Pandemic Revelations of Young Queerness
Last night, somewhere around midnight, I came across a TikTok of a Tweet. I won't take this time to develop the intricacies of this format, mostly because nothing in the video mattered to me except the tweet and that someone else thought it relevant. But it is interesting that this is the way I am consuming media now, like all the methods of social media are rivers that somehow end up in the ocean of an app for Zoomers.
This was the tweet:
This was the tweet:
I get a lot of #lgbtq content on TikTok, because the algorithm is infamously clairvoyant, but this post was so absolutely meaningful to me because it took something very personal, very unresolved in me, and condensed it into approximately twenty words. I have tried periodically to write about this part of my life, when I was living it and in the five years since, but it's not easy to write about something that is still so confusing, that hasn't gained any clarity in my heart.
I had a very real and very complicated homo-erotic friendship in my freshman year of high school. It was so gay, in fact, that I wrote endless pieces of heartfelt poetry about it and once, in 2017 on a bus in China, a very long journal entry. I have a computer documents folder named "Some Gay Shit From 2012" that contains this poetry, which I leave here for your viewing pleasure. 
I checked the date on this. May 5th, 2012, 1:58 am. I actually remember this night distinctly because I had gone to see her boyfriend's composition premiere. She had sat between us in the audience, holding both of our hands at once. Believe me when I say that I do not demonize her for that.
Clearly, past writing projects (2012-present) have not resolved any of it within me. It is still so significant to me that after reading the tweet, I looked through the depths of Facebook to find a photo that would prove that this relationship was as gay as I remembered. I couldn't find it, but I know there exists a photo of me and this girl holding hands in the hallway. The photo is taken from behind, mostly overstuffed backpack. It was friendship in the loosest sense, meaning the tightest sense, the closest one.
I have often thought that this was one of the purest loves I have ever felt, despite its confusion and complexities. This friendship ended for unknown reasons, although I can say that I know it had something to do with an abusive relationship I was in. I think she chose him over me, but I never can be sure. It is a conversation we have never had. I do not resent anything before this and this betrayal is somehow less important to me than demystifying the four years before it. When all of us are trapped in our homes, worrying about people we haven't spoken to in years, I am thinking of her. And I do wish I could talk to her.
Period Drama, Period Drama, and Everything I Have Worried About Today
I have recently been in a period drama phase. I have watched nearly two seasons of "When Calls The Heart," a Hallmark Channel TV show about early twentieth century Canada, a coal mining town, and a wealthy heiress-turned-schoolteacher. It is a very bad show that I have enjoyed very much. There is a "handsome" Mountie in it, which my mother noted has the potential for endless jokes. Before I found this show, I was watching "Anne With An E" because of my love of Anne of Green Gables. I'm reading Emma (sort of). I believe I am trying to escape my current living situation by thrusting myself into various foreign eras. So far it has worked marvelously.
The second section of this blog post is supposed to be about my menstrual period drama, which to be frank is neatly non-existent, but I thought it would make a good title.
The second section of this blog post is supposed to be about my menstrual period drama, which to be frank is neatly non-existent, but I thought it would make a good title.
Break-ups
On the day of my first real break-up, I went to a tea party for local people who had applied to Smith College. I wore a little skirt and didn't really cry. I was ready for sexual liberation. I tried on a corset and let a man spank me in his old car in a parking lot. My mother sometimes asks me what I did as a teenager that she does not know about, but I do not think she would be surprised by this one. We are all eighteen at some point.
In the next significant relationship, there were two break-ups. All I remember about the first was him trying to slash my tires and me yelling, "suck a dog dick" out the window at him. He never spoke to me again, so I infiltrated his online chat group and pretended to be named Robin. The second time we dated I broke up with him when he told me he was seeing a 17-year-old. He was 23.
In the aftermath of that relationship, I immediately started dating a man who was horribly swept up in my psyche of that era. He wouldn't want me to talk to him, but I wish I could apologize. When he broke up with me, I was devastated for weeks. I asked him to have a conversation with me. I told him I could've loved him and he told me his friends said he seemed much happier without me. I have no doubt about that. I shouldn't have been dating.
This time around I know I made the right decision. No one deserves a relationship with someone they cannot trust not to disappear at random. No one deserves someone who says they're not sure they can love you with their whole heart and then continues to date you for three more months in a half-assed manner because you were too loving to let them fuck off. It was a lot like waiting for my dog to die. I feared it for years and by the time it happened I was relieved. And I came home to her absence and I cried. But I was glad we were all cut loose.
In the next significant relationship, there were two break-ups. All I remember about the first was him trying to slash my tires and me yelling, "suck a dog dick" out the window at him. He never spoke to me again, so I infiltrated his online chat group and pretended to be named Robin. The second time we dated I broke up with him when he told me he was seeing a 17-year-old. He was 23.
In the aftermath of that relationship, I immediately started dating a man who was horribly swept up in my psyche of that era. He wouldn't want me to talk to him, but I wish I could apologize. When he broke up with me, I was devastated for weeks. I asked him to have a conversation with me. I told him I could've loved him and he told me his friends said he seemed much happier without me. I have no doubt about that. I shouldn't have been dating.
This time around I know I made the right decision. No one deserves a relationship with someone they cannot trust not to disappear at random. No one deserves someone who says they're not sure they can love you with their whole heart and then continues to date you for three more months in a half-assed manner because you were too loving to let them fuck off. It was a lot like waiting for my dog to die. I feared it for years and by the time it happened I was relieved. And I came home to her absence and I cried. But I was glad we were all cut loose.
Rowhouse Ghosts
I can never get the kitchen floor clean. It is a tiny space, maybe less than 50 square feet, but the level of grime it accrues is equivalent to that of a concert hall. Tiny shards of glass escape continually from underneath the oven, as though the Borrowers are having hundreds of raucous dinner parties under there, throwing the wine glasses on the floor over and over as I scramble to sweep them up. The space under the refrigerator is a similar story: raspberries come rolling out by the bushel as I take the yellow broom aggressively across the tiles. My bare feet pick up some of the detritus, but I manage to get most of it into the dustpan and into the garbage.
Though frustrating, this part is not the issue. The problem arises as I consider how to mop the floor. We have two sponge mops, a Swiffer Wetjet, and a dry Swiffer. We also have hands and knees (mine). Using the sponge mops means chancing the probably-dirty sponges already attached to them and dirtying the newly-cleaned sink to wet them. We never have the right Swiffer mop pads, and even when we do, the pads barely collect a fifth of the dirt on the floor. Even on hands and knees, I can't get the floor clean. I use lots of hot water, soap, any chemicals I can find. I use sponges and paper towels and microfiber cloths. I get my legs covered in mud. I keep wiping and wiping, but the cloths keep coming back dirty.
Down on the ground, I can tell our floor stinks. It smells like old fish and also like diarrhea. I use white vinegar and disinfectant spray and water. It seems a permanent scent. Somehow, the floor keeps producing dirt. It is as though the dirt rises up from underneath the tiles, from the foundation of this 1875 rowhouse. It is like a haunting--the ghosts in my house don't force blood out from within the walls or slime us with some ectoplasmic goo. Instead, they push dirt through the grout into our kitchen, laughing as they watch me scrub and scrub.
The main issue here is that no one else in my house seems concerned about the uncleanliness. I have never seen either roommate with a mop, and when I first moved in and asked about floor cleaner, they regarded me with a vague suspicion. As I try and fail repeatedly to clean our house, I leave no trace of my efforts. The ever-replenishing floor dirt refuses to betray my attempts at housekeeping. For all my roommates know, I am the floor ghost, throwing mud into the kitchen in handfuls. Either way, they don't really care. If there is a floor ghost, so be it, says my roommates. We will live with blackened bare feet and with pieces of gold foil stuck to the floor. We are renters. It's not really our problem! Maybe some new ghost will come along and figure out that Swiffer Wetjet. Maybe it will be me.
Though frustrating, this part is not the issue. The problem arises as I consider how to mop the floor. We have two sponge mops, a Swiffer Wetjet, and a dry Swiffer. We also have hands and knees (mine). Using the sponge mops means chancing the probably-dirty sponges already attached to them and dirtying the newly-cleaned sink to wet them. We never have the right Swiffer mop pads, and even when we do, the pads barely collect a fifth of the dirt on the floor. Even on hands and knees, I can't get the floor clean. I use lots of hot water, soap, any chemicals I can find. I use sponges and paper towels and microfiber cloths. I get my legs covered in mud. I keep wiping and wiping, but the cloths keep coming back dirty.
Down on the ground, I can tell our floor stinks. It smells like old fish and also like diarrhea. I use white vinegar and disinfectant spray and water. It seems a permanent scent. Somehow, the floor keeps producing dirt. It is as though the dirt rises up from underneath the tiles, from the foundation of this 1875 rowhouse. It is like a haunting--the ghosts in my house don't force blood out from within the walls or slime us with some ectoplasmic goo. Instead, they push dirt through the grout into our kitchen, laughing as they watch me scrub and scrub.
The main issue here is that no one else in my house seems concerned about the uncleanliness. I have never seen either roommate with a mop, and when I first moved in and asked about floor cleaner, they regarded me with a vague suspicion. As I try and fail repeatedly to clean our house, I leave no trace of my efforts. The ever-replenishing floor dirt refuses to betray my attempts at housekeeping. For all my roommates know, I am the floor ghost, throwing mud into the kitchen in handfuls. Either way, they don't really care. If there is a floor ghost, so be it, says my roommates. We will live with blackened bare feet and with pieces of gold foil stuck to the floor. We are renters. It's not really our problem! Maybe some new ghost will come along and figure out that Swiffer Wetjet. Maybe it will be me.