Kulture Klatch
Jacqueline has been writing personal observations and stories for the L-Word for 5 years or so, and we've got a bunch of them here, listed by date and title (you didn't know they had titles? they do now). If you remember one you'd like to see, tell us at The L-Word and we'll get it in here
- Seriously, December 2001
- Sex, April 2002
- Out, May 2002
- Abort, September 2002
- Touch, November 2002
- Fierce, January 2003
- Abuse, February 2003
- Queen, March 2003
- Rude, September 2003
- Marriage, March 2004
- Youth, July 2004
- Message, August 2004
- Halloween, October 2004
- Write, April 2005
- Journalism, June 2005
- Dia de los Muertos, November 2005
- Fear, December 2005
- Genetic Engineering, September 2007
Seriously
KultureKlatch – December, 2001 – [Seriously]
Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
Recently I embark on my eighth annual journey to the volcano Shasta. I still haven’t seen any Lemurians. Sleeping on Shasta isn’t just a camping trip, although this year I bring some marshmallows. This is really a pilgrimage to the power place where I am taught. The magik of Shasta’s influence begins the moment I leave my home.
As I approach Willow Creek or near there, I see a woman on the side of the road giving the universal sign language for, I’d really like to get a ride. At first I think: what if she’s going all the way to Redding; then I have company on what is preferably a solo journey. Being a bear I’m not sure I want company. In an instant I hear an old phrase from the seventies; women pick up women, a law that is never disobeyed. My car pulls over. She’s going all the way to Redding.
I don’t really get a good look at her before she gets in. Her baggage is small. Her name is Seriously; she’s twenty-five and just off the lines with the Mattole Forest Defenders. She’s been on the road since the age of nineteen. At that age she sits in a park, gets the urgent message that something is wrong, she must travel. She travels to central South America and now around the country doing this and that for this and that cause such as the Mattole, such as the needs of the Hopi and Navajo people. She learns quickly, engages, deeply, travels freely. I talk about the need to be in my own bed.
She speaks of being a warrior. She tells a story about being on a beach and confronted by a man with a gun. He wants her knapsack and her guitar. Neither is really of any value to him, but definitely to her. Sometimes, she says, she likes to win so she engages in a mighty physical struggle with this guy; she gives it her all and in the end has to surrender, sort of. She gets up, says: okay you want the contents of my bag, here. She throws at him the bag’s entire contents one item at a time, the last is a box of colored pencils. He lowers his gun and tells her the story of how it came to be that he robs people for a living. After he goes, she’s overcome by intense fear.
We talk for some three hours all the way into Redding. She uses the word warrior a lot. I use the word transformation a lot. We talk of the need for a community of elders and warriors and wanderers and gatherers. This reminds me of many evening conversations in a lesbian boarding house in Northampton, Massachusetts in the seventies. We make this a lesbian boarding house because my friend Marion becomes the housekeeper and thereafter whenever a room becomes available she makes sure to rent to a lesbian. No meetings, no plan making; just do it and it gets done. Seriously likes that story.
When we sit in the car, we’re the same height. When we stop in Redding, she gets out and is much taller than I am. From this view, she looks old as in from another time. In the car, her presence is light as air. In the lot, her presence is that of, well, a warrior. She offers me some herbs primarily lavender. Then she offers me a deck of angel cards from which to select. I draw sisterhood. She draws freedom. The words are in Spanish.
My last glimpse of her is when she dons a black wide-brimmed hat with a fringe of dangling cloth balls. I’m told later this is her signature hat. As I continue to Shasta, I remember the myths about goddesses who disguise themselves and ask favors of travelers; she needs to cross the river so the traveler carries her over. She is always disguised at first, then later reveals herself as who she really is. I feel that I’ve undergone a transformation from her presence. I wonder as I journey, guided by Shasta, if perhaps I’ve just given a ride to a goddess. Seriously.
Sex
Kulture Klatch – April, 2002 – [Sex]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
On TV Donna Reed is the role model for women. She has children but few of the audience think of her as having sex to get them. She’s married before the time of their conception. She is a nice girl, probably deemed frigid in her adolescence because she won’t even consider necking, or won’t talk about it with anyone, not even her best friend. When she does have sex, it’s her duty to her husband. The sole purpose of sex is to have children; absolutely no way does it have anything to do with pleasure except as satisfaction from pleasing her man.
With hormones raging through my body, I experience my adolescence in this world. A lot of us play sports. Donna Reed doesn’t play sports because that’s deemed unladylike; women athletes have a tendency to sit with our legs apart.
In 1965, which is my high school graduation year, women have no sexuality. We are either loose or frigid; a lot of us pretend to be frigid. Sexuality is a matter of morality not passion. Sex education is slide shows about chickens and eggs. Sex has to do with procreation an old agrarian concept that producing offspring is a matter of survival to create a labor pool to work the fields. It’s been a long time since our society is defined as agrarian, but the attitudes about sex haven’t changed.
In the 60’s, orgasm isn’t a common experience. I’m twenty-four when I have my first orgasm, and that’s with a woman. It’s assumed that orgasms are unimportant to women. These would be purposeless since no seed is planted as a result of feminine orgasms. It’s further assumed that the only way women have orgasms is by penis penetration. Few know about clitorises, never mind speak of or touch them.
The sexual revolution, part of the Women’s Liberation Movement, is a major challenge to these misconceptions about women’s sexuality and a break away from social moral restrictions. This means that we have sex when we want to, with whomever; that women have control over our bodies; that we’re passionate beings; and that clitorises aren’t just useless vestiges. It’s sometimes said in the remembrance of these days that several women may come out as lesbians for political reasons. Well maybe, although maybe we come out as lesbians to have sex with pleasure.
We do not say this out loud. We say things like, our deepest love is the love of women. True. What about sex? We go to meetings with hets to talk about the gay life style. The frequent question asked of lesbians is, what do you do? I want to say I play basketball, but that isn’t what the question means. I realize I am being asked what do we do sexually (which isn’t explicitly stated since the word sex sticks in everyone’s throat). How could even a heterosexual not know how to pleasure a woman? What does this say about women’s sexual experience? Later we learn it means that not many women experience orgasms. When we do, it isn’t often
In the 90’s, sex books are no longer in locked cases in libraries available only to those over twenty-one with picture ID. Now there’s a new generation of women who celebrate their sexuality, even flaunt it. There are entire stores with nothing but books on sexuality; videos, toys, demonstrations (sans picket signs). Not one of them says anything about chickens and eggs – although there’s mention that some vegetables aren’t just for salads.
I notice a friend has a huge chain readily accessible. It’s the kind of chain that I only know to be used as a way to keep the gate shut so the cows don’t get out of the pasture. I actually dare to ask what it’s for. She replies that she likes to run it through her belt loops and between her legs because it feels pleasurable when she’s walking.
I never imagine these possibilities during the sexual revolution. Then it seems quite a good bit of work to overthrow Donna Reed, discover women have clitorises, come out as a lesbian, and explain and explore what we do. Now I have carrots to consider.
Out
Kulture Klatch – May, 2002 – [Out]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In 1971 I say to a straight woman friend: I have something I really need to talk about. We walk a few blocks up the street to a secluded spot. It’s a huge, old hedge that provides a sheltered place and surrounds Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst. It’s there and then that I sputter out: I think I’m a lesbian but I’m not sure. She says in a maddeningly matter of fact way: you need to find some gay people to find out if you are or aren’t.
My first conscious lesbian interaction is at a women’s conference in a lesbian caucus. When I hear of this meeting, my heart thumps loudly inside my chest. I enter the room, act cool like maybe I am, maybe I’m not. I’m with a hundred intense outlaw, Amazon dykes crammed into a small room. I peruse the scene; the scene peruses me. The room feels really hot to me. I’m breathing hard, trying to be blasé; my sensors are beginning to smoke.
I’m in a definite state that I can’t quite define; I sure don’t feel this way with guys. I don’t know what it is, I have my suspicions; this just might be It. I don’t know what the next step is, so I pray. (Well hey, there aren’t directories of lesbian/gay groups, no women’s bookstores in existence yet.) I say to the ethereal invisible one: look, I think I’m a lesbian even though I’m not sure what that is except that I know the way I feel about women is way different than how I feel about men; somehow I’ve gotta find out; since you have a reputation for knowing Everything, help me out here!
Lo and behold, a woman returns into my life who’s an old high school acquaintance. Actually she’s an old crush but since it isn’t possible then to have a crush on a woman, I assume it’s the wind passing through my loins. She’s breathtakingly handsome. It turns out she’s in the Navy now and why don’t I come visit her while she’s on leave. Yes, please. She never says anything about being a lesbian; she doesn’t have to, the signal is very clear, Heat. She says: come to Newport, meet some of my friends. YES!
Shortly before I go, I loan my car to friends from the Young Socialists Alliance to attend an antiwar conference in Chicago. I say sure; it amuses me to think of socialists driving to Chicago in a bright red cruise car known as a Javelin which is similar to a Mustang. (The color is right; the style is wrong.) It turns out their stay is extended. Instead of three days, now it’s five. I’m out a car with no way to get to Newport for my all time important date with fate. I’m in a tizzy.
What’s a girl to do? I call my guy motorcycle buddy who’s a sweetly cynical existentialist poet; he’s not a sex interest otherwise I wouldn’t be friends with him since I have a praying mantis attitude toward male sexual mates. He takes me to Newport on his way to Boston which isn’t at all on the way. We get lost and for hours go back and forth, missing the exit each time; I’m beginning to think that I’ve been a little too seriously existentialist; this day is looking like No Exit. We finally arrive; there’s Howie with a room full of for-real Butches. He politely excuses himself.
Here I am alone in a small room with dykes, Navy dykes who know how to recruit. They ask me many, many questions quickly to find out if I’m a lesbian. I dodge and parry: so what if I don’t like men very much; lots of women who don’t like men marry them. Quite suddenly the conversation focuses on one detail they say is absolute proof that I’m a lesbian. Any woman who’s as crushed out on Barbra Streisand as I am has got to be a lesbian. I stumble and mumble; I can’t think of one dodge or parry. That’s the End of the Discussion. The Answer has been found. I’m unquestionably, irrefutably a Lesbian.
Abort
Kulture Klatch – September, 2002 – [Abort]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In 1971, Massachusetts Puritan law states that the only legal sex is in the missionary position (man top, woman bottom; in that order, those genders; that’s it). The use of, education about contraceptive methods are illegal including birth control pills and "devices" except for Vatican Roulette (the rhythm method). It’s illegal to show any pictures, even the pills. The use of condoms isn’t open to discussion.
In the case of The Coil, it’s just as well it’s illegal. This device looks like the spring from a bad mattress. Doctors recommend its use, although no one can understand how it controls birth since there’s an open space in the middle of it. Perhaps the theory is the sperm gets dizzy going around a spiral, loses direction and falls out. There’s a biting humor joke about how a woman births a baby who comes out holding the coil in its hands. It’s not funny reality is that it’s actually a torture device; it has a tendency to work its way into the uterus where it shreds the walls. That’ll teach us to have illicit sex. (Illicit means unmarried, sexual pleasure without reproduction as the goal.)
Our Bodies, Our Selves is a 136 page newsprint document selling for thirty-five cents. It’s surreptitiously published by a semi-underground group of women in the city made infamous by the phrase "banned in Boston." The book is very much illegal to distribute because the contents include pictures of sex organs, birth control pills and devices. In this (il)legal climate women work to make changes against all the odds. When I return to Amherst from an abortion conference in New York City, my pack is stuffed with contraband leaflets to distribute to and discuss with lesbian co-conspirators.
In 1972 a group of us "women libbers" have developed a well-honed tactic of strolling around the anti-abortion tables in the student union. Our tactic is quick verbal confrontation, then retreat. As we go, we pass out copies of Our Bodies, Our Selves which we carry inside our jackets.
Sometimes one of us lingers to debate while another acts as lookout for campus police. One day I pair up with Libby who’s a lesbian refugee from Alabama; the FBI chases her out of the state for her antiwar activities. I don’t ask her if the activities include bombs. When engaged in guerilla tactics, it’s best not to know everything about each other.
This day Libby is the debater; I’m the lookout and bodyguard. Libby is a great talker; she knows more language than is commonly used. She’s studying to be a lawyer. Legalizing abortion is her special mission. She’s getting down furious with the anti-abortion tabler; then he makes a terrible mistake. He preaches: Abortion is murder and anybody who has an abortion is a murderer. I see that Libby is gonna bite off his dick, but I wait a moment. She says: I’ve had an abortion. Then the guy makes an even dumber, bordering on fatal, mistake: Well, then you are a murderer.
My adrenaline skyrockets; I know what this means. In a flash Libby leaps over the three foot wide table with her hands perfectly aimed at the guy’s throat. His chair tips from the energetic force of her forward momentum. This woman has a roiling rage. There’s about to be a broken person sprawled on the floor. I care that my pal not go to jail on his account. In a breath’s second, I grab her belt, pull her straight back into my arms, face her fiery eyes and go nose to nose with her: "Libby, not today."
When we’re safely in my room of the Norhampton Green Street lesbian boarding house, Libby sobs until she shakes: I’m not a murderer; he hurt me bad, I want to punish him. Her pain is acute. Libby was pregnant and had an abortion at sixteen. She comes out as a lesbian later. I’m not sure what to say. I know how to break up a fight, but I don’t know how to disperse this kind of pain. I struggle: Some day it’ll change because of what we do now. It turns out that "now" is longer than we imagine.
Touch
Kulture Klatch - November, 2002 - [Touch]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
I lounge in the living room of my high school crush. My breathing pattern is strange to me. Mandy slowly rises, stands and says: I’m going to bed now. She says without saying so: are you coming? Hoo, if you insist; suppose so. This is The Lesbian Moment; come on, come in. So I do. I get into the bed; there’s about three feet between us. I’m scarcely breathing although it feels like I want to hyperventilate.
She whispers something and in order to hear her, I have to move closer to her. So what are you gonna do? Well then, I kiss her. I probably ought to remember that kiss, the first kiss to lesbian lips. I don’t remember. What I remember is that neither one of us is sure what to do next. I’ve not ever had a next moment with a woman. She’s a femme; her lover is a stone butch. She doesn’t know the next move either. During one of many pauses, the phone rings. It’s her lover whose ship is ported in Hawaii. I’m not breathing again; I’m not supposed to be there.
Marion assigns herself the responsibility of having sex with every newly out lesbian with butch tendencies. She feels this is her duty. This is a risky business since most of us newly out lesbians may have already had sex with a woman but probably we haven’t fallen in love for the first time yet.
We want that first falling in love experience just about the time Marion shows up; and she’s not the one. She has no intention of falling in love with any of us. She teaches us how to do the butch part. She has a vibrator dildo which I refuse to know anything about. She realizes she has a different kind of butch in her bed so she teaches me about clitorises.
I don’t date in high school. I have a brief encounter era with men; I’m not much impressed. I have still not had my first orgasm, woman or man initiated. I’m 24; I want one like now. I want to be consumed with passion, to fall in love. Marion has already moved on; I’m on my own.
Diana approaches me, looks into my heart with intense eyes. I actually feel exposed because I’m a stoic and nobody sees my emotions. I stand there and feel the heat and knowing that is between lesbian bodies. This is a way intense woman. I have no trouble imagining her in a forest naked enthralled with the ecstasy of an ancient Dianic ritual. She kind of scares me; and that’s why I decide to know her and let her know me.
She is a bisexual sensualist. One day we stand naked in front of the mirror. It occurs to me that I am 24 and this is the first time I have ever looked at my own body. With her touch, I experience profound stillness. That touch is exquisitely delicate, slow beyond patient, barely near the skin’s surface, leaving a trail of longing. There is palpable, intense heat coming from her hands. She caresses all of my body, every pore fills with the passionate energy of her hands.
I lay there like a cat curled up in the light and warmth of the sun. I am fully trusting; I am wide open. She moves her hand along my butt and slowly that heat moves with her hand. She is barely, barely touching me. This creates a potent, yearning desire. Her heat and mine mingle into a conflagration, and I am transformed, transcending into altered dimension of self.
She leans close to my ear and whispers: what’s that. I demur: I don’t know. Now she lays her body on mine without the skins touching; I feel heat all at once in my whole body. Her voice deepens as she presses for my response: what is that; say the words. I have suddenly gone all soft: an orgasm. She still is not satisfied: whose orgasm. Now I know why she scares me: my orgasm; my orgasm from the heat, light, touch, knowing of a woman. I am a lesbian
Fierce
Kulture Klatch - January, 2003 - [Fierce]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
She has fierce, fierce eyes of brown. I could notice and I don’t; I’m preoccupied. I’ve just come out and the process is somehow not what I anticipate; this is work, troubled times. Yeah there’s the exhilaration of self acknowledgement, the exhilaration of being able to feel the particular love I have for women, lesbians. Then there’s the exasperation with the realities of family, friends’ reactions, not to mention the world in general. These are troubled times.
At a 1971 meeting of campus gays, her fierce, fierce dark brown eyes scan to where I am, focus in until I’m startled by the intensity of her gaze into returning my attention to her. As she moves toward me, I could notice and I don’t that she’s using those fierce brown eyes to transfix me so that I’m not able to move. I could notice and I don’t that I feel unsettled by the attention. She touches my arm, the troubles melt away: your eyes are full of sadness. What a unique front line. We agree to travel to Nova Scotia together.
I want to follow the trail of my father’s ancestors, Canuks of Nova Scotia. I want to travel to that ancestral earth, a long held dream to be realized. I’m in search of an invisible deer trail. I unwittingly abandon all sense by traveling to very unfamiliar territory with a companion who’s a wild, wild woman. This unknown companion is a reckless goddess who’s the guide on this journey out of and into my self. Ah, sweet twenty-four year old woman is going to have an adventure.
One night she decides we should leave the campground and go into a town. She says she wants to get some cigarettes, but we have some. This is puzzling. Still I’m willing to see what might be there. We come to a small fishing village that hangs precariously on the sides of mountains that plunge straight down to the sea. It feels like we could fall over the edge.
She determines that the place to get cigarettes is a bar that has a pool table and lots of men in it. I park so that the back of my car is facing the bar. I wait in the car for quite a long while until she returns. Suddenly I am startled by the opening of the door. She has two men in tow who climb into the back seat. I ask her just exactly what’s going on.
On her way to the cigarettes she works her charms on the men in the bar, gets two because she thinks it’s good if we both have sex with men; she gets one for each of. Excuse me?! She starts to repeat the story. I exclaim: No, not tonight, not ever; out, everybody get out of my car now. She and I have a heated discussion in which I discover she periodically seeks sex with men. This isn’t understood by the men because they speak only Canuk; I speak only English. I have no idea how she communicates with them to get them to the car.
I learn that I mean it when I say I’m a lesbian. That’s different reality among many more possible realities than I could imagine as an asexual high school student in Agawam. At twenty-four I still don’t have a full concept of the meaning and variations of sexuality but enough. Whatever the troubles are, this being a lesbian is what I choose. At the beginning of this journey adventure, I’m full with doubt about my sexuality; in this moment I could notice and I don’t that the doubt dissipates because I’m so furious and startled by the fierce, fierce woman who has risen in me.
I could notice and I do that this wild, wild bisexual amazon companion has dramatically shown me my choice. I’m sure that if she looks into my eyes she sees that the sadness is gone. Now there’s no doubt that I am a Lesbian; that I’m a wild, wild amazon. I have no troubles with or sadness about being either one. I notice that I am sure about that.
Abuse
Kulture Klatch - February, 2003 - [Abuse]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In 1980 I’m at A Woman’s Place Bookstore doing my thing, a poetry reading. One of my four poems on bar dykes is a collage of brief scenes including the lines "some of us do die, wrapped around telephone poles; beaten to death by strangers, and lovers." I’m recently of the bars; I still got my edge even though there is no longer alcohol in my blood.
A woman comes up to me with mission in her eyes: I don’t think that’s something we want hets to know about us. I’m not sure who "we" is. At the next reading, I leave out the word "lovers". No major big deal, it’s only one word; yet, one word in a poem is a novel’s chapter. With the omission, a scream starts in my toes, rushes out the top of my head. This is because the ghosts of dykes are screaming banshee cries. It’s a lie to leave out the word.
In 1973 they’re a handsome couple; two underage baby dykes. They’ve been coming to the bar since they were sixteen. Where else would they go? So we let them be there. Roach is tough as nails, charming; she often flashes a sharp wit and humor. Beebee is radiant; she flirts with everybody, flaunts her desire; she heats the room with her presence. While this is what attracts her to BeeBee, Roach wants to possess it; she often succumbs to jealousy. Each time they come in, they wind up sprawled on the floor punching on each other in a duel of wills over who owns what. A lot of us have bad backs from bending over to pull them apart and lift them away from each other.
I’m driving to my room in the lesbian boarding house on Green Street. Sandy sits next to me; she’s agitated: Who is this Sasha; why are you hanging out with her! I’m not in a patient mood: We have been over this; you aren’t my lover any more; Sasha’s my friend; what’s it to you. I push too hard. Sandy backhands me in the face.
I don’t feel it the first time. I don’t feel a first punch; I feel the second one. Sandy back hands me a second time. I smack her back and then go into a verbal tirade to keep her occupied so she won’t hit me again. When we get to my room, I go silent and she hits me again and then, I hit her back. The next day, I feel sickened. It’s the first time I’ve hit anyone. Self defense doesn’t make me feel better. I don’t know who to talk to. Not one dyke in the house claims hearing the row.
I see her one more time. After I tell her I’m not going to see her anymore, she threatens: I bought a gun and I’m gonna kill you with it rather than have anybody else love you. This scares me enough that I have a sudden urge to piss. I call her bluff: If I stay with you, I’ll be dead for sure so I’ll take my chances on leaving. For weeks, I push myself to keep my routes even as I sweat that any moment could be my last. I wonder what’s the last thing I’ll see when I die; wonder if I’ll hear the gun shot; wonder if I’m only wounded, what I’d do to save myself.
There’s a woman who comes into the bar who’s a real hungry, hurtin woman. She talks too much, in a too desperate way. She comes in regularly and then she disappears; this isn’t unusual but why is unknown. One night the bartender comes over to me and nervously whispers: say, you know Sugar? People come and go: Who?
He’s fidgeting as he describes her until I remember: Sugar is dead; her lover beat her to death. I don’t feel well and it has nothing to do with the considerable alcohol content in my blood. Numb as I am, I feel acutely horrified. What’s Sugar thinking when she dies? A scream starts in my toes. We do die; wrapped around telephone poles; beaten to death by strangers, and lovers.
Queen
Kulture Klatch - March, 2003 - [Queen]Jacqueline Elizabeth LetalienIn 1985 I ride in a car with a gay man; we’re conversing pleasantly when he makes a silly mistake. He says: I am a feminist man… The liberationist in me protests: Nope, unh-unh, wrong. There is no such thing as a feminist man. In these times there are supposedly feminist men; many women’s libbers have morphed into feminists. This is one of those new ideas I have trouble embracing. I am on the verge. He makes a second mistake: “…I find drag queens very offensive to women.” He has the arrogance to think he knows about a woman’s view. He may be going for points with me since he perceives me as a radical dyke; he assumes therefore that drag queens are anathema to me. Seemingly he doesn’t know the importance of drag queens to gay liberation. There is Stonewall and without that event, there is no gay liberation; without drag queens, there is no Stonewall. Apparently he doesn’t know what a liberationist is. In the seventies feminist men are definitely impossible. First of all the phrase “feminist man” isn’t often use; women are libbers or liberationists. The Women’s Liberation Movement is a movement by, about and for women. To the point, no wavering. There are men who are allies and men who are feminine. Feminist? Nope, not until every woman is empowered to make her own choices. Lucky for this present day feminist man, I’ve moved from my days of rage. I simply say: I like drag queens because they teach me about women. He doesn’t understand and he can’t think of anything to say. The guy goes suddenly quiet. This is good. First lesson in the ways of women is to learn when to be quiet. The second lesson is to know when you don’t know what you’re talking about. In 1972 the gay bars I go to always have a couple of resident drag queens. They are the tricksters of the bar. They reflect us back to ourselves; not always comfortable, but beneficial. The drag queens I know are hustlers. They sit at the bar if they are attached with the bartender; they never stand because it’s unladylike. They pose at the tables when they are hustling the straight men who come into the bar to hassle the lesbians. This is a function of the drag queens: they protect the lesbians from these dudes by drawing attention to themselves. As I learn the drag queen ways, I discover that straight men don’t seem to know that they’re talking to men. They are absolutely convinced that they’re picking up a woman. This teaches me about the social perception of women. The social definition of women is an illusion. Only a few seem to know anything more about women than fashion, makeup and effect. I learn that what is seen in women isn’t our interior heart, soul, spirit but something that is applied to the exterior. These queens take very seriously the donning of a woman’ persona. Sometimes I sit with the drag queens in the bar and our conversations are concise, cutting right to the profound essence of a question that brings sharp clarity to a dilemma. When I think about the possibility of alliances with men, I wonder if a feminist man or a drag queen is my best ally. I choose the drag queen. The reasons are simple. Drag queens literally walk in the shoes of a woman. They know the dangers of walking in high heels, the humiliation of a run in a stocking, the constriction of wearing tight dresses, the stamina of putting cosmetics on right; and the violence against women. I restate my question: if I get into a fight with a man and I’m considering doing harm to his machismo, who would I rather have covering my back? I’d prefer a drag queen who knows what It’s like to be mistreated as woman, who’s likely to know what it is to be raped. A feminist man might intellectually understand my ideology; a drag queen might not, or might even make jest of it. Yet a drag queen feels a woman’s terror, suffers her shame; she knows a woman’s rage.
Rude
Kulture Klatch - September, 2003 - [Rude]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien In 1970 the UMass, Amherst accepts me as a transfer student. Four students are shot to death by the National Guard during an antiwar demonstration. Very many lives are altered by this event. This transfer student begins an intensive journey with gay and women’s liberation, the antiwar movement. My intention to return to college for a BA to be a librarian swerves abruptly in the rapidly changing tides of social, cultural, political life on a radicalized university campus. I attend just enough class sessions to get decent grades. I spend most of my time majoring in social upheaval. When I go to my parents’ house to visit and do the laundry, my father and I often get into raging arguments over the Vietnam War. He is a WWII veteran officer, retired. What his government does is right, always was and always will be. We argue from a visceral place in our experience, his from Okinawa as soldier surrounded by death and mine from daily life as commie peacenik in a hostile world. Then Kent State happens. My father sees this on the evening news, and he cries. The government has no business bringing the war home, no business killing our sons and daughters, especially not the daughters. All he can see is that his daughter could have been one of those students. We argue no more about the war. At the university, I work long hours for three movements simultaneously. This isn’t unusual in these times; we (radicals and gays and women and peaceniks) are all engaged in this work fully. I don’t smoke pot until later in college. Don’t need to; I spend long hours into the night sniffing magic markers (the really good toxic kind) making signs for demonstrations. Even though I am involved in several groups, I am essentially a shy loner who is a friend over time. Sometimes I venture out to peer sex sessions with a croup of queers to talk about “what it is to be gay.” Once I go to one of these a bit drunk on beer. This was the session when The Question some dopey dude asks for the umpteenth time - what do lesbians do? Whereupon I respond: if you know how to make love to a woman, you would not have to ask that question.My main function is steady, dependable, quiet organizer. I write several letters to the university newspaper editor about women, gays, war. The writing gains public attention often involving me in conversations with people that make me uncomfortable because I’m shy. I’d probably prefer it if they just send me a note. One night I sit at home with my three nonlesbian roommates. Since Amherst at the time is a rural area, doors are often left unlocked. The front door opens suddenly letting in a puff of snow from the flurries outside. A kind of tallish, substantial guy stomps into the room, steams straight toward one of the women. He knows Merry from a class. I know him from a story, that he threatens to rape my friend the woman chair of the Young Socialists Alliance because she’s a commie. In a perfectly even voice, I let him know that he has left the door open and there’s a woman standing outside. I direct him to bring the woman in and close the door. Whereupon, he slams the door, leaves the woman outside. The wind denies his slam and the door remains open until he has to close it gently. This somewhat deflates his entrance. He strides into the room, heads again toward Merry, calls her by name and speaks in large volume. He demands to know how she could allow herself to live with a sick dyke commie peacenik. She doesn’t seem to know what to say. He doesn’t seem to know it’s me he’s talking about. So I speak up. That woman is standing right here in this room. I am the lesbian peace activist, women’s liberationist you are talking about. You are in my house; stop now and leave, and he does. Merry berates me for my rudeness. I am unrepentant. Rude feels ever so good to a shy 23 year old. Back to Kulture Klatch list
Marriage
Kulture Klatch - March, 2004 - [Marriage]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien In the seventies women’s liberation movement, we let go of the vision for liberation and get mired in equivocation, a drive for equality that thirty years later we still haven’t got. We settle for equality which quite often means the same as. We can make the same money as a man for being a CEO and earn more money than any human has a right to or a need for. This is a result for many liberation and civil rights struggles that emerge from the era. In our political activism we’re often met with adamancy, stridency, resistance. Ultimately we get out-chessed in the game. The experience for some of us leads to a cutting cynicism from knowing that not all that much has been changed. When the outcome is broadened to the world, the effort still has a long, long way to go. We haven’t been able to bring down the patriarchal institutions; we haven’t been able to eradicate the pervasive attitude regarding women’s status. When gay folks begin the chants for marriage, I’m sitting here saying to my self: oh yeah here we go with the same as. We’re still failing to get at the linchpin, to fundamentally challenge the institutions that keep the patriarchy looming over us. Now we’re gonna get the right to divorce and have nasty custody fights and spend too much money on a wedding. Swell. Still I can’t stop reading or watching the persistent stories, listening to the rising swell of voices, observing the narrowing focus on this one issue. As this goes on I notice something amongst the clamor and clash and flash of it all. There’s panic; the reaction to the call for gay marriage is inducing a panic. This is different than the adamant negative reactions to Blacks calling for civil rights or women chanting for equal rights or even gays asking for the simple right to be out. When gays start with the right to marry, though, one state after another scrambles to pass laws stating that marriage is between a man and a woman. The news media and even those of us pushing for marriage seem to miss this panic. The overriding description of the action is that this issue is one of equal rights. The recurring legal argument is that separate but equal hasn’t been right for other groups and it isn’t for this group either. Because we’ve used this rhetoric for so long to wheedle and cajole bits of rights, we fail to understand what we’re really getting at. When I see a picture of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin marrying after 51 years of a committed relationship, I notice something. They are the same height, the same build; and obviously they are both women. Suddenly I get what the panic is about. We have finally, though perhaps unwittingly, found the linchpin of the patriarchy and we are tugging furiously to pull it out. Marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman. Traditionally in that relationship the man is taller, broader. Often the woman is his little lady. Even when a woman hyphenates her name, the man is still the reference point. Even if they use an “alternative” commitment ceremony, most usually it’s the man’s name she adopts. These are vestiges of the premise that women are literally the property of their husbands. In a lot of places in this country and around the world, the sun hasn’t really set yet on that premise.The panic about gay marriage isn’t about the need for the species to reproduce more. If we were rabbits, humans would be finding ways to reduce our population. The resistance isn’t about the natural order of things. Gay is in the wild as well as the history of the strongest civilizations. It’s not about the Bible. There are several instances of gay that God doesn’t seem to notice. When men marry men, they are refusing to own women; when women marry women, they are refusing to be owned by men. The ownership of women is the linchpin of patriarchy and we are about to pull it out. The panic is that when we manage to do this, the patriarchy is coming down.
Youth
Kulture Klatch - July, 2004 - [Youth]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien A pleasantly surprising gift of a stupendously wonderous gay pride celebration is spending time with a woman friend of many piercings. She’s the one I refer to in the last column as the “baby dyke”. I call her that knowing it’s very cross type. She isn’t a baby really at all, although she’s quite playful as twenty-somethings can be. She introduces me to her partner and some of her nineteen to twenty-something friends. This is a bit tricky. Doing the math on age difference involves the use of a calculator. There are some things to which I refer that represent an era that doesn’t exist in their lives. Also there’s the ethic that even though I may know some of the answers, I need to be respectful, stand back, remember that anyone prethirty experiences everything, explores, adventures, learns. Rather than be a teacher which is the socially assigned role of an elder, I intend to be witness. One of the women is an exceptional listener, empathic. She has the sense about her that she is a sage. That night she has an experience that brings it up sharp that she’s nineteen, and some other age such as 21 makes her an adult. This of course is really rather arbitrarily applied. Legal age limit suggests that age defines behavior which really is a lie. Later on she says that, you know, “I’m really just a kid, I’m only nineteen.” I watch and listen to this moment, these words. I remain still, quiet. These age things are artificial distinctions, thoughtless divisions after a point. Only-nineteen suggests less than, and whatever is more than is really a delusional lie. No moment of any age or what’s in it at any age, is more than any other nor is it less than any other. I remember that at nineteen, I’m deemed too young to understand the complexities of governmental, militaristic policy. Yet I stand regularly in a vigil to protest the “conflict” in Vietnam. This is in the way early days when people don’t even know where Vietnam is. There’s maybe six of us. We stand silently, hold placards, pass out informational flyers (sans rhetoric; it’s too early for rhetoric). The FBI takes pictures, starts files, watches us. At the age of nineteen I can go to jail just the same as a 21 or a 40 year old. A lot of us nineteen to twenty-somethings are arrested at demonstrations later on. When the police club the nineteen and twenty-somethings on the streets in Chicago in 1968, the victims bleed just like adults. Among the 56,000 soldiers who die in Vietnam are many, many nineteen to twenty-somethings who die just like adults. Palco sues forest defenders for hundreds of thousands of dollars they don’t have because employers in this county think that being under 21 justifies being paid minimum wage. The demonstrators who have pepper spray put in their eyes feel it just as intensely as someone who is forty or fifty. Please note few who are forty or fifty take that chance any more. Being susceptible to hurt equal to adults, experiencing the same moments or even having the same status of legality aren’t the real measures of wisdom. I watch for intention, perception, interaction. The nineteen year old woman feels every sense of my experience as I describe it; fully present. I look for playfulness. She also still has the sense to wear jeans with rainbow stripes on the sides. It’s true that women of now don’t know the world I know that’s before Madonna, Melissa, Ellen, Ani, Amelie, Pink. We do share the experience of these luminaries together. They cause me to remember. Be willing to be foolish, to lift up the feet and twirl in a swivel chair round and round and round, to have pink hair or be a geek. Be willing to be different and the same and not really care which is what and at the same time care a whole hell of a lot. I remember that at age nineteen, I also make snow angels and sand castles. I remember that I’m not too old to have the courage to be, to take chances.
Message
Kulture Klatch – August, 2004 – [Message]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien When I attend UMass Amherst, I major in sociology. I choose this major because I want to know the people’s stories. This is because even though I have cynical moments (ach, people, who needs them anyway), I love the people. I am hungry for a good story. What I am taught are phrases like abstinence syndrome. Sociologists get lost in the syllables; we study studies, we study black dots on demographic maps. These black dots represent people of certain classes, cultures, educational levels and other such groupings. Sociologists like to look at groups with a good deal of distance between them and the individuals of the groups. Perhaps they really believe that the dots and numbers tell a story. In some ways they do offer some information. For example, when the groupings have to do with poor people of color living in the projects, the black dots are crammed all together in the center of a city. When the groupings have to do with rich people living in estates, there’s more space and room for a person’s life. I take one day away from the university to visit a friend living in New York City. I am a working class rural woman of color (which I don’t realize then). She is an upper class urban woman. At a drug rehab program I meet up with her; she once is a client and now is a member of the staff. She introduces me to a young (actually we are all young) poor Puerto Rican woman. We spend the day at the beach, all of us together. We are able to converse with each other, enjoy the company of each other even though we come from different realities. When day is done, we take Maria “home.” Rising from the ground is a cluster of sixty story buildings in which thousands of people live. She advises us to stay close with her and not to stray. As we go up many stories on the elevator, she explains to us that the noise level is always 24/7 as loud as it is now. I am sure there are studies that talk about the effects of constant noise. We get off the elevator about midway up the tower and go into her apartment which is hermetically sealed: no windows open and all the sound is shut out. I am certain there are studies about the deleterious effects of oxygen and sound deprivation. We sit at her kitchen table and she tells me the story of her eighteen year life. At fifteen she is a prostitute, at sixteen she is a heroin addict, at seventeen she is raped and all she can think of to say is, don’t mess up my new boots. The way she tells the stories makes me listen with my whole body; I feel every word. Then she asks me about my life. I explain I am going to the university, that I have political activist friends who are working hard to improve the quality of life. She gathers me in with her fierce ebony eyes and holds me very firmly with them as she says: I want you to go back to the U-ni-ver-si-Ty of Masschusetss Am-Herst and I want you tell your po-li-ti-Cal activist friends that they don’t know Nothin about My life. She is not angry with me; she just wants to make sure I have her message and that I will deliver it. She gives me my work for the whole rest of my life. I am to tell the stories, mine and hers. I am to stand at a bust stop and listen intently with my whole body as a perfect stranger tells me the story of life full of pathos and terrible things and profound courage. I am to know that each dot represents a life. I am to know that abstinence syndrome means puking up all the pain and sweating out the horror of a life someone has the courage to live. Ultimately, this life’s work that she gives me is as described by the poet Muriel Ruckeyser: Time comes into it. Say. Say it. The universe is made of stories not atoms.
Halloween
Kulture Klatch - October, 2004 - [Halloween]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien On Halloween platoons of children and parents swarm over neighborhood streets in search of the ultimate sugar rush. As parents wonder how they’ll pay the dental bills, the dentists dream of ways to spend this windfall profit. Each child dresses as their favorite goblin, ghost or comic character. Many greeting cards sport a green faced witch. These are the surrealities of a pagan holy day that is separated from its traditions by patriarchal misinterpretation. So much wicce has been negativized by malevolent, sensationalist reports from the malleus maleficarum and about satanic cults which are patriarchal perversions of matriarchal beliefs. There is a lot to contemplate while munching on Sugar Daddies. Halloween is a sacred time to remember the millions of women burned as witches during an orchestrated orgy of exploitative gynocide. This is a trick that is not a treat. Women property owners, women without men as well as women witches, healers and midwives are summarily robbed, tortured and murdered with the excuse of some vague notion of evil doing, not the least of which is being an uppity woman. This time is known historically as the dark ages and known herstorically as the burning times. This is a time when the light of metaphysical practice and belief is shrouded in darkness. Wicce is a feminization of spirituality, a reclamation of feminized images and a realization that the goddess archetypes are expressions of the feminine inner self. This holy day is a time to honor the wisdom of women. In fact the word “wicce”, from which the word “witch” derives means “knowledge”. Halloween is a time to affirm the old knowledge of the spirituality of paganism: the abilities to heal, to give birth, to pray, to transform, to fly. When I am ten I slide into a perception warp that enables me to see and hear in an exceptional way. When I am twelve I look out the window of the house at night on Halloween. Along with the usual gaggles of costumed tricksters or treaters, I see spirit forms traveling in the neighborhood as well. I wonder at this sight and remain silent; it is my secret.Early on I learn the value of secrets. When I am ten, I tell my mother that I see and hear in an unusual way. I describe to her what it is that I see and hear. Her face becomes quite stern as she says: stop this nonsense; people who see and hear things that are not there, get locked up. While she does not say any more such as where or by whom, I realize I have no friends here. I feel an unreferenced fear (perhaps from the burning times). I learn that extrasensory perception is not a good thing. I remember and learn to try to forget what I know. I say “try” because I do not forget. The knowledge in me, just is. Yes I am able to keep a secret. Yes I manage not to get locked up. Yes sometimes I believe that what I know is not possible. And in the more than four decades since the warning, ever persistently, I see and hear things that are not there. Ever consistently, I have dreams that teach me a philosophical principle, dreams that preview a “real” circumstance. Ever increasingly, there is a direct connection between prayer and manifestation. I come to Humboldt to practice what the teacher has taught about insight, healing, magik. I read a multitude of books Wiccan, First Nations, Buddhist traditions, fiction and nonfiction. I go to the woods and the sea to chant. I watch the multitude of birds flying. I watch the sky and light change. I experience the seasons. I bathe in light from the stars and moon. I live with my heart beat that is my drum rhythm. It is still a tricky business: there are still people even among friends who are wary of the word “witch”. Still an intention for my life persists. I am a woman who does work to heal myself so that I am strong enough to give birth to prayer, to transform reality as we know it, and then to experience the particular pleasure of flying.
Write
Kulture Klatch – April, 2005 – [Write]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
I’m not a famous writer although wherever I am, my work is well known as a poet journalist and sometimes as a performing artist. I work for little or no money which maybe keeps my integrity intact. I am not big on awards unless considerable money comes with them. My integrity maybe stays intact.
Sometimes the poetry goes places I haven’t been such as England and Germany. That’s a pleasing satisfaction. Fame is not the goal or the reward. When people say that a story I scribe inspires them to write or encourages them to perform; that is a reward that’s awarded for the effort. It’s not the goal.
As much as any reason, I write for the experience of writing. I am engaged by the mystery, uncertainty, risk of published writing. The uncertainty arises from not knowing how the words are interpreted. The risk comes from making the commitment to write and when the due date arrives, there will be nothing to write.
I search myself for some sign of a story. Each time I begin such a search I have apprehension that there just will be nothing to find, not a sentence or word. My brain says there is nothing there to write, not a sentence or word. Yet once I sit to write and give myself even a minute moment, the words do come. It’s rather mysterious.
Sometimes my brain thinks that I haven’t got one more thing I want to say about anything. I think I should just hang it up and not write another thing. I have written for at least forty years; there can’t possibly be too much more to say. Yet there is writing persistently. I am the scribe for the words as they come. I am quietly compelled to write.
Emily Dickinson writes for decades and only upon her death is it discovered that there is a trunk filled with hundreds of poems. While it’s true that in her day women are not encouraged to write, never-mind publish, she continues to write without fame, awards, or audience. She is quietly compelled to write.
This is not some special ordination; being a writer is not in the category of being a yogi or the like. For sure not every one writes; on the other hand not everyone fixes cars either. Yeah sure a writer can sway a crowd with concepts written in stories, poems, words in a way that an auto mechanic doesn’t. Even though there are times when it seems more physically useful if I could fix my car rather than being able to tell a story, I am still quietly compelled to write.
When I am taught that I am able to write (not when I am taught that I am able to learn how to write) the focus is the experience of writing rather than the grammar, form or structure of writing. Sentence diagrams are still remembered as my favorite exercise in grammar. Knowing how to do that is not what leads me to writing.
When I begin to write poetry, I’m instructed to put a pen in my hand and rest that hand on a piece of paper and just sit still until there is something to write. Then of course I should write it or rather let it write itself using my hand to do it. I’m skeptical of this lesson because what I know from school is that I’m supposed to have a topic in mind before I write. My brain also tells me I might not be good at this. Even so, I give it a go.
With nothing in mind, I sit until there is something to write. Surrender is necessary. This part is difficult for me: I am a person who takes the “surrender’ card out of her Angel Card deck. I do as told, however: I sit, wait, and surrender. A spark floats in; I blow on the spark to ignite it and increase the light of the flame. As excitements are, this one is really very subtle and simultaneously exquisite. It is for this simple reason that I write: to feel the exquisite excitement in the experience of spark igniting to flame.
Journalism
Kulture Klatch – June, 2005 – [Journalism]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
I have no plan as a writer. I am not sure how exactly it is that I begin to write. I have no real academic, political or scientific reason for the writing of a story.
Being a poet/journalist could be something I am encouraged to do when I am a high school senior. I have one of those erstwhile (I know a writer when I see one) English teachers who gives me a lot of A’s for journal writing. She is not interested in the minding of grammar as much as in the telling of the story. As far as I know, she does not tell me to study writing in college although we both understand the importance of telling the story.
Being a poet/journalist could be something that I get from my mother. I recently read some of her letters to my father when they are courting. In one of these she mentions that she wants to be a writer. She never really does this. As far as she gets with that dream is her voracious reading of other people’s writing. As far as I know, she never really has any interest in poetry although we do share a love for the writing of the story.
Being a poet/journalist could be something that I get from my father. When I am living in my parents’ house, he reads the newspaper every night. I think he has an interest in the real world around him, the day-to-day; he slumps in his chair and falls asleep. As far as I know, at that time he has no real interest in making changes in the life of humanity although we do share an adamancy about the fairness in the story.
Writing comes to me in a gathering kind of way. I gather stories as I go in my day to day wandering through the world. The stories are dreamed into existence by the writing of them.
When I do my laundry, I go to Emerald City in Arcata. It’s pleasant there and I have a personal tradition of walking across the way to Wildberries to get coffee and a scone. Then I return and read the San Francisco Chronicle to while away the Laundromat time. This is really nothing profound. It’s a regular life occurrence in the experience of a writer.
So after I finish the scone, I take the remainder of the coffee and go outside to smoke a cigarette. (Yes, I smoke cigarettes; and no, I do not want to quit.) As I ponder some thought or other, I peripherally see an object fall from the sky. (Yes, I am smoking tobacco.) I focus my attention to the place of the apparition to see that there is a pencil on the ground.
The pencil point is intact. This is no ordinary yellow, number two pencil. This is a purple pencil with silver pumpkins, ghosts and stars all along the shank and a yellow eraser. Then it occurs to me that I should step back: since this has fallen from the sky, something else might fall on me while I’m standing there.
When it reoccurs to me that this pencil that I hold in my hand has fallen from the sky, I have a moment of disbelief because pencils simply do not just fall from the sky. I don’t mean it has been horizontally tossed in my vicinity. I mean this pencil has fallen vertically from up to down. This is simply not scientifically possible.
I’m standing at the driveway entrance from the street into the parking lot. There is no building or tree above me or even near me. As I arrive at the end of this scientific investigative thought process, I look up. There are utility wires and on one of them, there is perched a raven. Whereupon I just have to laugh. This is the bird in spiritual tradition who bears messages.
My writing has no academic, genetic, scientific origin. Writing is the gathering of magik pencils that drop from the sky, and the unfolding of mystery that dreams the stories into existence.
Dia de los Muertos
Kulture Klatch – November, 2005 – [Dia de los Muertos]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In the sixties the police have the right to harass, beat up and jail lesbians and drag queens. These are not wanton acts of violence by rogue cops. The law of the time clearly states that “sodomy” is a crime. Gay bars stay open by giving free drinks and payoff cash to cops. Our protectors are the mafia.
In the seventies lesbians who are married and have been enlightened and are getting a divorce, face the probable loss of custody of their children on the basis that lesbians are unfit mothers just because they are lesbian. Some lesbians of the time stay married just to be able to keep their children.
In the seventies Harvey Milk is shot to death by a cop turned council member. He is arrested and goes to trial. The infamous Twinkie Defense gets him off thereby igniting a gay riot in San Francisco. That defense is acceptable in large part because Harvey is gay and Moscone is a gay sympathizer.
In the eighties a man I work with at a women’s bar in Oakland is murdered in Concord. When there are large parties at Ollie’s, he shows up in a black cocktail waitress skirt, complete with frilly white apron. Our current governor would probably call him a girlie man. This Black Cherokee gay man who survived the Indian reclaiming of Alcatraz is found hanging from a tree in Concord. No one is ever arrested because his death is ruled a suicide. I still cannot imagine how he hangs himself with a backpack strap or how while choking he manages to scream.
Around the turn of the millennium there is a case brought to trial regarding the murder of a young Oakland Bay Area transgendered man/woman. The defense is that the young boys who are involved in doing the fatal beating should be forgiven by the rationale that they are duped and then embarrassed to find out they’ve been intimate with a man’s body. There is still socially acceptable justification for the murderers of gays. The jurors still struggle with the issues because the murder of someone gay is different than the murder of someone who is nongay.
About the same time Arcata High School administration bars Spare Change from doing presentations in part because of the frankness of their presentations about sexuality. There are those, including a school board member, who loathe the idea that the group also includes intentional information about the “disgusting lifestyle” meaning those disgusting queers. Underscore: this is said in Arcata not just in Myers Flat.
In 2005 locally there is a politician whose sons make sport of harassing two neighboring lesbians. He says of his sons that they are just “boys being boys.” There are young queers disowned by their families or afraid to come out because they still justifiably fear being cast out by their families.
In 2006 there will be scores of teenage lives ended by their own hands because the pressure of being queer in high school is too great. They will be harassed either because they are gay or their parents are. It may even be because of the more benign seeming but pervasive trend among teens to tag anything or anyone odd as being “so gay.”
I would like to believe that all this happens in a red state. Truth is the acts of deadly violence and spirit killing happen everywhere, even in the annoyingly self proclaimed “progressive” City of Arcata. The savage cruelties of the persistent loathing of gays is still pervasive.
We have come a long way from the sixties. It is now nearly thirty years since the spark that ignited the fire of gay liberation, of our passion for the pursuit of life, liberty, happiness and pride. We are one nation and queer folk are a vital living people of this nation.
In our rush for rights it is important to know that these rights are useful only to the living and those who are murdered will not enjoy the fruits of our labors. It is important to remember those we know and those we will know who are killed because they are gay. May their memory be for a blessing.
Fear
Kulture Klatch – December, 2005 – [Fear]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
A few years ago, an Oakland friend comes to visit me here, and then she needs to go visit another friend who lives in Oregon. I offer to drive her there because I’ve not been to Oregon. I have no idea at the time that I have offered to do interplanetary travel which is another whole story. Her friend’s home is actually a “farm.” This is no ordinary farm. She has miniature donkeys who are sweet, sweet animals. There is also a small herd of Alpacas, cousins to the Llamas. I am instructed not to put my hands up near them or reach for them because it freaks them out. I heed the instruction because I don’t want to be in the presence of a freaking out animal that stands as tall as I do.
I’m further instructed that if I want to show them that I like them, I should lean my cheek toward them. I admit I have a brain mutter moment which says something like: y’know they probably have very large teeth and if they have a tendency to freak out, perhaps this is a foolish gesture of trust and courage. I quietly resist the doubt and do as suggested. Standing still I go near to an Alpaca and lean gingerly closer. The animal moves its snout toward me and snuffles my cheek with its soft fur lips. This is the equivalent of an Alpaca kiss, I suppose.
The farm tour continues and I’m introduced to her miniature pigs. She says that they’ve had a rather traumatic life because they are rescued from a petting zoo. At the zoo, people say really nasty things to them like: we’re gonna eat you for breakfast or you’re a fat old ugly pig. I admit that the tusks that emerge from the sides of their mouths do make them look a bit ugly as well as mean. Still they don’t come up as high as my knees so there’s no hint of fearful hesitation in my approaching them.
I sit down on the porch steps to watch as the woman feeds them fresh picked vegetables. Their bite size veggies are about a half zucchini. As they chew, their powerful jaws make short work of the large pieces. I sit there admiring the strength of their jaws. When one of the pigs is done eating, she comes over to me and stands still, staring directly at me. I make the mistake of using a dog intro gesture and put my hand a bit closer to the pig’s nose so she can smell me.
The pig rather decides to taste me, opens its mouth and closes that strong jaw around my right hand. This begins one of the longest periods of a couple minutes in my life so far. I stare at the pig, the pig stares at me; I stare at the two thirds of my hand which is in the pig’s mouth. There’s no trust or courage involved in my inner turmoil. There’s only pure primal fear; one chew and I won’t have a hand. There’s no blood which helps to keep me steady as I’m immersed in this swarming fear.
All the while the pig continues to hold eye contact with me in a steady gaze that emits the question: so what are you gonna do, human. I slowly regain my breathing and persist with the in and out of breath. It’s only that invisible, insubstantial breath that sustains me. This transforms the fear into the patient endurance of stillness. As I surrender to the moment, the pig opens its great jaw and releases my hand from between those two large tusks.
In the past when I have been assailed, I skip feeling the fear because I deem fear to be a weakness, a lack of courage. I have often exhibited courage by battling in some way. Courage in battle is loud and big and vanquishing. The idea of courage being present with swarming fear, patient stillness and calm surrender isn’t one I ever consider. The pig teaches me a lesson of Tao: “[The one] with outward courage dares to die. [The one] with inward courage dares to live.” (Tao 73)
Genetic Engineering
Kulture Klatch – September, 2007 – [Genetic Engineering]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
Recently I read that a presidential candidate gaffed by saying that being gay is a choice. Apparently I've been napping again. In these times it seems that it's absolutely the right thing to believe that being gay is genetic; and choice is absolutely the wrong thing. While napping, apparently I missed the formation of the National Executive Gay Committee which seems to be telling us all, gay and straight, what to think. I find that just as disturbing as the other way around (the National Executive Straight Committee).
I'm inspired to google "heterosexual genes". That search retrieves an astonishing line: there are already proven heterosexual genes [and these are] X and Y. Really?!! Yeah it's contained in a blog. Even so it's an indication to me that the "science" is encouraging some weird linkages. I suppose the next logical scientific investigation should be for a Z gender chromosome that could be the cause of queerness. What I learn in school way back when is that X and Y have to do with gender and these are chromosomes not genes. Perhaps that scientific fact has changed too. Perhaps not, which indicates the level of the conversation is questionable and rapidly degenerating. The conversation is like grabbing for straws to keep ourselves from drowning in a sea of contempt, stupidity and fear. A little later in time I learn the view that Y is a broken X. That's still X and Y as gender related. XX is of course a same letter combination that creates a woman. XY is a different letter combination that creates a man. However, as some would later extrapolate: XX is a woman; XY is a broken woman. In line with the current quality of blog thinking on the topic, it could be inferred that the assignation of XY as heterosexual; and XX as gay. If that were a fact, it could cause great upheaval in gender social structure and sexual relations. No one seems to have gone that far yet. My google search netted me three pages on heterosexual genes (most of which were really about homosexual genes) and twelve pages on homosexual genes. I don't understand why homosexual genes get so much attention. Heterosexuality runs rampant in the world, contributing to an overwhelming mushroom of population that threatens to snuff out human life forms altogether because there are diminishing resources to sustain us all. I'd be more concerned about finding a het gene and eradicating it to save the planet. I can be sure that's the plan for the discovery of a queer gene. The truth about science is that it's a belief system that supports the prevailing views of a small group going for large influence in the world of humans. It's flawed; prevailing science on any given day can be disproved the next. (Scientists once believe that the world is flat.) The religion of science dominates in the world. Many of us believe without question that queerness is in our genes because some scientist somewhere thinks so. I believe it's a choice that's influenced just as many of our choices are by exploration, existence, experience. Science or belief, the outcome is the same for me; I'm a lesbian. A lot of the googled information is blog material churning out what at this time is at best shaky scientific theory. Some of the discussion is chock full of the same old anachronistic antigay posturing. Then someone whines the now common rebuttal: but it's in our genes. (…Maybe it's in the water?) It's really tiresome; all of it: our push to "respectability" and their push back to "perversity". I don't have to explain, justify, reason the reason for being gay. Each day I live my life the best I can. I believe life is a remarkable miracle, very well created by a source still a mystery even to scientists. The people who belittle my being a lesbian are people who are terribly ungrateful for this miracle of life and its astonishing plethora of possibilities. I have only one response to them. The slogan chant goes: we're here, we're queer; get used to it. I am here, I am a lesbian. No explanation, justification, apology is necessary.