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.

Channeling Rapunzel (#longhair #freedom #sex)

By Lisabet Sarai

During the past year, I’ve reclaimed a part of my identity.

After nearly a decade of keeping my hair no longer than than my shoulders, I’ve let it grow. It reaches halfway down my back now, at least when it’s wet. As it dries, it frizzes and kinks, looking far less luxuriant (and less well-groomed) but I still get a little shiver of pleasure when I look at myself in the mirror these days.

I have to admit that my newly extended locks present an incongruous contrast to my age-creased, sagging face. Senior citizens don’t normally sprout wild, hippie-like crops of hair like mine. But you know, at some level I really don’t care. That’s one solace to growing older. You start to realize you’re free to spurn conventional standards when they don’t suit you.

Free. That’s how my new hairstyle (if you can call this disordered frenzy a “style”) makes me feel. Despite the steamy climate in my adopted country, I love the feeling of it swinging back and forth behind me. Running my fingers through the tight curls makes me smile. I’ve tried braiding it, with limited success, and I enjoy pulling it into a ponytail. It’s almost as if I had a new toy.

I’ve always appreciated long hair, on both men and women. The hero in my first novel has a black ponytail reaching almost to his waist; the heroine, a mop of ginger-hued curls. Undoubtedly I’ve been influenced by the mythos of the sixties and seventies. I was in high school when the “American tribal love-rock musical” burst on the scene and hair became a symbol of youth and rebellion. Peace, love, sex and hair became inextricably entwined in my psyche.

In fact, I've had long hair for much of my life (see, for instance, my author photo, taken when I was in my twenties). When I started regular salon visits to erase the increasingly prominent gray from my hair, however, I also started getting it trimmed. I discovered that my natural curl was easier to tame when my hair was short. I looked (slightly) more professional and proper. 

 

My DH kept bugging me to stop the cutting. (Like me, he’s a product of the sixties. Indeed, he lived through the Summer of Love, while I just watched from the sidelines.) For some reason, I resisted.

So what has changed? I’m really not sure. It might be that I’m trying to recapture my youth. It might be I just got bored with my short hair. In any case, I’ve found the process rewarding. Even empowering.

I’d love to have hair down to my waist, or longer. It’s not going to happen; I gather that the maximum length of a person’s hair is genetically determined. Mine is probably pretty close to its limit. Nevertheless, I fantasize about being Rapunzel.

In fact, here’s a few paragraphs from “Shorn”, a re-telling of that classic which I wrote for Kristina Wright’s 2010 anthology Fairy Tale Lust. I think it will give you a sense of my feelings about my own hair.

* * * *

Do not believe what you hear of me. It was not to preserve my chastity that I was imprisoned here, in this amusingly phallic tower with its sealed entrance and single window. I have not been a virgin for years; even my father knows that. In the cesspit of hypocrisy that is his court, no one cares what goes on behind closed doors. Only appearances matter.

And appearances are what landed me here in this unorthodox prison. I'm confined to this aerie because despite all blandishments and threats, I refused to cut my hair.

In a society like ours, valuing external neatness and order above else, my wild auburn locks are an offense to public decency, or so my royal parents would like me to believe. My father's crown rests upon a bald pate, shaved daily. My mother and sisters wear pale helmets of curls that are clipped back whenever they grow beyond the earlobes. Every proper citizen plucks, trims, waxes and shaves to eliminate any hint of the hirsute.

Not I. I love my hair, not just the luxurious tresses that flow over my shoulders and down to the floor, but the rest, too: my unfashionably bushy eyebrows, the soft tufts gracing my armpits, the wiry tangle that hides my sex. My hair is a source of my power. My father suspects as much. An ancient prophecy says the kingdom shall one day be lost to a red-haired sorceress and he fears I am the fulfillment of that promise.

* * * *

In the end, Rapunzel gives up her hair for love of her prince. However, she knows it will grow back.

What I Did Before I Knew Better

by Annabeth Leong

I walked into the smoky, after-hours cafe I'd just discovered and encountered the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. He was lanky and careless, the way I like, with dark skin and honest-to-God golden eyes and a way of smiling with only half his face at a time. Sleeping with him felt like a need, not a want.

Back then, in the 90s, I was so good at setting that sort of thing up. In a matter of days, we were listening to Radiohead and Mazzy Star while making out in the back room (where he also slept in exchange for working the counter). We were making out on the floor in the front room after the cafe locked the door, when only the special people got to stay. We were taking midnight walks in the park behind the cafe and climbing from there onto the tops of official city buildings, where we were also making out.

Then I met his girlfriend. She had periwinkle eyes, a feline throat, and beauty spots everywhere. She had a way of laughing that was both rough and girlish, and when she was in the room, I could never stop looking at her. She gave me a ride somewhere, and my hand crept onto her thigh. It was another need.

I wasn't as cool with her as I'd learned to be with men. With her, I was desperate, all too aware of how badly I wanted her, terribly afraid that she might only be tolerating me. Still, I kissed her every chance she gave me. I would take her foot into my lap and stroke her ankle, then slyly and patiently work my way up her leg to the lower edge of her shorts. Sometimes, we played with boys together, trading kisses in combinations that made me dizzy, or going driving and pulling over so I could lick my way down her neck. She was so fucking beautiful to me that the shape of her name still makes me shiver.

He explained the deal to me one night while walking me home, after this thing had been going on for a while. The two of them were together, and their main loyalties were to each other, but they were both okay if I spent an occasional night with one or the other of them. I didn't know words for polyamory, or the concept of primaries and secondaries, but I got what he was saying, and I didn't mind.

It's not just that I didn't mind. It was perfect to me, even if everything I'd ever heard told me that I ought to be upset by the arrangement. The script I knew said I ought to demand to be his exclusive girlfriend. I'd just opened my eyes to the possibility that I might also be her girlfriend, but again, monogamy was the only story I'd been told. I liked having a boyfriend and a girlfriend, though. I'd spent the last couple years cheating on lovers all the time, until finally I swore off making promises of exclusivity. Our deal gave me the freedom I wanted, but also the right to spend time with what seemed like the hottest two people in the world.

For a while, it worked, and I was happy. Then he came to talk to me again. They were worried, he said, that this thing we had going was too imbalanced. They thought I ought to get a boyfriend who was cool with joining our arrangement. The number three was unstable, and they thought a fourth would even things out. We could go on double dates together without looking weird.

They had a guy picked out for me, a friend of his, and they wanted me to meet him.

It's hard to believe now that I was really this casual about things, but I said sure, whatever they wanted, and agreed on a time to go out as a group of four. I was excited, too. I liked the mathematical possibilities of what they had proposed. The whole thing possessed a beautiful symmetry. I drew lines in my head, connecting the dots in different combinations, and I fantasized about our future together.

There was just one problem. When I met the guy they'd picked, I hated him on sight. He was a good-looking man, if you were into a cold, Aryan beauty, but his smell turned me off in a deep, primal way, and I didn't like the way his skin felt. He'd apparently been told I was a sure thing. Within minutes of our meeting, he took my hand and introduced it to his cock. If I'd wanted him, I would have been thrilled, but as it was, my stomach dropped. I knew this beautiful arrangement was about to end.

The three of them played together without me that night and for several nights after. I'd never been jealous before, but I was then. I gritted my teeth and smiled through their descriptions of the satisfaction delivered at the hands of the man I didn't want.

A few weeks later, I got another visit. The two of them were going to try being exclusive with each other, he said. In my heart, I'd known it was over the night I'd met their friend, so I was ready for this. I gave him a hug and told him I loved him. I don't think I ever really got to say goodbye to her.

There's a reason this is the story I'm telling for my post on the 90s, and it's not just that this is when these events took place. This version of me, so absolutely unconventional, formed at that time, and came as a product of listening to Ani DiFranco and reading The Sandman and having friends who went to Lilith Fair. It came out of reading sourcebooks for White Wolf Games, which stunned me with their easy portrayal of various queer identities and relationships, not to mention other people at the margins of society.

It's not that I didn't suffer for my sins. I got my heart broken a lot, and I hurt people, and people in my small Southern town thought I was a (no-lie) devil worshipper even though I went to church, and I got called a slut in whispers and people screamed that I was a slut from car windows.

But I miss that version of myself, even though for a lot of my life it got a bad rap. See, when the end of the 90s came, that person ended, too, for a long time. I got convinced to stop listening to "negative" music, stop wearing black, stop playing devil games, stop kissing girls, and stop sleeping around like a slut. My journey into a socially conservative life can't be blamed on religion, though the fundamentalist Christian values floating around where I was living were certainly part of where these ideas were coming from.

I was depressed at the time, and I got hooked up with a group of people who convinced me that social acceptability (though they weren't calling it that) was the way out of my problems. In fact, I got brought into that group by that beautiful man I mentioned right at the top of this post. We were in a band together, but he'd decided to settle down. He and his girlfriend had broken up, he'd always remembered me fondly, and this was our chance to be together and make a better life for ourselves.

And I did feel better for a while—it's amazing how good it can feel to give in and stop fighting. And this is why, for a long time, I couldn't understand the "born this way" arguments for gay rights (I still prefer arguments based on personal freedom). In response to the idea that it's some sort of choice to be queer, I've heard the rejoinder, "Well, when did you choose to be straight?" But I had an answer for that. In the year 2000. And it made my life a whole lot more comfortable.

Until it didn't. It wasn't long before that man was telling me he missed "the way I used to be." And my relationships with women became lousy with unspoken desires and weirdness (and I am only just starting to sort that bit out).

In the 90s, I didn't know how to conform, and I wore my pain raw, and I did things the only way I felt I could, and it hurt sometimes but I also love that brave past version of myself. I didn't know much of anything about how to protect myself, and I didn't know the words for half of what I wanted to do, and that hurt, too.

I've learned a lot since then, though, and I've come to see the person I was in the 90s as an important indication of what I was growing into being. I can't just rewind to that, and maybe I wouldn't want to, but if not for that person, I wouldn't be here writing erotica now. In all my confusion, when I ask myself what I honestly want, or what my identity actually is, it doesn't hurt to think back to how I acted then, when I didn't yet know better than to be myself.

Bare Faced Truth

by Kristina Wright

I've never been good at being someone else. I'm a competent liar and capable of deception (fiction writers are, after all, the best liars), but to slip on the mask of a different personality entirely? I have never been able to do it competently. I couldn't even use a pseudonym for more than two erotica stories before I resorted to my real name for sanity's sake. Honestly, in most all situations, what you see is what you get with me. Is that good or bad?

There have been occasions where I wonder if it's good to be so... ME... all the time. Times when I wish I could be exotic or elegant or mysterious or simply more clever/smart/beautiful than I really am. Times when I wished I could fit in, belong, be one of the crowd, whatever the crowd is. I don't fit in anywhere--and I have given up trying. And I've discovered that it's very liberating to just be me. And sometimes it's fun to watch people try to reconcile the different aspects of who I am and make sense of it.

I used to enjoy dressing up in costume when I was younger, but the idea of going to a costume party right now me hives. I used to enjoy pretending to be someone else when I was a kid, but somewhere in the last twenty odd years, I kind of settled pretty well into my own skin and don't even want to bother. When we were teenagers, my friends and I would sometimes pretend to be British or French and affect accents to go along with new names. I always forgot my name and couldn't keep up the accent.

I am Kris or Kristina or Kristina Wright in everything I do. Every story I've written, with the exception of the two online stories I wrote over a decade ago, have been under Kristina Wright or some variation thereof. Kris Wright for my only gay erotic story, Lynn Cole (my middle name and maiden name) for an anthology that included two of my stories, Tina Simmons (the second half of my first name and my mother's maiden name, which was my legal name until I was 12) for a book that included three of my stories. All of my email addresses, with the exceptions of the ones for anthologies, are all variations of my real name.

Of course, using my real name doesn't mean people who don't know me in real life really know me. Reading my erotica (or any of my other fiction) may tell you a lot about my imagination, but it won't tell you much about who I am as a person, no matter how much a reader might assume otherwise. Reading the nonfiction I write, including my OGG posts, will give you a real glimpse into my life but it's only a snapshot, not the complete picture. The same with following me on various social networks or other blogs. All parts of the whole. Real, but incomplete.

Here's the truth-- no one really wants to know all of me, including the people who know me in real life. Maybe that's true for all of us who lurk on the fringes of several circles. Unless you're smack dab in the middle of whatever circle you're a part of, people are going to take what they're comfortable with and leave the rest in the closet. And that goes for the erotica writing circle, where my middle-aged, upper middle class life, 22 year marriage and 2 babies aren't very interesting, as well as for the suburban middle class circle, where my liberal politics, agnostic religious beliefs and erotica writing don't fit. I am not completely comfortable in any circle, but yet I can't even slip into the mask of what I'm supposed to be in order to fit into the circles I am a part of. Sigh.

I admire those writers who are able to slip in and out of their personas. I imagine it must be a relief to get to be someone else entirely, if only for a little while, and be completely accepted for being that particular identity. The masks authors wear are sometimes so believable that even I fall for them. I have been startled to realize that the names I've associated with some authors are actually pseudonyms. In fact, I once carried on lengthy email exchanges with two authors and didn't realize they were the same person until author A referenced the email I'd sent author B. The author wasn't trying to deceive me, but had assumed I was trying to keep the issues we were discussing separate. Ha! Now that is an author who is good at wearing a variety of masks-- and then there's me, taking everything at face value.

Does anyone really know me-- all of me? In truth, none of us is known (or knows anyone else) 100%. Human nature dictates that we keep something of ourselves private. Our secret hearts hold our most precious dreams and greatest fears, and we don't reveal all to anyone. On the other hand, anyone who has known me in real life or anyone who has access to the bulk of my online life could write a decent biography of me. And I'm okay with that. As I continue to struggle with my author "brand" I'm discovering that this is my brand-- being myself, being this very real person who has many facets, but only one name and one face-- and no masks at all.

What's In a Name?

By Kristina Wright

I wanted to go on the 6th grade trip to Mexico. That's how it started. In order to go to Mexico, I needed a passport-- which I didn't have. In order to get a passport, I needed a birth certificate-- which I did have. Problem was, the birth certificate I had did not bear the same name that I was using. If I got a passport under the name on the birth certificate, school officials would know I was using a different name. My friends would know. Their parents would know. It would have been scandalous, I guess.

This was back in the day when you didn't have to show documentation to enroll your kid in school. Or maybe that was just life in Florida in the 70s-- a nod to the migrant workers who weren't in the country legally. You also didn't have to have a Social Security card until you started working. I guess my mother assumed I wouldn't have to prove who I was until I was at least a teenager and she'd deal with it then-- but then I asked to go on the Mexico trip.

That was how I ended up in a courtroom at the age of 11, telling a judge about life with my parents so I could get my name changed. I ended up with a new birth certificate that bore the name I'd been using since I was 9 months old. Of course, to get there, I had to listen to my mother answer the judge's question about who my birth father was: "I don't know."

It was a lie.

She knew who my birth father was, but she wanted nothing to do with him and didn't want him to have anything to do with me, not even legally. She was so adamant about making sure I never had any contact with him that she never told me his name.

I had to listen to the judge ask my "father" (technically, my stepfather) why he hadn't pursued legal adoption before this: "I just never got around to it."

Another lie.

He would never have legally adopted me if my mother hadn't fought him on it. Why? Who knows. We were never close, ever. He didn't really want kids (so said my mother) and maybe saw me as part of a package deal-- an option he couldn't opt out of.

All I wanted was to go on the Mexico trip with my friends. I ended up with a birth certificate that was a lie. I had gone from having a legal document that negated the existence of a paternal figure, with the line for father left blank and my last name being listed as my mother's maiden name, to a legal document that bore the name of my stepfather as my father. I would stare at that piece of paper and wonder how it could be legal for a legal document to have my birthdate and my stepfather's name on it even though my mother hadn't even met him until after I was born and even though the adoption process had taken place in Florida, far from my state of birth. At the age of 11, I wondered how it could possibly be legal to fabricate the truth. I still wonder about it.

My birth certificate is a lie.

I had to give up my original birth certificate for the phony one, so I don't even have the real record of my birth to an unwed mother in a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. I wonder if that original document even exists? I'd like it back.

Despite my strong feminist beliefs, I took my husband's name when I got married. I had no connection to the name on my birth certificate or to the man I called Dad. But they don't change your birth certificate when you get married-- they give you a new document to reflect your new name without erasing the existence of your previous name. To this day, it bothers me that they didn't do the same thing when my stepfather legally adopted me. I wonder if the law has changed? It should.

There is a sense of shame attached to my birth certificate, both the original and the fake, I mean legal, one. It always felt strange writing a name that I knew wasn't really mine. I kept waiting to be found out, to be told I had to use my real name, the one on my original birth certificate. Even once I had a piece of paper to reflect the name I'd always used, it felt strange to make a poster of my family tree in 9th grade English when I knew that half of my tree was a lie. I pretended, as my mother had always pretended, that the man who wasn't there when I was born, who often forgot my birthday (and even misspelled my name), and who had little interest in claiming me as his daughter, was my father.

People have asked me why I have never used a pseudonym. My answer is always that I am proud of my work and want my real name on my stories, that I believe women writers were long forced to hide in the literary shadows and it's my tribute to them to use my real name on everything I write. The truth is also that I have always been uncomfortable using a name that wasn't really my own. I unwillingly lived under a pseudonym for 11 years of my life and then had the truth of my birth fabricated so I could continue using that pseudonym for another 12 years. No more. Ever.

This was supposed to be a post about fathers. I guess I should get back on topic. Despite my occasional attempts to find out (occasional because the fallout wasn't worth the effort), my mother never told me who my birth father was. Not when I turned 18, not when I got married at 23, not when I told her I wanted my entire family medical history in case I decided to have children, not when I swore to her I would never look for him. She took his name to her grave in 2007. It was my aunt who told me my biological father's name several months after my mother's death. She also helped clarify some of the details I'd been able to piece together over the years from eavesdropping on my mother's conversations with my father (stepfather) and other relatives. But I'll never know the whole story. Only my mother knew that.

At last, though, I had a name. It was anticlimactic. Knowing my biological father's name doesn't mean very much when I still know so little about him, his life, whether he had other children or is even still alive. I don't know if he ever wondered about me or wanted to meet me. I never saw a picture of him. I still don't have a complete family medical history and have gone through genetic counseling twice answering "I don't know" just as my mother did all those years ago in a courthouse in South Florida. The difference is, of course, I really don't know. Likely, I will never know.

After going through the adoption process and making my fake name legal, my parents decided they couldn't afford to send me to Mexico after all. That, like so many other things, was also a lie. My mother never intended to let me go to Mexico, she just wanted to push my stepfather to legally adopt me. She got what she wanted. I didn't go to Mexico and she kept my biological father's identity a secret for the rest of her life.

It took over 40 years to find out, but I finally know his name. Not that it matters-- it's not a name I would ever use and is as meaningless to me as my fake birth certificate. I have my name and my identity solidly established-- and on my own terms. It took awhile, but I know who I am and I have a passport to prove it. Maybe one day I'll even get to Mexico.