Selfies. Can we talk about selfies for a minute?
I finally caved and created an Instagram account last year, a month or so into my pandemic/unemployment boredom/mental health crisis. I don’t consider myself a very talented photographer, but I like to document my life and what I see, because I know that I tend to notice things that many other people don’t. That having been said, after joining Insta I quickly recognized that many people (who are, by social media standards and metrics, quite popular) mostly populate their feed with selfies.
Now, I see nothing at all wrong with this; everyone has a right to glorify their beautiful bodies. However, I’ve come to realize that there are two main reasons why I personally have rarely posted any photos of myself: 1) I think I really suck at taking good selfies and 2) Nearly a year into total COVID shutdown, I have never felt less attractive or physically fit in my entire adult life.
I’ve struggled with body dysmorphia my entire life. I was a fat kid; I eventually got a growth spurt (thanks, late-blooming puberty) and became gangly and awkward; I was happily a rail-thin raver in the 90s/00s and then eventually, I decided to get on the gym/bodybuilding/steroid train, and at 26 years of age, I finally sort of grew into what I decided my adult form was. It was fun. I got a lot of attention. Some people decided to hate me because to them I was “one of those gym/circuit queens.” And that is fine. I’m used to being hated. If you grew up queer as a three dollar bill in Alabama in the 80s, you either got killed or learned how to survive a whole lot of people hating you. Anyway. Point is, whether I chose to lift weights just to look good or to become more fit in general, I learned to love the way that exercise made me feel. Present, *in* my body. Strong. Focused. Disciplined.
Not having gyms really sucks. Not having a yoga studio to go to–where I can have a practice that’s like going to church–really, really sucks. Not being able to go to Ecstatic Dance at The Church Of 8 Wheels and fling myself around, barefoot, covered in sweat, and stone-cold sober (save for the actual brain-chemistry-induced high of the experience)…FUCKING SUCKS. You get the idea? It’s been nearly a year since I’ve been able to experience any of the physical activity that makes my body feel like anything other than a walking bag of garbage. I do not FEEL good in my skin.
I feel ugly. I feel simultaneously puffy and deflated.
I feel inhuman.
This pandemic has not just robbed me of human connection; it has robbed me of every physical practice that ever made me feel like I actually am a human.
I didn’t start writing this at 5 something AM on a Sunday because I wanted attention or reassurance that I’m still [whatever affirmational adjectives you prefer in regards to physical appearance]. I’m REALLY not asking for “life hacks” about how to create a home practice for physical fitness in any form, and I damn well better not hear a single word from a single person about anything physical-fitness-related that involves spending a single penny, when I’m getting about $142 a week to live on from the government and I haven’t been able to pay rent in full since last March. I want people to understand that presently, in my reality, physical fitness basically looks like a luxury item to me…something for the financially privileged, which is a category I have summarily been excluded from for pretty much my entire life.
I realize that there’s a lot of white whine in these words; I can say that I’m grateful for still having a roof over my head and food every day and at least one human being in my life who is legally contracted to accept some degree of my company and energy on a regular basis, regardless of the inherent risk of death (or worse, crucifixion via social media) that all human contact now apparently carries. But I am also a human being, and I am suffering, and I am entitled to express my displeasure at THIS FUCKING INSANITY THAT IS LIFE RIGHT NOW.
I want my old life back.
I want my body back.
I want to be in public.
With people.
People who aren’t treating one another like they’re fucking radioactive.
I really, really don’t know how much longer I can keep putting on a brave face and pretending like everything is just peachy keen and it’s only gonna be a little while longer before FUCKING ANYTHING NORMAL is allowed or legal or socially acceptable again.
I am losing my mind. I am losing myself.
I’m scared.
I’m lonely.
I know I’m not a perfect person and I know I haven’t always been the best I could be, in relations with other people. But goddammit, I’ve spent over a decade trying really hard to work on myself internally and be a kinder, more compassionate person and frankly, right now it feels like a wasted effort because if I can’t dance in a crowd of 2,000 bodies, or scream my head off in an arena when one of my favorite pop idols takes the stage, or–for that matter–stand in a spotlight onstage myself at a sold-out show and accept the applause from an audience that thinks something I took part in was worth clapping for…
Then why the fuck am I even here?
I don’t even know what the point of this ramble was, any more. I think I wanted to say something that maybe people would empathize with, but mostly I just feel like a hopeless narcissist, boo-hooing about trifles when there’s real suffering out there in the world.
You know what? Fuck you if that’s true. I pay for a (badly designed/maintained and mostly neglected) website; I drank the social media Kool-Aid like everybody else….I have my tiny patch of the internet’s ideosphere to stake a claim on, and I’m damn well gonna use it to say that
I FUCKING HATE REALITY RIGHT NOW AND I WANT THIS ALL TO BE OVER.
So yeah, maybe someone out there can relate. Maybe not. Whatever. Here’s a photo of my 43-year-old meatsack, in case you don’t like to read.
Happy January 17th.

Earlier this month, the drag and performance community of SF was shocked to hear of the sudden passing of Matthew Simmons, otherwise known as Peggy L’Eggs.

It’s taken me weeks to think of anything I could say publicly in response to this news; as the countless Facebook posts scrolled by–all of the photos and memories and eulogies–it felt impossible for me to think of anything I could say or add that wasn’t redundant or trite. Now, on the eve of his/her (online) memorial, I have realized something important that Peggy taught me, which I would like to share.

Shortly after moving to San Francisco in the summer of 2002, I had already been getting frequent gigs as a gogo dancer: mostly at The Stud Bar, where I had also begun to discover the fiercely beating heart of The City’s punk-aesthetic/performance-art skewed drag scene, as epitomized by the legendary Trannyshack. It was within this framework that I soon began dancing for the all-drag-queen rock band Pepperspray, in which Peggy played keyboard and sang.

As a barely-25-year-old who was still in many ways very naive, wide-eyed, and inexperienced, what first struck me about Peggy was their firm grounding in the sort of spirituality that speaks to me; I would say that s/he recognized me as a kindred spirit in that regard, and feeling seen in such a way meant a lot to me as someone who moved here to find as many kindred spirits (in as many different ways) as I could. What I was stricken by today as I was reflecting, however, was a simple sort of grace which Matthew/Peggy modeled to me…something which I now realize has made an indelible impact on my life.

As someone who was often severely bullied from my childhood and teenage years well into early adulthood, it took me a very long time to learn to feel any degree of deep trust with most people. Within months of moving from my childhood home in Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia (my home before SF), I had quickly been taught of the concept of “shade” as it relates to gay culture; being cut down, teased, or otherwise poked fun of was shown as a standard component of social interactions between gays, and I had to learn fast how to keep up and snap back when I was the recipient of shade–this was, for me, a major rite of passage into my adult queer identity.

There are few places in which the concept of shade is more finely honed or commonly practiced than in drag culture; in our modern age or RuPaul reality competitions, it’s launched countless catchphrases into common parlance. And as I began to become more firmly ensconced in drag culture, some Darwinian part of me was constantly observing the pecking order created by the dynamics of shade. Specifically, I noticed that, in most pockets of drag culture, there are certain people for whom being the butt of the joke somehow becomes an innate part of their role within said culture.

Perhaps because of my own history of being bullied, I recognized Peggy L’Eggs as one of these “shade scapegoats” rather quickly; however, what struck me was her seemingly endless capacity to accept the brunt of what may seem to the casual observer as mockery, yet s/he never appeared to personalize this or take any offense. In fact, I’d swear I saw some sort of deep compassion and amusement–perhaps even a pleasure–twinkling in those huge, expressive eyes of hers when shade was thrown her way.

It’s like…she didn’t mind being the butt of any joke, because she was always IN ON the joke.

I now realize that witnessing this practice of grace from Peggy has made so much difference in my life. I have always felt seen and appreciated by my drag/stage family here in San Francisco…and I have always felt like I’m in on the joke. That has made it easier for me to extend trust and love to all people more readily.

To put it in the very wise words of a long-time Radical Faerie friend of mine, Storm Arcana (who said this to me sometime in the late 1990s): Even when it’s disguised as Shade, it’s still Love.

No one I have ever met exemplified that better than Peggy L’Eggs.

Thank you, “Peggs.” I will truly miss the light you always carried inside you, no matter how fierce the shade.

Tonight is the 10th anniversary of my mother’s death. I can hardly believe I’ve gone this long without her.

My relationship to death has always felt strange to me. I accept death as a reality–as being written into the contract of life–but even though it’s already touched me (numerous times over) about as closely as it can without my own life ending, I’ve always had a sense that it’s a thing I mostly only know how to process intellectually, and not emotionally. I can accept that people die; I’ve accepted that people I love have died. I’m just not sure that I have ever really, viscerally and fully experienced the way that death and loss make me feel. It’s taken me close to a solid 10 years of therapy to realize that my default response to any trauma is disassociation, and who knows how much more work needs to be done before I might actually be able to change that default response. Continue reading What Is Lost →

One of my absolute favorite authors is Neil Gaiman. I’ve been happy to immerse Andrew into the multitude of worlds Gaiman has created via his writings, and most recently, Andrew completed Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys. When I was telling Andrew why I thought he should prioritize reading it, I said “there are important, true things he says in this novel. Things more important and profound than in American Gods, possibly.”

(Funny enough, when he pointed out that the blue-silver spider embossed on the hardcover has only seven legs, I had no recollection of anything within the story which might indicate that this was deliberate; however, I felt a nagging insistence that there was some reasonable explanation.)

When Andrew was finished with the novel, I began to realize that it had not been since its initial publication in 2005 that I myself had read the book. I still had strong impressions buried in my subconscious that told me there were vital truths among its pages, nonetheless. Continue reading Of Matters Filial and Matrimonial →