Ejaculating Jealousy

It is a Friday in July and all I can think about is sperm. As a child, I was told that if I drank enough milk each day, my bones would grow tall and strong. If I flossed between my teeth every morning and night, my gums would be healthy and cavities would be a stranger to me. Now I am all grown up and I do my best to eat well and take care of this body that is with me until I am gone. It should be no mystery or surprise to me that no matter how many pounds of spinach I eat or gallons of milk I drink each week, I will never produce sperm. I will not wake up one Wednesday in November and find that I have dripped sperm from inside me into my underwear. This will never happen. Because of this, and for several other reasons, I have become severely jealous of semen.

“We weren’t even trying and she’s due in December,” he said to me. My friend, who comes with his own sperm, has gotten his girlfriend pregnant. I want to feel excitement for this joyous, yet accidental, achievement. But all I feel is sadness.

I never use the pull out method. I thrust my clit as far as I can into my girlfriend’s vagina and leave it there allowing all my female juices to flow inside her. We do not use a condom and neither of us practice any forms of birth control. We are not careful. We have yet to engage in safe sex.

I try every time we have sex. I think about Tallulah with red, curly hair to match mine with big, blue eyes and freckles borrowed from my girlfriend’s genes. I think about going for walks with tiny Tallulah on my back as my girlfriend sings songs about fireflies or the ocean. I want to get her pregnant. I want sperm. I want to have an accidental baby. I want our cells to collide to create a new life with lungs and ribs and eyes and fingernails. So, what can I eat or how many sit-ups should I do each day or what types of vitamins must I be ingesting in order to make some sperm inside me? Tell me. Tell me. Please?

There was a time during my twenties when I decided to experiment with my sexuality. I dated a man. My mother was very confused. I must admit I was too. It was my first time emotionally and physically engaging with someone of the opposite sex. I worried people were going to stare at me when we kissed in public. No one ever did. This man that I dated came with his own sperm. I was slightly resentful, though never told him of this. He had so much power. We had sex together and yet, he always got to sign his name at the end. Sperm is like a fancy signature at the bottom of a really important document. I may have written most of the words, but he claimed it all as his own at the end.

It didn’t last very long because, well, I’m gay. But it was during this time that I got to experience what it was like to worry about becoming pregnant. During the course of our relationship, I must have purchased at least ten pregnancy tests. I always thought I was pregnant because we weren’t careful. Because he was allergic to latex and everything that condoms were apparently made from. Because maybe deep down I wanted to experience one of the many luxuries of being straight. I never got pregnant. We broke up and that was the last time my partner came with sperm. I haven’t experimented since.

I have a really good imagination. When I was younger, I had four imaginary friends: Chi-Chi, Lillian, LuLu, and Stanley. We played together in a world where trees lifted out of their roots and the sky could turn upside down and become a place where feet could walk. I still believe that if I want something bad enough, I will get it. I want sperm. It seems unfair to watch others around me get pregnant, sometimes deciding not to continue with it, while I stand beside my girlfriend on the sidelines.

There will always be a lot of planning involved. When, and if, we are ready, we will go shopping for sperm. Learn about the containers they came in and pick which one sounds best. Harvard education. Six feet tall. Blond hair. An artist. We decide. There will never be a night when I am beside my partner, limbs intricately tangled together, where we wonder if this is the time. We will never have an accident.

I’m still doing my research. Asking around. Searching for herbs to enter into my diet that may make my wish come true. We can practice, which can be fun and exciting, yet also realistic. I love being a woman. I value all my parts: my curves, breasts, thighs, hips, my clitoris, my uterus, my all-encompassing vagina. But, I’ll never get to make that announcement.

“We weren’t even trying and she’s due in December!”

the mathematics of oneself: when two become one or searching for the divisor

I was not always two. I started out as one and found myself fondling numbers all throughout high school and beyond. My head turned toward two’s with necks curved like entangled giraffes all twisted and curious about the other’s tongue texture. I thought I wanted to be a two because one felt so lonely. One never talked back to me. When I went to see a movie, as the credits rolled, there was no one beside me to wipe my cheek or admire the amount of names that went into creating its content or simply, explain why it ended in such a way. I began to develop number envy. This developed slowly and became more profound after my first break-up. My first–a detail which assures that there were others.

When one becomes two, then four or five, allowing room for addition and oftentimes, subtraction. When four or five leads to a headache or inability to balance names and locations. If you’re lucky, you immediately move to a new state where there is no chance of running into all the numbers and letters. Generally though, this is the time we learn how small this world is (with emphasis on the lesbian community). I am not much of a mathematician. I always use a calculator—never relying on my ability to gather a correct sum.

Maybe I should start at the beginning. Valentine’s Day advertises itself as a celebration of love and cacao seeds, but really it is a reminder of numbers. Watching hands no longer swing freely at people’s sides, they become immersed within the fleshy weave of other fingers. Flowers are everywhere. Suddenly, you develop an allergy toward happiness. You are one in a world full of two’s. The first time I swallowed a plus sign, it remained inside me undigested for six and a half years. My two inspired me to come out of the closet—which I never really understood to be inside. We merged our letters together. My name was unofficially changed to ___andAimee. I was part of the two-club and no longer took phone calls from one’s. I lived in multiples. Multiple dating with other two’s, dinner parties where we played games with already-created partners, and movies were never seen without the other. I noticed my preference of films altering. I read less—not a two activity. I gained weight because time spent walking was replaced by time spent sitting next to my two entwined like the number eight without knowledge of whose limbs were whose.

Slowly, I developed a craving for one. Two gave me cramps—my fingers were no longer free. My lips grew chapped from kissing. And I never watched the credits anymore because making-out grew precedence over plot and commitment of storyline. I was living in a world of beginnings and middles with no end. I yearned for the end. And it did. Two became one after years of combined bank statements and furniture investments, apartment renting, address changes, and the build-up of body trust. When the sadness subsided, there was a feeling of relief. Now, I can watch documentaries and movies based upon life-altering events rather than plots doused in fake blood and haunted houses. I can read all the books I’ve missed out on because of time spent having sex and being loved and having someone to talk to and laugh at my jokes and understand my mood swings and— I forgot how lonely one can be.

After many years searching through two’s and touching fingers that wrongly weaved mine and lips that felt like winter—all cold and slippery, I found something beyond a two. A divisor: one that separates into me without leaving a remainder. Evenly measured and flavored. An eruption of numbers and symbols. Not a reflection of me, rather a giant window, open and wide, displaying an array of weather forecasts and surprise sunsets.

With her, I am learning rather than settling. However, in order to unearth this divisor, I had to find completion in my one. One is defined as a single person or thing, taking the place of a group. To be able to feel comfort and safety with others, of course we must possess it within ourselves. I needed to be able to laugh at my own jokes and find myself interesting. I had to be able to enjoy a meal created and consumed by me. Most of all, I needed to find my sexiness, treat my skin to some respectful and deep admiration, and make my body feel loved by me. And when I did (and I must continue to do so, because there are days I forget), I found my divisor.

excerpt.

each morning

i will look outside my biggest window

and count each cloud, recognizable as a shape

the others, i will use as imaginary firewood

to burn the bad thoughts in my head

sylvia.

I am thinking about ovens today. Heads shaped as timepieces or giant screams smeared into the thickness of a preheated listening circle resembling self-cleaning cooker.

I think back to when I lived in Massachusetts during a summer writing program that allowed me entrance into Smith College for a brief, but rewarding stay. I claimed a bench early on that sat below me each day, sometimes more than once. I thought about carving my name in it–as I tend to do with benches and things I really want to understand better–but I realized my name was not important. I didn’t need to scar another bench to illustrate my attraction to it. So, I sat and thought of her.

Smith College. Northampton, Massachusetts. Land of Sylvia Plath. Or, University in which she placed her tiny poems into the bricks and ivy and school desks.

I thought about her as I walked each day. To and from class. Through bookshops. As I drank my coffee in the mornings (and sometimes afternoons too). I thought about her as I fell in love with a new shape. I thought about her as I reconfigured my voice and purpose.

On March 16th, Sylvia’s son (with poet Ted Hughes) Nicholas Hughes, killed himself. Just like his mom did forty-six years ago and just like his step-mom did almost forty years to the day. I know nothing about this man who lived inside Sylvia for nine months. Who stirred inside her internal fluids while she wrote poetry and felt sorrow. I do know that there is a sadness felt when rope is used to end lives, rather than hold something in place.

I used to want to be just like Sylvia. And Anne (Sexton) and all the beautiful poets that expressed themselves so vividly, yet could not keep themselves from leaving.

I used to think that was how poets were supposed to feel. Sometimes, I still do. But, like the best poetry that creates itself through ink and fingertips, there is so much more to read between the lines.

So, keep creating lines. Singing them. Slinging them. Stretching them through bent fingernails and screamed collarbones. And celebrate creativity when you can. Are there some words inside you right now? As you read this? Write them:______________

___________________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________________

A Place For Writers

Tuesday night, I went to a writer’s expo sponsored by the Boulder Writer’s Alliance.

I put on my “nice clothes” and pulled back my crazy red hair and tried to magically turn my red converse sneakers (the only shoes I own) into fancy-leather-woman shoes.

I entered a room full of real writers. Rather, TECHNICAL writers. Slightly disheveled men and women with bright white stickers below their shoulders exclaiming their names in black marker.

I pretended I wasn’t me: Woody Allen-esque woman with too many stutters and not enough full sentences. Knowing what I want to say and yet, something disturbing it on the way down from brain to tongue.

The room was set up in round tables with tiny signs declaring the topic touched on: Media, Creative Writing: how to write a mystery, …..

I entered a table full of women wearing glasses of wine and wedding rings with the sign: FREELANCE.

The woman facilitating it was a copywriter. A writer who sells, she said. I quietly sat, in my imaginary high heels, thrusting my chest out to boost my self esteem. Kind of like fluffing my feathers, if I was a bird. Instead, I fluff my cleavage–which I also pretend I have.

Many women were curious about what a copywriter was–how to become a writer–how do I know what to write?–how much do you charge?—questions that yielded short answers and lost women.

My brain made a noise. A sound of ingredients thrown into a metal bowl. Wooden spoon sifting the materials around. Shoving them against each other. A rattle and splatter of calories against a wall.

I had something to say.

Umm……I’m a freelance writer…..and…..what I’m having trouble with…..what I…..well…….basically…..I have no health insurance and I wonder how someone who essentially works for themselves and freelances work out can feel insured or covered in some way.

Deep breath. Lots of words. Did they come out right? Breathe. Breathe. Good job!

And the woman with red lips and visible bra straps who worked full time as a copywriter and owned her own small business and was important enough to have a name tag with a shiny gold star sticker on it said:

Well……I have a husband so……

*          *          *          *

I struggle with identity.

I struggle with being in a room with other writers and wondering if I am an impostor. Do I write enough? Is it valid? Decent?

Will I ever make a living as a writer?

Needless to say, the Writer’s Expo was not the right venue for me. It was geared toward technical writers and the contacts I was hoping to make were not interested in a performance artist/poet/erotica writer/ experimental prose pusher.

So, I grabbed my small red bookbag (posing as an expensive clutch that held a dozen credit cards and enough cash to fill my little car with gasoline) and walked out in my red converse high heeled sneakers.

peter, paul, and mary and thomas

* Inspired by news event on Sept. 10th, 2008 in Philly, PA where 26 y.o. man, Thomas Scantling, entered a subway train with his 5 y.o son and brutally beat an innocent passenger dozing on the train with a hammer.

They sang:

if I had a hammer–

to celebrate civil rights
anthem of 1949 and above

as clock alarms time
to strike again.

They sang:
I’d hammer in the morning
[eight thirty two a.m.

no need for interference]

I’d hammer in the evening
[he cannot sleep through it now]

All over this land
[largest city in Pennsylvania,
sixth most populated in the U.S.
forty ninth most populated in the world]

I’d hammer out danger
[on a subway,
city of Brotherly Love]

I’d hammer out a warning
[some of them noticed, but
nobody told]

I’d hammer out love between my brothers and sisters.
[they would not say a word]

All over this land
[attempted murder, assault—
could they not say a word?]

They sang:
if I had a bell
[first, he used it on himself]

I’d ring it in the morning
[he was sleeping—
weight of hammer against REM too
deep to stitch up]

I’d ring it in the evening
[some of them noticed, but
nobody told]

All over this land
[city of Brotherly Love]

I’d ring out danger
[were they afraid to be the victim?]

I’d ring out a warning
[history of rape, robbery, violation of bodies]

I’d ring out love between my brothers and sisters
[city of Brotherly Love]

All over this land
[they would not say a word/could they not say a word?]

They sang:
If I had a song
[his backpack held the weapon]

I’d sing it in the morning
[to mistake a spike for skin]

I’d sing it in the evening
[would not say a word]

All over this land
[City of Brotherly Love]

I’d ring out danger
[five year old son, sitting
counting the blood spills]

I’d ring out a warning
[not say a word]

I’d ring out love between my brothers and my sisters
[city of Brotherly Love]

All over this land
[as audience watches]

They sang:
Well I’ve got a hammer
[held tightly to his stability]

And I’ve got a bell
[at what point did he awaken?]

And I’ve got a song to sing
[they are all the victim now]

All over this land
[country of
equal opportunity]

It’s the hammer of justice
[bet he’ll plead insanity]

It’s the bell of freedom
[bet they’ll say they misunderstood]

It’s the song about love between my brothers and my sisters
[history of rape, robbery, violation of bodies]

All over this land
[all over this land]

Lionel Enthusiast III/ part two

Lionel Enthusiast III