Stepping Into My Own “Barracuda” Moment

Let’s talk about Friday night.

I’ve been sitting on this blog post for a few days now as I process what happened at karaoke on Friday. Here’s the SparkNotes version of the events.

Basically, I was already riding high from a very successful music bingo night that I’d just hosted at a different bar. That part is important because had I not been in such a powerful mood already, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do what I did. I got to Old Dog Tavern (shout out to one of my two favorite bars in Kalamazoo!) around 10 I think and met up with one of my bandmates and best friends, Ellie. We were just outside on the deck probably sharing a joint with a few friends or something when we both headed inside for some reason. Not ten seconds after we stepped inside, some crusty short old white dude with a Colonel Sanders goatee in a green hat came up to us. He reached his shriveled hands within an inch of our titties and made a honking motion, remarking “Eh, isn’t this how you greet women?” and shyly begging “Can I?”

I saw red. It was enough that this fucko disrespected me, but also poor little Ellie, who is for all intents and purposes a little sister figure to me. I pushed back through the doors to where my wife, Crass, was sitting outside, and all I had to say was “creep,” “tried,” and “grope” and she was equally livid. We both bursted back inside, her to find the pervert and me to make a fucking statement.

I ran up to the stage and grabbed the microphone. Fuck whatever else was going on. This man had to be stopped. I screamed to stop the music, took the mic, and with all of the pent-up rage of 32 years worth of creeps thinking they can test me, I declared:

“Nobody is allowed to sexualize me and my friend without our consent.”

The bar bursted into a frenzy of confused looks and claps, save for one asshat heckler in the front who yelled “Too late!” like a goddamn Reddit troll in real life. This made me even more angry, and I lunged toward him, grabbed him by the collar to make him look me in the eye, and said “What the fuck did you say?” At that point, Crass had turned her attention to the heckler, and she literally chased the whole man out of the bar. The original pervert got tracked down and kicked out as well, and the whole time, I was shaking and crying and in shock at what I had just done.

I — the bullied little girl who had to eat lunch in the library to avoid being pelted with ranch dressing packets — finally stood up for myself.

Then, the most amazing moment happened. The whole bar rallied around me, encircling me physically with their bodies and figuratively with their love. I sunk into my friends’ arms and let out all of the emotions that had built up.

Because I was no longer scared. I felt like I had become something new. I stepped into who I was supposed to be this whole time. Like, there was something deeply spiritual about what happened that night. My good friend’s girlfriend said it’s a Leo moon thing. I keep drawing powerful feminine cards like The Empress and the Queen of Wands, the latter of which is a card that’s always resonated with me, though I couldn’t place why at first. I always thought I was more of a Cups girl — soft and emotional — not a fiery, passionate Queen of Wands.

I’ve mentioned my ridiculous admiration for Ann Wilson, frontwoman of the classic rock band Heart, on here many times, and it’s fitting that this particular night was the day after her 75th birthday. I wanted to be her so bad growing up, to the point where I’d study her singing and her performances and her fashion sense and even her personal life, as stan-ly as that sounds now (give me a break, I was an autistic child). One thing I learned when reading about her childhood was the fact that she was bullied extensively too, like me. She was overweight; I was underweight. She had a stutter; I had undiagnosed ADHD and autism. But I saw myself in her. Hell, I created a cringey wish-fulfillment OC based on her! She gave me hope that I could someday be the badass rocker chick I desperately wished to become.

That night at karaoke, that’s exactly what I did. I became that woman. The take-no-shit rock and roll queen who isn’t afraid to call a fucker out.

After the creeps were exiled from the bar and karaoke resumed as normal, the DJ (who may just be the best cishet white man this side of Steve Irwin) asked me if I was okay and if there was anything he could do. I had one request, because I knew exactly what my last song of the night would be.

Back in the 1970s, Ann and her own (actual) little sister, Nancy, were frequent victims of slimy men in music venues, especially since rock was very much considered a man’s world back then. The iconic “Barracuda” was written as a response to some guy backstage who made a creepy joke toward Ann at her sister’s expense, insinuating their relationship was incestuous. Absolutely filled with unbridled rage, she wrote the scathing lyrics that would eventually become the now-legendary song.

And that night was my “Barracuda moment.”

I got on stage to a roar of applause. It’s funny because a while ago I wrote a song half-joking about wanting to be “Kalamazoo famous” instead of actual famous. In that moment, I really did feel like a small town celebrity. With what little was left of my voice after cussing out the pervs, I sang my musical heroine’s battle cry, dedicating it to her for helping me find my voice — and to every man who ever intentionally made a woman feel unsafe in a bar.

I left the best part out. After everything was said and done, a young woman came up to me and quietly thanked me for what I did. She’d been victimized by the creep too. It made me realize how much power we have as women to lift each other up and protect one another.

I want to carry this night with me whenever I feel like I’m not strong enough to stand up for myself. Because now I know I have what it takes. I’ve seen it. My friends have seen it. The entire city of Kalamazoo has seen it.

I have more power than I thought.

Grandkids and the GOP: How the Drive to Live Forever Fuels Conservativism

I think I cracked the code.

Like, I know why the other half of the population just doesn’t seem to get it.

It’s babies. It’s always been babies.

Of course, just look at that shit-eating grin.

Well, and death. Just follow me for a second.

I was recently reading about a fellow named Ernest Becker, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 book on death. In this book, he asserts that humans are driven by their primal fear of death and no longer existing in the mortal realm. Because of this, we unknowingly take on “immortality projects” meant to carve our name into history in some fashion. For some, including myself, this looks like creating art or music or stories that will last long after we’re gone. For others, this may look like accumulating lots of wealth, then dumping it into a cool institution or organization you believe in to get something named after you. And for many, many folks, their immortality projects are their progeny.

And that’s where things get sticky — because a lot of older folks are realizing their children and grandchildren don’t want kids of their own.

And if your kids don’t have kids, your bloodline is essentially over, you’ll be forgotten, and nothing you ever did amounted to anything.

Seriously, this fear explains so much about the psyche of older conservatives. It explains the anti-gay stance, as one could traditionally only reproduce with someone of the opposite birth sex. It explains the anti-trans stance, as HRT typically borks your reproductive system (and a lot of people don’t know about options like sperm banks for preserving fertility after transition). It explains the anti-abortion stance, since you don’t want your daughter to go off and abort your grandchild. I’d argue much of the conservative worldview stems from just three little words — “I want grandkids.”

And the wild thing here is that I actually get it.

I mean, I wanted to be a grandma someday. But mostly so I could nap and watch game shows all day.

That ever-present fear that I’ll just die and eventually be forgotten without accomplishing anything great is one of my biggest fears too. I’ve actually written about it extensively on this blog. I understand where these people are coming from, even if our ways of handling that fear lead us to vastly different belief systems.

A while back, I had this conversation with one of my coworkers at the caregiving gig I picked up recently. We got on the ill-advised topic of politics, and she told me she voted for our current administration “because of her family.” And I told her I had voted against it for my family. My wife is black. My girlfriend is trans. Our future children will likely be neurodivergent. This isn’t the world I want for them. I don’t want them to live in fear.

And so I keep finding myself going back to the same question — what makes my coworker’s family more important than mine? The fact that she’s straight and white and neurotypical? And yet, we’re really not all that different. She, like me, just wants to leave a legacy. Maybe her legacy will look different than mine, but that’s the beauty of the human experience. We each get to choose what our legacy will be.

That’s why these pushes to put as many babies as possible in as many wombs as possible will inevitably fall flat. People usually have a good idea of what they want out of life, and if that’s not children, that should be the end of the story. Family planning, birth control, and issues relating to fertility are personal and private. It’s no one’s place to tell anyone they should bring kids into this world. And that includes parents pestering their own children for grandkids.

But I do get it. I hate the thought that I might someday be forgotten. That’s part of the reason I write this blog — so there’s some record I actually existed one day after I’ve left this mortal realm. I always think back to that scene in Coco, a film I absolutely adore but can only watch very seldom due to the heavy themes. Like, a whole man evaporates as the last person alive who remembers him dies. And that fucked me up.

I write this because I feel in order to defeat the rise of fascism in this country, we need to understand why people voted the way they did. We need to know how we got in this position. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending the opposition are all irredeemable monsters is not how we win people to our side. Seeing people as fully human and acknowledging their dreams and fears is.

Because at the end of the day, when you set aside all of our differences, every person just wants to carve out a permanent place in the story of humanity.

Putting on the Straight Jacket: Choosing Between Safety and Your Own Identity

Alright everyone, today we’re talkin’ trauma. But first, the daily prompt WordPress gave me tonight:

What sacrifices have you made in life?

It’s serendipitous that this was today’s prompt, because while this wasn’t necessarily the direction I was planning to go in with this topic, I feel there is another important angle to consider.

Living and being in the world authentically requires sacrifice. And it absolutely can cause trauma.

Up until a certain age, the trauma I experienced never really left the school hallways, so once I was done for the day, I could compartmentalize all that BS and, I don’t know, play Sims all day. My bullies didn’t really live rent-free in my mind since I was too busy thinking about all the stories I wanted to write, and to be entirely honest, I didn’t have much else to worry about as a child. You know, aside from my terrifying OCD-driven intrusive thoughts.

No brain, I *don’t* actually want to stab my mother, I literally just want to play dolls.

Here’s something I came to realize: things were so easy because I actually had a pretty privileged life growing up. I was white, relatively well-off (well, blue collar, but my family never hurt for food), and straight…right?

Oh.

In the immortal words of NSYNC, bi bi bi.

I think I always knew in my heart of hearts that I was bisexual. You see, speaking of Heart, I came to realize I was staring just as longingly at old photos of Ann Wilson as I was at Peter Frampton. Yes, I am a millennial. My mom gave me some of her vinyl collection when I was around 12, and the cover of Dreamboat Annie just like, awakened something in me.

Then, I went to the church I grew up in and that got beat out of me pretty quick. I learned what it was called when a girl thinks another girl is hot. It was called being a homosexual and it was bad because…they never really said aside from a couple of Bible verses that I’ve since discovered meant something else entirely. But the message was clear. If being gay was bad, then I was not gay, simply because I did not want to be bad.

And then I met my best friend in college. She was a lesbian. The closer we got, the more I realized I preferred being around her to any of the guys I dated. I even realized I preferred her company to that of the man I eventually married. No one made me laugh like her. No one understood me like her. And like, she was way cuter than most of the dudes too.

If you haven’t caught on yet, she’s my wife now.

But something changed when I just said “fuck it” and started living openly queer. Suddenly, religious and political discussions were a minefield and I’d be taken aback by how freely people would say the most dehumanizing bullshit about folks like me — especially if the person I was talking to didn’t immediately register that I wasn’t straight like them. I had to watch how I word things around strangers, as dropping a phrase containing the words “my wife” could potentially put me in danger. Driving through smaller towns felt especially unsettling now. I wasn’t sure if I was surrounded by people who’d want me dead if they knew the truth. I’m originally from a small town; I know how it is. These folks don’t often meet people who aren’t like them, and when you’re that insulated from the full range of human diversity, exposure to that diversity can feel threatening. And when people are threatened, all sense of reason falls to the wayside and it’s fight mode.

I don’t want to fight with these people. But they want to attack me. All for something I never chose for myself. All because I thought girls were pretty.

In the last few months since the current administration took over, I’ve been considering what I’d even do in the case that homosexuality is outlawed. I am bisexual, and I could put on the straight jacket if I really needed to. I had for all those years I exclusively dated men. But I realized I wasn’t truly happy in that arrangement. I wasn’t fully, openly myself.

That’s why the topic of sacrifice kind of hit me. I’m sacrificing a lot of comfort and privilege just by being who I really am for the first time. There’s a term for that constant sense of looking over your shoulder that comes with being a marginalized person. It’s called minority stress, and refers to the chronic stress that we experience from constant discrimination and not knowing if the next person we run into will be a crazed bigot who wants to murder us. The thing is, I never had to experience that as a kid. My wife may have, since she’s black and race is a lot harder to conceal than sexuality. But remember, I was a white kid in a white family in a 99 percent white town. The only source of trauma for me, like I mentioned at the start, was being bullied.

All of that being said, would I go back in the closet if it meant freeing myself from the stress and potential threats? Would I willingly live out the rest of my years playing the role of the traditional wife in a heterosexual marriage? Would I sacrifice my own identity for my safety? Honestly, I don’t think I would. It is hard adjusting to being a marginalized person when it’s not something I grew up experiencing, but after spending years running from myself, I’m not about to backtrack on work I’ve done to be who I really am. Because who I really am is finally here, and she’s ready to take on the world.

Those Four Words: What NOT to Say to Someone Who’s “Seen the Light”

A few nights ago, I saw this post on That Accursed Platform:

There was more to the post, but the gist was “I voted for the Leopards Eating Faces Party and was shocked that the leopards ate my face.” Which has been a pretty common occurrence, judging by the sheer size of the community that monitors such things on Reddit. And I have to admit, my first inclination is to gloat when someone who voted against my right to life, love, and the pursuit of happiness gets their shit wrecked by the policies they voted for. It feels like karma. And nothing — I mean, nothing — feels as good as saying “I told you so.” Apparently, this woman has been hearing a whole parade of “I told you so” from people on my side.

But “I told you so” isn’t going to win people over to our side. It’s not going to soften hearts.

And it’s certainly not going to save folks lost to the MAGA cult.

I’m the kind of person who learns best by fucking up. It’s just what I do. I need to make a few mistakes before I realize what I’m doing isn’t working. My mistakes are pretty well-documented in this blog, actually. Co-writing an album with AI before noticing my own songwriting abilities atrophying? Dragging my wife to another state to attempt an ill-fated music therapy internship? Those were pretty noteworthy mistakes of mine, and I’ll tell you what I didn’t want to hear upon realization of my fucking up:

I told you so.

Those are the four words people will bend over backwards to not hear. And there’s a reason for that. Let’s get philosophical.

Here is a photo of Socrates, so you know just how philosophical we’re getting.

The sunk cost fallacy is basically what happens when you go “all-in” on a bad decision. Your brain kind of thinks “Well, I’ve already committed — it would be silly to back down now.” And that’s why people double-down on choices that are obviously causing more harm than anything else. It’s one reason why we stay in relationships that suck, or invest in a job that sucks, or finish watching a particularly sucky movie, even though we already know it sucks. It might as well be called “the suck cost fallacy,” because it sucks. But we know if we leave the situation, everything will have been for naught and even worse, you look wrong. And no one likes being wrong.

So when people inevitably realize they chose the wrong candidate and things inevitably start going south for them because of it, they’re not going to be happy. And when they hear a cacophony of those dreaded four words upon that realization, they’re not going to go “Oh shit, you’re right,” and join our side. NO. They’re going to double-down on their original opinions, even though they see the cracks.

What do we do instead?

Love. The answer is always love.

Welcome them in. After all, it’s not their fault they were lied to and deceived by shady campaign promises. Make sure they know that. Make sure they don’t feel any of your ire — it’s okay to be mad that they voted against your best interests, but you’re on the same side now. Make sure they know they have a place in the movement. And for the love of God and all things good in the world, don’t say “I told you so.”

I’m sure you’ve heard the poem that begins “First they came for…” by now. What you might not know is that the author, German pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, was originally a staunch Hitler supporter. But he, like the woman whose story I shared above, felt the sting of his vote after he was imprisoned. Eventually, his heart softened and he felt deep remorse for what he’d done, and he began fighting for good. We could have a whole nation Martin Niemöllers who are fighting alongside us, but we can’t push them away before they’ve even been given a chance. We want to win people to our side. Don’t punish the behavior you want to see.

As the Carrot King continues to make this great nation his plaything, we’ll continue to see more and more people realizing he’s not everything he seems. That’s where we come in — not to say “I told you so,” but to be a soft place to land. When we realize we’re on the same side, there’s nothing we can’t do.

All of us. Together.

More Than Words: Five Quotes I Live By

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

If there’s one thing I can take away from being a writer my whole life, it’s the fact that words are powerful tools. We can use them to build people up, tear each other down, spread information, spread misinformation, and evoke strong emotions. Something I’ve always been fascinated by is the use of mantras or affirmations for self-improvement. Just repeating a certain phrase to yourself can make an impact on your mental health. And here’s the thing — your affirmations don’t have to be anything in particular, so long as they resonate with you.

Like a favorite quote!

As I began writing this post, I realized I have a handful of quotes I constantly repeat in my head like mantras. They’re the words that shape my personal philosophy and the way I approach life. I never really stopped to actively consider and appreciate how these words have shaped my experience as a human being. But I wanted to share a few of these quotes I carry with me.

She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.

–Zelda Fitzgerald

This first quote comes from the iconic flapper wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who absolutely should have been absolutely as famous as him in her own right. She was a Renaissance woman — a writer, painter, and dancer, who went on to die tragically in a mental hospital fire. I see a lot of myself in her story. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but had she lived today, she would have received a bipolar diagnosis like me.

Zelda was a wild child with many diverse interests, so I can’t imagine a woman like her would ever be bored. That’s kind of how I want to be. I don’t enjoy being idle, and I don’t ever want to be boring. I always want to be involved in exciting new projects and opportunities. Life’s too short to sit around and be bored. You gotta actively make a life worth living. That’s kind of what the quote means to me.

Show love with no remorse.

-Red Hot Chili Peppers (“Dosed”)

I remember the first time I heard this song and being entirely floored by how beautiful it was. It was in the car with my former drummer Jerry and another short-lived bandmate on the way to our bandiversary date. I’d heard plenty of Red Hot Chili Peppers before that day, but this was the song that really made me appreciate them on a deeper level. I loved the guitar work, the harmonies, and perhaps most importantly, the words.

I’ve always said I wanted this exact lyric tattooed on me someday. I just think it’s a simple concept. You’ve got nothing to lose by giving love freely and joyfully. We need much more love in this world, and now is not the time to be stingy with it. You’ll never regret treating people with kindness.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

-Robert J. Hanlon

I hesitate to call this a quote. It’s technically a philosophical razor, which eliminates — or rather, shaves off — weak explanations for a particular phenomenon. The phenomenon at hand when it comes to Hanlon’s razor is “Why are people awful to each other?” And the explanation it offers is simple: people just don’t know any better.

Hanlon’s razor is why I still have faith in humanity, even after I’ve witnessed some of the worst of it. People very seldom intend to hurt each other. We’re all just big dum-dums that say and do the wrong things sometimes, and we really need to treat each other with more grace. That’s why I don’t believe in cancel culture — we need a grace culture. If you make an honest mistake and own up to it, that shouldn’t be held against you. No one is perfect, and we can’t hold people to impossible standards.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

-Romans 12:21

I struggled to think of just one Bible verse to include, since so many have been influential to me growing up in the church. But this one felt really relevant with some of my recent posts about loving your enemy and fighting the rampant dehumanization of marginalized folks in our society. It’s easy to lash out against the people who are hurting me and my loved ones. But you have to remember that they’re human and they’re hurting too. Hurt people hurt people. It’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation. And it’s why I choose love — because you don’t know what someone else is going through.

The verse immediately before this one talks about how offering your enemy water when they’re thirsty is akin to heaping hot coals on their head. The Good Book is telling us to kill them with kindness. I saw a post recently that said the true test of a Christian is not whether they love Jesus, it’s whether they love Judas. I’ll admit it’s hard for me to show love to the people who hurt me. The human part of me wants revenge. But the divine answer remains to be love.

Where words fail, music speaks.

-Hans Christian Andersen

I’ll admit I never knew the person behind this quote was none other than the Danish purveyor of fairytales such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and Thumbelina. But I’ve always related to this quote. As a child, the signs of my autism were very apparent. I would often stim by pacing or making bird sounds, and I had sensory issues surrounding things such as loud noises and upsetting smells (looking at you, ranch dressing). And like many autistic kids, I struggled to communicate with my peers. My classmates thought I was from France for the longest time because I never spoke in elementary or middle school, so they assumed I had an accent or didn’t know English or something.

But then I picked up a guitar, and everything changed. When I learned to play music and started performing, that was when I truly found my voice. Music was my way of reaching out into the world. I call music my first language for good reason. It was the bridge that connected me to other people for the first time in my life, and for that, I’m forever grateful.

What quotes do you live by? Leave your favorites in the comments!

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The Unsettling Trend of Dehumanization (And Why We Must Fight It At All Costs)

Oh. My. God.

So the government is planning on rounding up the info of folks with autism and doing God knows what with it. As someone who is (now thankfully) self-diagnosed, I’m probably safe for now. But this doesn’t exactly bode well for those diagnosed with other forms of neurodivergence, and considering RFK Jr. has already laid out his plans for people with ADHD, a condition I am properly diagnosed with, I have some cause for concern.

Because we’re in the beginning stages of genocide.

Just listen to the way he talks about us:

Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.

Dehumanization. That’s where we are.

We live in a world that values labor above everything else. If you’re not able to hold down a job, sucks to suck, you just don’t get to live. If you can’t contribute to society in any meaningful way, you’re a waste of carbon atoms and a drain on our resources and should probably be Old Yellered on sight like the useless sack you are.

*Rabies* are what happen when you don’t believe in vaccines, *RFK.*

The value of a person is determined by what they bring to the metaphorical table, and if you lose that value by losing the ability to work, you wear the scarlet letter of being a freeloader at best and a symbol of the downfall of civilization at worst. Sometimes you don’t even need to lose the ability to work. Sometimes your perceived lack of contribution to society is not paying your share of taxes (like undocumented immigrants) or not making your share of babies (like queer folks). But whatever it is, these people are not contributing like good citizens.

And I think that’s where the disconnect is, because a human life shouldn’t be weighed against how hard it has worked, how much money it has given, or how many babies it has popped out. Human life should be considered inherently sacred, with no conditions. Hell, all life should be considered sacred and handled with care. My dad (who dubiously claims he is of indigenous descent, although I’m not sure I buy it) says when certain Native American tribes kill an animal for food, they say a prayer of thanksgiving for it. And apparently there’s some truth to that. And if a buffalo’s life is worth enough to warrant a gratitude prayer, a human life should be worth so much more. The Good Book even says so:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

-Matthew 10:29-31

But we don’t value each other.

Wanna see something horrifying?

Those are people. Human fucking beings. “But these are violent criminals!” Well, for one, 179 out of 238 of these guys don’t have a criminal record and were sent to this fucking gulag without due process, which, may I remind you, is so important to our American way of life that it’s an amendment in our Constitution. You know, that thing that’s supposed to govern how we run this country?

But imagine, for a second, these dudes were violent criminals. Should they be rounded up like cattle and tortured for their sins? It’s tempting to say yes — if someone violently murdered my family, my kneejerk reaction would be “throw them in the woodchipper.” But in addition to a multitude of arguments against capital punishment, just by saying “x, y, & z are worthy of punishment by death,” we set a dangerous precedent that crime must be paid for with human life, and who decides what’s a crime? Rape and murder are obviously bad to most decent people at least, but remember that historically, being queer was a crime, and it still is in parts of the world.

You can see where this is going, right?

You can’t tell me you did Nazi that coming.

When the government decides an entire group of people are worthy of death, it’ll make their very existence a crime. That is dehumanization.

I’m honestly afraid of how and even if we can come back from this. How do you teach people that they should care for one another? How do we teach people that altruism and compassion are cooler than “owning the libs”? How do we teach people that kidnapping and torturing folks is bad? That all feels like common sense to me. And yet so many Americans are clinging to the very ideas their grandfathers fought against in World War II.

There’s a quote in the first Pokémon film from Meowth of all characters that goes like this:

I think about my big brother, who ended up an all-out Trumper despite being raised by the same blue-collar Democrats as me. We have very different values and views, but at the end of the day, we were both born from the same womb. The same blood runs in our veins. Despite the fact that he’s a business owner with a traditional marriage and four kids and a perfect picket fence life, there are so many things we share as well.

He is every bit as human as me.

I recently started a job at an assisted living home, and last night while I was changing one of the residents, I noticed his bright red MAGA hat staring at me from his bedside table. You know what I did?

I gave that man the exact same care I would have given my own grandfather. Because that’s what being human is about.

In that moment, I didn’t see a man who voted to take away mine and my loved ones’ rights. I saw a man with a family who loves him enough to bring him a giant stuffed puppy, who lay helplessly in his own excrement, desperately crying for help. Jesus said to love and pray for your enemies, and I’m gonna fucking do that if it kills me. I want to love so fiercely and fearlessly that it baffles everyone around me.

And that’s why I have this blog. Our best defense against genocide is humanizing our experiences. I want to soften hearts. I want to humanize myself as a queer, polyamorous, neurodivergent woman. I recognize that many people might not have ever met someone who ticks all those boxes and only get their information about those demographics from sources like Fox News and other conservative media companies. To those people, it’s my job to be a positive representative. I’m demonstrating to them that I’m not some irredeemably evil sicko that needs to be put down. I’m a daughter, a partner, a friend, a future mother, a musician, an artist, a caregiver, a teacher, and a writer. But most importantly, I’m a human.

We all are.

Chosen Family: The Life-Changing Power of Finding Your People

Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

Family.

That’s the first word that comes to mind after this Easter.

The day started in the fucking crapper. It was my third overnight shift as a caregiver and my chronic-whatever that’s making me not eat was really flaring up, to the point where I had to sit down every two minutes or so to keep from passing out. From the start of the day to the end of that night shift, I’d eaten maybe 400 calories, tops. I couldn’t get home from the facility fast enough. Once I walked through the door, I peeled off my scrubs and climbed into bed with my girlfriend and her other girlfriend, who were staying the night, and I slept like a damn rock.

I thought Easter was going to be pretty shitty as well, considering my state of health. And it would have been, except today made me realize I have the greatest support system on the planet.

From the moment I woke up this morning, the whole polycule doted on me. Livvy, my girlfriend, headed out into the wild to fetch me food I’d actually eat. Crass, my wife, hunted down my Sylveon kigurumi and made sure I was warm and comfortable. Meanwhile, Gabbi, my metamour, played all of the funniest bullshit she could find on YouTube for me. As my loved ones went above and beyond making sure I was healthy and happy, I came to this really beautiful realization.

We might not share a bloodline or a surname. But we’re family nonetheless.

Growing up, I was pretty close to my family. But after my grandmother’s passing when I was in high school, the glue that held my family together sort of dissolved. I haven’t had real quality time with my cousins in years, and my older siblings and I text maybe twice a year. The only blood relatives I still talk to regularly are my mom and dad, who are, in all fairness, the greatest humans to ever have the honor of being parents. But aside from them, I don’t really have a strong connection to my family, which kind of sucks, especially considering I wanted that kind of connection. There’s a reason I begged my parents to give me a little sibling for years.

Yet I’m realizing lately that family looks different for everyone, and sometimes, it’s your chosen family that’s really there when you need them.

This was a short post — more of a life update if I’m honest — but I wanted to write about how happy my little family of neurospicy queerdos made me this Easter, just by caring for me when I really needed it. I know it’s not conventional or traditional, but why stick to tradition if there are other ways that work just as well, or even better? They say it takes a village to raise a child, but really, we’re all still growing. We all need support throughout our lives. That’s what being with my partners means to me. That’s what being polyamorous means to me. That’s what being a family means to me.

I’ll leave y’all with a song by one of my favorite pop artists, Rina Sawayama, who absolutely should be as big as Chappell Roan.

Family is what you make it.

Worth the Fight: A Few Thoughts on Faith and Sacrifice

This blog post begins with a song. And it’s not a happy one.

This is a song I recently composed called “WTF.” The title perfectly encapsulates how I feel about the condition of the world right now, but it has a double meaning:

Darling, you’re Worth The Fight

Even if I don’t make it out alive

For you I’m ready to die

A girl like you is Worth The Fight

I was hesitant to put this song out into the world for a number of reasons. For one, it was unfortunately made from lyrics I hand-wrote and stupidly fed into an AI software, which I’m not proud of, but I feel like I’ve altered the melody and structure of the song enough to be my own original material at this point. And I’ve wrestled with this song for months now, trying to find some way to salvage it because of how personal the words are to me.

Because this song isn’t just any old song. It’s about how I’m absolutely willing to die for my girlfriend, and I mean every word of it.

And it’s all because of one peculiar Jewish carpenter who walked the planet 2000 years ago.

For better or worse, growing up, I attended church. My parents weren’t very religious, but my mom wanted me to have a basic understanding of the Christian faith because she felt it was important for me to have that spiritual experience as a kid. And I mean, what child doesn’t love vacation Bible school?

I was baptized at 14, mostly because I wanted to impress the really cute good little church boy I was madly in love with. To be honest, a lot of me attending church as a youngin’ was because I desperately wanted to fit in with my friends, who were mostly from evangelical families. But as I got older, I started making my faith my own. In my teen years, my OCD really started beating me down, and I felt really scared and alone in the world, but all of that disappeared when I was standing in the crowd at youth group screaming along to “How He Loves” (the “sloppy wet kiss” version, natch). I could feel the presence of Jesus in the music — I think that’s one of the reasons music feels so sacred to me. I always call music my first language as a shy autistic little girl who didn’t know how to talk to people, but it wasn’t just my way of communicating with my peers. It was also my way of communing with the Divine, and it made my relationship with Christ that much more personal to me.

I stopped going to church for many reasons, both personal and practical, but I still find myself going back to the holy scriptures and seeking comfort in the words of my Savior from time to time. And this morning was one such time, because it hit me.

If the world keeps progressing (or rather, regressing) the way it is, my time on this planet could be cut alarmingly short.

I don’t want to be a martyr, but I’m becoming increasingly afraid that might be my fate. I don’t want to go quietly into a world where my girlfriend has to move across the planet to get away from those who persecute her. And that is something that’s on the table, as she recently told me she can get Italian citizenship from her grandmother. But I don’t want to live in a world where she’s so casually and cruelly ripped away from me by the fucko from The Apprentice of all people.

I wish I knew how to protest in a way that means something, but I’m paralyzed by my fear of dying. There are literally people setting themselves on fire to take a stand, and I sincerely wish that was something I’m capable of, but I don’t think I’m that brave. I’ve considered staging a non-fatal hunger strike a la Gandhi and many brave suffragettes, but I’m also scared of being snatched up for being a political dissident and sent to El Salvador to have God knows what happen to me. To be honest, I’m almost too much of a coward to post this, as it’s probably the most personal and desperate thing I’ve ever written on here.

But with Christ, all things are possible, right?

I’m at a point where I don’t want things to escalate to the point where I feel the need to starve myself on the steps of the White House, but if that day ever came, I trust the Lord to guide me. I don’t want to die young. I want to get old. I want to be a grandmother someday. I want to live in a cute little nursing home with a bunch of other old people like the one I work at. I hope those are the cards I’m dealt eventually. I don’t want my last days on Earth to be uncomfortable and painful and scary.

That being said, if my time here really is to be cut short due to political violence, I don’t want my life to be in vain. I want my life to have meaning. I want my life to be marked by the kind of sacrificial love I learned from my Savior. In John 15:13, Jesus is quoted as saying:

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

That’s the kind of love I want to be remembered for someday.

Jesus at the Karaoke Bar: How Singing With Friends Can Maybe Heal the World

I had a real odd revelation recently. I haven’t been to church in a while now, and as a fairly pious person, I should be hankerin’ for a robust spiritual espresso shot of the Good Word. Like, I’ve been an active churchgoer for much of my life, so not having a church home in my town is pretty unusual for me. I checked out a progressive, queer-affirming church in Kalamazoo and even attended a few times, but it didn’t stick the way I thought it would. In fact, you’d think I’m in a terrible spiritual rut by the looks of it.

But believe me, I’m still finding Jesus every week…just in a much stranger place.

That is, the karaoke bar.

I’ve been an avid karaoke-goer since the move to Fort Wayne last year, when my wife decided on a whim to check out the local gay bar on karaoke night. She doesn’t sing, but knows I love to. So we got all dressed up and sure enough, we met some of the coolest folks there. That was enough to spark something, and we kept going back. When we finally moved to Kalamazoo later on in the year, one of the first things we sought out was another outlet for my newfound karaoke lust. That’s when we found Old Dog Tavern.

So we’ve been going every Friday for half a year now. I’ve got a whole slew of friends I see every week. We’ll go out on the back balcony, smoke a joint, and catch each other up on life. Then, when we’re back inside, we all take turns singing our favorite songs and cheering each other on. There’s no competition (well, except when another girl sings Heart — that is my territory), and it’s all in good fun. Some of us are natural performers, and some of us just like being silly on stage. But no matter what, we all go because something keeps drawing us back.

And I think I know what it is.

It’s community.

For years, church was my only community. It was where I went to socialize, make music, break bread, and share life. And I think for a lot of religious folks, that’s the case. The Bible even encourages this:

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

-Hebrews 10:24-25

We need each other. I’ve written extensively about how we’re not designed to live in isolation, and one of the good things I think religion contributes to society, for all its ills, is the inherent sense of community it brings to its congregations. But there’s a hitch. Though the statistics may have changed in the last ten years, data as of 2015 shows that folks in the United States are less religious than they used to be. And people are also lonelier than they used to be. So should we be working to get more butts into pews?

Maybe there’s another solution.

No, not the church — the karaoke bar.

I often describe my experience at karaoke as almost spiritual. I leave with my heart full every time — it’s how I recharge my internal battery each week. It reminds me of the feeling I’d get from singing in church when I was younger. It connects me to the music, to my community, to God, to the universe.

What if everyone had a place like that to go to every week?

The world is a scary place right now, and it’s getting even scarier. What we need now is more singing and more community. Revelations 21:3 and Acts 17:4 maintain that the Lord doesn’t live in a particular building, but within us. When we all gather together, we know that God is there with us. As silly and almost blasphemous as it sounds, I find Jesus every week in the smiles of my friends and the sound of the music. In a weird way, it’s my church.

Religion obviously isn’t for everyone — many folks have been burned by it, myself included — but everyone needs a community. In a culture that’s becoming increasingly secular, we need to figure out spaces for people to fellowship together. That’s why I feel karaoke and similar activities like trivia night and music bingo have the power to really create these strong connections between people.

On Thursdays, I host music bingo at a little bar in a small town north of Kalamazoo, and you really need to see it to believe it. Last week, it felt like the entire population of the town was there, and the air had an electric energy to it. Everyone was talking. Everyone was making friends. I even had a brief heart-to-heart with one of my regulars outside. These are the nights that will make life still worth living when things go to hell.

I leave y’all with a song.

Maren Morris has the right idea. Sometimes you find God in the strangest places. Maybe that is driving down the highway with the radio on. For me, it’s when I grab the mic every Friday.

Mom Jeans, Ugly Sweater

Earlier today, on the Platform That Shall Not Be Named, I happened stumbled upon this, uh, gem:

It’s not a secret that I grew up in an evangelical environment. Not the fault of my parents, mind you — my mother and father are Christian culturally but otherwise pretty irreligious. It was primarily the influence of my friends, who all grew up with moms and dads who swore by Focus on the Family newsletters and listened to Newsboys for fun. I found myself heavily enveloped in the local megachurch by high school, thanks to these friends. I’m aware that I talk mad shit about that old church (and pastor, who recently asserted I had lost my “mind, soul, and conscious” by becoming a filthy liberal — no hate like Christian love, as they say). But there were good things about it, like the music. And the food. And the people. Some of the people, at least.

But I won’t lie, that church messed me up in a lot of ways. It goes way beyond just the gay stuff, which I’ve already addressed on here before. My body image was pretty fucky wucky for a hot minute, all thanks to the “modest is hottest” rhetoric. Basically, tank tops were verboten for two reasons. Two big reasons.

First and foremost, modesty was to protect the boys, because of course it was. We were taught that looking at a woman lustfully was just as bad as sleeping with her, so instead of, you know, plucking out your eyeball like Jesus said to do, the crux of the responsibility was put on the girls to not be a “stumbling block.” We couldn’t cause the poor innocent boys to sin with our exposed bodies!

But there was a second, almost more sinister reason.

It was to protect us from the boys.

Because boys have no self-control, right?

It’s like putting a steak in front of a dog and expecting him not to eat it. I heard that one in church before. You can’t be dressed “slutty” in front of a guy because if he takes advantage of you, people assume you wanted it. It’s a shitty sentiment for both guys and girls. It’s basically saying all guys are inherent rape machines, ticking time bombs that will assault a woman with no remorse the second he has the opportunity, and I know that’s not correct. I know this because I surround myself with quality men who’d never, ever do that to someone. I’m fact, I’ve been around them dressed in my sluttiest apparel, and never once did I feel unsafe.

The one time I was raped, though?

Mom jeans, ugly sweater.

I still remember the exact sweater. It had chunky stripes of dark blue and purple and white and orange and pink and yellow. The jeans weren’t my typical sexy tight skinny jeans either. Nothing about this outfit was attractive. My hair was also a mess. When it happened, I don’t even think I was wearing makeup. I was literally at my homeliest. My point is, I was giving no signal to the world that I was “asking for it.”

Neither are the countless children who are sexually abused. Or the hijabis who get assaulted despite covering up far more than most women in the western world. A woman could wear a burlap sack over her entire body and still be a victim.

That’s because rape isn’t about the sex. It’s about power.

That’s what “memes” like the one I shared at the beginning of this blog post don’t get. Clothing is irrelevant. Do you think my rapist was deterred by a few buttons? He wanted what he wanted, and it didn’t matter if I was wearing my sexiest lingerie or, ya know, an ugly sweater and mom jeans.

It’s sad that we essentially teach girls that they’re to blame if they get assaulted. That’s what this line of thinking will inevitably lead to. Instead, we should be teaching young men to respect boundaries. Men aren’t all predators, and we need to show boys that they have the choice to be a good man. We need more positive masculinity. We need dudes to be more Mr. Rogers, less Andrew Tate. We need guys who are strong enough to stand up to abusers and gentle enough to not become one.

If you’re reading this and are a survivor yourself, please know it wasn’t your fault, no matter what you were wearing at the time. And always remember that you are more than the sum of your trauma. The awful shit that happened to you doesn’t need to define you. Rather, defy it. Live so completely and fully that the bad memories are entirely overwritten with positive ones. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, with quite a bit of success. It’s been nearly seven years and I don’t even recall his name. I recently stumbled upon a picture of him in my phone that I’d saved in case I ever wanted to press charges. It’s odd — the picture didn’t really freak me out as much as I’d thought it would.

But if I’m honest, I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to wear that ugly sweater again.