It Needs To Be Heard - Tumblr Posts
We don't talk about that
Maybe you'll be okay with it now People change, after all. Everyone changes. But I remember how I saw drag queens for the first time on some dumb daytime talk show And I remember thinking "That's weird but as long as they're happy" Until you sat down and calmly told me that they were not evil, but what they were doing was a sin Talking in your teacher voice I was confused, but I nodded anyways Wasn't a sin supposed to hurt someone? I remember how you watched the Oscars in a furious rage the year Brokeback Mountain came out Curled stone-stiff like a gargoyle at the edge of the couch, And how you sat back with a satisfied huff and said "Good, that's the way it should be" when it didn't win Best Picture You don't even care about the Oscars It wasn't even a good movie, it was just boring and sad and no one got a happy ending But, like, it's not about sad films about men kissing, or sins that don't hurt anyone It's not about women in wigs It's not even about hate It's about the ones called the fathers going out and living lives and the ones called the mothers saying home and getting fucked It's about the boy cousins getting multitools and girl cousins getting bath sets It's about me cracking a joke in first grade and the teacher going "quiet!" And a boy two seats over cracking the exact same joke five minutes later and the teacher laughing It's about someone taking you and forcing you, step by excruciating step, to recognize dirt and clean it, anticipate hunger and feed it, see a grown-ass adult man and know that your five-year-old child self is responsible for his care and upkeep whining and fighting and complaining every step of the way (while the boy cousins play Nintendo) and then later they have the nerve to tell you that women are naturally caretakers. It's about how I'm still not exactly sure if the devil scooped out my brain and stuck a stranger behind my eyes, someone who would adorn themselves in long lashes and hunger pangs, if you would even notice It's about how, until I was 19, the only words I had to describe myself were "girl, but wrong" It's about this guy randomly telling me he had feelings for me and me not feeling anything at all towards him, not one thing, not love or curiosity or boredom or disinterest or pity not one thing and I said "okay" because I didn't know what else to say (turns out that was the wrong thing to say) It's about being body-checked out of the way when some guy lurches forward to pull open the door that I was just about to open and he holds it open like he's announcing the fucking pope and he's half blocking the doorway and then he kind of glares at me when I sort of awkwardly wriggle past him and don't make eye contact and don't say anything I didn't ask to play a bit part in your street theater improv I definitely didn't ask to be typecast It's about how being a woman makes you less of a man And you can always be less of a man But you can never be less of a woman It's about a game that isn't fun and no one wins and everyone has to play it forever And no one is willing to admit it's a stupid game And the people who do, the people who realize that it can be fun, all the players who say it's not a game want to kill them Like actual death I don't know if I'll ever tell you I never talk to you anyways and I'm pretty sure that if we went to some gallery that was unexpectedly displaying Electric Fan (Feel It Motherfuckers) That even if I explained the story behind it, the deliberate disregard, the lovers torn apart and denied a final comfort, the history of all the people who were erased by their families, (the unspoken question of what you would erase-and-replace on my gravestone) you would still wonder why I was making a scene crying in front of a stupid box fan You're embarrassing yourself Thank goodness we don't have any of that in our family