Writing

Saying Yes, Saying No

3/3/2025

There are two types of birds. Those who run toward an offering, and those who run away.

I thought about this as I sat, legs open, in the park. I let my gaze fall idly on the heavy-set 50-something guy on the far side of the bench, as he furtively rubbed inside the pocket of his dockers. The birds waited at a safe distance, watching us expectantly. I had been contacted by this man on an app several weeks prior. There was the usual back and forth:

FunNRespect4U has submitted a bid for $200.
“Hi, thanks for the bid…What did you have in mind for a date?"
“Do you meet up?”
“...Yes, sometimes. Depends on what you’re looking for.” I typed.
"I want you to watch”
“Ok, well we would have to meet in public first....Have you done this before?”
“....a few times.”
“Where do you usually go?”
“Usually in my car with someone.”
“Well, I don’t feel safe getting in a stranger’s car. How about the park?”

Checking off my safety list, I packed pepper spray and a kubotan into a small black purse. I messaged my BadGirlfriends chat to let them know where I would be just in case. Is it weird to have the kind of friends who aren’t shocked by random afternoon sex work in a park? Maybe.

I’ve always had unconventional girl-friendships. There was a time a decade ago when Lily asked if I could film her puking into a toilet. At the time, it had seemed like a legit job lead on Craigslist. The producer of the bulimia PSA commercial had references. He was…googlable. He needed to see if my friend could puke on command, topless. This seemed normal and fine.

This memory is tangled up with the time in college when I had watched a fellow performance art student solemnly enter the black box stage and switch on a tea kettle. He produced a small fishbowl from under a cloth. The goldfish swam in circles while we listened to the kettle reach the boiling point. Who is responsible for stopping this person? I thought. I continued to have this thought as the kettle started to hiss. I continued pondering this as he lifted the kettle and poured the boiling water into the fishbowl, the fish fluttering helplessly and becoming still. A hot spike of pain and shame flooded my chest as we watched him produce another fishbowl and switch the kettle back on. Relief washed over me as another student—shyer than I—interrupted the performance with a stutter and a gentle hand on his shoulder, “You’re done now. It’s time to stop.”

What does it mean for us to be complicit in violence toward another being, toward ourselves? What does it mean when the violence is physical? Emotional? Intangible? Some effects reverberate over the years, not immediately apparent. I think about watching my friend from behind my camera, as she bent half-naked over the toilet all those years ago. I text my girlfriend chat:

“I’ll be at India Park at 2pm. I’ll text you when it’s done.”
“If we don’t hear from you I’m coming down there. So, don’t forget to text,” Amelia typed.

Amelia had a license to carry. Her handgun, I imagined, was pink camouflage patterned. I’m not sure if this was true, I never actually saw it. She grew up in Chicago, her family was poor and full of boys. When she was little her brothers used to hold her down and spit in her mouth. They made the money they survived on by pitting her against bigger boys in street fights, so naturally they made it their mission to “toughen her up” at home any chance they could.

Amelia’s anger, barely restrained, jumps out at unexpected times, like when another woman slid into the parking space in front of the brunch restaurant before we could. “I’ll fucking kill you,” she spat from the drivers seat at the woman and her boyfriend. They shot us startled looks as they climbed out of their car. “You’d better watch your fucking back, bitch. I can find out where you live.”

Amelia wants a reason–any reason– to use her fists, her gun. Who is responsible for stopping this person? I thought. I shook myself from the sudden shock of her rage. “Amelia, I’m not going into that restaurant with you unless you calm the fuck down.”

Learning about Amelia's childhood, I hate to say, I wasn’t really surprised. After all, another friend’s brother used to hold her down while the neighborhood boys stuck their fingers inside her. Lily’s mom kept her gun in her vanity table drawer right next to her blow dryer. A random fact about my friend Maya was that could shoot a rifle. The unspoken part of the story was that her dad had made her kill and dress rabbits as a punishment when she was only 10. So many of us are forced to do these things, not even for survival, just as a by-product of being alive. Call it collateral damage, the cost of living...it comes with the job.

Perhaps that's why choosing the job feels okay. Or at least, better than not being paid for it. There was a brief, fearful moment when the man on the bench reached toward me. I flinched away reflexively, grip tightening on the pepper spray hidden in my sequin purse. It had started to rain, and my brain stuttered for a moment. I watched a droplet roll down my bare leg in slow motion, the moment seeming to extend indefinitely. I looked him in the eye. "That's not what you're paying for," I said, firmly.

An Otter Taught Me to Dream Walk

1/1/2025

(I wrote this back in 2016, the first time t**** was president. It feels even more relevant now.)

Close your eyes and picture a two dimensional dreamscape devoid of oxygen where gravity is 4x what it is on Earth. Now take away the oxygen and insert towering structures made of bleached bones and tiny mirrored cubes. This was my Otter’s dreamscape, and along the crumbling blood-blackened paths we have walked together.

I met my Otter in late 2016, as the world was ending and our days were beginning to turn into a hellish gauntlet of hateful ideas and disintegrating democratic power structures. He was sunbathing on a patch of blue ice, slowly opening and closing his little fist as he watched the clouds pass over his concrete pen. “Otter,” I breathed softly, stepping closer to the wooden fence.

Just then a large group of school children appeared around the enclosure, shouting and jostling for a good view. In a strange moment of silence a current of psychic electricity seemed to pass through the crowd. “OTTER, OTTER, OTTER,” the children began to chant in unison, quietly at first, and then with an increasing vigor.

I picked up a small stone and winged it at the nearest child. The Otter screamed and a black tunnel tore open the sky between two pine trees. Before I knew what was happening, a shimmering orange duplicate of My Otter appeared before me and closed his fist around the smallest finger of my left hand. We drifted upward toward the tunnel, the children crying and screaming below us. My Otter paused and turned his dark eyes toward mine. “Let’s Go,” I said.

A loud ripping noise happened as we entered the black hole. My clothes flapped away as coarse brown fur began to sprout from my forearms. Otter grasped my paw and whispered the opening sentences of the Da Vinci Code backwards. We were traveling inside a gelatinous hexagon of infinite formlessness, seconds peeling away from our consciousness like tattered strips of sunburned skin. And then all at once, a dark ridge of bone appeared in the distance, enveloped in a hazy cloud of atmospheric gas.

I tried to make words and realized I had lost the power of speech. My tongue felt stiff and confused in my mouth. We saw the ridge and then suddenly we were on it, a damp cold mist clinging to our fur. “Who’s dream is this?” I tried to ask. “This is the 29th parallel,” said Otter simply, somehow understanding the clipped barking noises coming from my face. “You have been granted temporary asylum from the present.” Otter continued: “Look over there.” He gestured to a roiling pit of black sulfur I hadn’t noticed before. “That is your reality,” Otter laughed. I stared into the depths, and started to sweat.

I stared and stared. The drowning concepts of my broken world somersaulted wetly amidst the inky goo. Civil Liberty and Human Rights combined to form a sodden carcass, clinging limply to a charred rock poking out of the depths of the sulfur lake. As I watched, a wave of undulating slime catapulted upward and took the shape of the 45th president of the United States. Vomit rocketed from its rotting face hole, spewing onto the twisted limbs of the limp carcass. Otter adjusted his sunglasses, chuckling softly. “That is your dream,” he spoke, “the dream of America.”

I tore my eyes from the wreckage and tried to breathe. My whiskers began to tingle, and off in the distance the gas clouds parted momentarily, revealing a blinking tower of mirrored cubes. “Come with me,” said Otter.

To Be Continued.....

The Ocean of My Dream World

9/14/2024

Last night I traveled the ocean of my dream world.

I was on a giant ocean liner or ferry of some kind. There were many levels. It was like a hotel. I was exploring one of the decks with closed in windows and watching the waves come up and one big wave came towards us and crashed on the prow. I commented to my companions, "These waves are getting bigger and bigger. We might get a wave that will drown us." I saw a big wave coming and it was so strong and tall. It hit the window we were looking at and broke through it and water started to fill the level we were on. I ran up a twisting spiral staircase as the water chased my feet and kept going and going and going until I got to the very top of the boat which was somehow like a lawn of an island and the water washed over the lawn and we stood on a tiny dry patch and it took a very long time at sea for the water to go down and then for us to finally find land again.

When we got back to land, everyone on the ship had trouble reintegrating into society because they had had such a long shared, difficult experience. No one understood us. After a long, tumultuous, and lonely time trying to figure out how to exist in this new world, my good friends decided to take jobs on the ship and go back out to sea again. There was a big festival parade to celebrate the return of this ship back to the sea and the whole community came out with colored dragons and floats and flags and confetti and marching bands to see the ship off. I knew then that the ship was the only place I could belong. This time the seas were again tumultuous and there was a new captain who was confident he could ride the waves like climbing up mountains instead of allowing the waves to capsize us. He was narrating our progress on the loudspeaker. I went to the highest part of the ship and straddled a railing and watched out ahead of me as the ship climbed the highest wave I've ever seen. The captain said "Okay, we're really riding it now. We're trying." And instead of fear, I felt only joy. I yelled and hollered and screamed and let all of my fear out in the form of exaltation as the ship climbed and climbed and then sailed over back of the wave. I felt free.

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