TW: sexual assault

I was 19,
My parents hadn't noticed yet, the budding breasts that grew under my black tshirts
Street bought Premarin and Provera
I covered them in the South Florida heat in the same motorcycle jacket I still wear
Face sweating off concealer I'd applied too thick
No one to teach me
No one to tell me how much better it'd work to cover the blue beard shadow if I dabbed on a layer of lipstick, red/red, under the concealer
No one to teach me,
Use powder to set
No YouTube, or Internet, this was 1987.
I remember how thrilled and scared I was when approached in the Xtra parking lot by a man who asked for my number, even though I was dressed
Butcher than butch
That was also the year I was forced to blow a biker who called himself Satan, the broken tip of his fishing knife pushed
hard against the side of my neck

I discovered my bravery in Femme a little bit, before my parents kicked me out that year.
Door knocker earrings- my other punk friends made fun of me. Terri just looked at me, shook her head and smirked outside of Jonestown on South Beach.

No one taught me Femme. It was something I pulled out of myself like teeth.

When I first came out as trans, I did it in small, scared steps,
So used to this body belonging to
Everyone but me.
When I came fully into my Femme,
It was violent, like being born.

He knows despite the Harm Reduction Outreach backpack
"I'm not working tonight though sweetie, you need any cleans? Cookers, cottons, ties?"
He knows he can have me anyway,
because I'm Femme, because I'm Trans,
Because this is the stroll.
As we walk back to my car, parked on a side street, away from streetlights,
still a fishbowl, still a silent prayer for
invisibility & safety, I ask him quietly
"how much do you want to spend tonight?"
He knows the local prices but I
get him up to 35 and covered.
When we get into my gray Hyundai,
windows dirty enough from the
road salt and backsplashed FDR slush to
hopefully afford a little more privacy,
he notices on my dashboard,
the purple, Styrofoam, glittered skull,
the two plastic Christmas Disney Princess snow globes from Duane Reade,
the dried roses and dogwood blossoms.
"You don't seem like someone who'd be into this shit" he laughs,
as I lock the doors,
peel off my leather jacket,
and dig out a fresh condom from the plastic bag on the floor behind his seat.

I would scrape the capitalism from my bones, but how,
When it's my first impulse to let you build a shelter from my ribcage?
Just please always live in it
Please, always keep it warm

I write because I constantly feel like Im dissolving
into my role as caretaker
into my own sick and sweaty bed
into daynightdaynight22-24hoursaday
into just another tranny whore
into everyone else's ideas of who I am
I write because I so often want to dissolve
into nothingness
I write because part of me is still rooted in resistance
I write for my own resurrection
I write so that I might meet myself
again and again and again

1.
I dreamt of some future museum
(A memorial, like Yad V'Shem)
Here, in New York
And, instead of shoes
There was a pile of canes.

2.
If such a place should come to exist,
I hope that the curator
will tell all the crips
Who come to remember
To pick a cane,
To carry it with them
To let it support them
So that our stories might too be carried forth.

I want to write axes
write bullets
bricks
& bats
Want to write bombs to bust this world wide open
This Mayday, (which our dictator wants to rebrand as his "Day of Loyalty")
This day of our rage
We sick
We crippled
We poor
We brown
We Queer
We trans
We lie in bed
Our bodies, furnaces of blistering flames
Our knees, hips, elbows and spines,
crusted with stiffening rust
And words are all we have to throw.

Weeks disappear between the sweaty, dirty sheets of my sick bed.
I want so badly to be the Warrior Cripple, but instead, I feel helpless.
I twitch and
jerk in pain,
sweat and shiver and
lose myself
in disconnected thoughts of
ending my own life.
I think about the
paramedics who'll
collect my corpse; likely with needle still leaning from my arm.
will they misgender me? Will they notice more the 4 days of stubble than they will my
Painted nails, or my tits?
As they
zip
me into that
taupe, plastic bag, will they
tell my partner how sorry they are, as they
strap my stiffening body to the wheeling gurney, load me into the elevator, into Coroner's van, and as they
Fish in pockets for exact change at the counter of the the corner Bodega
stopping for coffee, a Pepsi and a bag of Cheetos
will they laugh, and tell the visual, and say
"First one of the night
You see everything in New York"?

I used to have a sticker on the back of my phone, one of those label maker ones that said in black and white, "aphasia",
for when I couldn't remember the word for
not being able to remember words

Aphasia
It's a beautiful, velvet blue and twinkling yellow light, a god dammed Van Gogh painting swirling to life
A goddess who hoards the wealth of our crippled experiences, doling them back to us- stories to whisper or text to trusted loves

Aphasia
Even now my mouth feels its shape, the "s" that strokes the inside point of my jaw's joints

Allodynia has always been another favorite of mine I
wrote once of the conflict of having to explain to a partner that her
overzealous touches- though appreciated were too much
About having "to cover her bruised heart with my
Burning skin"
This is Allodynia

I wish my clouded brain would allow me to write an ode to the beautiful language of sickness
Instead I tell myself "be content,
You were able to honor two of your favorites."
I don't yet know a special word for that
For adapting
For learning compassion for
self
for learning to be ok with less.

Sometimes I lie in bed and wait for the pain
Because the pain is familiar
Because the pain maps this body, this invisible body
Taken from me
So many times
Taken from me by
So many others
Taken from me

The pain
makes me real
When I am without it, I am
a ghost

I want to be
No more No
Pain aching thighs, knees, hips
Elbows locked
Hands burning, forearms warning
Loose
Useless grip
Ribcage, even skin
sore to the touch
How many words for pain?
How many ways to balance its deficit? How many ways to gently
(protectively)
tell your lover that her
enthusiastic touch is
too much right now
and not have to move precious energy to her
And not have to cover her bruised heart with
your burning skin?

There's an ache in me that supplants the bones
The muscles
steals the voice
There's an ache
And it's bigger than the power in your
enfolding arms

And when I say "I love you",
I say it
knowing you've heard it
a thousand times
I say it
knowing that it sounds
mundane
Or perfunctory
I say it
knowing that sometimes you must feel awkward
like you're
being forced to
acquiesce to something
(or worse, to reciprocate)
And finally
I say it
because I feel fragile
And because if I don't
the force
might burst through my
already crumbling foundation

"Actually, " I said, "I'm 46"
"No way," he said, "How do you even 46?" he asked, enthusiastically, in hipster speak.
I didn't know what to tell him until I'd
crossed the
Williamsburg Bridge
I thought,
You break,
many times,
you break, and you bleed, and you
heal, to
break again.
And each time you break, it
Hurts a little bit more,
But you
Bleed a little bit less.

So,  because I have no filter,  and because I believe in living without apology,  (even though much of the time I feel like I need to apologize for my existence,) and because I believe that the most vital activism is personal,  and often a little dangerous,  I want to talk about something that happened today in therapy: I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.  
I'm only beginning to learn exactly what that means. 
I know that there are a lot of stigma and assumptions around it,  and that many of them are completely wrong.  I know that it's inextricably tied to having survived years of violent and sometimes deadly abuse at the hands of ignorant,  intolerant,  queerbashing bigots, and two sexual assaults that happened to occur during seminal periods of my life when I should have been building a sense of self.  I know,  thanks to a wonderful friend of mine who also lives with BPD and has an amazing blog on the subject,  that my extremely heightened sense of empathy,  something I developed as a survival mechanism,  is a part of BPD.  

Being diagnosed with something that carries such a stigma is scary,  but having a name for why I spend so much of my life feeling disconnected from others and empty inside,  or why I've dealt with suicidality since I was 8 years old,  or why I have such an intense fear of abandonment, feels oddly hopeful;  I know I'm not the only one in the world anymore, and for that,  I'm thankful. 

I can breathe
I can breathe because
Although I'm terrified whenever I see a blue uniform,  I pass easily as white,  so chances are,  their attentions are elsewhere.
I can breathe because if I do get stopped for any number of reasons,  chances are,  I'll go home after little more than a desk appearance.
I can breathe because 
Although I am trans,  queer,  poor,  disabled,  of mixed non-European  heritages, pierced,  tatooed etc., in this country,  even after a civil war, Selma, Dr. King,  Malcolm X, and countless others who fought for dignity and equality, my skin tone alone, an accident of birth,  still grants me greater privelege. 
I can breathe because
I am not Eric Garner,  Michael Brown,  Trayvon Martin, Tarika Wilson,  Tamir Rice,  Yvette Smith,  etc.  etc.  etc.  etc. 
I can still breathe
Until however,  my siblings are safe
I will not breathe free. 
I will not breathe free. 

For Ferguson

They are pulling the people's teeth
One by one
by one by one

This is how it  will work: 
First they take your freedom,  your autonomy and your choices.  
Then,  they take your hope, until you think you've nothing left.  
Finally,  they take your voice,  so that no one can hear you scream.  That's when you take to the streets.  
When you've little to lose but your own life.
That's when you become their worst nightmare.

This is a lesson they'll never understand. 

Long the egg had labored under the belief that deep inside her, she held life, just like other eggs.
She spent her days in warm thought of what that life would be. One day, while eggling about in eggy ways, she bumped into another egg.
"She was so heavy", she thought, "I think I've cracked my shell. "
She felt the spot that was still warm from the contact, and sure enough, there was a crack.
"Oh dear", she said to herself, "I'll have to patch that", and that's exactly what she did.

The patch held well for quite some time, and the egg enjoyed being as eggy as possible. "Afterall," she'd say, "we eggs are delicate. We do get cracks sometimes, but it's hardly reason to sit in the nest! What kind of life is that? "
One day, the egg decided to go to an egg party. It was the egg event of the year, so she readied herself carefully, polishing her patched shell, artfully fraying the edges of her patch, and checking herself in the mirror over and over again.
When she got there, there were so many eggs! Some were- like her, beige, others were white, some were brown, and some were small and blue with brown specks, but all of them were oh, so beautiful.
"Finally", she said to anyegg who might be listening, "I feel like I'm home. "
As she egged herself through the beautiful crowd, she found herself bumped from every side. It felt so warm, this contact with other eggs, but she became worried about her delicate, already patched shell, and decided she'd better go to the restroom, and make sure the damage wasn't as bad as she feared.
She waited in the line, and when it was her turn, she shut and locked the door behind her and looked at herself in the tiny, high mirror.
The damage was in fact, worse than she'd thought: she'd developed a pit, where several cracks joined together.
"It's so unfair, " she thought, "all these other eggs, bumping into each other, and they're all fine, but I try to do what they do, and I break.
She began to sob, and as she did, her little eggy body was filled with shakes and quakes, which only served to worsen the cracks.
"Oh dear, " she said, over and over again, "oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I don't know what to do. These other eggs are so beautiful, and feel so heavy with life and warmth, and when I'm alone, I miss their warmth and heaviness and life! Oh dear, oh dear oh dear oh dear! " she cried.
Eventually, another egg knocked on the restroom door, for while she'd been inside, a line had developed, so she blew her eggy nose, and wiped her eggy eyes, and when she did, the pit that had fallen in on her eggy forehead, collapsed into her. She was stunned, and scared, and she hoisted her eggy self closer to the tiny mirror to inspect the damage. When she looked closely, she could see, and she understood: the other eggs had felt so heavy, so warm and full of life to her, because all along, unlike them, she'd really been only an empty shell.

We were born into worlds that weren't built for us,
We've jostled and twisted,  just to be able to feel like we could breathe. 
We have been octagonal pegs in square holes,  and there's not one amongst us who hasn't known the strike of the hammer that tried- through force,  to make us fit. 
We've been "problems that need to be addressed", and "why can't you just be normal"s.
We know what it is to be the butt of jokes,  and then told that we take these things far too personally. 
We have been beaten,  raped, and stripped of our identities and bodily autonomy  and, when one of us is murdered,  as so many of us have been,  and as so many of us will be,  we know that we will likely be  misgendered,  and slandered by media,  and maybe even family,  even after we are dead.  
We are not pathetic clowns; we paint ourselves brightly because our lipstick is war paint,  and our lives are a daily war in a world that's determined to marginalize us, to humiliate us,  and to kill us. We may lose this battle,  but we will win this war. 
Stonewall was only the beginning. 

Because, even though you're a straight, cis man, I'm supposed to feel safe around you because we're related, but when you get drunk, you "can't be held accountable",

Because when I tell you I don't want to have a conversation about my breasts you go on to tell me that they "look like they could use a good manhandling",

Because when I tell you it's not a compliment, and that you're making me uncomfortable, you value your own ego too much to lay off,

Because when I reveal to you, that I was sexually assaulted when I was fifteen, you feel entitled to tell me I'm making YOU uncomfortable with "too much information",

Because you feel entitled enough, to break me down into the parts of my body, to weigh them for my worthiness,

And because
After all this, you tell me, I have no sense of humor,
and that I'm
"overreacting".

#YesALLWomen

I was fifteen.
He was nineteen.
We had drama class together.
We went to the same school.
He invited me over.
"We'll hang out", he'd said.
He answered the door in
"tighty whities".
I followed him into the dark in-
terior of his house.
In his room, a super 8 projector machine-gunned silent 70's porn onto his wall.
He sat on the floor, his back against the
metal closet door.
In his lap, he'd placed a
two-handed vibrating massager,
the kind, I remember thinking,
Burgess Meredith might have run over Rocky's back before a fight.
He asked if I wanted to help.
He'd framed it as a question,
An option,
A request, but
It wasn't.
Afterwards,
He made me hide
crouched down on the floor of the frontseat of his parked car,
Under the steering wheel
In his unlit driveway,
for four and a half hours, until after midnight.
Until his parents were home,
until they were in bed,
until they were asleep.