The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round: Internalized Racism

I am what is known as a weekender.  That is also something I haven’t admitted on this blog, like HD’s career.  Because I am caring less and less about what people know about me, because I have off-loaded heaps of shame.  I don’t care if you bloggy-world know that I am a weekender.  That means I am one of those douche-bags that heads out of the city most weekends to escape the hustle and bustle in my wine country,  zona de la rosa.  Which trust me, sounds way more fancy than it is,but still, relaxing, fun, I get to garden and not be molested by the desperate, too much.   We also have  a t.v. there.

I stopped driving though so I take a bus.   It is a long ass bus trip.   Breaking my norm, I sat in the very back row.   There was a toothless hill-billy working on his home-made jewelery sitting next to a guy on the floor, since I love people making shit, I thought, this is who I want to sit next to, plus hello he had a spider-man cap on.  So I did, and we talked and he is awesome.  I gave him all kinds of business advice because I am super good at that, and love to help.  I removed his obstacles and he was one of the fabulous who actually wants his obstacles removed.   He told me how people with education and status think, I said, “I so know that because I have that,but here you can do this…”  I handed him my business card.  ”Can I call you?” he asked,   “To ask for free business advice yes!”  I answered because so do not want to date him, but am such a repository for sound practical advice. “When I started my business, I bounced a check for $40.00 to buy business cards.

True story, I was living in  a garage and bounced a check for $40.00 on purpose because I did not have $40.00 to my name.  I don’t live in a garage anymore. It was a nice garage because I hung the dry-wall, I laid the floor,I painted it robin’s egg blue and Chinese red,  I hung the molding.

But so I  am on the bus,  jewlerey guy leaves other people get on.    A woman older than me sits on the opposite side, about 15 years older than me so about 55.  She is fat and drunk .  She has a Foster’s with a straw.  A young kid gets on and sits in the about middle seat between us.  Drunk lady is talking a lot, so I ask kid about his shirt.  He says it is  because he goes to Tam high school.  I roll my eyes. ” I went to college with a lot of kids from Tam”  because I did.   The most interesting thing anyone ever did from Tam was shimmy up a flag-pole and steal a McDonalds flag.

So the kid I am talking to is black.  He starts telling me how he gets all As, he just moved here from Kansas City, I ask him KS side or MO side. He says KS side. I think, “Yeah, so you are good at jumping when they circle the cherry?”  because straight As are  a dark mark to me.  But I try to keep little charge to it, because that is super-important to me with young people.  They look to older people for recognition,respect, a sign they are on the right path.  I don’t know the right-path.  I was so misguided and harmed by my elders.  So I just say “yeah” all blase’ faire.

Then he starts telling me a different story,about  Marin City,about his dad getting  jumped, about his dad’s car being set on fire.  I lazily say “Yeah” to that as well, because I do know about all that stuff.   Because I do want this kid to have space in which he can explore his own space and experience.  By this point our lady of leisure had off-loaded the bus and  we were joined by a 14 year-old, also black. “Oh I heard about this” he said.  Because every world is a small world,  they know some of the same people,they heard differing versions.  Interestingly, they both get back to middle-aged white-lady me, with this idea they can impress me with their good behavior.

They had made an impression on me.  I was impressed by the lack of protection they had.   I was impressed by the difficulties they faced.  The kid next to me in the Tam shirt talked on and on about his father. He seemed to have some real hero-worship going on.  He was a handsome if slight kid.   I always think of that,  how being a slight male must be hard at that age.   I am very non-creeper fond of young-men, teenage boys because I raised one.  When I look at them I think of false bravado in a culture that doesn’t offer much comfort, I think of  Tom-tom and his sensitivity to the culturally accepted prejudice against teenagers.

He didn’t understand it.   It is ignorance and cruelty I would explain.  Which those of you that know me, know I can forgive you for being ignorant OR cruel, but not both.   Teenagers are incredibly idealistic, they remind me of toddlers when with their peers, toddlers who can do the side by side play but are lacking the skills to really interact.   Cute still new people,  going through puberty, wanting to make things right,  idealistic, often in impossible settings, like High School, where their peers will eat the flesh from their bones and most adults look at them as if they have already committed a crime.  That is the crime.  They have lovely energy that they so want to be harnessed.

Case in point.  In grade 7, I shit you not, I had a teacher named Ms. Dick.  That was her real name, I can see her in my mind’s eye today, in her lovely plaid skirts and wool sweaters, her lightly freckled black-skin.    We loved her, we never made fun of her name even though her name was asking for it more than a drunk woman in a mini-skirt.  She treated us with respect, like we were interesting.  We compared a fellow teacher, whose name didn’t lend itself to humiliation to Hitler, because he followed the cultural norm of treating us tender youngsters with enough to deal with, with entitled disgust, because we were young.

We were interesting, we were young and we had information about how the world was changing in a way that the entrenched cannot.  So did these boys, they did not disappoint.   I seriously do not think I have ever met a teenager I didn’t like, except when I was one.  I am always amazed as an older person, how much they want to open up themselves to an older person,while they slip back and forth between childhood, sexuality, adult problems, and try to navigate a system that serves most sorta alright, but none completely.

I told them I had a son more than a few years older than them, I told them what schools I thought were good.  The Tam boy really wanted me to think he was a good person.  He told me what big-name school he wants to go to.   I told him it is not all that, but it can open doors.  Because I was trying to leave both doors open, your degree cannot make you smart, it is just a degree.  It just says you had opportunity and can follow directions.   He told me he wants to “be somebody”  I said,  ”You already are somebody,you already have a shit-ton of value”

I asked him where his mother was, he briefly told me she chose a man over him and lives in a faraway from KS or CA state. I said, “I know that one”    He told me he was okay with that, that she just had other priorities so it didn’t bother him, he was not going to care, his voice cracking.  I told him it was okay to care,  it was okay to care as long as he wanted and then some.  ”Some shit you don’t get over, and that is okay too, don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have a right to your own grief”

Then the really interesting thing happened, he fell back into impressing the “nice white-lady”  not realizing that I too, have been through/seen some toe-curling shit, that so-and-so wasn’t going to make it because he started, “Acting black, stealing shit and disrespecting women”

I said, “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?”

He repeated himself. I made the back-up sound that trucks make, “beep-beep-beep, Wait just a minute now son acting what?”

“Black” he this boy who is black and wants me to think he is a good person told me.

If I had a pulpit in my pocket,would have so whipped it out, but I improvised.  ”Honey, you have been watching too many Cops episodes, you think white people don’t steal?  I have stolen,  ( I did I have shop-lifted and also lifted a bag of Hawaiin from some boys that annoyed me, okay it was jr. high,but still) “

“How does he disrespect women?”  I asked

“He calls them bitches” he answered.

“I call my best friends bitches, the bitches don’t bother me it is the ‘sluts’ the ownership of women’s sexuality  that bothers me”   They were stunned.  ”That is what leads to violence against women”

The younger boy then told a story about being arrested for spitting on the sidewalk.  First I told him, never to spit on the sidewalk, that is disgusting and can spread disease.   Then I got super enthusiastic and started shouting, “See! See!” because I know this, all teenage boys are suspect. As I said, I raised one, in a boutique small-northern-cali town, who would go meet his friend after work at OMG  10:00 pm, and be run for warrants by local douchebag cops.   The same cops that would help me search for my wayward dog.   Because I am nice white-lady.   The same cops when they tried to give me a ticket for a California-roll and I told them “What?  I pushed on my brakes what more do you want from me?” I did not get a ticket.

I said, “You want to hear about ‘acting black?’  I was at pride a few years ago with some friends, a math teacher,actually AP Calculus,a nurse, and me, math teacher insisted even though it was 10:00 a.m.  that we drink beers out of paper bags on the street.  We did, we each got two, we drank the first with no problem,the second we got caught.  The cops said, ‘Ladies, you know there are no bottles on the street’  so we are going to have to make you drink that up right now.”    The cops and they were a full circle surrounded us pumping their fists shouting, “chug-chug-chug” and that was the end of that.

Shit, Tom-tom white as a snow-flake got hassled  one year at Pride for walking home with an unopened can of Arizona Ice-Tea.  Man-handled, because he was young and male which is apparently against the law,  meanwhile his nice-lady white mother can drink with the encouragement of the po-po.   Tom-tom, in his own neighborhood, my nmom thought it was because he looks so straight, which made a great joke,”What are you one of them there, HET-EeeRO-Sexuals?  We don’t like your kind”

I wasn’t a 14 year-old boy who had no reason to understand the law, I was a totally enfranchised middle-class woman who was very aware.  I was the one who wantonly disregarded it, and was rewarded with fun story.  You want to tell me who acts “black”?

They listened to me, whether or not they can internalize that or not, Idk.  They’ve got some heavy messages to work against and I was at my stop.  Do I have the tools to offer them to navigate their way out of that system,no fucking way,since I was a girl I have had my own system that subscribes good qualities to me.  That was not a free-ride either, that comes with its dark side too.

It upset me obviously.  Our tender young, the messages they get, the information they are giving me like no one else can, sucks.  It sucks that in one of the loveliest areas of the country a black kid turns to me and accusingly says someone else is “acting black”   This is the best we can do?  That is not true.   Of course for me it came back to adoption, these kids, with their obvious race-based issues,  being raised by their kin, what do transracial adoptees go through?

I don’t know, I can’t know, I do know that my desire is to listen to them and respect them and not ever correct them.   I know so well the anguish this has caused me and I did not even lose a county, much less a culture and a language.    It frightens me,and I am so disgusted with the blithe way most people deal with this. You may think I am just emo and bitchy, but really it is called being perceptive.  Oh God, please stop it, if you want to nurture, there is no lack of opportunity. If you want attention,act like a spaz. But as that great philosopher Susan Porter (?)said, stop the madness.

Just because I find this so soothing to the upset:

This is the kind of song that opens the crown of my head,where all feel is love and connectivity, to everything.  But I always come down from that and wonder about things, like the boys that rode on the bus, with its wheels spinning round and round.

 

 

The Tyranny of the Weak

The first time I ran into this idea, I was a very young teenager.    As I have said before I was an “early bloomer”  so get ready for TMI, if you are a mom you may need your smelling salts, if you are male faint already, but if you were like me, this will be all too familiar.  So was at the local free clinic to figure out why my no-good bf had broken me, yeast infection, but I didn’t know that, literally thought I was dying, jay-jay first.   I couldn’t talk to my sainted amom, nmom, was no where to be found and bff didn’t like bf.  So I gave the clinic a fake name, waited waaaay to long.  I didn’t have someone in my life who could say, garlic and cranberry juice at that time.   I gave them a fake name, but because I was all lame it was like, “Julie Martin” so if someone saw me they would say, “Oh I saw someone who looked just like Joy but it could not have been because her name was Julie”  I eyeroll at my younger-self.

Because I am a compulsive reader, because if I was going to die, I wanted to be entertained the last few moments before death, I picked up a magazine from the table, the venerable Cosmopolitan.  I flipped to an article, “The Tyranny of the Weak”  This was a new idea to me.  I had spent the last dozen plus years I was alive being called, “strong” being depended on.  Turning on light switches for kids older than me that were afraid of the dark, trying to solve my aparents infertility problems, dodging molester neighbor,  I can’t remember the moment that I decided, if I decided I needed to be strong.   Or if it was just called out of me, or just part of me.

I visited my mother last summer, she told me that she never taught “her kids” what to think, as if that is even possible.  Everyone is always communicating even if it is via silence.  I was alarmed.  I always felt I had to teach Tomtom everything I knew so he didn’t have to learn it.  How to deal with bullies, oh I told him as he was going into grade 9 and I knew there would be another pecking order to be established, “If anyone says they will kick your ass after school, you say fuck after school let’s go right now!”  He was pleased to report it worked.  It does, there is a lot more chance that it will not end in death during school hours.   It saves face and removes the fight.

I felt compelled with Tomtom, this is how you change oil, this is how you do your taxes, this is how you negotiate, this is how you pump gas, this is how you make a pie crust, this is how you deal with people, look for what motivates them, this is how you ask  a girl out, for those that don’t know,  You call her up way in advance and say, “Hey I would like to take you to the bowling/movies/whatever on Friday”  you are clear, you are confident you never say, “hey what are you doing Friday?”  because if she is busy she will say, “so want to go but cannot what about Saturday?”  If she is not interested she says, “busy Friday” and then you leave her alone.   I taught him a woman says no once and that is enough, always wear a condom, if you are having sex, wear two!  Don’t believe that she is on birth control, she could be lying and you are responsible for your fertility.   I felt responsible for him like I was preparing him for war.  I think because that is how I look at life, like a war.   If you had to do battle with Tomtom, he could fix your wounds, he could fix the jeep, he could talk the enemy into putting his weapon down, fix you all a sweet apple pie, and the best kind of margarita that exists.   He can also do a bar trick, a push-up, trick, the twist, and entertain a child.

Tomtom is the kind of young man that can kick your ass and have you thank him for it.  He is that awesome.  He is compassionate, kind, and super cute.   When I was in junior high, Adam Ant had just made it big a few years before, so I didn’t like him, because I super wanted to be cool, didn’t realize I was being a douche-bag, because I didn’t even know what douche-bags were…  But later when I did, I did sing this song to him as an infant along with a lot of other inappropriate VU songs.

“Don’t you ever, don’t you ever stop being dandy showing me your handsome, Prince Charming, Prince Charming, ridicule is nothing to be scared of ; don’t you ever lower yourself forgetting all your standards” 

By the time I that babe, even though I was still a teen I had been through so much shit.  Oh there is still a part of me that wishes I could switch something?  what out?  Idk what?  but my family is just so, idk.   I don’t want to say how they are because that feels yuck.

But I knew of course what it was like to get picked on, I got picked on in the most major way ever, I was exiled because my nfamily felt to weak, they had tons of resources, or the reason was more sinister than that, with my nfam, who knows?   Tomtom was picked on in first grade, of course he was, he had super-poor mom, in super -rich community.  Oh ask any teen mom, the other moms don’t like you, but the dads sure do, which just makes you more vulnerable.   Luckily, I had no familial support, Jeebus, but I got to weather all that weakness all by myself, with my nfam especially trying to parentify me, ” oh it is just too hard for us!” Srsly?  srsly.   Twenty years later, they still do it.

Popularity in the early grades is based on popularity of the mom, I was not popular, I was isolated and alone.  Luckily, I had all these years  to draw upon.  I told Tomtom when he was picked on that year about the year I bullied the girl named Heather and how that was awful.    I also told him, “You are going to grow up to be a wonderful, beautiful, and powerful person and I want you to not ever forget how this feels, I want you to always remember how shitty this feels, so that you can be kind and gracious and not treat people like this in the future”    He did  both those things.

Oh we all get ridiculed, that is nothing to be scared of, the idea that we can’t fail, that we cannot withstand ridicule, that is something to be scared of,  I see it all the time with APs claiming that if we would just be “nice”?  As if there was anything about trafficking our identities that was nice?  or if I hear one more bullshit testimony from my nmom about how calling me an it is something I should argue with her about?  I mean wtf?  Kind people do kind things because they are kind.  That is the bottom line, I don’t have to tow any line to make a kind person be kind to me.  I cannot make anyone be kind.  If you care you will, if you want to listen, you will.  Ignoring the adoptee plight is decidedly unkind.   We are real people, you let us swim in a world of sealed records, fighting for the right to human, you do not qualify as kind.   You are the tyranny of the weak.

This could be my anthem after Tomtom grew up, empty nests are hella fun.

Deborah Harry: Rejected Adoptee, Srsly? Srsly

I love Debbie Harry, I have said that about as many times as I have said I was an adoptee on this blog.  I have traced the trajectory,  singing   “Rapture” as a little tyke while jumping rope,  ”then they ate up bars where the people meet”  some people say that was the first rap song.  Mabye?   But the things of childhood are to be put away when one grows the boobies.  Sooo, we did, we rejected.  BUT bff and I also liked to freak out the boys, tell them things that were super un-cool and get them to go along with us, just because h.s. boys are like that, they are all sure, whatever, just please?  no.   Then bff had a dream about us doing lines at Chase’s house while listening to Parallel Lines so I was “Let’s buy it, let’s really like it”  so we did.

Then we bought more,  I would lie in bed and listen to them with my head-phones on and satin sheets over my head.   My bed was awesome, it was all light blue satin like a cloud.   I had a beautiful room, it was white and light blue satin only with black and white movie pictures from the 20s to the 40s.   Hedy Lamarr, oh yes please.  Josephine Baker makes me go bananas.  Harlow (who weirdly looks a lot like my abrothers nmom), my hero, Clara Bow and her bee-stung lips, Bette Davis and her eyes, Vivien Leigh and her waist.   When I wasn’t listening to the Ramones, I would listen to Blondie, even though I dressed up as Debbie Harry for Halloween when I was eight.  ”Why is she biting her finger?”  I would ask my amom when I was a kid and she would be on t.v. , by the time I was fourteen, I knew.

I felt so connected, to Dreaming, people stop and stare at me, we just walk on by we just keep on dreaming.  And I also did this really stupid thing that skeeves me out, but you have to understand the times, or no you don’t, I just did this really skeevy thing and posed for pictures in swimsuits, which made more money than anything I had done before,or probably since,  but quickly left as weird old guys telling me to “look sexy” was just too gross for words.  I actually said, because I was born with a mouth that has to say shit, on my last photo-shoot, when I was still a kid, “Look sexy?  sexy is not a look”   It isn’t, but Blondie helped me through that with, Fan Mail, really it is so gross, it is the anti-sexy.

But I looked her up recently, I don’t remember when I found out she was a fellow adoptee, but I don’t think it was until much later, once I started liking her there was no turning back.   I forgot about this beautiful song though:

Oh and of course this was me and baby-daddy’s song   .  But at some point I learned she was an adoptee too.    I never heard her speak about it, but I never blame famous adoptees for not talking about it, though most do.  They are already under so much scrutiny, I think being famous is the exact thing as being ostracized, it is horrible and makes you feel, “other”  but I found this:

She starts talking about adoption related issues at about 4:00, more so at 7:03,   “most adopted children do”  eye-roll at the Asian chick.    She had strong support from her adoptive parents, yeah right.  Of course, she did.

“They were inseparable” Yeah,that is an adoptee thing.   I have done that so many times with so many people,while having “side projects”   because I was so afraid of being abandoned.  But mostly,  mostly I think, some woman couldn’t get over her shame for Debbie-fucking-Harry?  I mean how much more awesome can you be?

Pretty awesome, I am pretty awesome, I have been involved in all kinds of fantastic projects and have been dirt-ass poor and triumphed, and still get dirted by my nfamily, still get you don’t deserve parity from my maternal nfam.  not from my paternal n.fam, although my maternal n.fam has been clear about looking down on my paternal n. fam.

I know lots and lots of ladies who have been dirted by their nfams.  Addie,Linda, Paris, spring to mind.  They are fabulous, I know that, I know that I did nothing that could have ever done by anyone, would ever justify why my maternal nfamily treated me like they did, and they are super SMUG about it.   Srsly.  Because it is HARD for them, srsly, it is.  They find a license to be super-weak.   So I take comfort in knowing, the super awesome Deborah Harry had to deal with this, the super awesome Addie, the super awesome Linda has to deal, the super awesome Paris.  It sucks, but that is how people are.

People need scapegoats, adoptees are easy scapegoats, in that we are already exiled.    We are already bearing the shame, it is easy to push yours on us.   It hurts, it never helps, it never doesn’t matter, but it is the nfam and afam way to go, dump on the adoptee.

My Real Parents: Jello, Joey, Johnny, and Nina

“I find honesty to be the most offensive thing in the world, since the dawn of man-kind”   Johnny Lydon

I never really reflected on how hanging out with punks, in clubs, going to shows educated and liberated me, it just made the most sense at the time, looking back from middle-age, I am amazed that I was that smart.  Despite the gaslighting despite being a little kid and watching  weirdo documentaries about “My daughter was a wonderful cheerleader and then was taken by the punk-rock, halp me Jeebus”   You forget about those but they had them.  I was watching them, on God Bless YouTube

This is really the world I was a kid in, people really did get sent to mental hospitals, to jail for life, for listening to Heavy Metal  Thanks to the likes of people like Tipper Gore, srsly, Tipper Gore.  Some of my readers won’t recognize the significance of a nickname like “Tipper”   People with old money, with tons of privilege have  nicknames like “Tipper” , that she is smug enough to call herself while the wife of a representative of the peasants, is eeuuuwww gross.   I mean now the middle aged grew up listening to “vile” acts like the Beastie Boys and we are chill with that.

Jello is brill.  no wonder I left gross-out school and cleaved myself to the likes of him,no wonder I drank big bottles of whiskey before I went into clubs, and no it was not all dream-land full of cool kids, there would be girls or something there saying things like, “Oh it is the fucking prom-queen” about me because of the way I dressed, which is how I currently dress, anything I find,  ”interesting” at Goodwill  or, boys who would say about me and bff, “They’re both in love with the same dumb blonde”   I am not dumb, but thanks for the stereoptyping, how unusual of you.  But yes, we both did love me, I loved her too, why you want to shame us for love?  Hunh bubbas?

But like Joey said, “Feedback blasting out my ears makes me so high, I love all the modern men, but why are they alive?”

They were all brilliant, funny, real, sincere, they really cared, not like my horny unfulfilled teachers.    Again, I have to thank myself for being too cool for school because it was damaging, I was curious, I wanted to learn, I got myself an education.  They taught me it was okay to be angry, it was okay to have fun,it was okay to dance, it was okay to say fuck you, it was okay to be myself, and tell shame to fuck-off.   It was okay to care, to question.

The eighties were so lame, except for the punk  I used to freak out my abrother and his frosted-hair friends who were always “getting one over on a bitch”  that I was in love with Joey Ramone,  they thought that was disgusting, I was chill with that, because I thought they were disgusting.   I loved to get a rise out of them.

I was thinking about that as I was dealing with my nfamily, I know some readers think I am rough on my nmom, but that is just another lie, there is so much she does, did, continues to do that I don’t share.  She thinks loving another person is doing whatever the fuck without consideration as long as you say, “I love you”  like I could run you over with a car and then shout out “I love you” and as she likes to do, go to Trader Joes, I find them to over-package and they sick me out, but yeah, she will run you over and be all, “I love you, no tag backs” and off to get her over-packaged junk-food wrapped in pretension.  Whatever.

Punk taught me to be accountable.  My friend Sean said to me one time, “Ever notice how the punk kids are really sweet and the hippie kids are really mean and judgmental?”

“I did not notice but you are right”  I said

“Yeah, you seek out what you lack, punks need help with their anger, hippies need help to love”   he nodded and then we drank whiskey out of his coffee cup.  We would work together later, in VERY glamorous, self-hurray-important field.  I liked to mix things up by saying things that you were not allowed to say, like, “I used to like to do gobs of cocaine”

“Really?”  my boss said,  I nodded.

“By the Jaw-Breaker full”  I lolled, because you know, it can keep you up.

“That is so hard to believe, you are always so happy and cheerful, what were you like on cocaine?”

Sean lolled, “She was happy and cheerful”  I heart Sean.

I was thinking how lucky I was to take this path.  How really brave I am, I know most of you cannot see that, but this blog alone is really brave.  How disgusted I am by the members of my maternal family who tell me my abandonment was hard on them, and so deserve to treat me like shit.  I am sure it is hard on them, but that doesn’t give you license to be a coward, to do the wrong thing over and over and blame me for it.   Then self-righteously scapegoat me srsly?  My sister does all of this noise making about racism/sexism/heteronormative  values but treats me like she is a queen and I am a peasant, fuck to the that.   I am not, I was a bastard, big fucking deal.  I got over it, how dare you be so weak?  How dare you?

I never did that, I raised a wonderful human-being, who was also screwed over by them because they are so omg, insecure, well I didn’t get that luxury, if I was that weak I would be dead.  I can’t relate to those people.   I have to also say I had the brilliant shining the light for me saying, “Actually, you can be free of the tyranny of the weak, you can rid yourself of the bullshit”

These were the people who understood and wanted to help, they did.

Yayaya A Punk Rock A Punk Punk Punk A Punk Rockah, Yeah: Why Do People Even Bother Lying?

Can you name that tune?  Can ya Sheena? Don’t tell me I sang off key, I will have a shit-fit.  Lollers.  So I was witnessing this conversation about making friends with anger, and anger is my bff, so I know a lot about it so of course instantly thought of PIL’s “Rise”  you know “Anger Is An Energy!  We will all Rise Anew!  Yay Mr. Rotten!  He inspires me ‘n shit.

Anger can be fantastic.  When I get angry, it feels like all these disconnected data points coalesce and flocculate yes clarifying agent indeed. I feel like everything becomes clear and I am filled with an energy and have said some of the favorite things I have ever said while angry.  I usually don’t even know I am going to say them until they are out of my mouth.   I do one thing before I talk, Idk what it is all about but I focus on how it feels in my hip area, and lower abdomen.  I think, “am I comfortable with this?  Okay then let’s go”  And I go.

Words come too easy to me, that is a blessing and a curse.  My tongue can get too sharp too quick.  I have tempered that though in recent years, I have learned from others.  Someone I really respect told me once after seeing me go too hard after someone, “You always have to leave the other person an out, even when you are right”  That is true.   Him telling me that, has helped me dial it down a bit.  So I youtubed the song and off to the right I see this little gem:

He is so beautiful!  I watched enchanted,  I had a very frustrating day, I talked to liars like the talk show host all day long.  ”Inferior product, inferior lifestyle”  Oh God it is like the words coming out of  the marrow of my bones, it is all so real, so honest.  So really the best part of life.  He is brilliant and the poor talk-show host can’t even speak his language but wants to hump his leg.  Is that a job requirement to be a talk-show host?  Is that a job requirement?   Must hate people, want to hump their legs, must be quite stupid, resist research on your subjects, and want to make a jack-ass out of yourself  on television?  Who wants to be on television, it is so weird.

He is so patronizing, why doesn’t he adopt Mr. Rotten for chrissakes.  I mean he insults his jacket, really?  I love Mr. Rotten’s reasoning, the way he argues when he is forced to, “Clothes are fantastic!”  YES!  Telling it like it is.  YES!  ”I have introduced new concepts like honesty”  He did.  Don’t talk to me about Malcolm Mclaren, if you do I will just think you are dumb like the talk-show host.   “You don’t know do you”   Love it.   Johnny is the real deal, he has the stuff.

“You just said this yourself sir”  when talk-show host mentions that Mr. Rotten “led” fashion, yes that is key.  If you are a former baby that was left in the hospital when you were just a limbic system, collection of baby-organs and all the abilities you had were searching for pheromones, comfort, regulation and there was none.  If you as a little baby laid flat in a probably plastic box with your belly exposed, with indifferent nurses, in a busy nursery with BFA, Baby for Adoption on your plastic bin, shoved in the back so people can’t see you.  Do you really think we got the best care?  We were throwaways after all.   Then if you were like me, you went all super needy because you had only been alive for like days to a foster home that gave fuck all about you and that had an effect on you because you are like human, shame on you infant, that is what the fans of BN will tell you, shame on you naughty infant because normal human infants, normal slow-developing species with large brains so don’t need care.   To hear the folks at BN tell it, I should have probably started my own business and been analyzing investments at 3 days old, until who knows, I went to my afam, after they had an enforced week to think about if I was really a good fit.   My amom did have to bring an outfit for my fat butter-ball baby-self, they needed whatever I was wearing for the next victim of magic of adoption.  How sad is that, I didn’t even get an outfit out of the deal.

You know what totally sucks from what I am aware of?  The fact that I am maybe the luckiest adoptee I know.  My aparents gave me my info.  They were a party to my adoption, I am not.   I don’t have to deal with racial issues, I don’t have to deal with culture issues, well I do, my nfamily does not hold graciousness in high-esteem.  But not like Mei-Ling.  I don’t have to deal with best guess, 80% of what she has to deal with, I am a golden adoptee.  I didn’t suffer from self-esteem issues, I did have friends, I was able to fend for myself.   I did try to kill myself that one time, but that wasn’t because I didn’t like me, it was that the mountain was too big to get over, I had no emotional familial support.  Even at the time, I would have totally liked to hang-out with myself.  Like I liked to hang-out with Kendra, who pulled a bottle of pills out of her purse one time and showed me that she kept it there just in case she had to drive out to the beach and “do it”

People need tribes, that is just the way it is, I didn’t make it up.  Take it up with Jeebus who crated you, why do people need their folk, like Mr.Rotten said?   I also found this one which is also full of DB host that can’t understand the language.

I am so glad I hung out in punk clubs while I was cutting school and being “very disappointing”  because I had “so much potential”  It makes me laugh now.  Most of the time sitting in school was listening to teachers go on about themselves.    I had a teacher that liked to talk about how much he related with “Porkys” the movie, why?  Or the female teacher who would do exercises in low-cut dresses in front of junior high boys?  WTF? Is wrong with people?

I listened to Jello, he was before my time, but he sang about how a holiday in Cambodia, he used humor,  when I first heard the song, I thought, “where people dress in black”  cool, but what does Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot mean?  Then I watched the Killing Fields on cable obsessively, Holy shit.    I got a higher education alright, but it was not at my university, it was at the punk clubs with the outliers.   I am so grateful I did that for myself.

People, like at least 85% spend their whole day trying to make themselves important.  It is so desperate and needy.  It is so gross.  I used to go to Quaker meetings because they are super-fun, you should so go if you haven’t but felt slightly cheated as the spirit never spoke to me.  The whole exercise is about really listening.  Since I have dumped off so much shame, I have been practicing that in real life.  The weird thing is the more I practice the less I hear words and the more I feel energy.   The easier the solutions come.

I was talking with a big-brash-atty today.  She was being so loud, shouting, but I thought, why is she being so argy-bargy loud?  She wants to be heard, she wants to feel important.  I cannot fulfill her need, nor do I want to.  She started demanding answers about the stock-market from me?  I said, “I don’t know, I have no idea about the stock market”  which isn’t exactly true, but true enough, I am smart enough to know what I don’t know.  I did something kind of wicked, I showed her the statements, after her demanding, because I knew she wouldn’t even begin to understand them, “All the answers you want should be in here”  they are, but Ms. Pretend Expert, who what, watched Mad-Money Boo-yah, or whatever that other big liar says, thinks she can take me to task on something that isn’t my job?  That I don’t have the personal power to say, “I don’t know”  that I am going to get all insecure and stupid and pretend I know?  Why?  You can’t pay me enough money to do that bitch.   I’ll get all Tesla on your ass and go dig ditches first.

What really sucks is so many people are like that, they are not the fabulous, they are not the “Holy Shit! How can I helps”  they are the look at me I am important and can never be sated.   So yes, there is always room for Jello:

 

How could anyone ever not love this song, oh how much more educational dumping drugs into my body and listening to punk was then listening to my sexually-depraved teachers were.  I thank me.   My agrandma was right, I was too smart for school.

 

 

Tipping Point: It is NOT Too Soon to Celebrate!

I have to thank all the mothers that were brave enough to participate in Dan Rather’s Abducted or Adopted?  But of course from me a special big shout out to our girl Cloudia  (yeah, I remember that story, it always makes me giggle and I think that is a way better name for you anyway)  Because Cloudia and I have hung out in hotel rooms, we have asked a lot of people for a lot of stuff, we have led parades without the aid of 76 trombones.  She made the best adoptee rights coalition video evah!

She has done more things for adoptee rights than anyone I personally know, including me,  which I have expended a tremendous amount of energy and money to the cause.   Cloud and I have fought, we haven’t always agreed.   Sometimes she has had ideas that I resisted and I was happy to be proven wrong.   But she has always been flexible, she has always done what the truly fabulous do when they learn of an injustice.  They say, “Holy Shit!  How can I help?”  She has always been about the mission and not the ego.  In real life she is incredibly adorable, she has the best vibe, she dresses pretty and talks to the legislators with a huge depth of knowledge when we are in the building lobbying.  I remember people, who didn’t come or help in anyway, criticizing her choice of t-shirts at one of our Adoptee-Pride Parades, srsly?  The temerity, but for all the sane people what is not to love about this?

I almost stole it to use as my avatar but then thought no because I make bitchy comments and she doesn’t and people would not be able to distinguish the different names.   She is actually cuter than that in real life, she is super squee-cute.  Okay, enough love for the Cloud, but the real meat.

This is it babies, we have arrived.  All the incredible courage I have witnessed, including my own, I have laid myself belly-up on this blog, I have posted things that left me shaking like a dog shitting peach-pits for days, months even.  This is the most painful experience of my life I am talking about and I have been through some shit, nothing else even comes close.   I hope that nothing ever does.  That was what was really hard.   It is not hard to get attacked for having my fee-fees.  I am aware enough to know that anyone who does that is a major DB.   You know, I want to make fun of you because your mother didn’t want you thing, I mean eeeuuw as in eeeuw, what kind of cretin does that? Oh you are just angsty over being abandoned, that is hella compassionate, Jeebus save us.

But our mothers are the key to making us humans, and most people think humans deserve rights, those who are not busy correcting adoptees, or worse yet child development experts who think babies are crap and can’t feel pain because they can’t talk and she has found no evidence that practice babies were harmed at the Bureau of Complaints About Adopted Brats, which is totally transparent, I mean yikes!  Is it street-legal to be that stupid?   That harmful?  That I am the expert who will lead you to the path of soul-destruction.   Those words aren’t harsh enough for that ding-bat.   So ego based, so look at me, am expert on the ocean, so polyester pants-suit.

The word infant comes from the latin, without speech.  You know like infantry in the military, same thing, the enlisted, those without a voice.   Those who have to be all Tennyson and not question why but ride into the valley of death .  Most people like child-development expert refrenced above are not capable of seeing those without speech as human.   Just like many people think ESL people are stupid even though they have more often than not done things that they have not, like learned a Latin-Saxon language when their native language was tonal.

That Child-Development-Expert, Dr. Moreau as Ms. M. so aptly coined, would tell you if you hit an infant with a frying pan her skull may be crushed by some unmeasured variable.  Even though babies are basically all limbic system whose only skill is sucking.   Who are defenseless and extraordinarily sensory-oriented.  Those are their survival skills.  A “Child Development Expert”  who srsly believes that if you look at the natural world, where things are ruled by pheromones, visual signaling, sounds that cause others in the species to know it is mating season, inherent mating dances, etc.  This does not apply to human infants?  We are the exception to nature?  Oh again, street-legal stupid?  Someone, Thom Yorke, arrest this woman her Hitler hair-do is making me feel ill.

But people can relate to mothers, most people have them. Lots of ladies have given birth.  By keeping our records sealed and our mothers specters, it keeps us commodities, unwanted garbage “saved” by the “miracle” the “magic” of adoption.   Yeah right?  It saves the ass of the policy makers, the profiteers.   Keep those slutty bitches all shamed because most normal women, not men, because men are allowed to have sexual desires, never have had a sexual experience that they didn’t go into maybe because of raging hormones, maybe because they wanted to express their love or lust for someone, no, all good normal women only have sex when they want to have a bay-bee, because we are breeding pigs right?   I mean what kind of woman can’t get behind that idea?  Oh any woman with half a brain-cell.  Sluts/Whores don’t exist, they are like Santa a fun way to explain bullshit.  A woman’s sexuality is her own damn business.  Don’t make me tell you again.

But the mothers who lost their children?  What is a bigger fear than that of any mother, making them not other, makes us not other.   People can relate to mothers being pained over loss of child, it is so normal.   That makes their children real.

Some people want to be all academese and lame, okay lemme tell ya something, it doesn’t work, it alienates those that don’t know the lingo, those of us that understand it think, DB what are you on about,  ego?  Because it sure isn’t about communicating.  The Doll-test was the tipping point in Brown vs. The Board,  civil rights were gained through, who that has half a heart, can’t have it be broken by the doll-tests  Google it, it hurts me just to think about.   The fact that my birth was so shameful as to have to be sealed as a record so people’s faces don’t melt off?  That is real heavy-duty bigger than a Glad-Bag shame.    Be fabulous say, “Holy Shit!  How can I help?”

Because we just won.  We just got someone with major cultural capital to say, “hey cow, whaaaaat?”   That is what we did not have.  Some people criticized NJ care because they lack critical thinking skillz.  If you listened to their testimony, it was awesome, splendid even.   They hit every point.   They nailed it, they were to be high-fived.   Some of those people may have done more work than my Cloud, but they are like so on the hella other side of the country, I don’t know them.   They still got kicked in the teeth, not because they did anything wrong, they did everything right, they didn’t have the cultural capital on their side, the Catholic Church with the guys who can’t keep their dicks underneath their fancy dresses did.   Srsly, are they the original drag-queens or what?

On adoption.com they are already spinning  you see all the verbs end in ED?  Oh in the past we used to be so mean and am so sad about that, yeah right, but now we still seal birth certificates and we have learned the nice way to traffic children.  We learned the nice way to shame an  innocent child by sealing their identity, we learned a nice way to destroy people so we can brag about ourselves.  You did not bitches you did not.  Open adoption sucks.   You should think about spinning for sure, because game-over bitches, HA HA you lose.  I give it 5 years max, betting on under three.  It is over   You better re-think your mission statement, why you are a saint, etc. Because the karma police have their sirens on and you lost your cultural capital.  Too bad, so sad.

Oh I know I have posted this song like 50 million times but it is so apt.  I told you, I told you straight to your face so many times, you should have trusted me.  Instead you tried to harm me, you should have trusted me.   I don’t enter into fights I can’t win.  I am not ego based.   You should have trusted me.

Yes, we are the awesome.  Thank you to every single fool who put their heart on  the line and made this possible.

ETA:  I told you Chuck Johnson that I was smarter than you,   I wasn’t bluffing, your behavior has already proved that.  Tail between your legs time now boy.   Yes, your lies will become trans-fucking-parent, time to re-brand sucker. 

No One Puts Bambi in a Corner

I have been very interested in a conversation about race over at Mei-Lings blog.   I am a white person.  Racism is fascinating to me, scary to me, makes me feel vulnerable and sometimes very afraid.   SH and I went to go see Wanda Sykes awhile back, yes there were some upsetting adoption jokes, but I try to move past that you know.  What I was really worried about was being the only straight white couple there , we pretty much were.  The opening act was very funny and made me feel at ease.   He was man who was black and he addressed the whitey-fear, he said he liked to get behind white joggers at Central Park and jog behind them and ask them why they were “running from the black man”  which is funny and real.

I have my own stereotype to deal with, I am seen as “nice”  soft, pliable, stupid, indulged, a child, a child to be offered a candy to, this has nothing to deal with the life I have lived.   When I was 27, and granted when I was 27 I looked about 14, I was in a meeting with a feminist woman who was so classicist, so patronizing,  so rude, until I slapped my hand on her desk and said, “Okay, it is time to stop treating me like I am a stupid kid because I am neither”  She did.   She also HATED me after that.

Okay back to the story I really want to tell, and if you are a person of color and are reading this and I offend you, I really want to know and why and how I can have a deeper understanding.  It is okay to be offended by me, I am working with the information I have, if you have more to offer, I will be richer, so tell me, I won’t crap my pants.  This is a dicey post.

So, had a really shit-box day  a couple of weeks ago.  Crazy, day-drinking kind of day   I called to cancel an appointment.  ”Can’t come, just am pissed and mean and that is what is what”  Friend said, “well then definitely come, have champagne and you can help me paint”  So yeah like okai,  I walked down the street, I saw Mike, the homeless guy that resides real close to me and is always so kind to me,  ”I love you Joy”  he likes to call out, “I love you Mike” I call back, other times he calls me other names like beautify, or lovely, or just nurturing things.  This day he called me Bambi.   I didn’t quite like that  ”Why are you calling me Bambi?”  I asked . “Because you are always so sweet and soft” he answered.  I rolled my eyes at him, “no more Bambi okay?”  Oh I do want to say Mike is black to prove that me as white person can have all kinds of relationships with people who are not white devils

But then as I approached destination in very popular part of town, already with a martini in my body, a very tall man who was black asked me for some money  Which happens about every 15 seconds where I live, which I budget for actually have two line items, one for homeless I know, one for strangers.  ”Sorry” I said softly.

He called back at me, “Typical COCK!     Asian!  emphasis added by his spacing of words.  Okay, nurturing and loving other people is my first impulse.   I love to feel connected,  I love to give and feel loved,that is worth so much more than anything to me.  At the same time, fuck with me on a good day you will probably lose.  I may not be a good baseball player but try me on critical thinking.    You aren’t going to win, it is impossible because for me this is about the idea not the ego, sorry Jess.

So I was halfway in to friend’s office when I heard this, I turned back around

“Excuse me sir!”  I demanded.

“I am sorry there is racism, and I believe that is despicable and real, I respect that but I want you to know a few things”

He was easily a foot taller than me but he stopped.
“I was abandoned by my mother, I was in foster care, I was lied to, I was beat, I have been raped, I was a welfare mother, I lived in a garage,  I lived with the Mexican fucking mafia, which I did, I was locked up, I was 5150ed”

He said,  ”so what so did my mom”

I said, “So respect her, but don’t you ever think that just because I am white I have never known a day of trouble. ” (edited because I forgot an important point)  ”And I owe you nothing!”

The magical thing is I have run into this person since then, he is now lovely to me and I think I may have a small job for him

Love is so wonderful

HA! I Met Momma Marginalia, AKA Most Improved Nmother of the Decade

Okay, before I start, whoever found my blog by searching “how to get money out of adoptive parents” made my stomach turn, that is pretty gross, was that you Chuck Johnson, of your NCFA fame? Oh that is right, can’t ask a liar questions with any hope for truth.

Anyway, today started out extremely shit-box. First I called my father and asked him bizarre questions, he responded by telling me about my life with my “significant other” and all I could think is he going to start about “spending quality time and trips to Hawaii?” People with my skin-tone don’t do well in Hawaii. He was understanding, when I said, “I don’t want to talk anymore” He said “O.K. Call back when you feel better” Which was nice.

But the day turned, it was gorgeous. I headed off to work, and I love work. I also work with the best people to work with because they know really good jokes. They make me feel so cared for. They are smart, lively, and stylish, which I appreciate, because it makes life more fun.

BUT, the best thing was I got to have a lovely lunch with both the divine Ms. Marginalia and her MOTHER. Who has the best, most fabulous hair of anyone anywhere, nmom or otherwise. She looks like a tiger and I love tigers. That actually doesn’t do it justice, it is more subtle and stylish but it did make me think ‘rawr’! It is funny, I found myself picking out my outfit carefully, I tried to go conservative so she wouldn’t think I was all yay-area cray-cray. She could have been a native. So we walked around a bit so that we could see things. We saw them and they were very spring-like and windy.

She thanked me for being kind to our divine Ms. M when she was “being so mean” she is sharp as a tack, I could have spent so many more hours with her if the realities of deadlines would be so kind to disappear. They never are.

For those that don’t know the back story, she resisted for like a decade reunion. She made quite frank and funny jokes. She said she felt so much more free in her whole life now that she has dumped the shame because she OMG had sex! Oh what the societal gaslighting does to us all. Arbitrary social mores that are actually very fluid give it ten year, twenty. Her story is so inspiring because it is transcendence. “Do you know how few people get to experience that?” I asked. She said she had the support of her extended family and that helped. She said, “My daughter!” really loud. She said that felt good to say.

I said, “It must be wonderful to have a daughter” She agreed. I have one son, whom I adore more than life itself, but daughters are different. I have a lucky ring, it is actually quite the bling. I wear it all the time. It was given to me by a former client. She was dealing with a very ill son and a dying husband. She had a healthy son, but I remember thinking, ‘this woman needs to be daughtered’ so I did, way beyond the scope of my professional life. So she gave me crazy fancy ring. “I don’t have a daughter, I want someone I care about to wear this” So after refusing about 7 times, and when the whole family agreed, I took it. I didn’t sell it even when I really needed the cash because it means so much to me when I look at it and think of why she wanted me to have it. Bon-Bon sometimes daughters me, it is lovely. Tom-Tom has exquisite taste.

Probably my favorite though, was sitting across from them while we had lunch at one of those cute, albeit pretentious cafes that wants to know if you want your water sparkling or still. Lol, bubble or tap. Of course we had to go for the sparkle, because we didn’t want to clash with our water. Momma Marginalia want to know how to help get the word out. Which was fabulous people do, they ask how they can help. I also got to sit back and observe the genetic mirroring. It was more delicious than my lunch. I can appreciate how hard-won it was. Like talking to Ms. M. she already felt like a close friend .

It was a dream come true.

So huzzah! Hurrah! We are proud of you! stomp stomp We are proud of you! remember I was a cheerleader at one of the many points of my life.

It was so lovely to witness and took my shit-box mood and turned it into an imported cloud to walk on for the rest of the day.

Thank you both.

I am overcoming some of my own shame just by posting this happy song, which looks a lot like our walk. Tomtom would always make fun of me for liking this song when he was in high-school. “That is such a thirty-year-old’s song to be bouncing her head to, when she isn’t busy with lolcats” Yeah, it is.

One of the more interesting things she said, was that she knew Ms. M. coming back would happen, she just knew it. We talked about the adoption experiences that we don’t have language for, how interesting this is.

Ouch, Memories of Other Mothers

After A Visit (OAR Submission) by Another Version of Mother  

When I was 20, I was heading to a festival with my bf and his brother, and his brother’s new gf, C. who was the replacement for my bff, who he had cheated on and replaced with this new smug and stinky woman, who wore terrible belts in all the wrong places.  She got to bring her bff, S. with her.  I did not, given the circumstances.  We were in a van, I sat on the floor, facing the other women.  They were part of a group of girls that had been a couple of years older than us, and never failed to show their resentment to my group of girls.  They were the same age as the boys, and then the boys started showing interest in my group.  It is a common dynamic.

I wasn’t bitter, I was sad for bff but, I knew you know, these things happen.  We stopped to pick-up one other person, I didn’t know we were going to, my ex-bf climbed into the van.  Mickey, who I had replaced with current bf, he gave me a big grin,  it was one those things.  Mickey was friends with bf, we were being way too green and recyclie with each other. 

I knew this other woman, the friend, had been pregnant.  I heard that she had an abortion, then “got mono” and was absent for a long time.   I took it at face value.  She seemed different though, she peppered me with questions, not about me and my parenting but my roommate Gina.  ”I heard Gina got divorced”  

I confirmed this.  ”You guys are living together”  Yes,  ”When did she decide to keep her baby?”

“What?”  I asked somewhat annoyed.  I don’t know if they knew my adoption status or not.  ”Well I mean if H. left her, why did she keep her baby?”    I made a face, because I am bad at that.  I said incredulously, “You don’t give your baby away just because you get dumped”  I laughed ironically. 

She asked me other uncomfortable questions, but I still didn’t get it.  Her attitude shift toward me, instead of my usual interactions where she felt compelled to display her superiority she seemed very curious about a lot of baby stuff. 

The ngf kept up the attitude I was used to.  We finally arrived at our destination we piled out of van.  Immediately a family pushing a stroller passed us.  S.  was leaning against the van I was facing her about 6 inches away, suddenly S. wailed out, “Why do there have to be so many babies here?!!”  I felt it, I felt how you can sometimes feel like a wave of energy through my body, a pain that did not feel like mine at all, like hers.  I watched C. envelope S. in her arms.  I stared letting the pain wash out of my body.  She did not have an abortion, she relinquished.  I said nothing to anyone ever.    I mean why?

I was distracted later by C. repelling my mildly-friendly overtures, we were dating brothers after all, they would take us places and then proceed to ignore us.  ”Get used to this” I smiled, trying to be open.  ”She looked down at nose at me, “Oh I love watching them”  I smiled.  Whatever, yes because people like to be ignored.  

There is a picture of us taken later that day, C. is waving to the camera?  Why?  She has a stupid belt on,  S.  looks shell-shocked and I am looking down into my purse for something.  The boys are all smiling oblivious.  

Later my bf’s brother thanked me for being so cool considering the circumstances.  ”You don’t have to worry about me, I get it”  I said.  ”By the way that was brilliant inviting Mickey”  He laughed.  ”A little insurance never hurts” 

But that feeling, when I understood what was really happening, I can recall it with alarming clarity.  It is amazing that we as a culture are so flip about this stuff. 

Unlocking Human Potential and Who We Are: Why Suppress Primary Sources?

It has occurred to me that no one in the world has more access to info.insight into human nature, more interesting stories about what we as a species really are. Things that are more interesting than outer space, inner-space. Why we do what we do, because we are a mix of hereditary/environment. What trumps, more often, how do you empower people? How do you help children whose identity has been fucked-over?

How do we, the result of a eugenics experiment, can be a really interesting resource for moving human understanding and expanding into a more powerful, solid, capable of real thought creatures. That shit is interesting. I am interested. I wonder what we would learn if society could let us talk, if they had the capacity to listen? I bet it would be mind-bending amazing. I bet it would be fun.

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