ems_lotus

but i don't feel like writing it down so here's an interesting email convo with some girl i hardly know from high school that wanted to interview me on my 'coming out' story.   oh, and just so i know when i look back.. i'm currently in port townsend an hour off the coast of seattle, two days ago i lost my best friend , gained a new one, who ended up being famous and a man and really awesome, almost died,  and today was approached with the most exciting job offer I've ever recieved.. to have my own studio, thousands of dollars of photography equipment, lighting shtuff, wardrobe, and take pictures of pretty girls.  Robert is having to travel too much so he needs a new photographer and um, thought of me, so I'm going to fake it til i make it.   booyah.    this year has been so crazy/hard/wierd  .  thank god for adams and travis's , they filled up my soul in a way I can't even begin to explain.  they kept me from being sucked dry by aenas hollys angelas and everyone else.  they fed me berries and gave me warm clothes and cds to listen too.  they travelled by trainhopping and by van, toured with willie nelson and cat power and the flaming lips.  they told me i'm beautiful i'm strong i'm good and i believed them.  there was something in their eyes that said they didn't want to take from me.  and they gave so much that it lasted me months of despair and solitude.  and now here i am, on the front drive of my parent's new house watching the sun set over the bay and watching the moon peek out behind trippy trees.  and i am warm because he gave me his vest and i am happy becaus i am listening to mt. egypt and travis graves is probably the coolest most ALIVE human being I have ever met. and i could sleep in his arms and never feel wierd, and know i still want to live my life out with women because that is just the way i am. 

i guess i did feel like writing it down,

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: ♀emilyॐ 's brussel sprouts
To: FireCracker04
Date: Jun 30, 2009 12:50 PM
Subject: RE: Hi Emily!


Hey lady, no problem.. yea I'm still up in Washington so this may be the best way.. here goes,

1. Ocuppation: Gypsy. Was in Americorps running a youth-run coffee shop/training facility but left that, so now am just vagabonding around until going back to college (hum state) in the fall.. so I guess you could say student. and organic farmer.

2. I was 18 when I came out, and I'm 23 now so 5 years

3. It wasn't as hard as some coming out stories I've heard.. horror stories about getting kicked out of parent's house and such.. I didn't come out fully to my entire family right away... until they got to know my "roomate" (gf) Holly... my family is catholic so I had to ease them into it. My dad said "it's just a phase" but I don't think he thinks that anymore. They would all rather me be with men but have mostly accepted that that's not going to happen..

4. Yes, I've had a problem when I was 18.. got beat up pretty bad actually, they got me on resisting arrest when I had taken a drug but they dropped all charges when they realized they had been in the wrong. there were three cops on one tiny me and I think they were just bored. My mom had called them to come out and maybe take me to find out what I had taken because I wouldn't come in the house.. they took me to jail instead and I had to come down in a jail cell. I hadn't done anything wrong except not want to get in the cop car because I was scared. So, I have a pretty negative view on the police force even though my dad worked in the prison system his whole life.

5. I have never known anyone victim to a hate crime

6. Yes, I had fears like anyone else but it wasn't overpowering.. the fears came years later when I realized I was too "different" for some of my closest friends to relate to.. but as the years go by, I think they are realizing more and more how similar my relationships are to their heterosexual ones..

7. Um, hmm.. well, my mom's side is Russian and she came from China before she had my mom.. and my dad's side is hispanic/indian so that's cool.. can't really think of a story though..

8. To be an effective law enforcement officer- always use some degree of empathy, and realization that not everything is as it seems. There are always intricacies to every story.. like, those police that hurt me may have thought I was some criminal girl, into bad things.. but it was actually my first time taking a drug, and it was an accident, and my life would have been different if they had just taken a second to be empathetic and look at the situation as a whole..


Hope this helps!
Em

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: FireCracker04
To: ♀emilyॐ 's brussel sprouts
Date: Jun 29, 2009 9:43 PM
Subject: RE: Hi Emily!


Hi Girl would it be ok if you answered some of these question for my culture project for my academy.. Only if you have time this week. I really wanted to interview in person but I think youre still out of town right? Anyway thank you sooo much!

-Lei



1.Occupation?
2.How long have you been out?
3.Through the years have you noticed much change in acceptance? I.E. How hard was it to come out?
4.Have you or anyone you know ever had problems with law enforcement and what happened?
5.Do you know anyone that was a victim of a hate crime? How do you feel the police handled it, or did they even report it?
6.Did you have any fears before you came out? What were they?
7.Do you have any interesting stories about your culture?
8.What would I need to know about this culture that will help me be a more effective law enforcement officer?
 

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

The Litany against Fear, from "Dune" by Frank Herbert.
 

He liked to feel my fingers in his hair.

So he pulled them off me, wove a wreath of them,
and wears it at parades and contests,
my dying fingers with their kitchen smell
interlocked around his  sunny curls.
Sometimes he rests on me awhile.
Aside from that, he seems to have lost interest.

Its wasn't to preserve my 'virtue' that I ran!
What's a nymph like me
to do with something that belongs to men?
It's just I wasn't in the mood.
And he didn't care.  It scared me.

The little goatleg boys can't even talk,
but still they wait till they can smell you feel
like humping with a goatleg in the woods,
rolling and scratching and laughing-they can laugh!-
poor little hairycocks, I miss them.
When we were tired of that kind of thing
my sister nymphs and I would lie around,
and talk, and tease, and stroke, and chase, and stretch
out panting for another talk, and sleep
in the warm shadows side by side
under the leaves, and all was as we pleased.
   And then the mortal hunters of the deer,
the poachers, the deciduous shepherd-boys:
they'd stop and gape and stare with owly eyes,
not even hoping, even when I smiled...
Now every spring, like daffodils, those boys.
But once for forty years I met one man
up on the sheep-cropped hills of Arcady.
I kissed his wrinkles, the ravines of time
I cannot enter, gazing in his eyes, whose dar
dimmed and deepened, seeing less always, till he died.
I came to his burial.  Among the villagers
I walked behind his grey-haired wife.
She could have been Time's wife, my grandmother.
  And then there were my brothers of the streams,
O my river-lovers, with their silver tongues
so sweet to thirst!  the cool, prolonged delight
of a river moving in me, of his flow and flow and flow!
   They send to my roots their kindness, even now,
and slowly I drink it from my mother's hands.

  So that was all I knew, until he came,
hard, bright, burning, dry, intent:
one will, instead of wantings meeting;
no center but himself, the Sun. A god
is like that , I suppose; he has to be.
But I never asked to meet a god,
let alone make love with one!  Why did he think
I wanted to?  And when I told him no,
what harm did he think it did him?
It can't be hard to find a girl agape
to love a big blonde blue-eyed god.
He said so, said "You're all alike."
He's seen us all; he knows.  So, why me?

  I guess that maybe it was time for me
 to give up going naked, and get dressed.
And it took a god to make me do it.
Mother never could.  So I put on
my brown, ribbed stockings, and my underwear
of silky cambium, and my green dress.
And I became my clothing, being what I wear.

  I run no more; the winds dance me.
My sister, seamstress, sovereign comes
up from the dark below the roots
to mend my clothes in April.  And I stand
in my green patience as the winder rains.

  He honors me, he says, to wear
my fingers turning brown and brittle, clenched
in the bright hair of his head.  He sings.

My silence crowns the song.

-Buffalo Gals (1987)