JINNI AND HER LOVE OF QUEER PEOPLE, THE ANIMALS AND GOD

i discover myself when i fall short pt. 1

I think when I intend to talk out loud about sex or write about sex there is still so much left unsaid, left to the tool of inference, and this is an attempt to get more explicit. My attempt to .. deconstruct, integrate, embody. 

How I wish i was naturally re: gender and sexuality (dialogue from Victor/Victoria):

King: What kind of man are you?

Victor/ia: One that doesn’t have to prove it, to myself or anyone 

How I am naturally re: gender and sexuality:

It took getting pregnant accidentally and the prompt departure of another dude to admit that being straight wasn’t working, that it wasn’t going to get me the life that I wanted. It took health consequences from self-abandonment to commit to exploring queerness as an option, as a/the truth. I have spent the last seven years trying to arrive at a label, develop compassion for my denial and compulsion, while also unfurling my desires, finding my kin, being celibate. I needed “a narrative with room for messiness, one that can accommodate veering toward extremes.”¹ I still doubt myself, I stay small, I spend most of my time apart from the company of other people.

And yet, Audre Lorde reminds me that “In the recognition of loving lies an answer to despair.” 

My phone screen background is a black and white portrait of Carson McCullers. “Carson, my heart…” I wrote, underlined, above my notes about her novels. I read all of them in sequence last month, in hot epsom salt bubble baths by candlelight or while working on a spring tan on the front porch. Jenn Shapland’s book about both her and Carson’s sexuality has been a compass for me since it was published four years ago. Like me, Carson grew up in a conservative community absent the example or the knowledge that “I could love women and still be myself.”² Shapland says of Carson's writing : “the only story she ever wrote: a lonely misfit wrestles with her hidden self, unable to articulate her own longings.”³ This could have been me forever, I am profoundly grateful to have options and guides on all sides of me. I’m especially grateful to those who lived closeted as it is still just me and my desire for now, the potential for more always dangling about. 

My invitation to god this year was radical change. I discover myself when I fall short.⁴ 

I’m taking a break from working, living off of my savings. Money that I set aside, thinking it might be a down payment for a house but the truth is I can’t afford anything where I live, and where I can afford it there is no guarantee I will have civil rights. In this temporary rejection of labour, I have cleared great space in my life. My first (and honestly, primary) “project” was helping my body figure out how to sleep again on its own, withdrawing from years of pressed pill aid. I stayed awake until 7 AM for many days in a row until about mid-March when the nightly epsom salt baths helped me turn a corner. I’m still not sure what my baseline circadian rhythm is, what my needs are - work and ptsd are so closely intertwined. For today the future of labour is still a question. 

It is a challenge to not glorify work, to be brave and try a different way than allocating a bulk of my focus and thoughts and time to make a some-thing that is rarely on my terms. I think my full-time jobs and their projects have been a great way to keep me aware of how nutrient dense my recovery and alone time can be. They have also taken up energy I would now like to allocate to deepening my connections with others, continuing to meet new people, feeding the general concept of being willing to date, to desire.

My famously dicey interpersonal career in the construction industry contributed to a quick shedding of desire for cis-male companionship. Every boyfriend or cismale lover I have had has gravely discredited me when I tried to articulate and confide in them my struggles with gender, with unwanted attention, misogyny, unequal pay, years of constant and severe chronic bladder pain from penetration. I know, not ALL men etc. etc. etc but certainly, the ones I was attracted to… and it’s just a fact that the most profound, safest, juiciest intimacy I have ever known has always been with women and queer people. I have a boundless thirst for the potential of what queer relationships offer: “no rules, no timelines, no expectations. open endedness.”⁵ At the very least, a second chance. 

I have figured myself out through crushes on my childhood best friends, on straight women, on unavailable women, on close friends, on queer online people who I have never met, on nonbinary celebs. It is still a simultaneous thrill and burden to have a crush. It takes me a while to say how I feel. I’ll evoke Shapland again here - “Without pursuing them, they can be so much more, can be anything we want them to be. They never have a chance to disappoint.”⁶ 

At the age of 32 I have not yet had a girlfriend or been in an out queer relationship! My second adolescence promised to me by the elders who have walked before me awaits. I got asked twice the other week by straight people if I was bisexual, I think because I have yet to deliver on proof of my desire. To this scrutiny i quote:

“The standard of visibility is not a universal prerequisite for knowledge. We cannot see electricity but we know that electricity exists because electricity is the best explanation of why a light switch leads to the illumination of a light bulb.”⁷

And a Maggie Nelson quote i wish i had on hand at the time: “the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or their sexuality - or anything else, really - is to listen to what they tell you, and try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours.”

Shapland offers many definitions of lesbians, but I like this one: “individuals who choose to make their lives and their bodies sites for their politics and their feminism.” ⁸ Being queer is about love and connection and desire at its core, but it has yet to be that simple for me. The real birth of my out queer identity was concurrent with my abortion. I kept a special journal post-procedure, titled it Last Supper and encapsulated a blood clot on the cover. Within the first week I wrote “GUILT, WHICH IS OF NO HELP TO ME.” Our patriarchal tradition is the only reason I have ever thought of abortion as bad. Our patriarchal tradition is also the only reason I have ever thought of homosexuality as bad. I was very into the legacy of political lesbianism when I first came out because despite the PSAs re: how being gay is not a choice, I was at a crossroads of having to make a choice, or else nothing would change. 

My attraction to cismen is a big question mark. I feel really confused when I try to assess some kind of movable truth. There likely is still some attraction to beauty (is it just comphet from all my media training? or genuine? it’s impossible to separate) but no interest in the practical, shared day to day life. The idea of physical intimacy is repulsive, especially jumping back into the negotiations, the sacrifical pain, the drama of avoiding pregnancy, the acne from hormone interventions, the suicidal ideations. When it comes to women/enbys the mental waters are calm. It's a warm bath. There's no question, only hunger. I'll just let that be what it is today. How can I not try to prove it to myself, or others? I'm missing the invitation by focusing on the burden of proof, of language, of a binary. Trying to force solutions. 

Due to lesbian erasure, I have never read a fleshed out account of an out queer woman who did not have a partner that aided in the exploration of self, whose existence validated the effort. I know we exist! I have seen bread crumb evidence, but so far the fairytale always ends with a girlfriend, ends with a sexual partner. And what if it doesn’t, or hasn’t yet? My focus in life has been on my expansive platonic friendships for a long time. I write this all out largely to speak on the lived experience of a single celibate lesbian who has no plans to reproduce. This is a marginalised identity, I've already clocked that and have been clocked especially in these post-covid years of much family wedding travel. Dad will pay for the hotel rooms of my sisters and their respective fiance/partner but not mine. Most of my cousins fortunately just don’t ask about my personal life, and when they do, another will intervene and say “she is a strong woman!” Shapland again, from her recent book of essays: “To be partnerless is also to face stigma, to hear from the world that you on your own aren’t enough, can’t be or have a family made of your elders, your friends, your pets, yourself.” And Sheila Heti: “In a life in which there is no child, no one knows anything about your life’s meaning. They might suspect it doesn’t have one- no centre it is built around. Your life’s value is invisible… how wonderful to tread an invisible path, where what matters most can hardly be seen.” 

I am a person who lives in a special world of my own making. I am blessed to know and cherish others who fit into this mould, and I am learning how to be grateful for my special gifts. To be grateful for what isolation from other humans affords me when it is in balance. I sometimes understand that what other people think about me is often not my business. I have high expectations for my DIY life of flexibility, always lived on my own terms.

In this solitude I rely heavily on my entanglements with other species and with a higher power I call God. In the space of my days I am learning individual bird calls and visual bird identification slowly with time. Learning how to “read” a building or piece of furniture or built object over a decade ago opened me up to a new world of small details hiding in plain sight. I have similarly realised that birds are with me everywhere all the time, even in the city. I cry at the sight of sandhill cranes on a grassy traffic median in Central Florida. I visit the blue heron nest on the edge of the Silver Lake Reservoir. I can hear the swoop of hummingbirds from inside my house, the mockingbird calling at 1 AM. I have a higher power that loves me and who brought my sweet, graceful cat companion Athena into my life 12 days after my abortion. Athena has been with me nearly everyday since, day in, day out. I rely on her and she relies on me. I’m never really alone. Shapland writes of Rachel Carson and her girlfriend Dorothy Freedman who had “a different kind of family, two lesbians, and the world of plants, animals and tidepools” up on the coasts of Maine. I am grateful that I make that kind of family many times a year - gazing quietly at wildlife with my sweet friends, slowly exploring preserved landscapes, wandering around a coastal bird refuge with my dad and sister. When I'm at the coast or on an island I am happiest. How I love my routine of waking up to the waves, praying outside with tropical fruit, making an event of the sun’s rise and set. The potent resource of living simply and just showing up, daring to enjoy my life. 

In a draft of her song “We Lived Alone” Connie Converse reflects on the characters of her solitude:

We lived alone, my house and I

we had the earth, we had the sky;

I had a lamp against the dark, and I was

happy as a lark.

I had a stove and a window-screen, I had a table

painted green,

Sat on a chair with a broken back, wearing a pretty potato sack.

I had a rug upon the floor and roses grew

around my door

Though my estate was never high

My house was snug and so was I

I’ve listened to Connie Converse’s album “How Sad, How Lovely” for the last decade, knowing that the songs were singular and what I knew of her life was quite curious. At the age of 51 Connie packed up her VW Beetle, drove away from Ann Arbor and was never heard from again. I was blown-open by Howard Fishman’s research on Connie, collected in his recently published book To Anyone Who Ever Asks. I will quote my longest goodreads review to date..the book is an “imperfect, question-filled portrait of a singular, clever polymath who refused the pressures of conformity. I had so much relation to her story: as a loner, a creative, compelled to cure my ails by overworking or people pleasing, alcoholism running in my family, someone who does not have a record of much romance and who often dresses frumpy on purpose.”

I implore all to discover Connie for themselves but I will call attention to some of the things that really stuck out to me. Before disappearing, Connie prepared a filing cabinet of her life’s work: drafts of songs, novels, an opera, song cycles, paintings, sculptures, cartoons, correspondence, and a photo slide collection carefully labelled and categorised per her unique specifications. Fishman writes “this was an art installation, an immaculate archaeological find. My mouth agape, I saw revealed a self-contained universe, the not-unproud distillation of one’s personal life of ideas, accomplishments and unbridled creativity, all carefully curated and preserved.” 

I was vaguely reminded of this excerpt from an artist statement I co-wrote with Michael Muller in 2015 for a show of my journals:

“What the arcane encompasses, holds and keeps safe, is the barely articulable : mystical, inward truths; different forms of revealed magic, the self-protecting and playful codes invented by subversives; a single page inside a single volume buried deep within the stacks of a restricted library. It is restrictive knowledge, yes, and properly accessible only to a few. But the limits are as much a gesture of protection as of mastery. And the boundaries mark off a home, not an empty territory.”

Many people speak of Connie as someone outside of time, as someone ahead of her time. A woman whose physicality stood out because she didn’t wear makeup or deodorant, who sought to be natural “because it wasn’t deceitful.” There are echoes of Simone Weil-level intensity and commitment to morals. I am so inspired by the record, the document of Connie's commitment to her creative practice, that it spanned so many mediums, sub-genres within music, anti-racism, scholarship. Though her gifts were never given critical acclaim, they are gifts all the same. Projects that couldn’t exist without her practice and commitment to output. Beginning this two-part essay series has been the first project I have committed to seeing through in a while, it likely wouldn’t have come about without exposure to Connie’s work. Because of my reliance on spiritual help to guide me through my own inevitable darknesses, I say prayers for my own creative practice: “God, I will take care of the quantity, you take care of the quality,” “You will express what God wants you to express, and be what God meant you to be: we cannot judge the results… but we must give our greatest effort. Be patient.”

Here are two quotes that hint at her mental health issues but also her humour, her unique voice that makes me wish her novel drafts hadn’t been lost.

In a letter to her sister in law:

“Your blue funk is of course especially crisp to me, and although some professionalism is involved I competitively state that my Funk is funkier than your Funk but I am glad to hear details of your Funk because it makes me feel a little less singularly Funky, you being generally lifetime-wise less prone to Funks than me, and if you fall into even a Small Funk - et cetera. All this is to be sung to the tune of “My dog’s bigger than your dog.”

In a letter to her brother:

“What i wanted to demand, and would not be caught dead demanding, was a few swims in the sea of unsaidness.” Amen girl. 

There are all sorts of assumptions and theories about how Connie must have been damaged by someone or something to have no public partner for the entirety of her life. I also have to entertain this judgement in my own head re: myself. That to be single for eight years means something is unhealed, off balance. In many ways there is truth to that - that in the face of repeated disappointment some of us will insulate ourselves from the possibility of love. That we prioritise protection over risk for a time, intrinsically denying and repressing human needs in the process. Are members of religious orders who take vows of celibacy or chastity held to a different standard? Has abstaining from sex until I am able to have emotionally, physically and mentally safe sex allowed me to be of greater service to those around me? Hell yea it has. I’m all about harm reduction, especially to myself. I consciously seek to prioritise a life of authenticity over making others happy or comfortable. I can’t abandon myself just because I want to be liked, or because some persistent and insidious part of me longs to fit in.  

This is a facet on the diamond of my radical change year: that the driving force in my life today is a willingness to do whatever it takes to embrace fluidity so that I can be set free each day. There is so much ongoing grief throughout the project of deconstructing the self, deconstructing relationships. I believe that admitting we are grieving is admitting we are not in control, that love itself has always been out of my control. Today the literature asks me, what new dreams are possible for me today? I will keep studying, pasting photos and drawing in my journals, singing sacred harp songs on Sunday afternoons, taking walks near bodies of water, writing, praying, and relishing coming home to my quiet rooms: the privileges of existing for oneself. I will make space for god to work in my life re: my dreams, desires and try my darndest to cultivate a light touch. I pray to experience longing without pain, a desire that doesn’t cloud out my ability to think clearly or make taking care of myself a low priority. I am grateful to have found safe places to land and to sometimes have the total awareness that they are enough. Happy advent of pride month to you and may more always be revealed………

1. Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

2. ibid.

3. ibid.

4. Kendrick Lamar “6:16 in LA”

5. Jenn Shapland, Thin Skin

6. Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

7. ibid.

8. ibid.