Holy Ground

I wrote this a couple years ago and submitted it to be part of the official St Lou Fringe blog.  The editor was not a fan and so it was never published.  Being that we are all trapped inside and can't go to the theater I thought I would publish it myself in honor of our 2020 Virtual Fringe Festival.

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The Hebrew and Christian holy scriptures share a story of a man who after living as a refugee in the wilderness for forty years encounters a bush that while actively burning is not consumed. The miracle becomes even more fantastical when a voice speaks from this brush fire, "put off your shoes from off your feet, for the place where on you stand is holy ground." I have been fascinated by Holy Ground since I was a child in Sunday school. As I have lived life my understanding of God has changed drastically. I do not think of God like I thought about it in my youth, and yet my search for Holy Ground has not wained.

It was one afternoon three years ago inside the Kranzberg Black Box as I was alone in the space and waiting as the lighting board powered up. In just a few minutes Michael Hagmeier would be arriving to perform his 2015 Fringe show "Digeridoo In The Dark." For that moment though, I was alone in a dark room with 80 seats, 600 square feet of performance space, forty lighting fixtures, and a day scheduled full of theatrical productions.

The room I was in would be filled with the tones and reverberations of Michael's instrument. It would host the rhythms of Tapman and his team of dancers. It would be teleported to Moscow as Lucy and her troop presented a Chekov drinking game. It would host Patrick's high school students presenting a surreal production of Alice in Wonderland. Carl would tell a story of a lonely man and the rental of a dissatisfied sexbot. All these stories would fill this space that in this moment glowed with the just the dull blue of a computer boot screen.

This space I was standing in at that moment, this was Holy Ground. Moses stood before a flame in the desert and learned the meaning of his life. I stood in that dim blue glow and recognized the meaning of these spaces we call theaters.

It has been over three years since that first cherished moment. I have traveled between venues and producers. I have watched puppets skewer the US political process. I have seen other puppets address the struggle of infertility. I have now seen Elizabeth take her audience into the emotional core of two mothers; one who lost her freedom the other who lost her child. I have cried in these theaters, as Jackie told a story of two sisters very different worldviews. I have laughed in these theaters, as Taylor told a story of dinosaur erotica and human vengance.

Fringe is about the sanctity of the full human experience. Last night another staff member shared a song, "A Little Bit of Everything" by the band Dawes. The song's last lines are

It's not some message written in the dark.
Or Some truth that no one's seen.
It's a little bit of everything.

 

I produce theatre and work as the production manager for the St Lou Fringe Festival because I believe that theater is a sacred art. The art we create, the stories we tell, the voices we unleash into the world have the potential teach us all together what is the meaning we are searching for. For me this festival and these venues are my reminder that there is holy ground in this world if we listen to the voice from the voices speaking inside them reminding us there is something greater than our individual selves.
The reason this art of theatre embodies the divine is that it reaches inside the soul of the producers and exposes that "little bit of everything" we all need to see. Come take off your metaphorical shoes, and share this pure moment with us, because this space is holy ground.

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Lets make some Zoom Rooms Holy Ground 

I Am Becoming

As today is my 45th birthday I have been thinking a lot about the brevity of our human existence. When my time on this earth concludes and I have crossed the barrier from this existence to whatever, if anything, lies on the other side of the grave I hope as those left behind who loved me will read this series of paragraphs, from Daniel Keyes, as they plant a juniper tree and bury my ashes

"But this was the counterweight, the act of binding and holding. As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing."

"Finding out who I really am-the meaning of my total existence involves knowing the possibilities of my future as well as my pasts, where I’m going as well as where I've been. Although we know the end of the maze holds death (and it is something I have not always known-not long ago the adolescent in me thought death could happen only to other people), I see now that the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being - one of many ways - and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming."

"This was the way we loved, until the night became a silent day. And as I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other's arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other - child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death."

The Ideology Is In The Bench (A FB Post)

 "[It] is not just a matter of what I think about a situation; it is somehow inscribed in that situation itself. It is no good my reminding myself that I am opposed to racism as I sit down on a park bench marked “Whites Only”; by the act of sitting on it, I have supported and perpetuated racist ideology. The ideology, so to speak, is in the bench; not in my head." - Terry Eagleton "Ideology" 1991

This quote from Terry Eagleton's "Ideology" has been rolling around in my mind all day, or at least since I read the Amy Cooper "apology" this morning. I am completely unable to believe her apology as anything near genuine. 

On the video when Amy Cooper says, I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life." It is obvious her intention is to sit down on the bench marked whites only. 

In the apology she writes, "I’ve come to realize especially today that I think of [the police] as a protection agency, and unfortunately, this has caused me to realize that there are so many people in this country that don’t have that luxury." But her actions show this is patently not true, she 100%  used the risk of Christian's death as a tool against him. She chose to sit on the bench.  

Whatever thoughts she has about "not being a racist" in her head, the ideology is in the actions.  This becomes most important to point out to my fellow white liberals when we accept the fact that Amy Cooper is one of our own; a donor to the Obama and Buttigieg campaigns. Yet with the privilege and power of white supremacy at her beckon she used it to her perceived advantage.

This is not an attack on Ms Cooper, it is instead my own rolling thoughts about my participation and complicity in the system of white supremacy. It is a reminder to myself once again of Eagleton's quote, "The ideology is in the bench."

The Christian Ex-Pat

I am Kevin, an Ex-Pat of Christianity. My grandfather was an itinerant preacher and I grew up being told from my youngest ages that I was going to be a preacher like him. I pursued that destiny into early adulthood despite the fact that I was always a weird fit with Christianity. I could speak the language, and preach in a way that inspired many but infuriated those ensconced power.
Leaving Christianity was the hardest thing I have ever done, it is my homeland and its language is my mother tongue for speaking of the sacred. Christianity was also an abusive lover. I was thrown out of churches for questioning and others for claiming love too radically and others for taking Jesus too seriously. Over and over I felt Christianity’s loving embrace by communities that would later be weaponized against me.

As I experienced repeated abuse at the hands of the church I became more and more aware of others who were too often at the receiving end of Christianity’s “loving” beat downs. It became more and more clear that women, people of color, the LGBT+ community, and other oppressed group were the church’s targets. America’s racism and bigotry was much more clearly on display than the Christ who said, “love one another,” and “the last shall be first.” In the end I could no longer see God at all within its boundaries and I became a spiritual refugee, dispossessed from my homeland.

But I have always been a seeker, and I can no more stop chasing after God than I can stop breathing. So I have made it my discipline to see the sacred in everything and everyone. If God is Love, which I believe and affirm, then every act of love is a sacred interaction with God. If God is just, then living in a way that seeks restorative justice is a sacrament.

So now, ten years after leaving Christianity where am I? I am still a refugee, but I have found a residency that feels a lot like home. My church is a stage. I produce theater, since I find that theater is the most honest place to both question and to inspire. I have love, acceptance, a voice, and a community. I practice live performance as worship of the divine.

I am not landed, I am still seeking, and still discovering myself and God both. I know like that lesson there are many others waiting and so much more to experience and learn.

I am Kevin, dispossessed and seeking the sacred.

Literary Quotes Too Good Not To Share

"Sometimes I write to keep from going crazy. There’s a world of things I don’t feel free to talk to anyone about" - Octavia Butler
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"Sometimes the only choices you have are bad choices; but you still have to choose" -The Doctor

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“To me, religions are like languages: no language is true or false; all languages are of human origin; each language reflects and shapes the civilization that speaks it; there are things you can say in one language that you cannot say as well in another; and the more languages you learn, the more nuanced your understanding of life. Judaism is my mother tongue yet in matters of the spirit I strive to be multilingual. In the end, however, the deepest language of the soul is silence.” - Rabbi Rami Shapiro
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"God is change and in the end God prevails; but God exists to be shaped." - Octavia Butler
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"Inevitable is not the same as immediacy and love does not mandate forgiveness."- N.K. Jemisin

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Less Is More - Content Dictates Form - God is in the details - Stephen Sondheim

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"Only a fool is not afraid. Now Go" - Madeline L Engle

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"We are all Stardust and Stories" - Erin Morgenstern

Some Older Poems

 UNREPLIED
I have some time this Saturday
I think we are compatible
I'd like to discover if I'm right.
I've typed a message to you
Asking if you're free at that time
Sadly you have not responded
To the missive I composed you.

Did you have some other plans that evening?
Is my presumed compatibility misjudged?
Are you just not interested in this discovery?
I have yet to receive a reply
Letting me know if you are free
Most likely because I never faced my rejection fear.
So the note I wrote is still here with me unsent.

(04/2018)

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YOUR HEALING

I fought for your healing
Even when it cost
You walking out my door.

(02/2015)

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PURPOSE 

If life has purpose at all
then that purpose is to love.

No, not the safe
sanitized love for
a transcendent being.

Love,
the messy
vulnerable kind
for our concrete
carnal surroundings.

Love is embodied,
anything else
is just philosophy.

(9/2019)

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HARD STOP

Dot Dot Dot
Dash Dash Dash
Dot Dot Dot
Hard Stop

I need a hole so deep
Where light, sound, even thoughts
Can not pierce inside.
A hard stop.

I need a blanket so heavy
Fear, worry, loss, regret
Are crushed out of me.
A hard stop.

I need a clock so broken
The past, present, & future
Fail to tick.
A hard stop.

I need a whole rest
Nothing, total and complete.
Just one beat will do.
A hard stop.

Dot Dot Dot
Dash Dash Dash
Dot Dot Dot
Hard Stop

(05/2018)

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SELF HARM

I understand the cutter.
Loving you is
My self-harm.

(11/2014)

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Thoughts From The Night You Said Let's Be Friends

 Two years ago I had a romantic relationship end that had popped up between myself and a good friend.  The ending was absolutely the best thing, but something being best doesn't mean it is the easy thing.  I wrote quite a bit over the following days and this script comes out of the general ideas from that writing.  When I was asked to write a performance to submit for a 10-minute micro-festival I instantly knew I wanted to go back to those journals and work them together into a single script that read as if it was the stream of consciousness from an evening where one can't sleep. The script was initially accepted but the idea for how it was going to be used within the festival changed and I never got to perform it or see it performed.  

So oddly enough with it being almost two years since that relationship ended it was weird to me when the script turned up while searching for something unrelated in Google Drive.  Distracted from what I was intending to find I read the script again and personally, I still think it captures the emotions of something romantic ending that wasn't really defined.  I decided it was time to go ahead and post the script here in case anyone else would like to read it.

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The Librarian and The Witch (a Facebook comment)

So here is my theory. In all ancient cultures the village witch, served as the protector of the community’s sacred knowledge. She was healer, teacher, therapist, and priestess. Her role was materialist, transcendent, and sexual. Our collective unconscious has not forgotten this despite Christendom’s best effort to drive this woman out because her role was co-equal in power with the chief. As the chief preserved the sacred masculine the witch preserved the sacred feminine.

Western modernity with its roots so deeply in Christendom patriarchy has attempted to excise the sacred feminine. However, despite all that work, our collective unconscious knows the need for the sacred feminine by both genders.

Call me crazy, but this is where the librarian fetish comes from, it is a fetishization of an unmet unconscious need. The librarian in her role as guardian of information is an illusion for the witch. She is the arbiter of the sacred feminine for our modern culture.

Uncommon Women And Others

A friend recently asked me to read and review "Uncommon Women and Others" by Wendy Wasserstein. I liked what I wrote so I am putting it here.

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This is a story of five women. Five women are suspended between two impulses. The mechanism of society and upbringing has predisposed them to fulfill their role of patriarchial feminity while the exposure to these early works of feminist literature is an incitement to reject this societal impetus. However, the college though exposing them to an education that can be a catalyst against the societal expectation placed on them is complicit in the discouragement to do just that.
Professor Chip Knowles an unseen male character teaches women's history. As if this does not illustrate the dilemma clearly enough Wasserstein goes further when Muffet recounts her conversation with the professor, "Chip’s wife, Libby, graduated first in her class from Vassar. When I told Chip I was a senior and didn’t know what I’d be doing next year, Chip told me that Libby doesn’t really spend the day mopping and catching tadpoles with Chip, Jr. She may be mopping with her hands, but with her mind she’s reliving the water imagery in the Faerie Queene” It seems important to note that the piece his wife is reflecting on is "The Faerie Queene." Since the dragon is only defeated by virtue Professor Knowles reinforces that she in her role as mother has chosen the virtuous choice. This enlightened male professor of women's history illustrates how their education is still secondary to their primary function as wife and mother.

Man's Voice (The School President) is the most clearly patronizing voice of the male dominated society. "Am I saying that anatomy is destiny? No, it is not destiny. Providing a setting in which these subtle constraints can be overcome is particularly the mission of a college for women." Although the voice is an attempt to inspire the assumption of the speaker is that womanhood is a deficiency that must be overcome. The result of that condescending encouragement is a deep anxiety, a disquiet that forces restlessness by its demand that uncommon women be super heroes. Throughout the play Man's voice presents this both implicitly, "The college fosters the ability to accept and even welcomes the necessity of strenuous and sustained effort in any area of endeavor," and also explicitly "The real problem for many educated women is the difficulty they have in recognizing whether they have been a success... Women will be part-time mothers, part-time workers, part-time cooks, and part-time intellectuals [...] Just like the pot of honey that kept renewing itself and educated woman's capacity for giving is not exhausted but stimulated by demands."

There are two other male characters that play into this complicity as well the Fathers and Robert. The fathers ostensibly are the ones paying for the Holyoke education, yet the pledge that the "girls" are saving themselves for Yale show that in the eyes of the family their virtue lies not in the education they are receiving but in the role they are to fulfill at home. Robert too is revealed to repeat this with his success and parties in which Samantha is expected to succeed vicariously.

There are of course the men not addressed directly within the play, all men. The unconscious privilege that a system designed for you allows. All men are represented here, because all men are benefitting from the system. As Rita points out men are recognized as experts even as the speak to women on issues addressing women. "The only problem with menstruation for men is that some sensitive schmuck would write about it for the Village Voice and he would become the new expert on women's inner life."

Over and over again the play circles back to two key lines. "I don't know what I am going to do," and "When I am [age]." These two recurrent ideas illustrate the condescension of society toward young women. This confusion between their role in the nuclear family unit and their role in the wider public sphere is presented as an attribute of their immaturity rather than as a consequence of the insatiable demands placed on them by a patriarchal society.

This play is not written then for women to commiserate about the problem. Instead, it is a polemic against that burden. By illustrating how each of the five women have been damaged she convicts the entire system for its injustice.

This is best understood by looking at the women through Galen's Four Humors. Muffet, Rita, Holly, and Kate each represent one of these archetypes. Muffet is the Sanguine, Rita the Phlegmatic, Holly the melancholic, and Kate the Choleric.

Muffet's nature is to be amorous and carefree. She is presented as the optimistic encourager of the group. She plays the role of ditzy fun friend while recognizing it does not bring any fulfillment "I feel so so confused. I mean this chick is an obvious imbecile. But I didn't think she was entirely wrong either. I guess the truth is men are very important to me... Sometimes I know who I am when I feel attractive. Other times it makes me feel very shallow like I am not Rosie the Riveter. I suppose this isn't a very impressive sentiment, but I would really like to meet my prince. Even a few princes. And I wouldn't give up being a person." Though she meets the society demand of women to "Smile" she is left an anxiety that questions what submission to that ideal of feminity has achieved for her.

Rita is the living embodiment of overthinking. The enormous nature of the world and the challenges it presents have left her in an avoidant anxiety. She is a lost soul because there are no solid footholds. "The New York Times, Walter Cronkite, all the buildings and roads, the cities, philosphy, government, history, religion, shopping malls, everything I can name is male. When I see things this way, it becomes very obvious that it is very easy to feel alienated and alone for the simple reason that I've never been included because I came into the world without a penis." In adulthood she is still a coward avoiding the future.

Holly is the most introspective of the five lead characters. She has desires, and sees them for both their positive and negative both. "Yes, except if I fall in love it would be because I thought someone was better than me. And if I really thought someone was better than me, I'd give them everything and I'd hate them for my living through them." As an adult she remains unsettled and has still not left graduate school. Holly has an anxiety of being an incomplete entity which results in an apathy toward progress.

Kate is ambitious and driven. Yet she is part of a society that praises those characters in men while shaming them in women. So she is trapped by her aspiration and her need to remain being seen as feminine. "Carter, I'm afraid that I'm so directed that I'll grow up to be a cold efficient lady in a grey business suit. Suddenly, there I'll be, an Uncommon Woman ready to meet the future with steadiness, gaiety, and a profession and what's more I'll organize it all with time to blow dry my hair every morning." In the end Kate has all the success of the uncommon woman and yet settles for Kent who still condescends to her.

Samantha like the other four women serves an important character as well. Samantha has chosen the "other path" the traditional woman. Like Professor Knowles' wife she has rejected the promises of feminism. "Robert says I never grew up into a woman. That I am sort of a child woman. I've been reading a lot of books recently about women who are wives of artists and actors and how they believe their husbands are geniuses, and they are just a little talented. Well, that what I am. Just a little talented at a lot of things. That's why I want to be with Robert and all of you. I want to be with someone who makes a public statement." This rejection does not leave the audience with any sense that her life appears more fulfilled.

Wassertine's goal then is for the play is to illustrate to the patriarchial society itself the burden that it places on the women. The inevitable end of this is an ingrained mistrust of the woman to herself. No woman is allowed to be confident in herself. As Rita says, "Do you know what Samantha? If I could be anyone of us, first I would be me. That's me without any embarassment or neurosis - and since that is practically impossible, my second choice is, I'd like to be you." This impairment afflicts every single character, including, in the eleventh hour reveal, Mrs Plumm, who is the model of feminine sensibility.

At the begining of the last scene Man's Voice fades and is replaced by Woman's voice, "Women still encounter overwhelming obstacles to achievement and recognition despite gradual abolition of political and legal disabilities. Society has trained women from childhood to accept a limited set of options and restricted levels of inspiration."

Wasserstein does not offer any solutions to these issues. Instead at the final climax of this play she uses this paragragh to ask the viewer if she has proven the statement to be true. If the statement is true then western society is found guilty of its injustice against women. As a woman enters adulthood the constructs passed from one generation to the next through family, education, civilization, and religion have already played their role in shaping her into the person they are and will become.

Despite almost 40 years having passed since the play was written Wasserstein's question remains relevant to be asked today. Perhaps more achievements have been made, and more disabilities have been aboloished; but the work is far from complete. Women are still expected to desire their traditional role in the marriage relationship. In the heteronormative majority women are still expected to be caretakers of their home, children, and spouses; the mental and emotional labor of a relationship still falls primarily and often exclusively on the woman. Women are still being asked to choose between their own desire and the desire of men. "I don't know what I am going to do," to navigate that space between her own goals and her role demanded by these old definitions of femininity remains a central challenge and point of anxiety to women today. The expectation to put off their own desires to some unnamed later point in time repeated in the "When I am [age]" lines are no less relevant.

Until women no longer encounter overwhelming obstacles to achievement and recognition in a male dominated society then the production of this play remains a culturally meaniful act. These five women are as representative of the challenges facing women in 2020 as they were in the challenges facing women in 1980.

The Historian (a Facebook comment)

As a "historian" surely you are aware of the "Southern Strategy" which began in the late sixties and continued as the main growth fact of the Republican party through the mid-eighties.

As a "historian" surely you are aware with the Republican party's marriage to the evangelical right to promote the control of women by limiting their access to the basic liberty of bodily autonomy and access to make their own healthcare decisions.

As a "historian" surely you recognize that the "Rockefeller Republican" which supported strong labor markets, the establishment and growth of the state university system, and the largest infrastructure projects in American history were all excised from the party by the Goldwater Republicans in the 60s and 70s.

I would love to have an engaged debate about the merits of how the Republican platform is the platform of classical liberalism, but it needs to involve the actual present platform not the accomplishments of those who would be labeled RINOs today.

However, let's debate the merits rather than use NewSpeak terms like "post modern neo marxist" which mean absolutely nothing but sound scary to those without a degree in philosophy.

Words

I wrote this over a year ago, and have decided to go ahead and post it now because I was going through old stuff I had written and I really thought this was about the best poetry I have written.

I don't know how to use my words

They don't seem to work like they used to.

Proud confident and sure of the message they had to share

I don't know how to use my words

Muddled, questioning, so in need of nuance now.

I feel sometimes like I have become too shattered to ever be put back together

I feel sometimes like all these pieces

is the only Me which has ever been the real me

I saw you there,

Seated at a table of peers

You poised and beautiful

I wanted to know who you were.

I listened, me Sipping that beer

but drinking deeply of your prescence

Your words like music and lyrics flowing through

I wanted to get to know you.

I felt you there, every idea, joke, and word

your soul being shared, you filling ours.

And I wanted to kiss you.

Renée Descartes said I think therefore I am.

I was academically birthed into the world of postmodernity,

suckled from the mounds of trust no one and question everything,

And cut my teeth on deconstruction

Now I am left to say "I am thinking therefore I am not being."

I wanted to slide my hand into the small of your back,

guide our bodies together no distance between us our lips warm softly touching

The space surrounding melted away into the peculiar particularity of that moment together.

I wonder if the other me was entirely another me.

I wonder when in that 16 years did he pass and if anyone shed a tear for his loss?

I wonder if I could summon him from his mausoleum

invite possession by that other me.

I wanted to learn your story, 

to share your journey, 

to know the whole of how you think; 

to stay up all night talking 

so the sunrise makes us laugh 

at our enraptured attention to each other.

I wonder if enchanted by the other me 

this me could have charmed you. 

The one with poise whose melody 

was philosophy, dramaturgy, and story.

The universe she made us in her image.

from singularity we shatter scattered out into a billion billion pieces

Mass - pressure - ignition -fusion

Stars born and burn hot and bright

Stars energize fostering life around them

Stars supernova, destroying everything in the exploding path

Stars expended die out to cold and emptiness

Our atoms forged in the heart of stars

I want to take these two fingers 

unzipping the dress down the length of your back.

To take these hands 

slide them inside the slit of the dress. 

First pressing them firmly against your back  

savoring for a moment 

this first time their skin has touched this surface of you.

I want to rest a kiss at the base of your neck 

as I drop your dress to the ground.

Then piece by piece 

we together remove the fabric layers which separate our bodies 

from being fully touching enmeshed with each other.

Shards formerly propelled apart by the force of their own trajectory 

now coalesce into orbits round each other.

Orbits are added to orbits

Shards larger and more significant join, pass, yaw, and pivot in.

Planets and planetary Systems

bigger than the pieces

scraps spinning together

absorbing the energy of their shared fire.

Our lives dependent on the fire of a single star.

I want to taste the fullness of your soul.

Use these two listening ears; unzipping the barriers of your mind.

I want to scuttle inside your deepest self

Hear your passions, your pain, your strengths, weaknesses, dreams, fears. Savoring for just a moment touching the casing of your soul for the very first time.

I place just a peck at the base of your mind, dropping our masks and defenses to the floor.

Then story by story we tell each other

together we remove the layers which separate our souls from being fully touching enmeshed with each other.

Maybe you and me would have been a galaxy.

Maybe you and me would have been a supernova.

Maybe we could have found an orbit

Maybe we would have just passed by

The universe she made us in her image.

from singularity we shatter

scattered out into a billion billion might have beens.

Time expired

Leaving I only asked your name,

I stood there looking in those eyes

Windows in to the soul as they say

I wanted every bit more of you.

A morsel of your being

A spoonful of you mind

A tincture of your soul

But I said not a charming word more.

See, I don't know how to use my words anymore.

They just don't seem to work like they used to.

The Past Matters (a Facebook comment)

I have been thinking a lot lately about this relationship I had at 17. She was from a very religious, very wait until marriage type family. We never had PIV, but we certainly went further sexually than she was comfortable with. Our sexual activity was always consensual, but it was convinced consent not enthusiastic consent. She consented only because she believed our relationship was headed toward marrying each other.

About 8-10 years ago I reached out to her brother via Facebook looking for contact information to apologize to her. Her brother responded about a week later with a very formal, “She appreciates your apology but is not interested in communicating with you.”

I live every day knowing that I am possibly someone’s #metoo story. If someday she came forward and accused me of manipulation and therefore assault I would not deny it because THAT is what it means to be good. I was not intending to be manipulative, but that does not change how my words and my pressure affected and damaged her.

The past matters; especially when the past is not even admitted to.

Concealer (a Facebook comment)

Every woman close enough to share our confidences has revealed she wakes each morning having to apply a foundation of strength, her concealer over the scars of her sexual assault. Absolutely every woman I know intimately is living with the scars of sexual assault. Saying "Every single one" is not an exaggeration. It is an objective truth easily heard if you are listening. When you shame, dismiss, and invalidate the victim you become another piece of that trauma.

I Have This Friend

I have this friend. In physical appearance she is gorgeous. In conversational engagement she is captivating. In lifestyle she pursues the things she loves with passion.. Any man who meets her is going to be smitten; because in attractiveness she is the total package.  As I first started spending time with her I was taken by her. So, I did what any man enamored of a woman should do; I told her. I laid myself out there and told her all the reasons I was enchanted by her. My friend did not return my romantic intoxications.

I have this friend. I am honored to call a friend. All the reasons I find her amazing do not disappear because she is not attracted in a fairy-tale crush on me.  Most of the qualities that attracted me romantically are the same qualities that attract me to friendships. I want friends who are easy to lose time in conversation with and embrace their life with fervor.  She is both these things.

I have this friend who had a conversation this evening with another guy who found himself infatuated by her many charms. Yet, his response to her rebuffs of his romantic advances was very different than my own. See, like myself, she considered this person a friend as well. They had shared life challenges and she had been there for him when his life situation needed a friend to be there.  

I have this friend who was verbally assaulted, unfriended and blocked by a person she called a friend simply because she said to him, “No, I am not romantically interested.”

Men, this has to stop. We have to do better. How can a woman you considered a friend be discarded so easily simply because they do not return your attractions?  Are we as a gender so focused on our erotic passion that a woman uninterested in romance is discardable.  This is the pinnacle of objectification. 

Men, since you are unable to hear it from the women in your life I am going to repeat it here for you. That woman, your friend, is an entire person. She like you is fully able to possess a range of differing emotions. She, like you, is entitled to the attractions that allure her.  You are not owed her carnal sensuality simply because you express attraction. If all you can see her for is how she responds to your advances than you were never her friend to begin with. 

Men, do you want to be used? Of course the answer to that question is no. So then, why do you feel the women in your life feel any differently? To have a friendship discarded this easily hurts. This kind of capricious response to her honest response proves you were using her for the entirety of the relationship.

Men, I have this friend who I want to trust me. In fact, I have several friends who are women and I want them all to trust me. I want them to trust that our time is safe, our vulnerability is genuine, and our friendship is rooted in the whole of their personhood. However, how can I ask this trust when the bulk of their investments in relationships with men end in this way? 

Women, I am sorry. I am sorry our culture did not teach this lesson to men when they were boys. I am sorry that the repeating actions by a string of men have positioned you to feel unsafe as your default. I am sorry that teaching the emotional responsibility of friendship has been so grossly ignored in our culture.

Men, I need us to wise up, grow up, and do better. 

Meeting Someone New aka I Am A Nerd

Today a Facebook friend linked to this article, "13 Questions To Ask Before Getting Married" and I clicked through to read it.  I honestly thought it was a really great list of important ideas to discuss before two people shared vows and joined in a committed partnership intended to be life long. Really, the article has nothing to do with this blog post at all, except it was the catalyst for reminding me that I had compiled a question list myself a few months back.  Although, my list is more about getting to know a person you have newly met and have romantic interest in.

The list started when a woman I had been chatting online with asked me to send her any questions I had about her.  The questions I sent to her were slightly different than these as they were inspired by our conversation up to that point, but those questions I sent her became the skeleton which I would refine into this list.  She never did respond to the questions and that at first got me wondering if the questions we bad, or if the medium was bad.  Obviously, I decided it was the medium and worked hard to refine the questions to where I have them today.

Truth be told, because I am a total nerd, I would use this list with anyone new I met whether there was romantic interest or not.  In my ideal world, meeting someone new I would ask them to a coffee shop and we would go over this list together. The medium of answering these together in a dialog would work much better and not feel like an assignment as I think the original emailed list did when . Going through the entire list together the other party and myself would both have a good idea of whether or not we were going to be compatible.

So here is my nerdy list of "First Date Questions" which can be used for both new friendship or new romantic prospect.

1. What are your favorites of all time and why?
A. Novels
B. Authors
C. Television Show
D. Movies
E. Philosophers
F. Stage Plays
G. Musicals
H. Albums
I. Songs
J. Board Games
K. Card Games
L. Role Playing Games

2. Famous fictional duos, marry one murder the other.
A. Kirk and Spock
B. Batman and Robin
C. Hermoine and Harry
D. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck
E. Rachel and Monica
F. Buffy and Angel
G. Ted and Barney
H. Frodo and Sam
I. Arya and Sansa
J. (Bonus since they're real) Lennon and McCartney

3. What is your type on each of these personality scales?
A. Meyers-Brigg
B. Enneagram
C. Jungian Archetypes
D. World's Smallest Political Test
E. Dawkins Test
F. Chakra Center
G: Kinsey Scale
H. Locus of Control
I. Hogwarts House

4. If you were to receive a call tomorrow letting you know a distant relative had set up a $10,000 a month endowment in your honor how would your life change?

5. If you were invited to be the keynote speaker at a TED event what would the title of your talk be, and what thesis would you want to communicate to the audience with your 18 minutes?

6. Do you have one or more artistic outlets? How do you use these outlets to contribute to shaping the world around you? How have these outlets changed over the course of life events?

7.  Looking at your last major romantic relationship; When measured in the narrative arc of your life story would you consider the relationship beneficial or not?

8. What is your relationship with intoxicants? Legal and illegal?

9. What is your relationship with spirituality? How has your spirituality changed you? How has your spirituality changed because of changes to who you were?

10. What is a story that exemplifies the transition that defines who you are now?

I have never actually used this list explicitly and I am intrigued to know what other people would think if they had met someone new and there first time going out socially that person pulled out a list of questions for discussions.  I personally would be intrigued to learn more about the person with the list and to see what the list questions were.  But I am a self confessed socially awkward nerd and geek, so I also acknowledge I am not the best measuring stick.  I can definitely see where another person would find this intimidating or invasive. If you like the list idea and have other questions that would improve it let me know what you are thinking.