Distance and Interest

I feel like so many of the things I have dealt with in my life have made my feel more distanced and disconnected from the people around me.

When my mother was crazy, it made me feel crazy. Apart. Estranged from notions of friendship and family that were illusory to me yet somehow implied in the existence of my peers. I needed to be away from her, and so I went to Peru. I gave myself what I needed. I was independent. Competent. Strong. But for all the good it did me in my life, it was another experience that only makes the distance seem somewhat spectacular. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve learned how to be an interesting person at the expense of being a relatable person. It’s another in an ever expanding collection… my very own cabinet of curiosities where my life is what is on display.


Now I want to transition. When I first started thinking of transitioning, I had people in my life who valued me for my gender ambiguity, people who loved and coveted my genderquuerdom, people who I related to more because of my boyish desires. Now so much has changed in my life in terms of relationships. I feel like to transition would be to transition out of community, to taking another step away from support with no foreseeable corollary on the other side.

It’s no wonder that so much of what I focus my energies on is trying to find community in struggle. I worry that dealing with rather than striving for is the only future I’m prepared for. As if I have reached a point in my life where the only kind of connection that seems authentic is the relationship between people learning how to deal with shit together. As if the only love I believe in is love among comrades.

Haikus or Fragments form the narrative of my last couple days

April 28th
The smell of sweat and
Dirt gathered under her nails
Was like growing up

The disappointment
Of never having learned to
work for a living.

April 29th
Estranged initials,
Letters open, unexpected
Rounded but not worn

Fell through my inbox
Hitting a nerve on the way
Back into distance

On Wanting II

The fact that I claim I don’t know what I want seems farcical to many people who know me. After all, I am ambitious and have the work ethic of a puritan Ox (I way want an image of that). The question that I can see in their eyes when the ask: What am I afraid of wanting? What am I unwilling or unable to admit that I want?

When it comes down to it, I want for those I care about—I want that they feel safe and cared for; I want that they feel good about who they are and what they are doing; I want that they see how strong and capable I know they are. I want many of the same things for myself.

But the question that always seems so untenable is what do I want from them. What do I want from my relationships with them? And thus I falter. I want to be a good man; I want to be a good brother; I want to be a good friend; I want to be a good parent. I want to be what they need. I want to show them they are already enough. I want to be a mirror that reflects all the things I admire about them. I want to love them in ways they can’t love themselves. I want to show them how much they have to teach me. What does any of that mean?

I know Buddhism is attractive to me because it tells me I am virtuous because I don’t want. I know that is ego. I know wanting things makes me feel vulnerable. I know that is ego too. I know that all the things I know only get me farther from what I want. So where the hell does that lead me?

"Activists are my people"

My girlfriend asks me good questions. It’s one of the reasons I like her so much. She asks me why don’t I ever talk about personal growth outside of political growth. I try to explain that for some people personal growth is inextricably intertwined with a social and historical moment. For some people personal growth is melded seamlessly into the times, into the reciprocal relationship with their environment shaping and reshaping one another in their own image. For some people, community is movement in a way that nothing else can be. We argue over whether or not my answer if just some updated version of “personal is political.” I don’t know how to explain to her that jews are her people and queers are her people but activists are mine.…

I can't get to sleep...

Our hot water heater ran out of oil two days before I left. We figured out that's what the problem was the next day, but I was too busy getting ready to leave to do anything about it. I offered to schedule it if anyone would tell me a good time. no one did.

A week later someone started rounding up the money. By time I came back, I expected it would all be settled. Disappointed. The tank had been filler, but it had been a few days and no one knew how to light the pilot light. I came home to cold showers.

This morning I woke up and started complaining. I was pissed that I had to pay 80 dollars for oil I'll never use, and I still can't take a damn shower. I started cleaning to sooth my anxiety about it. The fridge smelled, and I didn't know why. I usually clean it out every three or four days, but I had been gone for a while. SO I started to unload things that looked too familiar. I wanted to clean out the veggie drawer before p

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utting my vegetable in because its gross to store food in a dirty space. Then I saw brownish water in the space beneath the drawer and the bottom of the fridge. I took them out to wipe it up and saw mold floating in it. I gagged as I sopped it up, freezing cold with a towel I had found wadded up on the floor. This place was disgusting.

I spent the better part of an hour muddling around with the furnace down stairs to no avail. I grumbled under my breath as I moved bags of clutter out of the way to find the tools to work on it. When I finished, my pants were stained and my hands reeked of oil. I couldn't believe some people had lived here for a year and didn't know how to do this damnit.

I went on the porch to update people on the situation and hint that someone else needed to pick up where I left off. My room mate's cigarette smoke rolled into my space. I coughed a little and then went inside.

As I lay in bed on the edge of sleep, I'm unable to go under. I'm kept awake by the smell of oil mingled with stale cigarette smoke, by annoyance translated into compulsion and neurosis, by the insistence that others have wronged me. I'm going to bed disappointed, critical and alone. I'm going to bed the same way my mother went to bed for the last 20 years, and I can't get to sleep because I'm a little scare of how I'll wake up when I'm through.

Disappointment Strikes Again

I pressed my greasy finger against the cool glass of the airport check-in kiosk. I’ve been sweating since I woke up this morning and now I’m enjoying the AC in another over-sized glass building where I’ve spent too much waiting since I’ve been here. I was in a bad mood because I had only slept about an hour the night before and for no good reason either. “This flight may be full. Would you be interested in volunteering your seat for compensation?” the kiosk offered.

“Sure.” I thought in my easily impressionable state, “Why not?”
I arrived at the gate moments after the agent pushed the little red button of the walkie-talkie and articulating my name in a perfect accent into the speaker. My timing seemed too good.

“Soy Chlirissa Perez”

“Do you still want to give your seat?”

“Yeah. I mean, wait… when can I get another flight.”
He described to me how I’d have to spend a couple hours here and then couple in Chicago. I’ve slept in Chicago. Really, it’s worth the flight to an unemployed soon-to-be student. Whatever vague thoughts I had about the situation, I was registering value not experience… what was my time worth not where would I go. Last year I had wanted to visit Ashley and Tessa, but they didn’t move. They broke up, and neither of them are leaving the East for a while. Instead, I went to Detroit for a conference because the ticket was on the verge of expiring.

When I’d done this before, it seemed like it could be the kind of adventure I dreamed about as a child toppled over in a fort between the couch cushions. Moreover, under the pretense of dharma, I was carrying out an ego-driven quest to prove to myself how rugged and resourceful I could be. Groundless ground had grown less novel in the interim since though, and I had had more than my share of spiritually challenging travel stories. All the same, I nodded my head at the man and grumbled that I was fine with it. What is a couple more hours of waiting if I’m going to be dazed out on miserable already?

It was only after I sat down and begun typing that I remembered I have someone I want to see who lives a plane flight away. I’m sure this seems an absurd detail to overlook, but it wasn’t until I returned to my niche (I’ve learned to treat any seat within two feet of a power plug as a home away from home at this stage in my life) that I remembered how desperately far away the West Coast loomed. I remembered how sleepless I had been since she told me she had made that final decision to move. I let myself begin to imagine what it might be like to share another first with her, to stretch further across the country than I’ve ever imagined myself going. I’ve said before that the West Coast might as well be another country, and I set to work in my mind illustrating my passport so as to make it more believable.

My day dream was interrupted as the agent announced that the plane was to leave late. I strolled up to the desk to get information so that I could leave an excited message on her answering machine. He told me he had changed his mind. Why had I let myself indulge that daydream? A woman once told me expectations are premeditated disappointment. It sounded cheesy at the time. But as I sat sulking in my missed connection and the hours of waiting that ensued only to learn that I had to take a plane the next morning, I damned myself.

She's been dangerous from the beginning. She challenges me to want, to know what I want, and to let myself entertain my wants. She makes me want to have dreams. When I think of her I give myself permission to believe in things just because I dream them. And the airline is just the latest co-conspirator…

Personal Update: Job

I won a veggie peeler today.

After 6 months of searching for a job and only finding temporary work, I’ve finally broke down and became an independent contractor with a corporate marketing company. I think that means I sold out.

I’ve spent three days being bombarded by incentive programs, get-rich-quick ambitions, and luxury car examples braided through company lore. I don’t know how to relate in the strange landscape of salesmanship were everything is a contest and success is an attitude platitudes are planted along every path.

It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I sell knives. Rather, I am getting trained to get paid to visit people who have been referred to me through my social network and show them a few party tricks with high-quality cutlery. As my boss pointed, “They will always want it. That’s not your job. You just ask if they are buying it or get the names of who will.”

I’ll be doing about thirty hours worth of training, which I’m not getting paid for. I had to work through the first weekend. I am having trouble brainstorming people to show because I haven’t been in the area too long. My success is very much in question.

My goal for the night is to get an appointment. For the weekend is to get a sale. For the week, I wouldn’t mind earning a leatherman, but I’d settle for a pay check.