The Tribe

I am gay and adopted. I have always found it easier to tell people that I am gay rather than I am adopted. I am gay is straight forward. I love women. But when i tell people that I am adopted, I see it in their eyes. I see them trying to figure out why my mom gave me away. I never think about it. All I can say is I am fucking awesome and it is her loss.

And then there are the kids. Of course my mother didn't stop at me. There are 7 of us that I am aware of. That is 6 new people I have to come out to. 6 new people I am afraid to meet. I am very self aware. I am not just smart. I am smarter than the average person. Why? I'm adopted. I have been fighting against my genetics my whole life. I have OCD. I follow the rules. I break no laws . . .I am not the one seeking out a litter of adopted kids or foster kids fucked up by the system. I don't know how to relate to them. When I met my older brother with his prison slouch and in-articulation, I just looked at him and looked at him and saw myself in his face and then lost it. It is like everything that i worked for is face to face with me and I refuse to admit it. Am I that? Am I him? I'm not. Then he sends the little ones my way. They are younger. I see what young fucked up kids are like everyday at work. Am I them? Are they me? So one by one, they trickle into my life and I have to say "I am gay". Because I am 36.  Because I am proud of who I am. Because I love me. Because I know I was never anything but this nerd, but this loner, but this gay athlete, competitive, driven, introspective, intelligent . . .I can go on. Because I am way past begging for acceptance or forgiveness for my own adoption . . .I say I am gay. I say I am proud and I ask "Now what of it?" And I wait. I wait til these new young doppelgangers fuck up. They do. I wait cause despite our genetics, they know nothing of me. Except that I am gay. 

They say it. Those that remember her say it. That I look like our mother. They are a lil afraid of me as I am of them. And I wait until they say something beyond repair. So the one most like me. Sarcastic. Loner. Funny. Says some off handed shit like "oh I tolerate my gay manager." I ask "tolerate? So you tolerate me?" His response, little me. I am literally looking at a younger version of myself. We all look exactly like our mother. Every fucking one. So I look at him and wait til he tells me how he is tolerating me. He says "I'm not judging you" I respond " you aren't in a position to judge me" He says he tolerates the gays you know as long as his kid is a gay girl but if his son was transgender, he would give him, or more aptly her, up for adoption. So I ask, sitting next to one brother I met two weeks ago and one brother I met two hours ago and I ask "are you fucking serious? You think foster care and adoption is a way station for kids you don't consider perfect like you are?" They agreed.

I come out and I wait. I wait for me to catch my breath. I wait to tell these kids they no longer need to tolerate me. I hate my birth mother. I hate her for fucking up these kids. I hate her for being everything that I despise. Her irresponsibility forces me to look in the faces of young kids so ignorant that they can live in a shelter and still judge others. I hate that these kids feel there is a reason to throw a child away. I hate that I came out and waited and has probably decided to cut my losses and forget the Tribe.

All our times have come

I did 26 in the hole. The world had stopped moving and I stopped breathing. It was as if I was submerged. I kept having dreams that I was swimming under water, beneath current, sucking in great heaving breaths. My eyes went dark and I watched myself as a specter through my mind. There I was, driving to work, sobbing incoherently. Here I was again, having drinks with my gf, lost not only to myself.

I made a very pragmatic decision, based on arithmetic. Who would support me? Who would produce the most successful life? Who shared my goals and ambitions? There were charts and graphs and more than one Pros and Cons list. I agonized over the decision, though really there was never any question. I would stay with her. Lonely, ignored, unappreciated – it made the most fiscal sense. There were cats to raise and a pile of shared debt and rent to pay and oh, yeah – I had already invested in her education. That’s OUR degree baby.

There is so much I am sorry for, so much I wish I could change. Every death is his death. Every loss is my loss again, magnified. And still no one knows. And after all these years, who would even care?

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made. I made a choice to berate and begot and beg all the days of my life because unconditional seemed a moot point. He never asked for anything in return. He never stopped listening. He never gave up on me. Until he did.

I did 26 in the hole. The hole of my loss and his death and our undoing. I stopped moving and stopped breathing and wished with every fiber of my being to be taken down to the soil with him. I wished to lie under the earth in that cold, hard place where we return to ash because he wouldn't be with me any other way.

We All Fake It

Every time I attempt to try to understand the MTV Show Faking It, my thirteen year old heart feels a virtual blow from a former bully. I'm not going to lie to you. I didn't struggle to come out. I was always Y'A. I hated my mother up until the day she died and everyday I discover a fondness for this heinous, unaffectionate woman who saw in me what took me 18 years to see. I was me. My mother, by not focusing on my OCDness, by not focusing on my GAYness, made me feel pretty damn normal by default.
So what is my issue with Faking It? Every time I watch, my feelings are jumbled. I didn't have issues with my gayness as a kid, but that doesn't mean I didn't have problems and people didn't have problems with me. My gay ass was damn near last on the list of my struggles. I was called tomboy so much I found it insulting. There was always venom on the tongue like I should be in the house baking at 7 instead of running around. My mother called me a tomboy with no venom in the confines of our walls in our house like an observation. Everyone else said it like they knew me more than I did. Like they were telling me my future and it would be hard because I like to run and jump. Life is lived half out of the house. I have adoption identity issues that trump my gayness. I remember when I was in junior high school and high school when you "accidentally" let a friend go too far at your expense. They laugh a lil too hard and you allow it. My problem with the show is simple. We all fake who we are. We become who we are out of necessity, but in 2014 when the restrictions to marriage equality are falling what seems like daily, should we even promote the idea of faking sexuality? Should we watch a show about a girl clearly struggling with her sexuality get VERBALLY abused by her best friend? We have made so much progress. So much so, that I no longer have to come out. Not that I ever did. But finally my coworkers don't find it a requisite speech on my first day. 
Do we really want kids to think it is funny and cool to pretend to be gay? The realities that homeless trans and gay youth are faced with after they come out is not funny. I have a few coworkers that are in the closet at a job that has a no tolerance policy on discrimination. A job that is great in that respect. A job that has many gay and lesbian employees. I have a job where I have to pretend to be stupid. I have co workers that stop speaking to me because they feared others would discover their long hidden sexuality. Even hidden from me. I have coworkers that run on the assumption that because I'm gay I understand, we nod and smile and are not seen in a corner alone talking. The show reminds me most of these people. This is why I know a 40 year old woman who just had a baby with her gf who is in the closet. What should be the happiest time in her life is shrouded in secrecy. I can't watch the show Faking It because we ALL know when people fake it is not funny at all.

Not An Addict

I learned my days of the week thus: Thursday my dad got paid. On Thursday, my dad came home a little later, arms full with parcels we were forbidden to touch. On Thursday, my mom would tell us the Pepsi in the refrigerator was our father's mixer. We couldn't have soda. Don't touch. We had rules. He didn't. Thursday thru Sunday we tried to ignore our father while he succeeded at ignoring us.

I drink everyday, but I am not my father. I pair; I savor; I enjoy. I lie. If I am honest, I don't know where the line is. If I am honest, I don't care. I don't come home after a long day of work to a family I hate to forget I exist. I am single. I love the quiet. I come home. I work on my body. I make a healthy meal and I pair it with wine or some white or brown liquor that will enhance its flavor. Seriously. I am not saying I'm not an alcoholic. What I am saying is I can't tell. If I am a cop I can watch a show called BLUE BLOODS and family dinners aren't complete without two bottles of wine, beer, and a scotch night cap. If I am a doctor, I can watch GREY'S ANATOMY and there is wine product placement. We live in a drinking culture. Who am I to resist?

The real problem with my society now is no one is left to judge me. I can judge a friend because they are broke and yet spend all of their money on booze. I can judge a co worker for the 2 bottle of wine nightly ritual and declining health. Who is left to judge me? I work out 6 days a week and eat healthily. There is really no checks and balances for someone who drinks everyday, fair trade or organic, just the doctor's recommended dose of red wine . . . . We should all let go. All embrace our inner Mad Men with a scotch, a cigar and zero inhibitions. I contend . . . I'm not an addict.

one drink

i have had that day before
when i start realizing and remembering
reflecting and admitting.
it always ends the same.
i weep and exclaim. i'm
rendered empty handed.
i don't count experience.
what do i have now?
nothing. empty handed
empty hearted.
i wish i was empty headed.

I have no furniture or My life as an emotional refugee

Jess

There is a disturbing phenomenon that I have noticed of late amongst my friends. We don’t own furniture. Now I don’t mean those hulking black walnut china closets our grandmothers would dust on Sunday or those Queen Anne wingback chairs your great aunt never let you sit in. No, I literally mean my friends and I, in our 30’s, don’t own normal, everyday, rest your arse, furniture. I’m not sure when the cross-over occurred. When I moved into my first apartment at 21 I had tons of furniture, all hand-me-downs my parents grudgingly gave up to their oldest daughter. My father, still kicking, surely would have requested he be buried with that damn orange velour sofa had it not lived in my apartment for many years (and met a TIMLEY demise when my ex ‘accidentally’ lit it on fire). Along with the sofa, I was given a kitchen table with chairs, book cases, an awesome green paisley Lay-Z-Boy, plastic deck chairs, and I used all of it! I can still hear my sister lamenting the fact that there would be nothing left for her when she eventually moved out (pretty sure I did her a favor). There’s some kind of magic that happens in your youth when you secure that first apartment. You feel like an adult and adults have furniture. My friends were no different – all of them accessorizing with cast offs from relatives, but at least no one had to awkwardly slouch against the wall like our living rooms were some kind of old man bar.

After I dug out my car this weekend, I was searching for a chair to hold my parking spot (parking chair – look it up) and I realized that if I wanted to save my spot, I’d have to sacrifice one of only TWO chairs I own. I no longer have a kitchen table and these two chairs are the last vestige of that suburban dream (it died in the divorce). I am careful to only invite over two friends at a time – they get the couch and I take the recliner. As I thought about it, it became apparent that I’m not the only one. My bestie has a habit of selling everything she owns every time she moves, and she likes to move. She bought a couch on Craigslist about two years ago and it’s a two seater. If you don’t call dibs, you are shit out of luck and stuck on the floor with the dog. My buddy JR had to split up his adult living room set when his gf moved to a different city for a better job prospect. I’m sure the couch believed it would one day be reunited with the love seat, but as I had already foreseen, they are on the rocks and the furniture set will remain incomplete. He doesn’t have a kitchen table either and it’s no wonder we never invite anyone else to hang out – no one wants to be squished on the sofa.  

Everything I own is left over from the adult life I led in a LTR when buying furniture and setting down roots was the ten year plan. When I shrugged off that relationship to emerge anew, I slowly starting destroying the furniture we shared. It was too big for my too small single-life apartment. I replaced it with economic, space-saving pieces from Ikea that were never meant to last the long haul. There is impermanence to my generation. We went from stable 20-somethings to nomadic, unsure 30 year olds. Everything I thought I’d have by this age, everything I was working toward at 22, is now a distant memory as I sit slouched at my Ikea computer desk, sitting on a new $20 plastic desk chair (I sacrificed the old, broken kitchen chair to hold my parking spot). 

Y'A

Jess wants to know how people in their thirties can still live like they are on a college campus. Well sit down. Here is why. I assure you this is not a sad story. It is just a life. When I was unceremoniously kicked out of the home in which I was raised a year after my mom died, I moved to Brooklyn. I hated Brooklyn and the only reason why I was willing to venture this far west was because my girlfriend at the time, Michelle, swore she would help me AND help me adjust. I lived in a Brownstone in Bed Stuy. I fixed it up like a home. Pictures of my nephew and my ex's son were literally covering every inch of the apartment. My landlord had two sons which was great for my nephew. Michelle spent most of her time in my house. It was small. I wasn't used to the neighborhood, but it was me and I was stressed, but felt safe. That is, until my landlord's husband beat the shit out of her unbeknownst to me. I was upstairs and didn't hear any of it. She left and I was evicted. Michelle and I were off again after a "respect my house" type of argument. I asked her for my keys and I was faced with finding a new place fast. The prospect of being homeless with my nephew weighed heavily on me and yet Michelle outright refused to help me. She refused to listen to me. So that's how I ended up in Bushwick. Further west . . . I was so far away from where I grew up, I would dream of the house in which I used to live. When I had to pack . . . took down every picture . . . I admired the fresh paint job Michelle and I did in the bedroom, I knew I never wanted to have that home-ripped-out -from –under- me feeling again. I now live like I am not quite unpacked. Don't want to make too many footprints here. We were in Bushwick for five years before I told my nephew we could get new furniture and paint his room. I was flush with cash and there was no excuse. I was also in no jeopardy of being evicted. Then my landlord said he was planning a million dollar remodel of the apartment building. I told my nephew and he was disappointed. The remodel, of course, never happened. Divorce rearing its ugly head again. So now I have been in my apartment for ten years with barely any furniture because I am afraid of packing and afraid of finality and I always have to be on the move. I am always careful of making more memories in a place not mine. I am in the beginning stages of buying my own house. Above all else, I think about the furniture and the painting and the garden and office with the bookshelves lining the walls. I don't even think about the neighborhood. I just think about what I would do with a place that is actually mine and can't be capriciously taken away.