sublingua

The heart with a mind of its own.

(Be present.)

The mind with a heart of its own.

(It's past.)

The dream that is your waking life.

(Go there now.)

Stone Demon Blues
Saturday, Mar. 06, 2004

Began reading an autobiography that The Demon Who Always Does The Right Thing passed on to me after having read it in the women's studies course she took last semester. The Demon Who Tolerates Intolerable Behavior (a.k.a. The Demon Grrlfriend) said of this book that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder while reading it. I was afraid--not for that reason, but for a reason I can't quite explain yet--to pick it up. I did that thing where you pick up a book and dip into it at random (which I usually do when I'm either browsing or don't want to start the uphill climb into a difficult book), and the second or third time I did this, it yielded a quote wall quote: "Those men came there to exercise their bodies; I came to exorcise my demons."

I lived with that book for a while, trying to share space with it without knowing it, which is always difficult. I don't mean to say that I haven't lived with some unfamiliar books for years. I mean, yeah, for example, The Little Prince sat on my shelf for almost fifteen years without my ever having read it (until recently anyway). But when you think about those books that you have on your shelf without ever reading, they're usually things that you know something about from other sources. They're either some tome that people tell you is worth reading usually without ever having read it themselves (James Joyce's Ulysses much?) or they're books that are so famous that maybe you've seen the movie or read the comic book or were supposed to've read the book in school but didn't (and here how can one avoid casting a shameful glance at Moby Dick?). But this book? Never heard of it. I had never heard of it and would never have run across it if The Demon hadn't been searching for a picture of herself on the first day she moved into her apartment.

"Have you ever read this?" she asked, holding up an unfamiliar title.

"No. What is it?"

"I read it in that women's studies class. It's good. Here take it," she said. She handed it to me and went on looking for the photo. (Which she never found, by the way.)

So I lived with the book for a while, trying to get a feel for it without opening it, which you can sometimes do if you're paying attention. (And if you don't believe me about that, try going out and getting a copy of anything by Salman Rushdie or Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Those books will teach you a few lessons about yourself even if--or perhaps especially if--you never open them). I moved that this little trade paperback from place to place in my little apartment, always thinking I'd start it, always starting something else instead, but always bringing it along to the little places where I read.

And last night, finally, I started at page one.

The book begins with a letter from the author to a woman that she once loved and has since lost. It was open and raw and familiar and my heart began to ache as I read it. (It aches now as I write about having read it.) I've written letters like that, and recently too. Too recently to be reading someone else's perhaps, but perhaps recently enough that knowing, seeing, that she has survived will make me realize that I will survive too.

The book moves rapidly and inexpertly (and by that I mean that it's told in a very honest way, the way you might tell a story, a true story, something that's truly happened to you and that changed you in a profound way, but that you haven't yet had the chance to rationalize or to mix with enough lies to lend it the kind of coherency that we all feel that others need) into her childhood experiences which include a set of parents whose shame over the author's differences leads them to make fear-based decisions about her care. She is surrounded by fear continuously, surrounded by a din of it (and my throat just tightened up writing that) that comes from others and is related to their perceptions of her differences. She can feel it, but she can't change it, and it forces her into increasingly more difficult places, places where she can find no comfort or solace. And people survive that kind of thing--of course they do--but not without being changed in such a way that they become a livingbreathing mixture of protection and pain.

And I've seen it. I've seen it over and over in my life, in people I come into contact with almost every day, in the members of my family, in the eyes of strangers. And I have read it over and over, have read it in the books used women's studies and minority studies classes. And it is absent--completely lacking--from traditional white male literature.

I'm less than a third of the way into the book, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. And I'll finish it, but already I know I won't be the same at the end. Because she's writing about me. She's telling my story in a way that I would never think to tell it--in a way that a black woman might tell it, or a sansei poet might tell it--and it hurts to hear it. (And I hope it will always hurt to hear it.)

The Demon Who Does The Right Thing called this morning looking for some office supply that I didn't have. I didn't pick up the phone. I couldn't. I was crying, in tears from having read the story of Leslie's first non-rape sexual experience in which the woman told her how sad she found it that by the time we want to be touched that we're already too adept protecting ourselves to truly enjoy it. (And I'm paraphrasing, badly, here, but will come back and put in the correct quote later when the book is in front of me.) The Demon said, when I told her about this, "Now I know you're butch. You and My Grrlfriend!"

Am I? (Not that this would be a huge identity upheaval to have this confirmed, because I know that all my self-protective mechanisms are more butch than not, and I've always known that I'm not a girly-girl, that traditional definitions of femininity are shit and that real women decide for themselves what it means to be a woman, but do these things make me a "butch"?) We'll see, I suppose. We'll see as I read how much more I'll come to know myself.

retreat or surrender

More lies:
Waking Sleeping Demons II - Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011
Waking Sleeping Demons - Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011
time - Friday, May. 20, 2011
- - Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010
The Return - Tuesday, Oct. 05, 2010

� sublingua sublingua.diaryland.com.