Everybody Here's a Label, Not a Name

Know what? I'm going to give up on labels. These day there are far too many of them.

Once upon a time bisexual meant "attracted to pretty much everybody," which was fine by me, as it pretty much covered where I stood. But someone moved the goalposts and now it means "attracted only to those born male or born female and who have not altered their base gender aspect in any way."

Which is, by the by, a crock of utter shit. I don't think there is a biological urge on the planet that stops to ask what gender a person was born when it first kicks you in the hormones and directs you to ogle another human being from afar. If the attraction ceases after finding out, then that is not a biological imperative, but a psychological one. It means the person in question has Issues that clouds their ability to truly enjoy sex or feel comfortable in their sexuality, which is worlds divorced from base biological urges.

So this splitting hairs finer and finer as to some sort of "attraction flow chart," seems to me to be further confusing the issues of sexual attraction instead of shining light on them. Especially when it comes to understanding and embracing self acceptance, self honesty, and figuring out where our hangups lie and why they exist. Plus, it gives a sort of "status boost" to those who are the most "inclusive" about their attraction, as if these people were somehow better than all the folks still working through a lifetime of sexual issues, some of which can be pretty intense depending on what culture you come out of (evangelical is a good example) or what you've been through (abuse, rape, etc.).

Fuck that shit, man, sexuality is NOT a status symbol and should never be used as such.

I don't like the game, so I'm not playing. From now on, I'm introducing myself as "Weird-Sexual." Or maybe "Sexually Fluid," that works too, as long as those of a twelve year old mentality don't get hold of it.

It basically means whatever label you try to put on me, I don't fit. Chances are, I'm gonna do something that doesn't jive with your little pigeonholes, and I'm okay with that. In fact, better than okay. I get enough judgement from mainstream society about my sexuality; I don't need it from the non-mainstream folks as well. My sexuality is only one small aspect of who I am, and not the most important one, at that, so get over it already!
 
Unless, of course, you really, really need everything neatly dissected and tidily put away in order to function. In which case, have fun with your masses of self labeling. Whatever turns you on, dude*.


*Dude is used in this context as gender neutral and does not imply the user's gender in any way. It is being used this way because the author is too damned lazy to list dude, dudette, cis-dude, queer-dude, pan-dude, and whatever the bloody hell else is floating around out there. Yes, the author is a lazy bitch. And, you'll note, she also does not call herself an authoress because she also considered the word "author" to be gender neutral. She's weird like that.

As the Kitty Burns

I walk home, one knee high sagging around my ankle.

I'm thinking.

My cat needs her kidneys flushed. Something is wrong, but I have no idea what. The nice doctor explained it to me on the phone, but a combination of what I can only assume is medical-speak plus his heavy Indian accent turned the explanation to gibberish. I don't understand accents on the best of days because...well...I'm a terrible person (isn't this the sort of thing politically correct, caring, and sensitive white folk know how to do?), but it's even worse when the words are unfamiliar to me.

All I know is she needs them flushed. She needs an IV. She needs an extended vet stay, and in a couple days, she needs her blood tested. Oh, and antibiotics. We can never forget the fun of giving a kitty antibiotics.

And I'm seeing little cartoon dollar signs flitting around my head, making a pass or two before fluttering off into the wide blue sky. I have money. I can pay for this. But it'll hurt. And the solution they're giving...well the doctor isn't guaranteeing it's a solution. There could be more money, more tests if this doesn't work.

I'm thinking of my mom, a single mother in Florida--back when Florida was still something resembling sane--struggling to make ends meet.

We were the only white faces on the black side of town, but back then that didn't mean what it does now. The neighborhood was by no means safe, but crimes didn't happen in broad daylight. Neighbors still looked out for each other, even if it was just keeping a wary eye on what was going on around the homes next to them. My mother could go outside and walk down the street without fear of being raped. I could play in my yard--front or back, we had both--without fear of being kidnapped or harmed. In fact, we had more to fear from the boys who liked to drag race their cars down the street than any criminal danger.

And all those black faces around us were in exactly the same boat.

We adopted a dog when I was four or five and named her Lassie. She wasn't a collie. She was, in fact, probably the spawn of several generations of sleazy back-alley encounters between breeds looking to kink it up with members outside their genetically exclusive gene pool. She was a small, enthusiastic mop of nervous love, her big brown eyes hidden behind bangs so long my mother often clipped them.

She was a pound dog, and that meant something different then than it does now. Anything from a pound had a fifty-fifty chance of having contracted some sort of disease or ailment, usually from the close quarters with other dogs or the merely adequate hygienic conditions. They weren't checked, and pounds didn't apologize. It was simply known, like you knew the sun was going to rise, that you took your chances.

Lassie, when she came to us, had problems. She wasn't fixed, for one thing; that was on our dime. I remember looking at her stitches, mom trying to explain to me what they were for. I also know she was ill, but I was little and it's been years. Ask me to tell you with what and I couldn't answer. I know it was two or three things, probably ears, fur/skin, and some bacteria or virus she needed medicine for. The moment we got that dog we had a money pit.

But my mother stretched her budget and that lovely little dog lived with us for nearly twenty years.

Keep in mind, my mom was a single mother--that's difficult in any day and age. She had only a high school degree, so she wasn't exactly raking in the bucks. And yet, in many ways she was better off then than I am now.

We owned our own home. Sure, it was dirt cheap and on the wrong side of town, and sure we only afforded it because of a special program hosted by the city (lowering crime by making prices affordable for families who weren't criminals to move in--it worked), but hey, we owned it. How many people could do that now, even if offered similar help?

Mom owned her own car. Not making payments, owned. And when a wreck wiped it out, she bought a new one. Sure it was old and not very fancy, and sure it wasn't speedy or pretty or really anything desirable. But it was reliable, not a junker, and was bought with money she saved.

We got a dog, and while the budget was tight while we nursed her back to health, we managed it.
She had one job, one, and it paid all the bills plus some left over. Very little, but some.
And, I can't stress this enough, she was raising a child all on her own.

And my mother, then, made less than I do now, even adjusting for inflation.

Fast forward ten years.

After her divorce and after discovering that her ex had found a legal loophole through which he didn't have to pay his court mandated child support--ever--she was essentially a single mom again, but this time with two kids. Still, she was also senior in her field, having the know how and experience to have moved up considerably in rank, and now made more than she did when I was a preschooler.

My grandparents bought her a trailer on a tiny piece of land nearly an hour outside town--if they hadn't we'd have been homeless. My grandparents bought her a car--if they hadn't, mom would be jobless. And to keep us afloat my mother maxed every credit card she owned, worked long hours, and when that didn't cover it she took on so many odd jobs they essentially became a second job in their own right. Money was so tight we didn't even have a dollar to spare for a candy bar.

Fast forward again another fifteenish years, give or take.

I'm single and childless. I make more now than my mother ever did--even adjusted for inflation--but I own nothing permanent. No car. No college, because I can't afford it and my credit is too bad to get loans--education is apparently NOT an equal opportunity offer. No home; I rent with a roommate, in fact. I own nothing but my books, my clothes, and my cats. Most of my money goes to bills, and I mean basic bills. Aside from internet what I pay falls under necessary--phone, food, electricity, water, sewer, gas. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy some modest pastimes, like going to the movies or out with friends, but even these things are done pretty rarely.

And sudden disasters like my precious cat being sick? A nightmare.

Like most of my generation I live hand-to-mouth. I don't have credit cards (by choice) so I can't even pretend things are better than they are, that I am somehow wealthier than I really am.

And as I walk home, my knee high around my ankle, exhausted from too much work and too little sleep and hallucinating dollar signs hemorrhaging into the open sky, I wonder how we got here from where we started, not even a full lifetime ago.

I wonder if we'll ever have the energy to get mad or whether everyone else, like me, is so exhausted merely from the daily struggle to survive that they just can't rouse the energy to fight back. Or even to care.

And then I walk in the door.