badpersimmon

g asked me, over our umpth glass of happy hour wine at an overpriced tapas place in LA, if i’ve ever been jealous of a lover who was also a writer. i was surprised at how immediately i knew the answer to this question. it was a lover who was on *texting relations* with the venerable, feminist priestess of no fucks, survivor bad ass, dorothy allison. as in, “aw, dorothy just *texted* she got my package in the mail.” inside i was pretty much having a nuclear meltdown from excitement and wild jealousy. holding it together, i just said, oh really, that’s cool. i all but asked this lover to send a friendship bracelet from me in the next package. for some reason, this seemed like the most reasonable strategy to friend-court a stranger-writer in a seemingly non-threatening manner. i understand this is creepy.

anyways, reliving this memory recently got me into a dorothy allison interview reading binge. this one’s pretty good from 1994:

“I have a theory about writing fiction. I often run into young writers who ask me the question "How can you tell those terrible stories about people? How can you make them seem almost real, or liveable or loveable?" And my theory is that if you create a character and if you tell enough about that character, even if you are creating someone who is a villain or someone who does terrible things, if you tell enough about them, then you have the possibility of loving them.”

“I don't know any southern writer who doesn't begin with momma.”

was catching up with a youth organizer i used to work with. she is such a badass and makes folks laugh where ever she goes. we met when she was 16, so it’s been like 6 years now. she’s a first-gen student about to graduate college. she wanted to talk about leaving home, if she should leave ny. should she continue to work and organize in her hometown, or leave for a bit and do something like teach english abroad on fulbright. for her, the latter sometimes feels so selfish and frivolous when considering the urgencies and needs of her communities. but, she really craved travel, to see, to expand. she knows how much i’ve moved around since i was a kid. she wanted the advice of a nomad. i told her about a traveling root. we talked for an hour and half. 

before we said good night, she said, "p thanks for sharing your soul with me, for giving me a piece of your soul. you're really good at that, giving your all when someone needs advice, has a question, wants to talk. you share your soul even when capitalism slowly tries to pluck away at it."

conversations with other qpoc about the trials and tribulations of dating white people are *usually* funny. there seems to be a spectrum of feelings ranging from anti-dating white people (qpoc supremacy) to love can overcome anything (kumbaya-ing with caution). i was reminded of this when c was talking gay wedding planning and all. in her case, her black jamaican love for her mid-western white love overcame dietary blandness:

c: remember when i stayed over her house for the first time, and i was going to cook something up and all she had was like salt...that was it! i open up her cabinet and it’s just a salt shaker sitting there, not even any black pepper!

me: yeah, that was kinda scary.

c: and i had to literally bring like all my spices with me to her house. now she’s more adjusted to spicy food and can eat like thai, but it was like serious??

me: yeah, seriously.

past few weeks, been working on a project with red thread and simple back stitching. piercing paper with needle. red strike through. red words. decided to clear out a sedimentation of writings i’ve accrued from past lovers and ex’s. a box. many years. many miles. many poundage of muscle i cannot calculate in the micro-movements of packing and moving, but impressive i’m sure. of course, i need the ritual, stitching. i’m repurposing them as best as i can. a practicality akin to a hallmark writer, skewering sentimentality with needle.

i gave one recently to someone dear who is about to face a big transition after a rather shit year. i found the phrase ‘i’m looking forward to a new start’ in one note written by an ex-lover in pencil. i stitched through all the affections and erased the whole note except the date and phrase. a congregation of linear red stitches pooled in the center. her response surprised me. she expressed feeling like she was given an object of much weight, like a “responsibility.” she asked if i took a picture of it (i lied and said yes, even though i didn’t take a picture of the final), and with the tone of the honored, she promised to keep it secure, like some kind of museum curator (of love). it didn’t occur to me that this giving could take on a shade of the burdenous. i want this giving to not feel so weighty, like you’re being given history, i want it to feel like recycling.

one of my favorite pieces (i’m keeping) comes from this 3-page rejection letter i haven’t read in years. essentially i was being turned down in the kindest way possible after i sent this friend an impulsive, out of the blue, i think i’m in love with you, what do i do, what do i do, desperate letter. i folded it into an accordion, locating the various renditions of “you’re just a friend” that at one point were sites of my red-face humiliation. but now, i just think it’s so funny. and now, you can use these lines to turn down friends you don’t want as lovers. useful right? recycling.

i stayed in and cuddled w/a crush on halloween while watching the exorcist. f has never seen it. i have seen it many times. it’s a film that for a majority of my childhood through high school never failed to re-ignite the “reality” of fiery hell for me. the “reality” of my body’s permeability to “evil.” i grew up in the evangelical church and f grew up in the catholic church.

when i say, i grew up in the church, like, i was heavily involved in the church. the most reparative rendering of my experience in the korean church is that it was my first extended period of time where i learned to organize in various positions of leadership in my youth groups; found joy in community, singing and reading together; coached an all-girl’s volleyball team to compete in this state-wide church volleyball tournament. a less generous rendering is that’s where i endured intense policing of my sexuality and managed inappropriate passes made by older male pastors and leaders (for instance, the children’s pastor at one church was my alcohol hook-up; in HS, it was like “cool! i’ll just deal with your creepy stares and touches because i want to get drunk with my under aged friends!”); where my leadership as a girl was consistently challenged or questioned or tasked to domestic roles, even sometimes backed up through scripture; where i learned the impossibility of my desires which translated into an obsession with being virulently bi-phobic while “understanding homosexuality” (and making out with girls which somehow “didn’t count”)-- probably my most bizarre, vocal manifestation of my religiously framed, sorta liberal, internalized homophobia at the time.

and, of course, there’s HELL.

there was one visit to our sister church, a black assembly of god church, that put on a hell house production. hell houses are all theater, premised on different scenarios (i.e. a girl who dies after getting an abortion, a gay man who dies from AIDS, etc.), and they go to heaven or HELL. i was so moved by the performance, i joined the (very loud) prayer room after the show, and SPOKE IN TONGUES for the first time. i was so scared of going to hell, the emotional intensity literally made me speak gibberish and be “filled with the spirit.” many years later, when i stumbled across ann pellegrini’s essay on hell houses, it brought back those scary feelings, but in a way that felt healing for me, by then, an early 20′s pretty comfy with my queer-self-self. the world-building, the affective and material life of belief, is so powerful, so transformative, and it can change, it can change, it’s always changing, and it really has changed.

f and i watched the exorcist and laughed a lot, while appreciating the film’s pacing, dialogue. from the head spins and the fuck-me-jesus, a story of a nice girl who becomes so fed up by the church, psychology, and medicine, she’s like evilhood-of-the-traveling-pants, just take me. she develops extra-human strength and powers. not giving two fucks, she pees on the carpet in front of her mom’s obnoxious, drunk friends because they’re too loud and she’s trying to sleep. she grabs her condescending psychologist’s balls and twists them because she doesn’t want talk-therapy. she floats in the air above her bed, because this world, this brotherhood of man, sucks, and we all gotta dissociate every once in a while.

cannabis butter magic happening on a double boiler in my kitchen. my fingers smell like the lavender buds i ground. the end goal is lavender-bud lemon shortbread. the sunflowers i bought myself are gazing at me, curiously, from the corner of my desk. it’s a meshell ndegeocello kind of saturday morning.

me, lately. and possibly, halloween.

the title of some white girl’s short story in jenny zhang’s writing class. like, really?! yeah, really.

this video is like so hot, i can’t even, take it.