My Blog

a year later

it's been a full year since the last time i was seriously physically gay bashed.  maybe a year and a month or so.  the thing about it is that it has never felt like such a big deal, except for remembering how important it was to fight back and how important it was to get home. 

being gay-bashed is something that is not shocking or new to me, homophobia is something i deal with everyday, along with racism, transphobia, classism, and the ever-present effects of imperialism and colonization on my family and sense of self.  however, the bashing that happened last year was particularly memorable because of how physically debilitating it was.  and because it left me pretty much incapacitated for days.

a year later i think back and realize that i did everything the way i would do it again today, and i am proud of myself for that.  and i am no longer ashamed of saying that i fought back, and i fought back hard, and i fought back at young guys who were probably the same color as me, and maybe a couple of years younger.  i fought back and i am alive, i fought back and i needed to, i fought back and i am stronger because of it. 

i have been struggling to reconcile how wrong it is to play into the war between men of color in this world.  that it's not a radical way of thinking about liberation or restorative justice. that fighting gets nothing accomplished.  but i am of the always-fight-back school and i ALWAYS fight back.  because i also know that i have to survive and i have to feel safe and i have to get home at the end of the night and i have been fighting back with my heart and my mind and my many forms of resistance since i was a kid, and i have been building myself up inside and i will not just let anyone break me and take that away.

because i know that i am challenging that violence and bullshit in my relationships and in the way i interact with people.  and because i know that i will continue to mess up and continue to learn more about the power i wield and the violence that my body and words put out into the world. 

but fighting back to me is not about putting more violence into the world, but about gathering all the strength from my experiences and the legacies of survival that have kept my people here, and really gripping onto what is mine; my body, my life, my right to survive, my commitment to survive and my right to feel safe in this world. 

i always say there is a line and a moment when we need to stop trying to be martyrs and educators and just take care of ourselves.  to come from a place of loving ourselves and loving being here and harnessing that in why we fight back, instead of fighting back from a place of hatred or anger.

so a year after taking several blows to the head and being fag bashed by three people, and still being able to make it home alone and take care of myself, i am learning to let go of the anger and the fear, and learning that it's alright to fight back with your body when your body is being attacked.  this is a huge step for me, and for many of us with colonized bodies, or bodies that have been invaded and in which we have been taught to feel powerless and to not own. 

... more later...

the look back

every so often i collide with the boxes, e-mails, letters, filing cabinets, crates, old notebooks, picture albums, yearbooks, scars on my body, birthday cards, old clothes, scribbled notes, hospital bills, call history, bank statements,  phone book, old bedding, older records, specific lighting, scents and sounds that seep in before i open my eyes. phrases that repeat almost rhythmically.  i cannot place them. they echo, second-nature and never second-guessed, like prayers with which we were indoctrinated; falling out of my mouth in silent hours along with inexplicable tears and a sense of longing that gets stuck in my throat somewhere between whimper and chuckle.

i am a pack rat. a sucker for nostalgia. i have piles and piles of emotion layered and crammed in my chest. i collect todays to turn into the yesterdays that i will at some point yearn for or cry bitterly in memory of.  todays that become the yesterdays scrapbooked or archived in muscle, triggered by a word in a language i have since forgotten. or maybe in a story whose new narrator has, through time, forgotten me.

in this ephemeral world and ever-changing body i cannot risk to lose the memories, nor can i survive without the history. i have pinned down stills and verses that translate back and forth until i can't remember if i encountered them in Spanish or English, or even at all.

i measure growth and self-worth and often self-pity in a 'compare-and-contrast' that leaves me and my memories of myself falling short of each other or outshining each other in dreams.

i am at once in love with and heartbroken for that person i was even two minutes ago.

*******
i find myself questioning this longing. the bittersweet love for yesterday. attachment to emotions that are long gone. an inability to live solely in the moment.

i contextualize and pathologize it. grapple with it until it becomes affirming.

see it as mourning and celebration. rationalize: loss through immigration and development of new cultural identity. gender dysphoria leaves me mourning and celebrating a me that once was and no longer is. 3-day notices. early abundance of joy and sorrow. friends passed too young. lovers left too soon and often without goodbyes. acknowledgment of constant evolution. i cannot let go of me, i have not gone anywhere, the history pounds on too strong for forgetting. the boxes and books are inscribed in my blood and sweat. i am those yesterdays. so i keep cramming the future into crevices where it makes room for itself.

today is only an hour and a half old. yesterday is still fresh on the tip of my tongue. it tastes like new love and tomorrows. new self that has not wandered too far from a self who has always been. grounded in memory. it is summer, the waves dance warm, but remember the spring.

becoming my dad

truth remains through and through. the apple does not fall far from the tree. or something like that.

as my transition progresses and my father and i become friends and peers i realize that my socialization is shifting and there are a lot of red flags.  in a world where men who look like me have a shorter life expectancy and i try to become and survive with few role models, i look to the one that's always been there and remember that behind the love there are contradictions. 

the major difference between me and dad is that i'm gay and he's not.  this difference seems irrelevant when i think about how being male means being male and all the privilege and all the bullshit that comes along with that applies to me regardless of the fact that i am a gay guy in a heterosexist world.  i think a lot about essex hemphill's "conditions" series in which he challenges men, gay or straight, to fight out the misogyny which we are socialized into, and often gladly accept. 

i always write love poems about my dad.  not the incestuous kind, but the kind that praise his work and survival.  these days i think about his contradictions as well, when i find myself living in ways that may reflect his.  the biggest challenge for me right now is to acknowledge that the history of my gendering doesn't excuse my appropriation of misogyny and that it is more my responsibility to challenge misogyny within myself than anyone else's.  i am learning to be honest with myself.  to be honest with my lovers.  to let go of entitlement and really communicate. and to keep those emotions open and accessible.

so i challenge myself today, as every day, to think about language. the way my body relates to other people's bodies, and especially how i look at women; most recently though, how i build relationship with other men. relationships that seem like solidarity but that can often be based on misogynist bullshit that doesn't build positive relationships between men who challenge each other, but that are based on the exclusion of women.

grappling with power is always a challenge, but hopefully one that we are up to; or at least on that i am up to.

difuntos

**** background: Mami called from Guayaquil to ask me if i was thinking about my dead the other day, on dia de los difuntos (dia de los muertos). i have a lot of dead i call my own at this point in my life, so i find it hard to imagine days when i don't think about my dead. but this day is a special day, and to me has become one of the most important traditions in my life. a way to remember those i love who've passed in my lifetime, and the ancestors who've created the legacy that reminds me to keep inscribing myself into today. there is no Jesus in this tradition. this is not some christian colonizer shit. this is so Brown i feel it in my bones. this is the skulls and ashes of real people, of my history. this is the day to silence the overwhelming hum of the immediate and connect with the history that's made me. this is some powerful coming from beneath my feet beaming from the sun that keeps me moving shit. this is the day to listen. ****

i tried to listen to my spirits; maybe catch them pushing past sirens or rhythmic subway sighs. past polyphonic ringtones and barking dogs, fake moans, giggles, choirs. it was unseasonably warm and i was overdressed, my hat covering my ears so i heard them, though muffled, trying to share their stories with me. mostly i believe they wanted to remembered as weapon and life wielders and, overall, as living.

mostly i connect with her, though she is mostly silent. i can largely decipher what she means by how many teeth she's flashing or the depth of her stare. she's louder with her eyes than that car alarm that woke me up for school from ages 5 to 17. louder even than my parents arguing at each other at 5AM.

today she tells me something about compassion. hope; faith, even. i feel her lingering on my hand to let me know she never intended to let go. still she lets go. i don't want her to let go. it's hard to imagine living without a sister/friend. i figure if i hold on to her, she will stay put.

when she does use words, they are naked and bald. succinct. she does not dress them. there are no curlicues and intonation is irrelevant. they weigh. keep both of us from floating into idealism or delirium. raw and unaffected. wise.

even her closed and sunken eyes that wheatgrass and chemo did little to keep open, tell me a story about dreaming. i fall into the dark circles that anchor her to her dreams, and in that falling i realize that i too will start dreaming one day, and keep dreaming without having to wake up.

it is a little easier to let go. and a lot more beautiful to remember.

Papi

my daddy is a rock. the kind of rock that held up the old apartment with leaking ceilings and cracked walls. who taught me to take some breaths before reacting, who gave up his fists and the bottle so he could be here to father this daughter-turned-son a little longer. he always reminded me that no matter what it took, he would get some rice and beans on the table and we would be alright.

a white teacher once told me that he'd learned that rice and beans were peasant food in latin america and i cried such huge tears while i ate my dinner that night i made myself ill. i had a second helping to make up for letting the food my dad worked so hard for escape my body and felt nourished with the knowledge that each meal i'd ingested to that point in my life was a meal my mom and dad, not peasants, but surivivors,  had cried and sweated over.

my daddy is the handsomest man i'd met until my brother grew to be just as handsome as him. he's got a pretty Brown face, with big eyes that hide behind his glasses like mine do, a full head of thick, dark, straight, cholo/chino hair, perfect teeth, high-cheekbones and chiseled jaw, and a rare but sincere smile. i often say i hope i age as well as he has, so that i can be a fine Brown old man one day too.

one time, when we were real little, james told dad he didn't want him to drop him off at school cause he was too dark.  me and dad are the same color, especially in the summers when i can catch my Brownness up to his by sitting in the sun for hours on end. james and Ma have really light skin, but you can still ID them as Brown people at first glance.  but that was real for us growing up, Ma always regretted having a son that was light skinned and had pretty wavy hair and having a then-daughter who was Brown-skinned with thick ass stubborn hair we don't know whether to attribute to the indigena ancestors or the chinese ones. 

i've always had body-image issues that relate to my size or gender presentation, but i thank the ancestors every day for my brown skin and dark eyes and the legacies and histories that grow in my hair; and this was something i learned from my daddy, from the time i was born to the moment i looked in the mirror this morning after washing my face and saw those worry lines above my eyes and realized that the older i get, and the more my body transitions, the more i look like this man who taught me to love and taught me to keep fighting.

i never saw daddy cry until lauren passed away.  he didn't even cry when his Ma died. i doubt he cried when his daddy died when he was seven. when lauren passed, i called my daddy at work. i was three states away. i was crying from the gut and my nose was already at that point in the crying cycle where you can no longer inhale. i called him because i needed my rock. my best childhood friend, chosen sister, potentially first love, dead at age twenty and i was devastated. daddy tried to be that rock, but i heard his voice break, and i broke a little more. i knew for the first time that neither i nor daddy could do anything about it.

the second time i saw my Papi cry was when james was in rikers.  i had been going to visit my bro every visit, and so the hours of waiting in line and then getting inside and looking at his tired face and big beard had become something i looked forward to.  when james and i got to spend that time, i would turn on that part of me daddy always showed me; the part that takes it in stride, that understands that this too shall pass, that doesn't cry or get hung up on things.  i would tell james stories and reminisce with him, and hold his hand when the guards weren't looking, and i never told him about how much i was crying at home or how many times his daughter asked for him that day, or how every time i listened to the radio i would remember him and wish he was there to talk about music and be hard with. i took daddy one time. i looked at the three of us.  we look real similar in the face, and we all swallow our tears and grin almost in synch. it was the most silent visit i ever had with james and i told him i loved him and my eyes got red, but i didn't cry.

when we got off the bus, my daddy held my hand and we let go of tears at the same time and we never talked about it, but he's like me, or i'm like him, and i knew exactly what he was feeling.

a couple of weekends ago, while i was really sick, my mom and dad showed up at my house.  i was walking with them to the subway, and i looked at my dad's face. he looked worried in the eyes, but i knew that seeing me for the first time in a couple of months had been sufficient for him to feel okay and realize that i was going to be alright.  he hugged me goodbye. it was the first time we've touched since lauren's funeral. that was almost five years ago.

when i was little, i would sleep stuffed in his right underam, hold his hand when we walked down the street, sit on his lap on the bus, eat next to him at the dinner table, and fall asleep next to the chair where he would fall asleep after twelve hour work days.

psychic ability

so i believed the palm reader who told me all of the things i needed to hear, if not from the voice i silence in my head, from some complete stranger who gets paid to tell it like it is.

so in hopes of moving forward with my life, i took it all in and contextualized it so that even the far-fetched seemed applicable.

then melanie went to get her palm read and got pretty much an identical reading to mine. sad!

that said, i've decided to just keep working on what seems relevant, focus a lot on being who and where i want to be, and maybe that way be able to better predict what's in store for my future and know what kinds of work i need to be doing on myself.

i do, however, still believe greatly in psychic ability and i will never go on a second date until i know a little bit about someone's astrological chart. really. i know it's gay.

nothing too revealing or important in this post, i miss reading your blogs and putting up posts and getting your messages. i've been a bit preoccupied and i think even a bit creatively blocked. i have a bunch of writing i've been working on, though, which i might put up here for comments soon, look out for them.

figuratively yours,
victor

riis

i am fiercely attracted to salt water. tonight, kind of on a whim, about an hour after my bedtime, my roomates and i decided to take a drive to riis beach. we left the house and drove quickly to the beach where soon, in the daytime, we'll find ourselves socializing with mostly naked homos of all genders.

i'm currently working on a piece about loss and the process of healing from violence and death. the last part of this three part piece deals with creating a ritual of closure for myself, and where else to find closure, but know that i will not forget, but the ocean?

it's often really difficult for me to feel progress.  and often, i find myself feeling anchored by the weight of memory and an unprocessed and underanalyzed feeling of guilt and second-guessing.  i also find myself asking water, the element, the people, all of the images that remind me of water, to loosen me from the grip of tight anchors that keep me in places where i end up feeling stagnant and trapped. 

there's nothing like the smell of salt water and the slight breeze of tide and night collision to make me feel like time is moving and with that progression, i am also moving forward, letting go but still wearing the stories and memories visibly. 

****

tonight we found the big dipper and then the north star. it's amazing how much more sky there is than i can see when i look up at streetlights and tenements.

****

we tried to build tiny castles in the sand, but it was too dry and too late to focus on sustainable arrangements of grains of sand.

*****

on our drive back we got pulled over.  i still don'tknow what the appropriate reaction should have been. but they let us go, and my heartrate has finally returned to a place where i think i may be able to fall asleep. it is already ten after three in the morning.

****

i will be 24 in one week. that is irrelevant.

****

i am no longer heartbroken.

****

I am looking forward to when the atlantic is warm enough to jump in.

birds, bees, plants, springtime, my new york

i was writing a bit the other night... and i am not ashamed to admit that i was writing for someone who i have a huge crush on who will be visiting new york very very soon.  the premise of my writing was to [briefly] create a portrait of what new york has been like for me for the past 24 years to give to him when he takes off, hopefully to bring perspective to his visit. 

while doing my writing, i realized that the more i piece together my memories, the more i remember, the more i realize i am figuring out a lot about myself, my past and my identity; the little details that put together the way i talk, the way i see myself, my relationships, the framework for my solitude.

********

this morning i woke up and it finally sounded like spring.  i beat the alarm to a beam of sunshine and the first set of bird chirps of the season.  i may have imagined rustling leaves like i often imagine the warmth of embraces or visions of myself as a gentle old fag. i watered the plants, walked around the apartment picking up straggling clutter, and sat on the couch while the water boiled, waiting for the forecast on channel one.  this thursday will be incredibly sunny and warm. as my only day off, i plan to spend it at the park with a stack of books and ideas for lessons to plan. after a few hours of reading and working, i will take the hour and a half subway ride to my mom's house where i will leave my brain and enter my body again, to remember and give care and attention.

*****

it seems, sometimes, that i have made a small nest for myself, where during my off hours i can retreat, relax, and reflect. isolate myself to quiet and stillness and produce something verbal to put in the archives in case i should forget.

when i left my house this morning, it all became relevant again. a bit of flirtation from a shop owner a few blocks from my apartment who a few months ago threw my groceries in my face because he couldn't figure out if i was a dyke or a fag.  i had stopped going to that store, but this morning i walked in because it was open that early and i needed to replenish electrolytes after a weekend of puking my guts out every few hours.

as i walked to work a few blocks from my house, i walked past an older white couple pushing a stroller with a small blonde child in it.  i rarely see white families in bed-stuy, and i definitely never see older white families here. when i walked past, they slowed down to create distance. it often amazes me how obvious it can be.  i shook my head, disappointed, and i think it shook me. i dropped my bottle, it spilled, the white baby started to cry. i blushed at the attention i'd brought to myself. heard the parents debate about my gender as they told their baby that it was just an accident and no one was hurt. it was awkward. i was awkward. they were awkward. i thought about what it means to be here for me.  i am brown, still working class, still living in the hood.  but there is privilege i access, violence my presence here keeps going. but i am still too brown and too poor to actually be one of them. and i feel good about that. in some ways it legitimizes me, their fear, and that is some complicated and fucked up shit to reconcile.

******

when i was growing up, there were no white people in my community except for cops.  all of my neighbors were people of color and i believe the first white people i met were cops and case managers at the welfare office.

*****

my new york has been segregated, gentrified, violent, gentle, comforting, abraisive, repellant, attractive, insular, exclusive, glamorous, gritty.

some mornings i wake up to sirens. other mornings i wake up to bird chirps. i mostly wake up on time. and the day takes off from there.

re-solving

i don't like thinking about resolutions and making plans in terms of the beginning and ending of the calendar year, but i think i'm at a good point to start making change in my own life, hope that it extends to my surroundings, enables me to have reassuring, more positive interpersonal interactions.

i guess things have been picking up since september. i started working at babeland, started testosterone, started a second year at the apartment, and in general started feeling a little less helpless and more in control [sporadically]. 

as i look forward, i'm trying not to focus on all the fucked up shit i want to leave behind in 2005, and focus on some positive steps i want to take toward being a happier, more focused person.

i know i want to build community for myself again, as i have been feeling incredibly isolated.  trying to relearn to seek out support, whether it's institutional or interpersonal.  trying to build a
community for myself that's based on making art in spaces that feel safe politically and personally.  trying to learn more about my own history, about what it means to work toward specific vision, to further my political ideology and vision. 

i want to be better at loving myself, removing focus on finding reassurance from others (lovers/acquaintances/etc), getting over heartbreak [and realizing that this is not an unattainable vision or goal], being more honest with myself, being emotionally vulnerable.

writing more, and painting again, building all the shit i've been storing materials for, more push ups, less silence, more crying, no excuses or explanations, more smiling, more building [of everything], more cooking.

acknowledging love.  acknowledging resentment. acknowledging hate. anger. fear. joy. finding things and keeping things that make me joyful/happy.

checking myself. apologizing. changing the way i live.

knowing where i end and someone else begins. where this ends and something new begins.

talking about it. i want to talk about it. i'm afraid of it. i think this life can be possible for a lot longer, but shit! is it ever hard! i'm not afraid to admit when it's too hard. sometimes i'm afraid of what that implies. i need to be reminded that it can also imply survival.

i want to grow more plants, i want to make more books, i want to paint the walls, write the words, bring a little life to something.

i want to be on the stage in the next year, more than once.

and i want to swim and run and climb.

xo
victor

on my masculinity etc.

i will grapple with masculinity and what it means to ID as male for the rest of my life.  and i will continue to challenge my socialization thru and by misogyny every day of my life. there are so many stories that need not be recreated, cycles to disrupt. how do i inhabit space? what types of relationships am i building? what do i expect from people? who do i sexualize? who do i desire? why? what do i allow myself to feel? what truths about myself do i silence?

in coming out as trans, and then in deciding to start T, i looked for answers from other transguys around me, writings from the academy, the lives of non-trans men i've lived with and in the same communities as my whole life.  i don't think anything could have prepared me.  and i wonder what more i'll discover as days/years pass and i am read as male, Brown, faggot, femmy in more and more spaces.

i grapple with violence. the more i pass as male, the more i see how my interactions with women change. i understand the need for me to challenge bullshit in myself, be willing to be called out, be willing to be quiet and listen. i am afraid of transmasculine spaces. spaces that sometimes make me wonder if i've become part of some secret society that believes femininity and femaleness are concepts and realities to fear and be protected from. i crave trans community, but i also need communities that are accountable to all members and i can't really wrap my head around the concept of a community that challenges gender-oppression, but excludes women. that doesn't make sense to me. 

when i am on the street i am a Brown man. regardless of whether or not i identify as a man, that is how i am perceived. and that is how people interact with me.  one of the most difficult things for me is being treated with caution.  it's this fear that i am going to hurt someone, or that i am a sexual predator, or that i will react violently. violence. this is what i don't want to internalize.  i know i have to challenge the violence that is supported in me, but also not internalize violence that is EXPECTED from me as a male-identified Latino.  i have experienced violence on so many levels and have worked persitently to resist violence around me and to not be a perpretator. racist definitions of my perceived gender permeate my interactions with white people. i feel like i need to leave. i wonder why they are afraid. why they cross the street, speed up, turn corners suddenly.

i have never been afraid to display femininity. i am femmy. and i am queer. a queer boy. i am a big flaming faggot. the other night i was walking home after work and some young guys followed me down the street for a while talking about how much of a faggot i am and how they wanted to beat my ass and see how much i really like getting it in the ass. people have always said fucked up shit to me because of being queer regardless of what they perceive my gender to be, but this time i was particularly afraid. i was afraid of the ways in which boys are socialized to hate femininity and queerness in other boys. the entitlement we have to hurt each other, the knowledge that i could and would not call the police, that there are no systems of accountability here that challenge us to stop hurting each other. that we are socialized to hate each other on so many different levels. fear that i would be hurt, killed. fear that my body would be exposed, that i would be recognized as something other than male, that i would be humiliated, subjected to other kinds of hate, more violence. prayers and affirmations replaying in my head. i will not be afraid of my people. legacies of survival. too many close calls too often.

everyday will bring new lessons, and i hope i can see them all. there is so much for me to learn. i don't want my understanding of my gender to change because of the ways in which my body is changing, but i do want to continue to challenge how my body survives and builds with people around me.