Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang!
I am sorry but I am getting a bit fed up now. Slightly sick and tired of how incapable people are of seeing what this is really about. The fact that what I do still evoke so many strange feelings. Why is it that there are so many things we handle better than this…
Why is it so hard to respect personal choice, why is it so hard to respect that the consensual choices of others might not be what you like. But, the opportunity for others to make those choices and turn away from lives prescribed to them by gender, class, race, age, size…whatever you would like, is what makes this world worth living in.
I am sorry but we must get personal now. This here world of assumptions of femininity is not big enough for the both of us. I am telling you, dear creators of “open” and “accepting” spaces, do not fuck with me… and beware, cute is a scare!
……
I am in the tackiest of clubs. I have told her to sit up straight to make it is easier to endure the strange feeling of being a zoo animal, little girls don’t come here. Little girls with frames don’t come here. They don’t wear silk blouse. They don’t wear silver crosses. Amongst leather pants and whips hanging from a belt, amongst eyes that measure me as a falsely conscious little girl not yet having found her place at the feet of the patriarchy.
I survive that evening because I cling on to her physically. When they look at us I look at her. There is a fatigue in her eyes the same as mine. A tire of those eyes that invade us, that measure our bodies and what we do.
When she is preoccupied with other things and I roam the vast club on my own I seek the eyes of other Ladies.
A woman with her boi on sofa…the knife slowly caressing hir fingers… She looks at me with that same fatigue, we sigh and I nod at her. I know what it’s like.
That’s when he approaches me. I must confess I didn’t like him that much prior to this either. He is the invasive kind, the exploiting kind, everyone in a space like this are vehicles for lust and that is his lust, he thinks.
I have been waiting for her which I clung to, who I told to sit up straight so that something would be endurable in this place, he looks at me with that icky middle aged man smile.
“Aaaw, little miss…” he says. “How are you?”
I am shocked. I am shocked at how easy he does it. How easy he belittles and ignores me. I am sure he knows what I do. I am sure his partner, who has seen me work stripes into shivering strong backs many a time before, have told him what I do. I am sure he knows that even if I am a girl I am no one’s girl.
I hope my eyes burn with that famous black soot I have been told they have when I tell him that I feel fine although I haven’t been able to play here since I didn’t feel safe.
Yet when I leave I am turned off, furious, hurt and sad. My invisibility was so hard to face. His, the middle aged man’s, part in that so obvious it stung my eyes.
…..
Let’s talk a bit about what he couldn’t cope with. Power. Girls with power. Let’s talk a bit about why the idea of the dominant woman is still scary. What have I done? What are we doing?
I grew up in an environment that respected my femininity, and the power I ascribed to it. I call my upbringing a matriarchy – my mother and her sister, my cousins and me, formed a bond of femininity and power. It stemmed from my grandmother and her sister, from a strong sense of survival and belonging.
I never knew of no patriarchy, I never knew that women were not allowed to have power. I never knew I wasn’t allowed to decide for others if they wanted me to do that.
And I was always just as puzzled when I saw the mindfuck in their eyes. In the eyes of men and women alike, when it didn’t match. When my body didn’t match my mind.
Or that’s not right, I match perfectly find with all my expectations of myself. It’s their expectations that I don’t match.
You see it’s not about exploitation, not about abuse and not about oppression. The way she cooks for me and the man, always a man, peeks in at us and asks me if I shouldn’t do that – as the girlie girl.
I don’t tell him to fuck off. I tell my glorious butch girl to tell the “nice” man that that is not how we do things. And she does because she loves me. She loves me when she squirms under my touch, when she bends her neck for me. And I love her when I do it, I love her the most when she gives all of her to me – I love her the most when we rip that patriarchy up by the roots, when I insert the matriarchy that fed and clothed me into the void that the loss of man-made worlds made in her.
I never understood why this was challenging. I never understood why women, girls, I, couldn’t do this? What prevents me? What would force me to do otherwise?
I am sorry but my mother, the Pentecostal, married, heterosexual mother of two, never taught me any of this. She taught me to hold my head high and give myself with love to others, and they will love me too.
So please, put your assumptions, your false notions of female sexuality and femme identities elsewhere. Please don’t put them in my lap – and mind you, don’t force them down my throat. I don’t really do that shit you see.
Ask the girls who have been mine, butches, femmes, bois and grrls alike what they felt when they were with me. What we did when we shared that love my mother told me to share. How we catered to one another.
Ask the patriarchy if it hurt when we ripped its roots.
…..
I leave that club numb. We agree it was bad night, a really bad night. I give her a quick hug before I get in the cab. I tell her she will pay for dragging me all the way there…. She knows I am more serious about then I look. I giggle as she blushes.
On my way home I write a letter of memories and paths travelled for all the women and men that ever giggled sweetly at me assumed I was nice and humble only because I was cute.
To patriarchy with love, best wishes - little girls of the matriarchy!
