Agency, near and far

The national election is coming up in just three weeks from today and I posted a missive about how scary and even terrifying the next weeks and especially months will be, and a good friend of mine posted in response that there's nothing we can do about it, so don't worry. I understood where he was coming from in one sense of course, but I also was rankled by his comment, in that it reeked of complacency and even some kind of nihilism. Sure enough, I can't change the outcome of the national election directly. That really is beyond my personal control. But I can and should be active in changing the environment around me, both interpersonally and even beyond that to my local and regional area. I have agency in that regard. YOU have agency in that regard. No flood ever existed apart from the droplets of water. Vote (especially down ballot). Talk to one another. Talk to yourself in affirming and critical ways. And whatever you do, never give into complacency and a defeatist attitude about your own voice and place in this world. You really do have agency in your attitude and actions. NEVER let that go. I know from my own life experiences that one life can make a huge difference, even if on a personal scale. But sometimes those scales can tip the whole world. Make a difference and excercise your agency.

I Shaved Last Night

Every evening I wonder what to do. I look older when I don't shave. But sometimes I don't mind that look. The gray beard and growing mustache are a good look sometimes. Honestly, I don't mind that look nowadays. Do I want to look older or younger? That's still an open question to me. I like the naked face look, I won't lie, but the gray follicles have their own sexy gravitas. I just wanna have sex. That's really the beginning and end of my story.

Inescapable Sexuality

I can't help but think of you. You penetrate my mind. You sing into my mind with melodies that slide. I think of you all the time.

I'm yours all the time.

When I walk through the brush I think of you and us together surrendered to the forest.

The idea of leaning into you makes me happy. That is my sexuality.

I Crush Easily

My relationship with women has always been complicated. I was mostly raised by my very complicated mom, with her addiction and mental health issues, and my older sister, the same, and my beloved grandmother on my mom's side, a professional seamstress, who, though born and raised in West Virginia, was a thoroughly modern woman of fashion. I grew up with my face in dress patterns and fashion magazines after all. Various thread spools were my play things as a child. My grandmother was a hoarder as was my mom, and I have to resist that strong temptation every single day myself. The Great Depression has lasting effects on generations after all.

But this is but a few puzzle pieces of the puzzle that is my life. Especially as it relates to my relationships with women. I love women. I adore them. My first crush was my cousin Betsy, a beautiful redhead a few years older than me. She looked like Jean Harlow. Every guy was crazy about her. She hilariously blew popcorn all over the kitchen in NJ as a young teen when she took off the tin foil on a Jiffy Pop popcorn container before cooking it. Later, when I lived with her family in NC, she showed me her pot plant in her bedroom and occasionally walked around late at night topless as I slept in the living room. She also taught me to overcome my fear of taking showers since I almost drowned as a small child. In many ways, she was my first love.

I can't not mention Karen, my best friend as a child. Her mom and mine were best friends, often commiserating over their respective terrible husbands over the phone and in person. Karen and I were pretty much siblings in everything but blood. We bathed together as small children, played house together and even discovered my older brother's dirty magazines from underneath his mattress, and were curious about what we saw. If my mom and I hadn't moved to North Carolina when I was turning 12, she would've been my first sexual experience. But it was not to be. I've since recently learned that she's a professional photographer and does amazing work in NYC and elsewhere. She's an amazing woman. Who knows. Maybe I'll reconnect with her some day soon.

But this post/essay isn't about these early life histories, it's about my adult relationships, friendships, romances, more often than not with women (and a few men) who I became attracted to over the years.

I was born wounded.

That's both true physically and emotionally. I was born with a cleft lip and pallet and a functional heart murmur. And my parents separated only months after I was born. It's only in recent years that I've come to terms with the likely fact that my birth probably precipitated their separation and eventual divorce. My "defects" as it were, obvious to the eye, were fuel to the fire of my parent's already deteriorating relationship. Amazingly enough, I've never blamed myself for this turn of events. Neither of my parents laid that trip on me, nor did my siblings, all of whom were incredibly protective and loving towards me in the way they could.

All told, I was incredibly fortunate as a child. I had love all around me.

Lynn, my older sister, exposed me to the arts and sciences from a very early age. She was, in many ways, my dream weaver. She always bought me art supplies as a kid and teen and encouraged me in my own artistic pursuits. She lived in the West Village and worked at Party Cake, an amazing pastry shop next door to Crazy Eddie's. I got my first posable art mannequins thanks to her. I posed them in gay stances, much to her chagrin and her coworker's hilarity. She wasn't anti gay by any means, she just thought that my pose would be offensive to them. They were fine. They knew I was an innocent child expressing my creativity.

I've loved the Village ever since. I would live there in a heart beat.

But women, those breasted of every size, vaginal creatures I was born from, nurtured from youth, near and yet so distant from me, lo those many years ago to today. Yes, I crush so easily. I love you, but you smile at me from a distance.

I love you. My motherly wings hang down over you, protecting you from danger, from men like me. Because, after all, anything posable can be re-posed. Do not be afraid of your femininity. Do not be afraid of your masculinity.

I do crush easily. I just hope I don't crush anything, anything tender, including you and me.

Spectrum

Being on the spectrum is a blessing and a curse. You sense more than the average person, both for good and ill. You see, hear, smell, taste, feel things most people don't, but it can and often is very overwhelming. That's why order and a tight schedule is so important. It's more than a little easy to freak out at the avalanche of sensations flooding you from all directions. Folks on the spectrum are also misidentified as being aloof and even uncaring, but it's most often the opposite. The level of empathy experienced by those on the spectrum is so strong that it's deeply painful many times. Sometimes you feel both trapped inside yourself and standing outside of yourself simultaneously. Your own skin, ears, eyes are your frenemies, pulsating with overloaded sensations. As an aside, stimming helps alleviate that overload. It allows you to focus your attention on one thing to the exclusion of everything else bombarding you.

The term idiot savant is now a term we don't use because of its offensive nature, but it's one I still think can be useful in one sense (pardon the pun) in that it connotes accurately that someone can be incredibly talented in one area while being limited in most others, especially socially. I think we all know someone who's a great mathematician/coder/chess player/musician who struggles with interpersonal interactions. Seeing, or maybe better put, sensing patterns is an amazing thing to experience. But of course that can easily go awry. Obvious examples are Bobby Fischer and John Nash. Both geniuses who also struggled with serious mental health issues throughout their lives. I guess I kinda know these people. I see a little through their eyes. It's why I considered working in the intelligence world three different times. For my own mental health's sake, I'm glad I never, figuratively, pulled that trigger. It can be a very dangerous rabbit hole to go down.

No wonder I loved Sherlock Holmes as a kid. He was definitely on the spectrum, even if he was fictional.

Smile

We had learned, expertly, to avoid the security cameras. We only looked at each other with furtive eyes a few times, but it was obvious that we were playing with fire. But we eventually didn't care. We had lost all dignity anyway at that point, so there was nothing else to really lose. Honestly, I'm not that attractive. Neither was she. But she has beautiful blue eyes. And she's funny. That counts for a lot. The coat room, no camera. The ice room, no camera. Behind the outside cooler. Sure a neighbor or two might see us, but still no hidden camera. It's amazing how much fear drives us in so many of our actions. Her lips are beautiful if potentially deadly. Thinking of her makes me smile. None of this ever happened.

Preaching the Word

It's been years since I preached. It wasn't often, but I did preach several times a year back in the day.

I love Jesus, and I love preaching about Jesus.

I still believe that He is the Way, Truth and Life, capital letters and all.

Strangely enough, I'm still a thoroughgoing supernaturalist. I believe the miracles stuff. Ya know, the virgin birth, loaves and fishes, bringing people back from the dead, he died, was buried and was resurrected on the third day and ascended to heaven stuff. I can gladly recite the Apostle's Creed without question or doubt.

And I say this as a deeply doubtful person.

But I believe.

But I'm also a skeptic.

And that's a good thing to me and to everyone I know.

I grew up a child of the post 60's, a 70's child, spiritually untethered by any institutional structures. It was the zeitgeist I guess. All spiritual options were open back then, and are again today. We really do live in untethered times once again.

How do we ground our being? How do we find a center, a core, a Way that gives us a sense of Why, How and Who?

I mean, this is a wibbly wobbly kind of question which leads to a need for a spiritual Dramamine.

The Incarnation.

God became flesh. God showed up through a virgin's vagina and became a child with a penis. Is that too vulgar to you? Are those body parts offensive to you? Apparently God thought otherwise. In the beginning, God thought all of those body parts were good and very good. And remember folks, they were initially intersexual and betwixt. Apparently, God has a side splitting sense of humor. Pardon the ribbing...

Meanwhile, God showed up as a vulnerable child in a far off land, in a part of the Empire that most had forgotten. Inexcusably dirty and poor. Parents running away from death squads. Trying their best to escape to a new life somewhere else.

The baby showed up, slimy and wet, but exquisitely beautiful, in the town of bread. Both Miriam and Joseph cried tears of joy. Even the animals nearby seemed to lean low in adoration at this beautiful sight. This little baby, unexpected in so many ways, rang out in cries the Universe Itself sang in response as a Holy Echo.

And God in Christ pooped and cried out in need of his mother's milk.

And that's OK. Physicality is not our enemy. It's our friend and close neighbor. It's us, in fact. It's you. It's me. It's we.

This is what it means to be enfleshed and holy, physical and spiritual, intellectual, emotional and sexual.

God in Christ saves ALL of this. This gives me comfort. This gives me hope.