them to be supportive, but I couldn't have anticipated how supportive they would be! So many amazing responses came from that group including some of these: 1) tons of hugs 2)"I thought that flannel shirt looked pretty gay!" 3) "Well shit, there go my chances!" (from my best friend's dad, of course), and 4) tons of intrigued questions about how girl-girl sex works. IT WAS GLORIOUS. If only all coming-out experiences could be so uplifting. It was like they saw me in a whole new light, and they loved it. They were interested, intrigued, and loving. I couldn't have asked for more.
The other family was less receptive, but at least it wasn't a spectacle. They politely smiled and said congrats, but mostly brushed it off. I can't really blame them, though. Their world had just gotten rocked because my dear friend (their daughter) had eloped with a Nicaraguan boy that she met while studying abroad in Costa Rica, and she hadn't told them about it until recently. She had studied abroad nearly six months prior to now, and hence had been married for about six months before she told ANY OF US. So naturally, me being a homo was far less interesting or shocking than the other things going on in that poor family's life. Sigh.
Coming out to the ex-boyfriend was incredibly nice. We hadn't really connected at all since we broke up during freshman year, so took today to hang out and talk for hours. It was easy for me to share my journey with him, and he shared his journey with me. We had both been a little un-lucky in love with girls in the past, so we bonded over that. He told me all about how he spontaneously drove from Columbus, Ohio to Nashville on a whim to tell a girl how he felt about her, only to realize she had gone out of town to go to her grandfather's funeral! And I told him all about why it took me FOREVER to have the courage to really come out, and how I was so sad that I had hit so many bumps in the road along the way. At the end, we were crying and hugging and it turned into an incredible evening with a lost friend. Boys are so much more fun when you can just be bro's, and he and I had never had that before.
Goodness, this post is getting long, but I still want to talk about "coming out" to my parents. I guess I put those words in quotes because I had come out to my parents as bisexual during the summer after freshman year. However, I had never given them a reason to confront it. I had kept dating boys, and I had never mentioned any of my flings with girls because they had never gone anywhere.
Now, at the end of Yale, I feel differently than I had when I came out before. I don't really think I identify as bi anymore. I just feel gay. Gay gay gay. I've become a drag performer (ah! my calling!), joined the rugby team, become even more involved in the queer community at Yale, and even had some luck with girls :) At the brink of stepping out into the read world *shudder* as a hopeful, excited, and proud gay girl, I felt like I needed to re-come out to my parents.
And luckily, they started the conversation for me. I had been ranting and raving to them ever since Bad Romance had starting coming together about how much I LOVED performing in drag. And when they came out for graduation, I got to show them all my pictures! There were hundreds of pictures from BR and from the glitter salute at BAR, and they could tell that I was beyond proud of all of them. So, with effortless tact, my Mom began the conversation while we were eating at Uno Pizzaria in NYC before seeing a Broadway show. She first asked what I loved about drag. Why drag? What is it about? What do you mean gender is a performance? Who is drag for? Why do YOU like performing a different gender? Why is it still drag when you prance around in your bra and fishnets? What statement are you trying to make? Wait – that boy on the right side of the group photo is actually a GIRL?!
I was SO excited to begin to explain drag to my Smalltown, Ohio parents! I could tell they didn't really understand everything, but they really responded to my enthusiasm and wanted me to elaborate as well as I could. Throughout my excited rambling, I kept referring to the "queer community,” and yet again, with a smile and a truckload of finesse, my mom asked, "Okay, babe, so your dad and I are wondering where YOU fall in the queer community?" After this, my dad immediately interjected awkwardly, "And kiddo, if you don't want to talk about it, we can just talk about something else . . . like the weather. Know that we love you no matter what, and you don't have to talk if you don't want to."
I LOVE MY PARENTS. I confessed to them, with a few tears welling up in my eyes, that although people change, identity isn't fixed, and you can never predict love, I probably wasn't going to be bringing home any more boyfriends. I am gay, and I'm happy about it. Ecstatic in fact. I think it’s one of the best things about me. And then I burst into tears. And they just hugged me. Then, after I regained my composure, we did just talk about the weather. I think we all needed to let the emotional charge dissipate a little bit.
Since then, we haven't discussed it again. But today I was filling out paperwork for my job in England next year, and I stopped to point out to my parents that the non-discrimination policy for the school where I would be working protected sexual orientation and gender presentation! Then I also showed them how all the wording in the pension plan said "spouse or civil partner." They were almost as excited about these small (but totally NOT small) things as I was. And so my parents and I are taking baby steps.
Next step? Bring home an adorable British girlfriend, of course :)
Ok Sappho, thanks for listening. I hope you put up with my rambly writing-style to get to this point. I hope to see so many of you at NYC Pride in less than a month!
So much love <3
Freddie
Goodness, I have been soooo MIA from posting. I'm almost ashamed. But I guess now I have the excuse that I'm graduated (like a cylinder, yeah?) so I can post when/what ever I want. Not like that was incredibly different from before, though, despite how often Mariana nagged me to post when I was supposed to :)
Kudos to Ryan. She and I have both decided that we are going to stick around and post occasionally as creepy grads.
So I'm one of the members of the class of 2010 who spent most of her last few weeks at Yale in tears. I just couldn't let go. It took me these four years to build my friendships and become part of the communities I love so much. Pulling myself away from the YPMB and the queer community were the worst. I just did NOT want to go back to Ohio. Those of you who saw the most recent episode of glee (aka all of you) can only imagine how much my heart ached when Finn yelled at Kurt to try harder to blend in. "We live in Ohio, Kurt, not somewhere like New York or San Francisco where they eat vegetables that aren't fried!" Ohio is the place I grew up, and I love so much about it, but my queer little heart has nothing gay to cling on to. Yale brought so much beautiful gayness to my life, and now it feels like I'm very much alone.
To combat the daunting loneliness of gay Ohio isolation, I have established the following objectives for this summer: 1) go to as many Pride celebrations as I can (currently making plans for June 12th in Monterrey, Mexico and June 24-28 in NYC!), and 2) come out to EVERYONE!
Along the lines of the second objective, I first came out to my parents. An elaboration of what I mean by that, plus the story of how it went will come at the end of this post. Beyond that, however, I have already come out to one full family of Russians who have known me since 1st grade (the family of my elementary/junior/senior high school best friend), one family of liberal hicks who have also known me for forever (the family of another dear friend), and one high school ex-boyfriend.
How did these go? Mixed results. The Russian family was AMAZING. I was out to my best friend ahead of time, and she told me to expect them to be supportive, but I couldn't have anticipated how supportive they would be! So many amazing responses came from that group including some of these: 1) tons of hugs 2)"I thought that flannel shirt looked pretty gay!" 3) "Well shit, there go my chances!" (from my best friend's dad, of course), and 4) tons of intrigued questions about how girl-girl sex works. IT WAS GLORIOUS. If only all coming-out experiences could be so uplifting. It was like they saw me in a whole new light, and they loved it. They were interested, intrigued, and loving. I couldn't have asked for more.
The other family was less receptive, but at least it wasn't a spectacle. They politely smiled and said congrats, but mostly brushed it off. I can't really blame them, though. Their world had just gotten rocked because my dear friend (their daughter) had eloped with a Nicaraguan boy that she met while studying abroad in Costa Rica, and she hadn't told them about it until recently. She had studied abroad nearly six months prior to now, and hence had been married for about six months before she told ANY OF US. So naturally, me being a homo was far less interesting or shocking than the other things going on in that poor family's life. Sigh.
Coming out to the ex-boyfriend was incredibly nice. We hadn't really connected at all since we broke up during freshman year, so took today to hang out and talk for hours. It was easy for me to share my journey with him, and he shared his journey with me. We had both been a little un-lucky in love with girls in the past, so we bonded over that. He told me all about how he spontaneously drove from Columbus, Ohio to Nashville on a whim to tell a girl how he felt about her, only to realize she had gone out of town to go to her grandfather's funeral! And I told him all about why it took me FOREVER to have the courage to really come out, and how I was so sad that I had hit so many bumps in the road along the way. At the end, we were crying and hugging and it turned into an incredible evening with a lost friend. Boys are so much more fun when you can just be bro's, and he and I had never had that before.
Goodness, this post is getting long, but I still want to talk about "coming out" to my parents. I guess I put those words in quotes because I had come out to my parents as bisexual during the summer after freshman year. However, I had never given them a reason to confront it. I had kept dating boys, and I had never mentioned any of my flings with girls because they had never gone anywhere.
Now, at the end of Yale, I feel differently than I had when I came out before. I don't really think I identify as bi anymore. I just feel gay. Gay gay gay. I've become a drag performer (ah! my calling!), joined the rugby team, become even more involved in the queer community at Yale, and even had some luck with girls :) At the brink of stepping out into the read world *shudder* as a hopeful, excited, and proud gay girl, I felt like I needed to re-come out to my parents.
And luckily, they started the conversation for me. I had been ranting and raving to them ever since Bad Romance had starting coming together about how much I LOVED performing in drag. And when they came out for graduation, I got to show them all my pictures! There were hundreds of pictures from BR and from the glitter salute at BAR, and they could tell that I was beyond proud of all of them. So, with effortless tact, my Mom began the conversation while we were eating at Uno Pizzaria in NYC before seeing a Broadway show. She first asked what I loved about drag. Why drag? What is it about? What do you mean gender is a performance? Who is drag for? Why do YOU like performing a different gender? Why is it still drag when you prance around in your bra and fishnets? What statement are you trying to make? Wait – that boy on the right side of the group photo is actually a GIRL?!
I was SO excited to begin to explain drag to my Smalltown, Ohio parents! I could tell they didn't really understand everything, but they really responded to my enthusiasm and wanted me to elaborate as well as I could. Throughout my excited rambling, I kept referring to the "queer community,” and yet again, with a smile and a truckload of finesse, my mom asked, "Okay, babe, so your dad and I are wondering where YOU fall in the queer community?" After this, my dad immediately interjected awkwardly, "And kiddo, if you don't want to talk about it, we can just talk about something else . . . like the weather. Know that we love you no matter what, and you don't have to talk if you don't want to."
I LOVE MY PARENTS. I confessed to them, with a few tears welling up in my eyes, that although people change, identity isn't fixed, and you can never predict love, I probably wasn't going to be bringing home any more boyfriends. I am gay, and I'm happy about it. Ecstatic in fact. I think it’s one of the best things about me. And then I burst into tears. And they just hugged me. Then, after I regained my composure, we did just talk about the weather. I think we all needed to let the emotional charge dissipate a little bit.
Since then, we haven't discussed it again. But today I was filling out paperwork for my job in England next year, and I stopped to point out to my parents that the non-discrimination policy for the school where I would be working protected sexual orientation and gender presentation! Then I also showed them how all the wording in the pension plan said "spouse or civil partner." They were almost as excited about these small (but totally NOT small) things as I was. And so my parents and I are taking baby steps.
Next step? Bring home an adorable British girlfriend, of course :)
Ok Sappho, thanks for listening. I hope you put up with my rambly writing-style to get to this point. I hope to see so many of you at NYC Pride in less than a month!
So much love <3
Freddie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)