Apocalypse of the Self, a Post About #Queer #Identity and #Aging by @GiselleRenarde

When I was a teenager, older adults warned me that no matter how old you get, you always look into the mirror expecting to see your eighteen-year-old self.

My eighteen-year-old self isn't all I expect to see.

There are so many layers to the person I think of as ME.

Most salient is my queer identity.

I don't think I'd heard the word QUEER used in an empowering way to describe one's own sexuality until my final year of university. I'd been kicked out of a psycholinguistics course because I didn't have the prerequisites. The university notified me by post, except they sent the letter to my mother's address--and I didn't live there.

By the time I discovered I'd been kicked out of my class, it was too late to pick up another course.

I wouldn't be graduating with my cohort. I needed to take a summer course if I wanted to convocate in the fall.

To complicate matters, I'd already secured a full-time job. I would be working for the same company where I'd worked part-time throughout most of my university years.

So I needed an evening summer class to accommodate my new job.

I'd shied away from taking LGBT courses in university. I felt like taking those courses meant committing to an aspect of myself I wasn't fully ready to embrace at that stage. But when one of the only appealing evening courses during the summer happened to be an LGBT course, it sort of felt like the universe guiding me gently toward my identity.

Gently, but firmly.

During the course of that course (which changed names three times that summer--I have no idea what it ended up being called), I felt like I'd found my people, and found myself. Hearing the lecturers talk about queer identities was both enlightening and empowering.

I still shied away from calling myself queer, because I didn't feel "qualified." Which is stupid, but it's easy to feel that way--and it was even easier to feel that way back when I was in university. There's a ridiculous amount of gatekeeping that goes on in queer culture.

In time, I adopted my queer identities. Not only is my sexual identity QUEER, but my gender is, as well. Even before I'd embraced my genderqueer identity, I pushed back against the gender binary by dressing androgynously. Androgynous attire felt like a safety net, for me. That's how I showed the world I wasn't the person they wanted me to be.

Another aspect of identity I've clung to throughout my adult life has to do with living under the poverty line and setting myself apart from "rich people." I grew up in a "bad neighbourhood," and that's stayed with me even after 15 years of living in a "good neighbourhood."

A couple weeks ago, I was on my way to a volunteer shift. My work takes place in an office space where people dress well, and so I started dressing well when I went in. My co-workers don't need to know that my business attire came to me in a garbage bag from a clothes horse friend of the family, who generously unloads her old clothes on myself and my sisters. Every garbage bag is like Christmas, particularly because this girl's clothes fit us so perfectly.

Anyway, I was on my way to my volunteer shift this one day when I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window.

My reflection truly shocked me.

Not only was I no longer 18, but I didn't look poor, I didn't look queer (whatever that means), I didn't look androgynous--I didn't look the way I felt.

I looked like a yuppy.

I looked like the kind of person who goes to their office job and comes home to a husband and kids.

How do I know who I am if I look like someone I'm not?

The image I'm used to seeing in the mirror is a greasy-haired androgynous kid in dirty, ripped clothes. I'm used to being mistaken for homeless. Not anymore. I dress better than I used to when I leave the house. And, because my "nice" clothes are femme, that means I'm presenting femme more often than before.

Not just that, but I'm no longer in a relationship with a woman--a relationship that outwardly validated that, yes, I am queer.  Just look at who I'm dating!  She PROVES my queerness!

The partner I have now is a man, so anyone observing us as a couple would make the assumption that I'm straight.

My sexual identity isn't reliant upon the gender of my partner. I can be queer with a partner of any gender, or without any partner at all. Queer is who I am. However, when you look like you're cis and you look like you're straight and you look like you're financially secure, the world treats you a hell of a lot better than it does when you look homeless and queer.

So, if the world is suddenly a more hospitable place, why am I complaining?

I don't know. It just doesn't feel like me. It isn't me. I look like something I'm not. And I'm rattled by that.

The mirror doesn't reflect the me I see inside. But the truly troubling thing is that, aesthetically, what I see in the mirror... I actually kind of like it.

The Crisis in Midlife

by Giselle Renarde

I'll tell you how I've been feeling lately.

I've been feeling like every worthwhile thing I'm ever going to do in my life--everything good, everything useful, everything productive--I've already done. The best is behind me. I'm just waiting out my sentence.

Last month, my mother told me I'm not a spring chicken anymore. That threw me for a loop. Isn't your mother supposed to think of you as a child for always? But when I told my girlfriend, she said, "Yeah, well you're middle aged."

Middle aged?

My ex, who (as you know) was much older than me, used to say that every time he looked in the mirror, he expected to see his 18-year-old self. And instead he saw an old man. It was jarring.

I didn't get that when I was 19.

I get it now.

The thing I really didn't get is that a midlife crisis is... well... a crisis. Crisis in the sense of crisis counseling, crisis lines, crisis intervention. The term always made me think of sports cars and 22-year-old girlfriends, but there's more to the story. Holy Mother of God, is there more to this story.

There's a reason you try to recapture your lost youth: that's when you accomplished everything of value. Or, at least, that's when I did. Or, at least, that's how I feel. But you're talking to someone who peaked in high school. Your mileage may vary.

I'm sure there are ways to feel useful again. Volunteer work and such. But volunteer works is just one more of those things I did when I was younger. I worked in the domestic violence sector for years, and I burned out so hard I can't even tell you. I've volunteered my ass all over this city, and most organizations (the big box charities in particular) have left me disillusioned at best and disgusted at worst.

In a perfect world, I would feel fulfilled by my work.  So I've devoted a lot of my time and energy to projects I felt would be helpful to others. The thing is, in order for your book to help anyone, someone in the world has to... read it. And when you get to the point where you write something super-meaningful and then you literally can't even give it away for free, it becomes pretty clear that the work isn't going to dig you out of this hole.

Now I get why people go back to what gave them pleasure as children, as youths. There's a simple joy to childhood that's so hard to recapture decades later.  The lights dim over time. The world is less shiny and bright.

Maybe I've been watching too many YouTube videos about nihilism and existential angst, but lately I've been wondering if I should even bother trying to do anything of value, if anything actually has innate value anyway, or if we're all just marking time.

I remember having fantasies, when I was young. Fantasies about all the exciting things I would do in the future. I would imagine scenarios in detail. It was really energizing. Made me want to get up in the morning and work toward my goals.

Now? In midlife, or whatever this is?

I don't have fantasies anymore.

How do you get through life when it seems like your best days are behind you?

I'm taking it one day at a time.

I've been working at publishing all the stuff that's just sitting on my hard drive.  Most recently, I've released the second edition of my book Ugly Naked People. It's a collection of queer fiction. This second edition has a new stories, three of which have never been published before now.  No sense letting perfectly good fiction go to waste. Might as well get it out in the world.

If you're so inclined, Ugly Naked People is available from booksellers like Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo and Google Play.

The Taboo of Growing Old

Sacchi Green

Getting old is taboo in erotica. Not in the sense of being forbidden—no one will stop you from writing about characters advanced in years, and every once in a while an editor will talk a publisher into backing an anthology of stories where all the characters are over—shudder—50. Or sometimes even ust over 40. The horror! And you can occasionally place such a story in other anthologies. I’ve done it a few times myself. Yes, I admit that “taboo” is an overstatement in this context.  

Still, in erotica, as in most forms of entertainment, pretty much anything goes except being physically unattractive, in terms of what’s generally considered attractive in one’s particular time and culture. In our culture, that tends to be youth-centered. Fortunately, even within a culture tastes do vary, and a good writer can make a case for one character being attractive to another even when one or both of them fall pretty far outside the norms, but most erotica seems to toe the mark of what’s commonly considered youthful movie-star looks.  

Speaking of toeing the mark, I’m not very familiar with toe fetishism, although I know it exists. Do toes need to be “’cute” to be fetishized? I rather suspect not. There are certainly some exceptions to the necessity of exceptionally attractive characters in erotica, and we humans being as contrary as we are, there are probably some who fetishize dramatically ugly characters, or parts thereof. And there may be those who prefer to read about older people having sex, for various reasons, not necessarily kinky ones.

Aging is a complex issue in our society in ways that go beyond the matter of looks and therefore desirability, although those are the prime counts against it. Getting old is a challenge to the young’s sense of immortality.  There seems to be a feeling that those who grow old must somehow deserve their fate. They should have known better. This attitude isn’t quite as pernicious as the one that sees poverty and ill health as the fault of those who suffer them, or possibly a just punishment from God, but the two are similar.

What set me off on this tirade isn’t the fact that I’ve somehow allowed myself to get to an age that’s considered old. I am as good as anyone else of my generation in defining “old” as some years older than wherever I am now. But I’m annoyed by the click-bait headlines I see again and again online, the ones about “So-and-so was gorgeous in such-and-such TV show back in the 70s, 80s, but you won’t believe what they look like now!” You know, the ones interspersed with “Celebrities who have to work at Regular Jobs!” and “So-and-so Lost 100 pounds and Looks Like a Model!” There seems to me to be an underlying motif of, “Ha ha, they got old!” I have to admit that I don’t click on those, so for all I know they show pictures of celebrities who have managed to stay gorgeous, but I still think they’re intended to appeal to people who want to see the formerly beautiful and famous brought low by aging.

When it comes to averting the eyes (and mind) from images of old people having sex, there may be some connection to the possibly universal distaste for thinking of one’s own parents (or grandparents) in sexual situations. I suppose this is to be expected when the parents have been responsible for such oppressions as toilet training. And I suppose that thinking of grandmothers as hyper-prudish seems reasonable from the perspective of the grandchildren, who can’t imagine that anyone that old was ever young, or sexy. Every generation thinks they invented sex, or at least sex with the lights on. I guess they never heard of the 60s, and Free Love, back when I was their age. Granted, not all of us had the luxury of being hippies, but we paid attention.

But back to erotica. I have an admission to make. What really got me thinking along these lines is wondering whether I’ve included too many stories about older people in my next anthology. Wondering about that, of course, makes me guilty of seeing erotica with old people as slightly taboo, too. Will readers complain? Will it affect sales? Well, screw it all. The book is Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2—how I miss the days when it would have been titled simply Best Lesbian Erotica 2018!—and it just happened that among the stories I considered the best, there were more than usual with older protagonists, and fewer with young ones. Maybe this is a trend. Most of them were younger than what I consider old, but there are several over 40, and one lovely piece set in a geriatric psych ward.

Hmm, as I look again at my Table of Contents, there isn’t really as big a percentage of older-folks stories as I’ve been thinking there was. More indication of my own unexamined bias. It’s like the study that shows that if twenty percent of a group is female, the males will be sure that the females constitute an overwhelming majority.  I’ll stop obsessing about it. You know, I think the reason I feel like there are too many of those stories is just that they’re so good, and stick in my mind.

So I guess I’ve been attacking a straw man. Or straw woman. Like beauty, taboo is in the eye of the beholder, and if I think growing old is taboo, that says more about me than about our youth-oriented, celebrity-obsessed, fat-phobic society.

Weakness Is the Mother of Invention

Sacchi Green

What do you do when you have to come down out of the trees because the climate has changed and the trees become scarce and now you’re living in a savannah environment where the grasses are tall and most other creatures, both those that want to catch and eat you and those you want to catch and eat, can run faster than you can?

Right away I’ll back off my choice of title and admit that evolving to stand erect so that you can see farther across the savannah is a form of survival of the fittest that has nothing to do with invention. But consider what happens when you can see the prey or the predator from far away, but the predator is stronger and has bigger teeth and claws than you do, and the prey is still too fast to catch easily. How do you compensate for your weaknesses?

You invent weapons for protection, and for hunting. You figure out how to use fire to scare the sabre-tooth tiger away from your cave, and incidentally to cook your food and keep warm, and you invent snares to catch small prey and throwing devices to kill prey at a distance. If you had been the biggest strongest species around, there would have been no need to invent weapons, or tools, or much in the way of strategy and tactics.

This is not to deny that necessity is also the mother of invention. Invention has two mothers. Probably more. Necessity is also the mother of evolution; when we lived in trees, it was necessary to be able to hold on to the branches, so those who survived were those who evolved to have opposable thumbs, and without opposable thumbs we would have had a much harder time inventing weapons, or much of anything else. Once supplied with an erect posture and opposable thumbs, we were able to invent work-arounds to compensate for our many weaknesses.

Farther along the human timeline, when population pressures or changing climate or just the curiosity that goes along with inventive minds drove us from the warm regions of our origin to colder, harsher environments, we figured out how to compensate for the weakness of our bodies when it came to keeping warm by wrapping ourselves in the skins of animals we’d killed, and later with woven fibers from plants. If we hadn’t compensated like this evolution might have eventually restored our ability to grow enough warm fur of our own, but then again it might not.

Of course the more we compensated for our weaknesses the stronger we became, in terms of survival. We learned to grow and breed our food, to irrigate our crops, to produce and save enough food and other resources to be able to diversify our work, so that some people didn’t have to produce their own food but could trade their crafted goods or various skills for what they needed. Some people needed physical strength for farming, hunting, protecting the resources their communities had amassed, but other people could make their living in ways that depended more on mental strength than on physical. Eventually some people could be weak in every way, but survive due to the resources of their families. Survival of the fittest wasn’t what it used to be, but neither was the environment one needed to survive in.

These days strength of one sort or another is still valued, and weakness despised, but oddly valued at the same time if it makes the despiser feel more powerful. Let’s not get into the labyrinth of gender relationships in this regard, except to note that men who seem to appear weak get the most disrespect. Women who seem to appear stronger than culturally approved get disrespect, too, and resentment, but at least in recent times they’ve been able to get away with wearing clothing similar to men’s in ways that men can’t manage the other way around.

The more complex our society gets, though, and the more important technology becomes, the more valuable inventiveness becomes, and the less necessary physical strength turns out to be. That ninety pound weakling on the beach might get sand kicked in his face by the muscular brute eyeing his girlfriend, but he may well own a tech start-up that pays him enough to buy lawyers who can flatten the muscle man. (Sorry, youngsters, for using a metaphor from old magazine ads that was already passé before you were born.) And that rich techie may well have his youthful nerdiness to thank for motivating him to study and create and compensate for his own perceived weakness. Strength gets redefined, and so does the fitness to survive.

Am I grasping at straws to handle this time’s theme of “weakness?” You bet. Just be glad you avoided my real thoughts on the subject, all of which have been focused lately on the weaknesses that come with aging. Not my own, except by unavoidable extrapolation, but those of my once strong, handsome, intelligent, and compassionate father, who, at ninety-five, is still compassionate, but needing more and more help, and feeling guilty to be needing it, however much my brothers and I assure him, truthfully, that he’s earned every bit as much help as we (mostly me, for valid reasons) can give him.

So you can see why I chose to take the long, long view of weakness as a benefit in the development of our species, rather than get up close and personal. Also, social media addiction and general procrastination have already been covered pretty well, so there’s no need for me to go there. Thank goodness.        

The Comforts of Home

by Giselle Renarde

I really hate it when people ask if I "live at home."

At home?

Of course I live at home--at MY home, the apartment that's been my primary residence for more than a decade.

But that's not what they mean.  They're asking if I live with my parents.  And then, because I'm already irritated, I want to ask, "Well, which of my parents are you talking about?  The one I haven't spoken to since I was thirteen years old and who is DEAD, or the one who isn't? And it doesn't even matter because I don't live either of them."

All this angrrrrrr is underscored by the fact that I'm in my mid-thirties and, until last year or so, I had never in my adult life been perceived as an ADULT.  I think I'm starting to look my age now (actually, I seem to have skipped from looking 16 to looking 46, somehow), but until very recently I looked like a kid.

I don't voice this grrrr very often, because every time I do whoever I'm talking to says, "You don't know how lucky you are. When you're 50 you'll look 30, so it's all good."  But, see, I don't want to look 30 when I'm 50 any more than I wanted to look 14 when I was 24.

Maybe I'd have a different mindset if I'd gone through a "normal" maturation process and looked 21 at 21, 28 and 28, etc.  But that's not how it went down.  I can tell you, from experience, that it's irritating as hell to be perceived as a child when you're an adult.

One time at the CNE, I sat in one of those chairs that has kind of a back massager thingy in it.  There was a sign up that said like "no kids 13 years and under" and the guy who ran the booth started yelling at me, "No kids! You have to be over 13!"  Guys, I was 26 years old.  For serious.

That's the sort of thing people don't consider when they tell me how lucky I am.

Booze is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.  I actually stopped drinking in my late twenties, in part because buying alcohol was too much of a hassle.  I never drank very often anyway, so it wasn't a huge change.  I was just sick of cashiers at the liquor store being jerks to me because they didn't believe the 16-year-old they were looking at was actually the 29-year-old my ID said I was.  So fuck it.  I don't drink anymore.

These days, I'm going a little grey and getting a little wrinkly.  I can't even begin to tell you how much I love my crows' feet. And my gorgeous silver strands!  Ah, they're beautiful.  I would frame them, but better to keep them on my head.

All that said, any time I feel sick there's only one place I want to be: my mom's house.  I don't have a bedroom there anymore, but I sleep on her couch probably once a month.  When I think about "home" I picture my apartment, because this is MY place in the world, but when I'm looking for comfort?  Mom's house.

When you read my diary (it's coming out of March 14th, but you can pre-order now) you'll find that Mom's house wasn't always a safe place to be, but plenty can change in 15 or 20 years.

Hey, you might even start looking your age... if you're lucky...

Remember This

By Lisabet Sarai

Dear Lisabet in the future -

How far in the future am I imagining? Ten years? Thirty? Fifty? Perhaps you'll revisit these journal pages more than once, at different stages in your life, trying to recapture this time of youthful discovery.

What will you (I) be like in a decade, or in half a dozen? I rather assume you'll be more confident than I am, less riddled with doubt and scarred by envy, more satisfied with yourself. By that time you will hopefully have realized the futility of constantly comparing yourself to others and finding yourself lacking. Obviously you will be wiser. I've spent enough time around older, even elderly, people to know that wisdom does often come with age and experience.

I worry, though, that too much experience may dull your senses and emotions. Will you lose the ability to feel the thrill of new insights, fierce revelations like those that overwhelm me almost daily during this crazy period in my life? Will you brush off the wild passion and transcendent pleasure I describe as merely the effects of hormones or marijuana? Looking back at your twenty-six year old self, will you shake your head in embarrassment and tell your friends, “I was such an awful slut.”?

Don't. You know more than I, have done more, achieved more, but still I have some advice for you. Remember this.

Remember the electrifying feel of first skin. Remember the exultation of being joined, the richness of emptiness filled. Remember the telepathic communication – don't shrug it off as mere fantasy. At least be willing to consider the possible existence of psychic links potentiated by carnal connection. As for me, I'm convinced that sex, God and magick are three names for the same thing. I'm not a slut. I'm a spiritual seeker.

Remember that love lies at the very core of your being – yours and that of everyone else. Even a stranger has lessons to teach, if you're willing to learn. Remember, if you can, how it feels to be open to it all, even the pain, to give and receive as part of a virtuous, outrageous circle.

Of course, you won't recall the physical sensations. Even now, just hours later, I can't conjure them here on the page. Sense impressions are ephemeral, impossible to capture in words. All you can do is hint and suggest, using analogy and metaphor, roughing out the shape of the experience and allowing the reader's memory to fill in the details.

I hope, though, that you'll remember the joy bubbling in your chest as you go about your daily business after a night with your lover. Remember the awe when you pushed past another barrier, connecting more deeply than ever before. Remember your amazement and pride, admiring the fading marks from his crop on your rear. Never forget the devastating flood of tenderness when you first pursed your lips around her trembling nipple.

The intensity will fade. Of course it will. In fact, sometimes I'm not sure how long I can bear it myself, one ecstatic day after the next. I'm too aroused, sometimes, to sleep. Poems pour out of me like blood. I gaze into the face of a lover and I see God. They say a mortal cannot bear such glory.

Keep the thrill alive, if you can, however you can. Tell the stories to your new lovers. Write them for strangers. Read this journal, page after page scrawled during the times when I'm alone, or while my lover is lost in dreams, and let it rekindle the flames of memory.

Passions become muted over time. Stories told too often ossify into stereotypes. Fight these trends, if you're able. I can't know what you will experience, as your body ages and your mind and heart mature. Tonight, though, if only for a moment, I'd like you to feel what I feel, know what I know – the awful, holy beauty of the flesh.

And even if everything dwindles to stale shreds of recollection, do not, at least, forget the truth – that these days, and these encounters, are a rare blessing. Old people become conservative, I've heard. Perhaps there will come a time when you're tempted to repudiate me, to label me as foolish, extreme, or even wicked. Promiscuous. Perverse.

Listen to your heart, Lisabet. Remember. You know that, no matter what society says, I (we?) did the right thing at the right time. I have no regrets, and neither should you.

By the time you read this, I'll be gone. I write, like the ancients, to share the knowledge I've gleaned with my descendents – you, the many Lisabets who may read this over the years. Perhaps you'll find my scribblings quaint and fantastic, myths from a lost past. I beg of you, don't dismiss my stories as the ramblings of an overactive imagination. Believe. And remember.

On the Tip of My Tongue

By Lisabet Sarai

It happens more and more often these days. I'll reach for a word, and it isn't there, or at least I can't grab hold of it. Usually there are traces, ghosts that taunt me from the murky depths of my memory. I'll be able to tell you what sound begins the word, or how many syllables it has. If my husband suggests alternatives, I can easily dismiss them. That's not the word I'm thinking of, I confidently assert, but the specific item of vocabulary I'm seeking remains inaccessible.

This happens not only when I'm writing but also when I'm speaking. I'll trail off, unable to summon the word that's dangling there on the tip of my tongue. Occasionally, I'll come out with a related term, knowing that isn't what I really mean. Sometimes these substitutions are bizarre.

I'm an author. My sense of self is inextricably entwined with my ability to weave worlds out of words. I've always been able to rely on my extensive vocabulary. I barely thought about it. Now I worry that my verbal facility has begun to desert me. And that's terrifying.

Is this part of the normal process of aging? I'll be sixty soon, but that doesn't seem that old compared to my ninety year old aunt, who still follows politics and who told me, the day after Obama was elected, that “she felt as happy as if she had a new lover”. Are these lapses the first signs of a more serious deficit, Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia? In the case of the former, I've read that keeping your brain active appears to have some prophylactic effects. I teach kids in their twenties and write computer software; surely that's active enough, isn't it? But it's all a crap shoot, I gather, and worst of all, there's no cure for what the media suggest is an epidemic.

In the past, when I imagined getting older, I expected declines in physical capabilities. I can picture myself blind, deaf, unable to walk, even paralyzed. I've always consoled myself with the notion that however limited my body becomes, I'll still have the life of the mind. I'll be able to read, or listen to, books. I'll be able to write, even if I have to dictate my stories as opposed to typing them.

Now, as with increasing frequency I struggle to grasp the elusive word, the exact term to express both the meaning and the mood I'm trying to set, I glimpse another, far bleaker future – one in which the glorious universe of ideas and their multifaceted expression in language gradually crumbles to dust, until my head is filled with sawdust like the scarecrow of Oz. I honestly think I'd prefer death to that sort of half-life.

Shanna Germain has a magnificent story in The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes, entitled “Remember This”, that treats this theme with tremendous sensitivity and depth. A woman joins her husband and long-time female lover in an ecstatic but bittersweet encounter full of echoes from the past. Although she's barely in her fifties, she has a genetic predisposition to memory loss. She comforts herself with the thought of the poison she's secreted from her lovers, not ready for that step yet, but knowing she won't have to endure the dissolution of what is precious.

And of course Garce's much acclaimed tale “An Early Winter Train” goes even further, showing us how desperately sad the physical shell becomes when the mind has mostly departed. These days I can't even think about that story – it's too frightening.

And yet, here I am, penning this blog post, obviously with some verbal memory left. Perhaps I'm overreacting. I sometimes joke that I know so many words, I could forget half of them and still have a normal vocabulary. I know my laughter's a defense, though.

The other thing is – the words aren't gone. I can't deliberately summon them, but later they may sneak up on me, bubbling up from my unconscious while I'm thinking about something completely different. It's as though the glass between my conscious intent and the depths where language resides has grown cloudy – almost like cataracts of the mind.

I try not to think about it, because honestly, I find it too distressing. Instead I muddle along, pretending there's no problem, hoping that I'm being alarmist. And when a word escapes, I chase it, unwilling to let it get away.