I'm Probably a Jerry

She went to a watery grave to become something else.⠀ ⠀ #inktober #drawtober #waterygrave #sketch #bicpen #sketchbook ⠀

in changing stalls she’d pick helplessly at her hipbones. she used to sigh and beg to borrow my curves. said boys actually notice you. hated beach days where her bikini didn’t fill out, hated the “eat a sandwich” and “are you a boy?” jokes, hated never feeling sexy, hated being un-soft. 

i was baffled by it. i told her there’s nothing on this earth that girls like me fit into and actually look good in. she said she’s sick of looking like an infant. we would compare pros and cons and both think we had it out worse for it: i felt like i was designated “huge” even at a healthy body weight just by virtue of breast size, she felt like everybody thought they were her nutritionist and could offer her “eat more” advice. we had friendly arguments about it, about who was suffering more than the other. how if we woke up in each other’s bodies, we’d finally be happy.

from twelve we’d both been taught our body wasn’t our body. it belonged to the public for viewing. at ten i knew it - figured out not to wear shirts with words because “i’m just reading” was an excuse to look at my boobs, learned while i grew that a v-neck was now out of the question because it always looked inappropriate. had boys run up giggling to me and ask “are you wearing a bra?” before middle school. i was in sixth grade the first time a car followed me to my home, honking, hollering. i threw out the skirt i had been wearing.

i got drunk a while ago with her. we rehashed a friendship 13 years old. the old argument came up - which is better to survive through. flat chest or full.

it’s different in our old age. we’re both out now, full-fledged gays. “boys like you” isn’t really on the table but i do get to whine that i look too femme for most girls to see i’m into them. 

it’s different in our old age. she says people still ask her if she has an eating disorder - “and thank god i don’t, because imagine what that would feel like if i did, like my ED was a punch line, like if i said ‘yes’ they’d win.” strangers on the street demand she eats a sandwich. she still never feels feminine. i tell her none of this should happen to her. she raises a thin shoulder. “it’s not as bad as all the shit that happens to you.” i tell her it’s not a race. in the end, no matter how bad either of us has it, we both lose.

we talk about how us and our bodies feel divorced. about the unfairness that exists for young girls. how we took apart our pieces and examined them under a microscope. how girls are taught to observe themselves even when alone, how we constantly kept ourselves organized - body versus soul. we talk about hecklers and abusers and fear of the dark. about thighgap fixations and fear of the subway and always being on guard. about life as a person and life as an object.

at twenty-five we compare stories. 

black people are being shot for being black by a militant police. millions of dollars pour into arming individuals who report domestic violence rates of two to four times larger than the general population. when black children are arrested for attending pool parties, the police officers are given the benefit of the doubt because “blue lives matter.” black children are not given any benefit. they are told to sit down and shut up and be un-violent, with the promise that if they are a peaceful people, they’ll be slaughtered someplace less public. when a man kneels, this is seen as offensive and degenerate. but police officers committing felonies is “just how it is.”

school children are being killed because individuals love a tool more than they love the incoming generation. despite the fact we know, as an open fact, that the NRA buys politicians, we are told to sit on our hands and just buy a gun if we don’t feel safe around them. the american schooling system is entirely built to be classist and currently forces college grads who didn’t die into a system of debt that ensures little to no upwards mobility for many students, ensuring the creation of a lower class that is indebted to the higher class. students are assured that Miss betsy deVil has their best interests at heart while she absolutely annihilates every chance they’ve got. 

women speaking out about sexual assault get silenced so much that it takes forty women saying “yes, he does this, it happened to me” before someone is actually charged with assault. we literally live in a world where “incel” is a real thing women have to watch out for; a community set around the idea that men are owed a woman as a reward. these men and other men kill women for rejecting them. women are assured if they stop dressing like sluts and started giving these good honest men a chance, we would be hurt so much more delicately, without the man feeling nearly so close to guilty.

two years ago was the pulse shooting, where a latinx gay community was targeted, yet nobody talked about it on tv. instead every news caster pretended to be reeling: “what could he have wanted possibly.” this world, this america, this land-of-the-free, has gay/trans “panic defense” as a legal precedent in which i can be murdered if a straight person perceives an “unwanted homosexual advance”. i will not be around to defend myself, because i will be dead. i am assured that if i want to be upset about these things, i can just take my cake to another bakery. that it’s someone’s right to discriminate against me, because apparently freedom of speech covers bigotry.

a pedophile and white nationalist is not in prison but instead running for congress, even despite his online admittances about his desire for sexual violence (tw: don’t read his posts unless you want to vomit). i’m assured no one will vote for him, but just look at who our president is. they told me “no one will vote for him” too.

we have been told backwards and forwards and upside down that everything we do is violent. that our peaceful protests are riots. that our legal demands are taking away from real problems. that we are not being good, that the violence enacted upon us isn’t really violence, it’s just The Way It Is. They quote MLK to us while they step on our necks. the anger we have is always too much, too loud, too valid. it Upsets The Peace.

i’m saying: you made the game. you set it up and played. you made sure we were always, always, always losing.

you don’t get to be surprised when we return what you gave us. you don’t get to cry “hate begets hate” instead of stopping the original bigotry in the first place. you don’t get to say it’s not fair! when you’re the ones who made it unfair to begin with. you don’t get to turn the other cheek to nazis but call anti-nazis a disgrace while whining and keening you’re not actually a racist. you don’t get to ban abortion for the “sake of the children” and then turn your nose because people are protesting children in cages. you don’t get to wring your hands now that people are punching nazis rather than sitting them down and letting them have a say. i’m saying you made the fucking rules!!

Feinstein: You’re a big, powerful man. Why didn’t you [gestures pushing motion]?

Crews: Senator, as a black man in America [sigh]…

Feinstein: Say it as it is. I think it’s important.