So I’ve been trotting around the United States doing this and that, and now I’m back in the slow swing of things on the east coast. I accidentally fell in love with San Francisco and we’re struggling with this long distance, one sided relationship. I’ve been self-medicating with bing cherries and cuddles.
I read a piece with no title at the Queer Memoir salon at NOLOSE on Sunday, June 6 and it was so well received I want to read out loud all over the place. The theme was In/visible identities and I wrote about what else but disability! Forgive me if I get repetitive but blindness and a guide dog tend to wipe off your humanity for most of the world to see. I like to flavor my readings with a heavy dose of sex and sexuality so it wasn’t completely dry. In fact I venture a guess that there wasn’t a dry seat in the house.
It’s incredibly to have people come up to you afterwards, people who were quite interested in your dog and quiet about you for 2 days, who then said “I see you…definitely you.” Is it because I verbally dominated an entire room of queer folk and got them all hot ‘n bothered? Possibly…but I’ll take it. In the disability caucus someone mentioned the frustration of not experiencing fat oppression because people first get stuck on disability oppression. Same here. I’d LOVE to get harassed about being a fat chick….or a slut….but that would require the world to first move beyond blindness. That seems difficult. So I take the visibility where I can get it -on my terms of course, but nonetheless I’m cold at the end of the day. I still want to be seen as me primarily, and that’s a goal I have yet to attain.
The piece I wrote is not safe for work or this PG-13 blog, but if you’re an artsy type perhaps you’ll see me perform it somewhere. Always looking for suggestions 🙂
Just keep forcing visibility and someday maybe I’ll walk by a group of people who will not start and stop at “DOGGIE!!!!”
Dis/positional 