"You're So Young"

    
"You're so young," reached my ears, and I wanted to burst out, "Fuck you!" I wanted to scream until my vocal chords burst. At least then I would physically be silent rather than socially. Instead, I smiled and treated it as a compliment.

I walked home anger boiling, tired of hearing that phrase. It reached my ears many times a year. It always seems more an insult than a compliment meant as a phrase to put someone in place. Or at least that's how its been used frequently in my life. I don't believe it was meant that way. But meaning sometimes has little to do with feeling. I felt hurt.

Toxicity grew. It stayed under my skin causing patch red itchiness, which I scratched until it scabbed. I snapped back to policy meetings where I was the tokenized young adult representative asked for violence prevention ideas only to be told that I was too naive; too young. I remembers workforce development teams where, as the youngest person at 30, my suggestions wouldn't work because they were "too out of the box" even though I had over five years of experience. I was sixteen again advocating for a letter in theater against the principals advice of "You're just a kid. You can't make it happen." Each one compounded the other. I was on fire. I was tired. I went to bed.

Tossing, turning, throwing blankets crowded dreams. A dark restlessness grew wanting an explosion. I woke early sad and went to work. Tuning in meant hopefully tuning out. It didn't work.

I left the apartment hoping wandering would replace restlessness. It, too, didn't work. "You're so young" kept repeating. "You're so young. You're so young. You're so young."

I know it was meant as a compliment. It was a comment from a elder meant more for them than for me. I just didn't hear it that way.

Maybe I need to listen better. Maybe I need to grow up. Maybe I need not replace my reaction with a metered response. Maybe I just need to be happy about being the youngest.

Soon, I won't be.

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A Yielding Start

  
Just start and the rest will come. I know this now. It is not something I have always known. I used to be distrustful. I used to wander aimlessly with arms flinging and flailing hoping for a life vest or boat to rescue me; something other than myself to rescue me. It comes, but only sometimes, so I have learned to let go, trust, open up, lend a hand, show up. It doesn't mean I have stopped flinging or flailing. It just means I have found comfort there. The same comfort I find in solid ground and a firm direction. Or the same comfort I find sleeping next to my husband.

Again, I am at a crossroads, a point leading in multiple directions with varied outcomes. I have recently been here. I have actually been here many times in the last few years. each time I feel out trying to find a way. Then, a step or two. I may circle back, feel again, and take a new step. I may stay where I am at too. It all depends on circumstance and intuition. Rarely, it relies on fact. Those are messy and always changing.

I have never found a dead end. Finding one would require me to believe in death, and I am still too catholic to believe end equals death. It is more of a cul-de-sac or a holding patter, something that can be perceived as final or terminus but isn't I guess the Catholics would call it Purgatory, but there is too much negative connotation to that word. Calling it that implies a hellish type of atonement upon arrival. I prefer my atonement while in transit. It allows for a certain amount of course correction.

This crossroads is slightly different. All the others included a certain frame or reference point, some guide post that at least marked space or time or location or some other defining feature. I have ripped out, torn down, and destroyed the guide post that once was here. I mutilated it to the point of unrecognizable, undefinable, unreadable. It happened so slowly that I only realized it was destroyed once I looked for it. Then, it was too late to hope for it to be there. So, instead, I stand firmly waiting for my foot to lead itself or another passerby or just resting in this moment. I don't yet need to move. And if I am not compelled, then why move?

I am excited to see how the next few days, weeks, months, years, decades spread outward, contract inward, spiral. I have a feeling, somewhere between the back of my eyes and in the depths of my belly, that I will be here for a while. I will become momentarily an observer yielding to the tides and currents rather than shaping them. I will travel with the least resistance possible making my self obscure and hopefully obsolete. I shall shrink and expand.

All I have to do is start. Again and again start. The rest will find its way.

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Held Breath, Exhaled Home

  
He was reflective, contemplative, alone on a bench surrounded by budding trees and block-long concrete apartment complexes. His scarf wrapped tightly and pipe in hand, he inhaled and held. He wanted to exhale as the bikes zipped past unseen and the u-bahn unloaded below. Pupils dilating, he saw the microscopic growth of possible flowers blooming. Lungs expanding, he tasted the air laden with rain. He didn't want it to end, so still he held.

The old woman with her paper shopping bag and her yapping dog silk draped over her head walked past. There was no recognizable acknowledgement. There was nothing. He wanted something. He wanted to be seen if only momentarily. He exhaled. Still nothing. She was gone.

He sat on that bench alone as the night grew and the sliver of moon ascended. He finished his bowl with two drawn breaths. Then, he stood, and the world changed. He was no longer alone in the park. He was one of the masses trapped between where he was and where he was going. He liked it there. Almost more than on that bench.

He stalled. He held. Then, he went home.

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Berliner's Spine Popped

        
He approached me casually in German asking something of me I couldn't understand and yet obviously flirting. That is a language beyond words. The gentle bodily intonations that spark and catch on receivers unseen and universal. I smiled.

He spoke again in English. This time more animated expressing back pain from manual labor. His whit tufts of hair perfectly matched his loud red shirt and scuzzy black pants as he asked for my help. I obliged smilingly and stood.

He turned me around and ordered me to stay, arms firmly planted at my sides. We stood back to back. He pushed his arms through mine as he chuckled slightly and pushed on my back. I hoisted him. Spine popped. He smiled. Danke.

He spoke of art and pot and wooden pipes perfect for smoking and wanting to share. It smelled of tobacco and dried longing. I opened my hand and received. We both smiled.

He left the cafe and hopped on his bike. As he bent over to unlock the lock, I was greed by striped underwear and thick white legs gazing at me from a gigantic tear. Unaware he smiled. Aware I smiled. Together we understood.

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Whistleblowing Review

 
He said he would finally give me a review after three years of no reviews on my final day of work. I was excited to finally know what he thought of my performance. I was nervous too. I hadn't had a review because he was afraid of me. I scare people in authority or in supervisory roles. I see though their lies and misdirections.

I sat at the conference table taping my last receipts as I waited for him to arrive. His boss joked about not being reimbursed because I was too late in submitting them. We didn't have a joking kind of relationship. He took and misappropriated grant funds on two grants they received based on my work. I shot him a glance of "Back the fuck off". He nervously giggled and said he was kidding.

He was twenty minutes late. Not a great start. We went into the small  office for the closing interview. I anticipated what would be said of me. I was a pain in his ass and a whistleblower.

"I didn't have time to get to your review," he said.

He knew about my departure for a month. I don't know why I expected him to do his job. I had been picking up pieces of his work for two years. It is why I blew the whistle. Only the whistle was never heard. He was a "nice" guy. People liked him. That outweighed him forgetting to file a restraining order against a former employee that threatened to come to work and kill me because "I was a fucking faggot and was going to burn in hell."

I stood up and said, "If you don't have my review then there is no point to this meeting." I excused myself and left.

He got a promotion after that. They really liked him. He knew how to take care of the problem employees: quietly push them out.

I saw him a year ago at a meeting. He looked the same: clueless and white. I smiled. While my road had been and was rocky and undulating, I had conviction and ethics. I didn't need his approval. For if he approved, it meant I too was clueless and white. White? Sure. But clueless? Well...maybe sometimes. But that is a different story.

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Fact Lost, Emotions Burst

  
We sat around a table square in shape and posture. It wasn't about exchange. It was about proof and facts. I screamed inside confined by walls unseen and demanded by power. It was too much. I silenced myself fearing voice would sway confidence.

They were looking for a victim. They were looking to shed blame onto someone else. My silence proved and opening. "Delay, delay, delay," they said.

I burst. I exploded. And with it screams of emotion spilled. Fact was lost.

I was furloughed the next day.

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Labyrinthine Corridors Snaking

   

We went to the sex club looking like two trannies, but one of us was a bio-girl. She was my girlfriend, and we were looking for some casual open sex. It was time to try something new. 

We wandered the labyrinthine corridors snaking our way through dungeons with men bent over being fucked by strap-ons, MTFs making out in corners, and women cuffed to walls being spanked with riding whips. Each turn offered a different encounter. We kept walking. 

We stopped at a cushioned bench beckoning us to recline. She unsnapped her red and black bustier revealing her perfectly shaped c-cup breasts. He nipples teased calling for a flick and a lick. We began. A crowd grew. 

It was exhilarating and titillating making out in front of a handful of men. Pants unzipped and semi-hard cocks were pulled out. We wanted more, so she pointed to one of the men and batted her lashes. He read her signal correctly and approached pants still closed. She reached out and grabbed. he obliged letting her unbutton his jeans and stroke his growing hard on. 

The vodka swirled in my head. The fuzziness expanding matched my blond frizzy wig falling off my head. My fishnets caught on one of the silver sequins on her heels causing a ripple of holes up my leg. The ripple found its way between us as I reached out for his cock. She presented it to my lips, and he backed away, zipped up, and proceeded on. 

The crowd dwindled. They wanted only her. They wanted the illusion of possibility and exoticism. They couldn't hand the touch of a drag queen. The always present stubble was a too tactile reminder I had a dick. 

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