| Friday, October 14, 2005 |
| two dreams |
Remarkable if only for the fact that I remember them:
Back in or around Wheeling, I'm attending some family gathering or another, playing pool in someone's basement. It's probably Thanksgiving, or sometime shortly after my birthday anyway, because one of my aunts [DeeDee, probably] is asking me what it's like to be able to drink. I don't drink, of course, and she asks why. And here's the interesting bit: I tell her. In the dream, I tell her everything. I don't drink, I tell her, because I cling to my inhibitions; they keep me safe. That I'm afraid of what would happen if I lose control, lose myself, and start randomly groping every cute boy that I pass on the street. And just like that, I'm out to my family, and I smile.
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Back at my parents' house, in what may or may not be a separate or subsequent dream, my uncle Phil comes out of the upstairs bathroom, pulls out a handgun, and shoots me in the stomach. I pull out my own handgun and shoot him back, and he dies. At some point an ambulance transports me to the hospital, where I make a full recovery before returning to the UI.
Guest starring: Greg Grunberg as The Doctor, Colin Mockery as The Paramedic
Conspicuous by their absence: my father the paramedic, my mother |
posted by La Malinche @ 1:34 AM   |
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| Wednesday, October 12, 2005 |
| fun with google |
Ganked from Syn, Josh, et al.
Results 1 - 10 of about 765 for "pete needs". (0.09 seconds)
1/ Pete Needs Our Prayers.
2/ Pete needs you, and you need him.
3/ Pete needs to launch his career as a high-powered attorney.
4/ Pete needs a girlfriend.
5/ Pete Needs His Own Personal Jesus.
6/ Pete needs some time to digest what happened.
7/ Pete needs to spend millions just to have people outside of Lane county know who he is.
8/ Pete needs to get his homework done in record time.
9/ Pete needs your vote.
10/ Pete needs to come out and admit what he did and say he's sorry. He has never been able to do that.
And...
Results 1 - 1 of about 21 for "malinche needs". (0.06 seconds)
StarTrekVoyager.com - USS Malinche - NEEDS MORE CREW!
O_o
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| posted by La Malinche @ 3:59 PM |
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| Tuesday, October 04, 2005 |
| the fairy in his blood |
My mother the preschool teacher knows the game well. It involves placing colored plastic pins in the tiny holes of a pegboard. There are probably over one hundred pins, allowing for the infinite whim of a young child’s creativity. This is the task my grandmother is set to as we visit her in the nursing home Sunday, the day before my birthday.
“So Pete, you got friends out in college?”
My aunt DeeDee happened to be there when we arrived unannounced. I look at her, amused. I play myself off with mild incredulity at the question, with an unspoken “of course!” ignoring the fact that I’ve been a social pariah all my life, and it’s all too fair a question. That’s DeeDee—she’s not much one for small talk. No discussing the weather, no local politics. Right to the point, to a fault. “Hey, Pete, how you doing, that’s great, so tell me--your mom’s not happy lately, is she; what’s going on there?” That was last Christmas. I don’t know how Dad lived with her growing up--I wanted to slap her.
This time around, though, I just assure her that yes, I do have friends.
“Yeah, that’s great, what about your best friend? Linda? Yeah, the one you’ve told us about, your best friend out there?”
This time I return a puzzled look for a moment or two, as though searching for whom she could possibly be talking about. I know she’s referring to Lucy, but I also know that I’ve never gone into detail with anyone in my extended family about my friends.
“You mean Lucy?”
She responds in her sing-song, but I’m not listening—rather, I’m looking over to Dad, trying to visually reprimand him for discussing my life in such detail with his sister, but he’s busy telling his mother how best to put the pins in the pegboard. Gramma stops him and looks at me.
“Have you brought her home to meet your folks yet?”
“No, Gram, I don’t think she’s his girlfriend. Just a girl and a friend, but not a girlfriend.”
“Dear God, I’m being defended by DeeDe. Kill me.”
--
There exists a photo of me from 1991; I am either in kindergarten or first grade, either six or seven years old. I’m sitting in the gymnasium of my elementary school during some assembly or another. The students surrounding me are all staring dutifully at the front of the room; I am preening for the camera. I am also wearing a giant, flowery, pink Easter bonnet.
--
I am a role-player. At any given moment, I am one of innumerable people, depending on mood, surroundings, meteorology, and most importantly, audience. It is a station in life that I have inherited through the generations of my Wildean genealogy by virtue of my more particular sensibilities. He wrote that the masks people wore were more interesting, and often more truthful, than the “real” identities underneath. He bore the masks born of the love that dare not speak its name, and passed them down the line of fairies to me.
I grew up in Wheeling, Illinois. Among privileged upper-middle-class Chicago suburbia, it is considered the ghetto. 29,000 people lived in Wheeling while I was attending my Catholic school, learning all the right things just so I could reject them when I got out.
My sister left Wheeling for geographical features. She left for the mountains of Fort Collins, Colorado, where she now lives and works as a family practitioner MD with her husband, whom she met there. I, on the other hand, left Wheeling for anthropological features. In elementary school I had a single black classmate, whereas in high school white people may have been the plurality, but were not the majority. I soaked in the diversity of high school, reveled in the presence and celebration of racial minority, but I still felt isolated. I came to realize that what was still off-putting was that my minority wasn’t represented. In my four years of high school, I had one each of gay and lesbian classmates. It took me until my senior year to even recognize this, and I was horrified. Here I had thought that I had made such great strides in the direction of diversity and equality, but where was I in this scheme?
No one, in this country, is raised to be gay. Our society and our culture are set up in an attempt to hard-wire children with hegemonic gender and sexuality roles, subtly encouraging that they grow into the heterosexual men and women they ought to. Lesbians have it easier because girls are afforded, at least, a “tomboy” phase. For we girly boys, however, there is no such allowance. The moment we show an effeminate side that cannot be cured, or perhaps even is enhanced, by little league sports, we are sat on the bench and institutionally marginalized.
It is this marginalization that creates and maintains the link between homosexual culture, particularly gay men, and the theater. All the while society and culture are proselytizing us to heterosexuality, we are at the same time learning how to be gay. It is that secondary learning process that outed me to my father, when he checked up on my internet usage and discovered that I’d been reading extensively on gay advocacy [and gay pornography] websites. As much as mass society is socializing into children the proper way to walk and talk to be straight, gay society can urge resistance to, and rejection of, those signifiers.
We, more than any other minority, have the ability to “pass,” if only for the irrefutable fact that we look like you. Even more so in a modern world whose vernacular includes “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “metrosexual,” those signifiers that separate straight and gay can no longer be trusted. Armed with a double education in how to live, the gay community is more than able to hide in plain sight when necessary, and that same double education is what affords members of that community to track the tricks of the trade, as it were, and identify when someone is using that knowledge to pass. Gaydar is a very real phenomenon, and while intuitive rather than rational, there’s nothing mystical about it. It’s a magician seeing through the stunts of a street performer.
Maya Angelou has said that it would benefit every African-American to go and see for him or herself a Free African Nation, a place where black people are the majority, and freely and rightly exercise their social, political, and economic power. While the same is certainly true for all oppressed minorities, there is no Free Homosexual Nation, where gays and lesbians can go and experience a place where we are the majority, where we exercise the power. Most of the world, sadly, is the exact opposite, and Wheeling was no exception. So I left. I moved to a progressive college town, and started taking classes in the Sexualities Studies department. In some of those classes, despite what the college of liberal arts and sciences says in the disclaimer attached to every Sexualities Studies course, you can pretty much assume that everyone in that class is gay. It’s a radical, empowering feeling. For the first time in my life, homosexuality is the norm, the default. It’s the closest I’ve come to a Free Homosexual Nation, and it feels like home. |
| posted by La Malinche @ 6:52 PM |
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| pretty colors! |
 La Malinche took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test!
La Malinche's Existing Situation
Active, outgoing, and restless. Feels frustrated by the slowness with which events develop along the desired lines. This leads to irritability, changeability, and lack of persistence when pursuing a given objective.
La Malinche's Stress Sources
Has an unsatisfied need to ally himself with others whose standards are as high as his own, and to stand out from the herd. This desire for preeminence isolates him and inhibits his readiness to give himself freely. While he wants to surrender and let himself go, he regards this as a weakness which must be resisted. This self-restraint, he feels, will lift him above the rank and file and ensure recognition as a unique and distinctive personality.
La Malinche's Restrained Characteristics
Has high emotional demands and is willing to involve himself in a close relationship, but not with any great depth of feeling.
Circumstances are forcing him to compromise, to restrain his demands and hopes, and to forgo for the time being some of the things he wants.
La Malinche's Desired Objective
Needs to feel identified with someone or something and wishes to win support by his charm and amiability. Sentimental and yearns for a romantic tenderness.
La Malinche's Actual Problem
Greatly impressed by the unique, by originality, and by individuals of outstanding characteristics. Tries to emulate the characteristics he admires and to display originality in his own personality.
The first bit I question, but the rest is neat. And to think, all I did was click the pretty colors first. The second go-around I got "Longs for a tender and sympathetic bond and for a situation of idealized harmony. Has an imperative need for tenderness and affection. Susceptible to anything esthetic." ^_^;; |
| posted by La Malinche @ 6:38 PM |
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