burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

Medford Public Library LGBTQ+ Book Group's list of books for this season came out today. (In-person/Zoom hybrid from 7-8:30pm, 2nd Thursday of the month unless otherwise noted. hmu if you want in on any of them.)

It feels more wide-ranging than previous years? Like 3/9 authors are male (and 1 is non-binary). Also a surprising amount of historical fiction. And 2 memoirs and 1 "partly autobiographical" novel.

When I posted about this book club last year, I included publication dates, so I'm including that again.

October 13, 2022
Orlando by Virginia Woolf (classic/fiction) [first published October 11, 1928]

Orlando the character begins as a British nobleman during the reign of Elizabeth I (late 1500s), lives for centuries without aging, turns into a woman at one point, has romantic/sexual relationships with men and women... definitely has some uncomfy racial stuff in moments (also talks about "gipsies," which term is considered pejorative by many Romani people)

Virginia Woolf (a British woman) wrote this book for Vita Sackville-West, and one review says, "A high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's lover and close friend, the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West"

November 3, 2022 (1st Thursday of the month)
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar (fiction) [November 24, 2020]

protagonist is a Syrian American trans boy in NYC -- I think author is similar? (definitely trans-masc, and seems to be Arab at least -- and Wiki at least used to call him "Syrian American")

December 8, 2022
Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi (fiction) [November 3, 2020]

about 3 Nigerian women, by a Nigerian-Canadian woman

January 19, 2023 (3rd Thursday of the month)
¡Hola Papi! : how to come out in a Walmart parking lot and other life lessons by John Paul Brammer (biography/essays) [June 8, 2021]

biracial Chicano (Mexican American) man

February 9, 2023
Real Life by Brandon Taylor (fiction) [February 18, 2020]

Wikipedia says, "the partly autobiographical book tells of the experiences of a gay, Black doctoral student in a predominantly White, Midwestern PhD program." [protagonist and "scientist turned novelist" author are both from Alabama.]

March 9, 2023
Matrix by Lauren Groff (fiction) [September 7, 2021]

historical fiction by an American woman about Marie de France (a woman in late 12th-century England)

April 20, 2023 (3rd Thursday of the month)
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones (memoir) [October 8, 2019]

black, gay man from the American South

May 11, 2023
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue (fiction) [April 1, 2014]

historical fiction about women in Summer of 1876 San Francisco by an Irish woman

June 8, 2023
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (memoir/graphic novel) [May 28, 2019]

e/em/eir-pronouns non-binary and asexual American

So, in group chat this morning, Thom goes:

Oh. My. God.  

Maybe you’ve seen this, but I guess one morning Sam Smith and Demi Lovato woke up and said, “Let’s make the queerest music video ever.” And yes, I discovered this because Alok is in it and posted about it on their Instagram.  

https://youtu.be/glD1M418bC0  

Okay. It’s 12 hours old so maybe you haven’t seen it?  

I mean, I’m not sure it actually _wins_ the title for Queerest Music Video Ever, but it’s a solid entry.

So, I watched the video and had the following reactions:

• this is really gay male
• oh, this is queer
• wait, no queer women :(

I had A Lot of words. 

Excerpt from ensuing conversation:

Thom:

Yeah. I almost pitched it as gay and not queer. Would that have calibrated things better? I was excited about Alok being in the video and clearly overshot the mark. Sorry. 😢

me:

Yeah, gay would have been SO MUCH better.  

Because it IS gay. And it's also queer -- but it's you queer, not me queer.  

Thom:

And thus not even close to Most Ever.

They revised their pitch to: "OMG, check out this hella gay/genderqueer video that Sam Smith just dropped (with Demi Lovato). Sam is super hot in it and it has a bunch of genderqueer folks like Alok. (Though it looks like it’s entirely AMAB—my read—genderqueer folks.)"

I asked some of my Internet spaces for THEIR suggestions of Queerest Music Video Ever, and so far have gotten:

• Ezra Furman - I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend
• Janelle Monáe - PYNK
• Björk - All is Full of Love
• Miike Snow - Genghis Khan
• Janelle Monáe - Make Me Feel
• Icona Pop - All Night

Do y'all have any nominations you would add?

Edit:

Thom:

Sarah suggested this, but admitted she hasn’t rewatched it in a few years. https://youtu.be/hdYiYjuf0ko

[Zolita - Holy]

me:

That video is definitely a narrative journey.

Thom:

Sure is. 😮

Of the things posted here, my leading contenders are probably “All Night” and “Make Me Feel”.

But also, if the issue with the Sam Smith video is breadth of queer representation, I probably have some words about the other videos here.

But let’s be real, no music video needs to bear the burden of full and complete queer representation, I think.

me:

Yeah, a lot of these videos I was like, "Okay, this doesn't really improve on the narrow representation of the Sam Smith video" (though videos about queer women are obviously, imo, preferable* to videos about queer men/male-ish people, though I recognize the value of the latter) -- though I was also aware that it's unfair to ask any single video to bear the burden of, as you say, "full and complete queer representation."

*meaning my personal preference -- not that they're objectively better queer rep

Though it is possible to get ensemble queer rep in a single video -- e.g. Tegan and Sara's "Closer" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e9NSMY8QiQ

( gym )

I'd heard predictions of snow showers for Monday morning. On my way in to work there were flecks of snow, easily confused with cigarette ash (a reverse confusion I made leaving Berklee Friday night). Watching the news at the gym this morning, I was jealous of New Jersey with its footage of snow (over an inch thick) coating cars etc.

Katie: "Why would you ever be jealous of New Jersey?"
me: "I hear Pennsylvania got inches of snow, too, so I could be jealous of Pennsylvania."

I woke up at 7:05 this morning, which was problematic, but I managed to get out of the house at 7:30, which is about the upper limit for when I can leave the house and still do a full cardio workout (half hour plus five-minute cooldown) and get in to the office by 9am. She's continually impressed that I do the morning gym thing and said, "You inspire me."

Speaking of my influence on her... she was in Best Buy with her friend Ben over the weekend and saw HIMYM S1 DVD and had to buy it. (We recently finished S1 in lunchtime viewing, and she fell in love with the show early on.) She made him watch the first 4 episodes, and he enjoyed it. She almost e-mailed me yesterday to tell me but decided it could wait until today.

This afternoon Ian asked me for cookies. I asked what kind he wanted and he said anything, "emergency sugar." I made some sort of noises about how he should really have his own stash. "So I stop bothering you?" he said, and before I could respond, he offered, "So I don't die?" (He's diabetic.) I was like, "Yeah, that." He says he has stuff in his car.

Nicole was talking about podcasting -- NPR, Berkeley courses, etc. -- noting various stuff I might be interested (i.e., religion). I mentioned that I don't have an iPod -- and more generally that I'm just more comfortable engaging with stuff as written texts rather than as listening to radio programs for example. During our conversation she mentioned that oh yeah on my walking commute in to work I do "prayer and meditation." I was a bit abashed because honestly it mostly turns into distracted planning of my day and suchlike, but I was touched that this is a dominant piece of information she remembers about me.

Speaking of... prayers appreciated for: family friend Ginny H. who fell about a month and a half ago and damaged her knee and now has a nasty infection, for Lorraine who's chosen to leave her Ph.D. program and is job-hunting, and for a dear friend I'm not naming because we have mutual friends but who's going through a really difficult time.

***

Princess Tickybox (aka, minim_calibre's two and a half year old daughter) is phenomenally attractive.

***

from Friday's Smith eNews:

LGBT Alumnae Forming Affinity Group
At Reunion in 2007, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) alumnae, those with LGBT children, and other alumnae allies from the classes of '05, '97, '82, and '57 held a gathering to share their stories. It was such a positive experience that participants wanted to form an ongoing group, with the goal of becoming an Alumnae Association affinity group. The idea is to create a broad-based group that would link members across generations to engage in conversations that affect the LGBT community personally and professionally and to renew connections to Smith through online discussions as well as events at college reunions. Does this interest you? Would you help in putting together such a group? What are your ideas about it? Let us know by contacting [redacted]. We want to hear from you.

Dude, I was totally a queer '05 at Reunion in '07 and I don't recall this.

Edit: I forgot to include (via friendsfriends) Cracked.com takes a look at the next nine children's characters that should come out of the closet.

I tend to think that in LJ this would be redundant (for me), but apparently it isn't quite as obvious as I thought.

Admittedly, queering everything does not necessarily mean one is queer oneself.  (And it would be more accurate to say I sexualize everything, though there's definitely a queer bent to it.)  I very explicitly come out as queer in my LJ UserInfo, though it isn't the very top line and I'm sure some people get intimidated by the sheer amount of text in said UserInfo.

I haven't had serious girlperson crushes in a while, and I don't have any exes period (one of the easy ways to reveal that one is interested in a particular half of the population is to slip mention of an ex into conversation).

Why is the possibility of "passing" so insistently viewed as a great privilege ... and not understood as a terrible degradation and denial?
-Evelyn Torton Beck, Nice Jewish Girls

In Monday Night in Westerbork, Bear talks about the importance of telling/sharing our stories.  My story is full of boring and safe, but for anyone who cares, here it is:

( very wordy, as is my wont )

Historical Note

In Googling I stumbled across the information that the date for National Coming Out Day was chosen to commemorate the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights: October 11, 1987.  (The same year my younger brother was born.)  According to wiki, the March protested the Bowers v. Hardwick decision* and the U.S. government's handling of the AIDS epidemic and was also the first public display of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.  (I know I haven't done a writeup of Monday Night in Westerbork, but I had meant to informally poll after seeing it because one of the audience members expressed concern that her college kids wouldn't recognize the AIDS Quilt allusion in the show.  I think of it as an obviously known cultural touchstone, but I also spend a lot of time in queer/liberal circles.  I remember viewing some panels in the NHS gym while I was in high school, though it wasn't a particularly moving/memorable experience -- though I absolutely cried during Bear's anecdote in Monday Night in Westerbork.)

* "Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law that criminalized oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults. Seventeen years later the Supreme Court directly overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), and held that such laws are unconstitutional."
-wiki

***

I, of course, love Ani's bisexual anthem:

[...]

some days the line i walk
turns out to be straight
other days the line tends to
deviate

[...]

i've got more than one membership
to more than one club
and i owe my life
to the people that i love

I also have much fondness for the chaotic blurry queerness of Blur's "Girls & Boys":

Girls who are boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they're girls
Who do girls like they're boys
Always should be someone you really love

Aw, heck, musicspam (some more literally queer than others):

How do I not have Ani's "In or Out" on mp3?  Someone please remedy this for me?

All links are sendspace because YSI was giving me difficulty.

* Ani DiFranco, "The Whole Night" ("we can touch, touch our girl cheeks...")
* Dar Williams, "Iowa (Traveling III)" ("I have never had a way with women, but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could")
* Billie Myers, "Flexible" ("She's James Bond in a dress...")
* Catie Curtis, "What's the Matter" ("This town was my biggest fan 'til I was who I am")
* Alix Olsen, "Cute for a Girl" ("I said, 'If it's dick you're after, darlin', try my top dresser drawer' ")
* Tori Amos, "Raspberry Swirl" ("I am not your señorita, I am not from your tribe")
* Holly Near, "Imagine My Surprise" ("Lady poet of great acclaim, I have been misreading you, I never knew your poems were meant for me")
* Melissa Ferrick, "Drive" ("I'll hold you up and drive you all night")
* Sophie B, Hawkins, "32 Lines" ("I want your hand across my belly, I want your breasts upon my back")
* Bikini Kill, "Rebel Girl" ("In her kiss, I taste the revolution")
* Loudon Wainwright III, "I Wish I Was A Lesbian"
* Phranc, "Bulldagger Swagger"
* Reel Big Fish, "She Has a Girlfriend Now"
* Jill Sobule, "I Kissed A Girl"
* Blur, "Boys and Girls"
* Two Nice Girls, "I Spent My Last $10 (On Birth Control And Beer)" ("I spent my last ten dollars on birth control and beer / My life was so much simpler when I was sober and queer")
* Peaches, "Gay Bar"

Apparently "Celebrate Bisexuality Day" is officially this Saturday.  (Apparently the founders weren't Jewish, so they didn't know that date -- Sept. 23 -- would routinely fall during Rosh Hashana.)  Which means that my big party falls on Celebrate Bisexuality Day; this pleases me, of course.

Anyway.  I was seriously tempted to not go to this (dinner&panel), but I'm ultimately glad I did.

The speakers were uneven.  The first guy said that media representation is important, and said that a lot, but really didn't have a focused mini-speech so I had to force myself not to zone out.  Most of the other speakers were good, though.  Bobbi Keppel is 73(?) year old UU who started doing bi activism oriented toward educating therapists ('cause she's a therapist) but has also become really active around issues of bisexuality and aging (first being asked to represent that contingent about twenty years ago -- "When I was much younger than I am now").  Luigi is a Puerto Rican HIV+ bisexual man.  Lori is a trans and bisexual woman who decided to speak after Robyn Ochs had to cancel last minute due to illness.  She talked about how bi and trans are complementary "not just because they're the letters at the end [of GLBT]" but because of fluidity.  She was a bit hippie-dippie for me, but I also really liked her.  There were one or two unmemorable speakers after that.

Apparently Transcending Boundaries this year is a joint conference with PFLAG's Northeast Regional Conference and is being held in Worcester (hi, Jonah).  It's a Friday-Sunday (Oct. 27-29) and I don't think it would be a big deal to take that Friday off from work.  I have really mixed feelings about going, though.  It could be cool, but I'm really hesitant about workshops and am bad at socializing.

Sidenote: People often talked about a bisexual community, and I was a bit surprised to find myself feeling uncomfortable around the idea of being a part of that.  I often find myself wanting a queerer community around me, so it's not that I have a deep antagonism toward identity politics.  Though I think I am developing something of an antagonism toward that -- because while I want to be surrounded by queer people, I want that to be incidental to everything else.  It occurs to me to to wonder if this is some sort of performance anxiety -- in that I feel like I don't have queer cred because I don't have past queer relationship/sex experience.  (Yes, this elides the fact that my heterosexual experience is similarly nonexistent.)  This occurred to me because I compare everything to WriterCon these days and I was thinking about how defining myself as a fan and inhabiting spaces focusing on that is both similar to and different from identifying as queer and inhabiting queer-specific spaces, and one thing I thought of re: WriterCon is the anxiety around identifying myself as a fan giving my relative lack of production/participation in any of the fannish venues (fanfic, meta, etc.).

I didn't really ping with any of the people I talked to, but I saw Ellyn, which I sense is going to become a theme (I last saw her at the MFA Gay&Lesbian Film Festival.) so I went to say hi afterward.  I was pleased that she had seen me across the room and recognized me.  She was talking to a woman Robin (age 26, BA in Linguistics, living in N. Quincy newly from Colorado, partnered with a biphobic woman, UU, grew up Catholic) and we had good conversation and will hopefully get together at some point.  (She's getting a new phone number in the next day or two but took mine.)  Oh, and Ellyn introduced me saying "Elizabeth was one of my interns a few years ago," which was said entirely innocently of course but just sounds so naughty when phrased quite that way.

Also, Robin wants to write.  Ellyn said there are a lot of opportunities for that around Boston/Somerville, which Tim said to me recently as well.  I didn't have a chance to ask for actual suggestions, though, unfortunately.

*

Speaking of bisexuals (and the in/visibility thereof):

"A recent study of more than 4,000 New York City men found that nearly 10 percent of participants who identified as straight admitted to having gay sex in the past year."
(link seen via kita, where there is plenty of discussion)

On Thursday, hedy told me that http://www.calltodutytour.org was gonna be at the Kennedy School this Tuesday.  Googling it to get an exact time/location, I found "the website of the Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (more commonly, and succinctly, known as the BGLTSA)".  The first line after that self-descriptor was: "Since our initial bathroom study, the number of gender non-specific bathrooms on campus has gone from approximately 40 to approximately 91. See a list of all of the Gender Non-specific Bathrooms around Harvard!"  Oh so Smith.

I took home the Harvard University Gazette on Friday and read some it, including the calendar [I am very excited to have found an online listing], on the train ride home and oh so very reminiscent of Smith -- lots of evening lectures, many of which conflict with each other, plus lots of ones around 4pm or noon/1pm which of course I can't go to.  And my mom's on the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum mailing list, so she forwarded me the most recent e-mail.

( Feel free to help me decide what to attend :) )

We didn't have any bread, so I bought lunch today.  I asked for a calzone and the woman said, "It has meat in it.  Do you want this instead?"  (Gesturing to the peppers and cheese stromboli.)  ♥  The stromboli wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.  The calzone sign said broccoli & pancetta, and having never heard the word "pancetta" I just assumed it was a kind of cheese.  Dictionary.com, AHD, tells me it's "Italian bacon that has been cured in salt and spices and then air-dried."  And gee, isn't this attractive: "Italian, diminutive of pancia, belly"

We got a letter from the Farrs yesterday.  The were ministers at UCN when I was wee and had daughters who bracketed me in age.  We haven't heard much from them in ages, probably since before Phyllis [bestest old lady evar] died, which was when I was in junior high.

"Ron and I are in our sixteenth year at Emmanuel Lutheran UCC in Watertown.  We think you'd both love this lively, progressive church family.  This past year our church voted to become an Open & Affirming, multicultural, multiracial congregation -- which was no surprise because for over a decade our church has attracted a wealth of diverse people from all walks of life, and we are truly enriched by the miracle of each person here.  We also have become a Green Church (earth-friendly, etc.) and are endorsing as many Fair Trade products as we can.  We feel privileged to be the co-pastors of such an intelligent, open-hearted, open-minded family of faith."

My dad says becoming an Open & Affirming church is what all the cool churches are doing nowadays, and it is so true :)  Still makes me happy, though.  The list reminded me so much of First Churches.  And it occurred to me that if they had stayed I would be having recurrent conversations with wisdomeagle about how it made my brain hurt that her ministerpeople experience was so not mine even though we had such similar ministerpeople, and yeah, potentialities are weird.

Speaking of potentialities, classes at Smith are starting up again, so I get to be jealous (though honestly, I'm really not jealous much at all; look at e go, rocking the contentment).

I missed Children's Lit by one year!  *pouts*  (Plus of course mt's modern poetry seminar last semester, which I was bitter about starting like a year ago now.  I'm over it by now, though.)

(Simmons has a graduate program in children's literature?  Oh, and I don't think I ever linked to it, but kidlit & femslash -- discussion in fox1013's LJ.)

I'm also mildly jealous of Catholic Philosophical Tradition.  Except, oops, it's taught by Carol Zaleski.  Not so much.


thistlerose got a Vermont Teddy Bear Company catalogue in the mail today, so she posted a bunch of picture links.  The Wedding Bears come in m/m and f/f as well as m/f, which is pleasing.  I was reminded of the Hallmark kissing bears debacle of February 2002.  [Sidenote: Not being at Smith means no Anti-Valentine's Day party for me :(  But hey, I do have good memories.]  And most are available in 4 different fur colors.

Pride Bear? I, um, may have made him my desktop at work.  I thought of buying some but, um, $80 = meep!  My mom says I should just get a cheap knockoff in the South End.  Oh, and if you wanted to be subtle: cowboy bear ;)

This afternoon I got an LJ comment from Dec. 28/29.  It was a reply to a fic feedback comment I'd left, so no big, but still, weird.

Hey, Ari, up for remixing Sherlock Holmes fic?  remixredux wants you.

( some political talk )

I have delirious love and adoration for the people who care about me sometimes.


And listening to the mp3s i dl-ed from carbonleaf.com?  I've totally heard Desperation Song before.  And here i'd thought Life Less Ordinary was my introduction to them.