Macha S. Wicket

And my sibling was like “oh hey; they’re writing a book about a jockey”

And their partner was like “and they’re all Irish or from the Dominican Republic????? Why??”

And I was like “oh yeah - the weight limit has to be half the weight of the average American male so by numbers Americans don’t really ride races any more, the top flat jockeys in the USA are from Latin America. In Ireland and the UK there’s a lot of Irish and the Irish go everywhere for economic reasons and get purposefully imported to Japan and-“

And the partner was like “and they’re all four feet tall and crazy!”

And I was like “and they’re all crazy! The most injured athletes!! The athletes with no off season! The most concussed athletes! And unlike football and hockey players, they don’t get brain damage from it.”

My sibling was like, “they don’t?”

And I was like, “well no!! They don’t!! The most resilient and fastest-healing athletes for some reason. Of course, two of them die on live TV every year —-“

“TWO OF THEM DIE EVERY YEAR?”

“Yeah well that’s just the ones that die IN RACES, more of them drop dead in exercise riding but dw about it…”

My sibling’s partner broke in, in a tone of revelation; “and nobody notices them! They only see the horse!!!”

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

BUT

i work with unhoused people fleeing domestic violence, and i have a client rn whose driver's license expired in 2024, and she needs a new id to apply for apartments. ok, cool. problem is, she lost all her documents due to the domestic violence

so we call the dmv. dmv needs a birth certificate. like i said, she lost her birth certificate. she needs a new one. her birth certificate is from out of state

we look up how to get a new birth certificate. the birth certificate needs an id to order it. cool cool cool

ok then what about secondary options? well, she needs two secondary sources of identification to order a replacement birth certificate, and she only has one, because for everything else she needs an id. fishing license? need an id. fucking park pass? id. she could have her 18+ child use their birth certificate to vouch for her, except her abuser won't let her talk to her children, so that's a no go

ultimately we land on social security card. this is where we're at in the process rn. ofc she doesn't have her ss card, so we need to order that. social security also requires an id to request a new card, but they'll take a health insurance card with a picture attached (god fucking bless them). she has medicaid but doesn't have a physical copy of the card, so we have to figure out how to get that. then once we do that we have to upload it to the social security website, and if that doesn't work, we have to, god forbid, call the social security office (takes literal hours) and then make an appointment. she doesn't have transportation or cell service, so we would have to figure out a way to coordinate me getting her to the appointment in order to present the document

then we wait 10+ days for the replacement, that has to be mailed to me bc she is unhoused and doesn't have an address

then we need to submit her request for a new birth certificate, which we have to figure out how to pay for, bc it is not free. they're at least a month behind on requests, btw, so we are probably looking at may at the earliest for that to arrive

then we need to take the birth certificate to the dmv

dmv also requires two pieces of mail not from a po box. she doesn't have an address, she is unhoused. she can use the homeless shelter in town, but we will need to mail her stuff there and have her receive it first, and also then the homeless shelter address will now be on her new id, which landlords will recognize and may discriminate against her for

during all of this she is sleeping in a garage. it was negative one degrees this morning. also, forgot to mention, she is terminally ill. some days i legitimately don't know if she lived through the night. every day is a toss up

the absolute soonest she will have an id is probably late may. forget voter registration--most rentals won't let her apply without it. she won't be offered section 8 housing without it. she can't apply for ssdi without it. she is blocked at literally every corner without it, and the absolute soonest she can get it is late may. the dmv literally has her old card on file, and she knows the number by heart, but it doesn't matter. it doesn't count if it's expired, as if she's somehow become someone new

and that's all with the help of someone whose job it is to do this shit. imagine if she didn't have a caseworker. she has a ten year old donated iphone that only works on wifi, she can't even do her own research bc she doesn't have internet half the time. how the hell is she supposed to get anything done on her own?

Saint Roch, by Francesco Ribalta, c. 1625, Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.

"There was an excellent warrior, Thorir his name. He was fostered by Thorstein, who had a son called Thorgrim, but it was not an auspicious time for their farm, because there was a haunting there. When Thorir saw the dead man, he tied a withe around its feet, but it pursued him anyway. Then he performed the sword-feat, and cut the man into many pieces. He took his head and went back to Thorgrim mac Thorstein. 'O fosterbrother,' he said, 'I have killed the man who was haunting you, that is, the revenant.' Thorgrim said, 'This is a great deed.' And that is why that place is called Hill of the Dead Man."

And we will never find out who any of these people are or what was up with the revenant or what Thorir was trying to achieve with the withe -- or even who the revenant was before he was dead.

Hey. Hey. Listen. Come close. Closer. Yeah. Listen.