Boss: Kellie-sensei, we haven't taken your official company photo yet. Can I take it now?
Me: Now?!!!
Boss: Yeah, why not?
Me: You have to warn me about these things! I'm not looking my best today---also not adhering to the dress code at the moment.
Boss: That's alright.
Me: I'M NOT EVEN WEARING MAKEUP!
Boss: You don't need makeup.
Me: Can we take it tomorrow?
Boss: Yeah, of course.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
nature- of the human kind included-
I've had bizarre dreams for at least a week now...
like a waking half-nightmare, half lucid...
a shock to my system, but no surprise.
A friend of a very good friend, a kindred spirit, Brian Benson wrote about an experience which today affected me:
Two years ago, while taking a riverboat down the Mississippi with two white friends, I got trapped at a party in a house owned by one of the more racist, sexist, violent men I've ever met. How my friends and I arrived at his house is a long story. The details aren't so important. What's important is that this man, who knew only our faces, invited us. This man who, over the course of our few hours together, went on to compare women to dogs and call black people everything besides people and describe in detail his fantasies of killing other men—this man very much wanted us in his house. He gave us fresh towels and soap and shampoo. He told us a story about every one of his guns. He introduced us to his friends, so many friends, all of them drinking heavily, spewing hateful language, assuming we agreed with them because of our faces—and insisting, over and over, that we sit, stay, enjoy the party.
We were scared. Scared, and disgusted with ourselves for being there and being too scared to challenge what was being said. So we just bided our time, and when an opening appeared, we fled to our boat. We stayed up for hours that night, talking and staring and drinking whiskey with shaking hands. And what we kept coming back to was the feeling that our escape had provided nothing like relief. Because far worse than that momentary flicker of fear—worse, even, than our scared silence—was the knowledge that we, by simple virtue of being white men, had been invited.
Today, I'm thinking a lot about that party. About being invited, always. That, for me, feels like both the hardest and most important thing to take from this moment: even (especially) now, as a monster steps into the presidency, I am being invited. I'm an able-bodied straight white cis male with metric tons of class privilege. Trump's policies won't personally threaten me. They are written for me. Or, at least, for who this country so often tells me to be.
And so even though I'm devastated, I can't think about any of this as something that’s happening to me. Can't say “it’s not my fault,” or “this isn’t my country,” or anything else that distances me from what is and has forever been happening in America. Because no matter how much I loathe Trump and all he stands for, the fact remains that his presidency is just another invitation, to me, to have a drink, to take the soap and shampoo, to enjoy the party.
To every POC, LGBTQ, Muslim, immigrant, trans- and female-identified person I do and don't know: I'm hurting for you. I'm angry for you. I'm disappointed in myself for not doing and being more. And I'm pledging, here, to not forget what I'm being invited into, and why, and why I've got a responsibility to keep finding ways to show up and stand at the door and say, “no.
I'm not afraid.
like a waking half-nightmare, half lucid...
a shock to my system, but no surprise.
A friend of a very good friend, a kindred spirit, Brian Benson wrote about an experience which today affected me:
Two years ago, while taking a riverboat down the Mississippi with two white friends, I got trapped at a party in a house owned by one of the more racist, sexist, violent men I've ever met. How my friends and I arrived at his house is a long story. The details aren't so important. What's important is that this man, who knew only our faces, invited us. This man who, over the course of our few hours together, went on to compare women to dogs and call black people everything besides people and describe in detail his fantasies of killing other men—this man very much wanted us in his house. He gave us fresh towels and soap and shampoo. He told us a story about every one of his guns. He introduced us to his friends, so many friends, all of them drinking heavily, spewing hateful language, assuming we agreed with them because of our faces—and insisting, over and over, that we sit, stay, enjoy the party.
We were scared. Scared, and disgusted with ourselves for being there and being too scared to challenge what was being said. So we just bided our time, and when an opening appeared, we fled to our boat. We stayed up for hours that night, talking and staring and drinking whiskey with shaking hands. And what we kept coming back to was the feeling that our escape had provided nothing like relief. Because far worse than that momentary flicker of fear—worse, even, than our scared silence—was the knowledge that we, by simple virtue of being white men, had been invited.
Today, I'm thinking a lot about that party. About being invited, always. That, for me, feels like both the hardest and most important thing to take from this moment: even (especially) now, as a monster steps into the presidency, I am being invited. I'm an able-bodied straight white cis male with metric tons of class privilege. Trump's policies won't personally threaten me. They are written for me. Or, at least, for who this country so often tells me to be.
And so even though I'm devastated, I can't think about any of this as something that’s happening to me. Can't say “it’s not my fault,” or “this isn’t my country,” or anything else that distances me from what is and has forever been happening in America. Because no matter how much I loathe Trump and all he stands for, the fact remains that his presidency is just another invitation, to me, to have a drink, to take the soap and shampoo, to enjoy the party.
To every POC, LGBTQ, Muslim, immigrant, trans- and female-identified person I do and don't know: I'm hurting for you. I'm angry for you. I'm disappointed in myself for not doing and being more. And I'm pledging, here, to not forget what I'm being invited into, and why, and why I've got a responsibility to keep finding ways to show up and stand at the door and say, “no.
I'm not afraid.
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