Seven Days of Catsmas

For various reasons, including the high cost of airfare and the high stress related to certain family members, I stayed in the relative vicinity of my New England home for the late-December holiday season this year. While it is unusual for me not to spend Christmas with my family of origin, it is not unprecedented. A few years ago, I visited a friend in Austin, TX, and spent my vacation drinking whiskey and watching peacocks wander around a park. But usually I am with one of my parents and at least a couple of siblings and some kind of brightly lit tree, etc.

This year I decided that rather than just sit around my house alone during my time off work I would make myself useful, so I asked around to see if anyone in the area needed house or pet sitting and if I could live in their house like it was my vacation home. It just seemed like a good way to take care of myself and also my friends and also their animal friends. And I got so many responses! In the end, I booked myself at four places with the intention of riding throughout the land, spreading joy and petting cats all along Rte. 5 or I-91 or whatever.

As I write this, I'm in the middle of Catsmas Tour 2014, in a rural VT schoolhouse with a wood stove and two furry friends chasing each other around. You have left me candy, eggnog, play-doh, vets' phone numbers, and more. I have scooped poop. I have listened to your Wu-Tang tapes. And I have written you a song. Good luck trying to sing it.

On the 7th day of Catsmas, you all gave to Cat Santa:
7 furry felines
6 Goose Island Festivity Ales (okay I got those myself)
5 logs a-burning
4 wifi passwords
3 hours waiting (for takeout from the Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve)
2 cool keychains
and a fish on top of a fridge.

Also, this happened:

If Santa Claus (1959) has taught me anything, it's that visiting homes at Christmastime
means occasionally getting in prank fights with gay, joker-pants Satan.

Thanks.

I love acknowledging and expressing expressing gratitude. And I hate. HATE. the idea of going around the circle on Thanksgiving and everyone saying what they are thankful for. Because holidays, especially holidays that hang heavy with the legacy that this one does.

Tonight I am full of gratitude, and rage. It's really a strange combo. Rage at a country, a culture that devalues black lives, trans lives, poor lives, women's lives (the list goes on). Every day. Every damn day. And gratitude for my community, people close and far, family of origin and chosen, who work to end all forms of violence, who work with and take leadership from those most affected by that violence. I see you.

Then there are the ways you see and hold me personally that literally keep me going, that make the difference between me going out the door every day and ending up under a blanket in the corner of a room for a week. Which! Is fine! When it needs to happen! I'm just saying.

I'm thankful for my housemates who leave me notes in Spanish, or wishing me a good Thursday. My dad who reads my Queerest Post Ever and sends me a super relevant article. A Certain Someone who comes up with completely unnecessary excuses to see me (move the chicken coop, yeah right). Friends who scheme with me on projects and jam with me on songs. Siblings who miss me over the miles. People I've just met who quote gender theory and radical MLK at me and then drive around a cemetery with me after dark. And so much more.

Oh. And so thankful that no one I know in real life or Facebook or anywhere else has said anything about how people in Ferguson shouldn't riot or how Michael Brown was a criminal or how news reports of the grand jury's decision not to indict his killer interrupted their viewing of "Dancing with the Stars" because I don't know what I would have done, so help me.

17 of Something

Shit. Don't blow 
My cover, but I just 
Did that thing where 
I was thankful.

This is how good people are to me. Do I deserve this? Probably not.

Pair of Hearts

You'd think, given my recent experience with re-watching Purple Rain, that I would go into watching Grease expecting some surprising revelations about how this favorite film from my formative years shaped who I am today.

But I was mostly too distracted by the overacting, overt misogyny, and disco influence on Travolta's dancing to notice much more than "Hey, those T-birds are some snappy dressers."

Until I got to this scene:

I don't know how I didn't make this connection before, but I almost have Kenickie's exact tattoo.

For the rest of the movie, I kept an eye out for what else I had internalized from time spent with Rydell High's inhabitants. Definitely the boys' fashion sense and not, thankfully, their contributions to rape culture. A sexual proclivity for hot rods and their drivers. A deep yearning for a date who can dance or at least strut.

And the lyrics to this song:

Haiku for Hopeless Devotion

My head is saying, 

"Fool, forget him." My heart is 

saying, "Don't let go."

Resolved.

Haiku for the New Year

In 2014
I will write a post a day.
Ha ha ha ha ha!

kiss me, i'm jesus

Haiku for December 25, 2013

"Happy holidays."
Everybody celebrates
Something today, right?

Also, this.

Gratitude-Free Zone

I don't celebrate Thanksgiving, just like I don't celebrate Columbus Day. The story of the first Thanksgiving I was taught in school is a lie, the kind of lie that my Jewish friends were taught in Hebrew school as kids. A lie that is told to cover up genocide and land theft and erase the histories of entire peoples.

I am not thankful for this:

Or this:

I'm real happy that a lot of you have decided to take this day (or even this entire month) to remember to practice gratitude, and I like gratitude and think it's important.

But I just felt the need to carve out a little corner of the internet today in which to say, "No, thank you." Today is a day of mourning all those murders, rapes, mutilations, all that enslavement and lying and theft that happened and continues to happen in North America and Palestine and all over the world.

Also gonna mourn my grandma, who left this life on Thanksgiving a few years ago. She had a big mouth and an attitude and was one of my favorite people ever. Love you, Gram.

The sincerest form of flattery

So last Thursday night a dear friend shows up to the Halloween show looking pretty damn stylish. Plaid shirt, argyle sweater vest, bow tie, black cap. I'm not about to ask, "What are you dressed as?" because I want to figure it out. I do almost say, "Hey man, you look extra fly tonight," but I'm shy sometimes.

A short while later, this friend wordlessly hands me a slip of paper that reads:

My jaw crashes through the floor and into the basement.

I then have several more costume details pointed out to me, like a plaid fanny pack, the patchy "future haircut" I got a couple months ago, and my wrist tattoos, which my friend has duplicated expertly with a sharpie.

Also, eight more little slips of paper with a haiku on each.

I was really touched, and I maybe it's because I'm self-obsessed and vain. And maybe it's because I felt loved, and seen, and appreciated. If I have done anything to deserve such honor and beauty in my life, I hope I keep on doing it.

Up all night to get lucky

Haiku for October 31, 2013

Seven years' bad luck
Unless it's Halloween night
Then all bets are off

I love rock-n-roll. And Halloween.

See my previous post wherein I bemoan the struggles we underwent in coming up with the Ultimate Cover Band for Halloween. See below for how entirely we nailed it. 

If you're in my town tonight, I fully expect to see you at the show.

Haiku for My Halloween Cover Band

Do you wanna touch?

Do you wanna touch me there?

Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

(Not pictured: my band mate, also Joan Jett.)

Homo in Noho, or, On Second Thought, Let's Not Do the Time Warp Again

Despite protests that it is a horrible place and wry laughter in response to my invitations to join me, I went to a certain gay bar in a certain New England college town last night for a Halloween party. There were no fewer than three unicorns, two Catwomen, six Power Puff Girls, and two Rockys from RHPS.

My favorite costume was Carrie White as interpreted by a cute guy wearing just a pair of trunks, a tiara, a corsage, and head-to-toe fake blood. He was accompanied by a woman dressed in black carrying a Bible and a knife. They didn't win anything. Pfff.

The cop who pulled me over on my way home for having a tail light out sounded incredulous that I would drive 45 minutes each way to attend such an event. I wanted to tell him, "I'm from the Midwest. I've gone farther for much less."

Haiku for a Small-Town Gay Bar

Flannel shirts and beards
Back it up and drop it down
Massachusetts queers

Requisite Anti-Columbus Post

I appreciate that the people in my life mostly have kickass politics and that my Facebook feed the last few days has been full of statuses correcting the misinformation we were taught in school, particularly repeated postings of The Oatmeal's comic drawing on Howard Zinn's scholarship.

I also appreciate that Imani shared the photo below, taken outside Walter's in Fort Green, lest I feel too satisfied with myself and my friends and forget to be angry about gentrification and displacement and disenfranchisement currently happening in Brooklyn and all over occupied America.

Post by Imani Henry.

[Update: As I was writing this post, Imani got word that the restaurant owners issued a formal apology for the sign. Probably in part because his friends saw his photo and started making noise.]

Haiku for the Legacy of Genocide

2013
And still telling lies about
1492.

In Memoriam

Haiku for Barbecue Day

i'm that little guy
walking home all by himself
wishing you were here

I'll have a Sticky Navel

You learn something new every day.

And by "you" I mean "I," and by "every day" I mean "on St. Patrick's Day."

And by "something new" I mean "what a body shot actually looks like."

Haiku for March 16, 2013

You slurp rum off me
As I stretch out on the bar
Who's this "St. Patrick"?