This photo is from last week’s Pride parade in New York. Everyone is always pretty friendly in allowing me to take their photo at these events — it’s one of the only times people are that gracious about having a stranger stick a camera in their face, and it’s one of the things I love about NYC Pride. I also love that it’s one of the most racially diverse queer events you could ever participate in. Not every state is that lucky. What I hate about Pride, though, is that like any queer-related event, the focus is still on very homonormative goals and values.

This year, there was a lot of focus on DADT and on marriage, as there was last year. Don’t get me wrong, when I decided to sneak into the march last year, I ended up walking with Marriage Equality NY – and they were lovely people! But the emphasis on “gay marriage” is problematic for a number of reasons: it ignores the fact that not everyone who wants a same-sex marriage is gay, and it also prioritizes marriage (something that mainly affects gays and lesbians) over issues that affect the other letters in our acronym, such as trans-inclusive hate crime legislation. Last year, I was at an LGBTQ conference with other colleges in the Northeast, and we were asked to state our opinions on a number of issues affecting our community by standing in various boxes ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. When marriage came up, 95% of students strongly disagreed with Prop 8. When HRC’s actions concerning ENDA came up, 95% of students stared blankly at the man asking us questions, as they had no clue what he was talking about.

Let’s think about this for a minute: a bunch of students living on the east coast were up to date and very much concerned with a law in California concerning marriage, yet none of them knew about HRC lying to the trans community and pushing for a non-inclusive ENDA, an action that probably set our community back a good decade. They’ve since apologized, but it’s still troubling that this doesn’t quite register as a big concern within the LGBTQ community (at least not within my age bracket, though I don’t think this is really specific to us).

I also saw a lot of “born gay” signs this year, a phrase that annoys me more and more every time I hear it. I think it’s one of the worst approaches to homophobia our community has ever created. Besides the fact that it (absurdly) singles sexual orientation down to this one so-called “gay gene,” it assumes gender by suggesting that biology predetermines our attraction to gender. If we understand gender to be biologically innate (rather than a social construct), the “born gay” standpoint further complicates the LGB relationship with the trans community, and we have enough tension there to begin with. “Born gay” is an easy comeback to the argument that homosexuality is unnatural as well as the religious argument, but it’s more problematic than anything else, and completely ignores the fluidity of sexuality.

In addition to the born gay posters were signs that appropriated the language of the Civil Rights Movement. I believe I’ve posted about this before (one one of my blogs, at least), but I’m bothered by it so much more after Prop 8. As it is, offending the black community by equating our struggle with the Civil Rights Movement does nothing to help our relationship with people of color, but it’s especially offensive after we blamed black and Latino voters for the outcome of Prop 8. And that was only after opponents of Prop 8 did not go into communities of color to appeal for their vote in the first place…

I still love Pride events, and I always enjoy myself in the craziness of it all. But we’re not immune to homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or racism just because we are a fairly progressive community. As a community so focused on our own oppression, we should be more conscious of the prejudice within our own community and the voices we silence in favor of the ones more marketable to heteronormative society.

(cross-posted on my tumblelog)

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This is the kitten living in our shed. Morgan and I tried to lure her out the other night, but couldn’t figure out how she got in to begin with, because the shed is locked, and even we don’t have access to it. There’s a small window open on the side of the shed, but it seemed way too high for a small kitten to be jumping in and out of… and then I remembered the previous tenants left their garbage piled up against the shed until our landlady got rid of it earlier this week. This also must have hindered the kitty’s escape route, so I finally built her a new one today. She managed to get out, but as soon as I walked outside, she became frightened and proceeded to climb back in. And when I say climb, I mean climb. This kitten has monkey arms or something. She practically flew onto the windowsill, then slid down the glass, grabbed hold of a box, and jumped just high enough to grab the top of the window with her little kitty paws before making her way back into the shed. She’s a freakin’ ninja.

That space she’s trying to get into is boarded up. She managed to grab onto that box on the left and climb all the way up to the top of this window…

And just wait until I tell you about the sex noises. Oh, man. I’m pretty sure our shed has become a kitty brothel or something because the amount of sex going on is just not normal, and I definitely heard more than two cats sexing it up last night. There was also a voyeur sitting on top of Kayla’s car (aspiring kitty pornographer?) throughout the whole thing. He seemed to be enjoying himself the most, because the cat orgy itself didn’t sound too pleasant. Apparently it’s very painful for the female cats because the males have barbed penises. Which makes me really happy that I’m not a cat. And also, that I don’t care for penises.

Anyway, the mother and boyfriend(s) are nowhere to be found, but fraidy cat has safely parked herself back on top of the banana boxes in the shed. I’m still waiting to see if she ventures out again…

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This is my best friend Jamie (left) and her younger sister Casey (right). It’s the first photo I’ve taken of them in a while, which is odd considering I photographed them for three straight years in high school, using them as models for every project I was ever assigned. I took this one at their dad’s house last night. It feels weird to call it that, because growing up–and I practically grew up in that house, rather than in my own–I always called it “Jamie’s house.” When we left for college, it became her parents’ house, and after the divorce, just Howie’s house. Of course, going back there it still felt a little bit like we were 7, and her mom came by to visit as though she still lives there, and a lot of things just haven’t changed. Some of the furniture is gone, there’s only one dog, and Kyle (Jamie’s youngest sibling) has morphed into a teenager with a deep voice that none of us recognize, but we also spent the day uncovering old notebooks, pictures, and maps from our witch-hunting days.

I don’t know if I’ve written about this yet, but Jamie and I once believed our third grade teacher was a witch, and so we spent the majority of the year whipping up potions made of bleach, coffee, and other such things in an attempt to melt her (we read too much of the Bailey School Kids books back then). We even wrote spells–none of which seem to make any sense, though we were pretty proud of them at the time. I won’t embarrass myself by reproducing any of them here, but I assure you, they’re rather unique.

After joking about what we might find yesterday, Jamie pulled out a vile-looking bottle of brown liquid and glitter that was sealed off with wax. I tried to convince her that it was a memory candle gone bad, but her mother just looked over at me and said: “Lauren, you know this is some shit the two of you concocted–you guys were fucked up.” No one but Jill could sum up our friendship quite so accurately…

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This photo was taken in the most sacred place in all of Demarest. It’s hard to explain this particular tradition to those who are unfamiliar with my dorm, and to avoid divulging too much information to those whose jobs are to keep this place so secure, I will leave it at this: we are the first generation of Demarites to reach this place in the past four years, and it probably will not be done again for quite some time. I have to avoid posting any of the (better) pictures that reveal what this place is and who is in it, but it was amazing to see some of the things that were written in this place, some of it dating back to the 1950′s. Unfortunately, days after this success, we learned of a tragedy in the dorm that affected our community in a way I’ve never seen before. On Thursday night, our friend and beloved Demarite took his own life.

I chose this particular photo for an entry about my friend because when we reached this sacred place, I noticed one psalm in particular that was written on the wall: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalms 30:5) My friends know that I’m not one to quote the Bible as anything that is meaningful to me, but that psalm has always struck me as particularly moving, and I know it is something that Onion wholeheartedly believed. In spite of everything, Onion was the most positive and outwardly optimistic person I’ve ever known — and when I say that Onion lived to cheer people up, it’s not just something to say. I remember distinctly the times we counted attendance sheets and request forms in e-board meetings and always stopped at his name to mention how wonderful, how involved, how dedicated, and how sweet he was. There was never anything Onion wasn’t willing to do for a friend or neighbor. It’s hard to think back now on how suffocating it must have been for him to live every single day for another person, because he never even let on about the difficulties going on in his life. The few personal struggles in his that we were privy to, he seemed to handle with ease. I know it’s pointless and vain to look for warning signs after the fact, but it’s so difficult to think back on every memory I have of him and realize that he was never as happy as he seemed, and that every smile and every hug he ever gave to me was for me, and not for him. We always question the people who look more upset and more depressed than usual, and never think to worry about the people who don’t seem capable of expressing any sort of negative emotion at all.

I don’t really know how to begin explaining what we’ve been going through these past few days or what our response has been. It’s just hard to believe that something like this could happen in our own home, and I don’t think I’ve ever lost someone in quite the same way before. When someone passes away in a place like Demarest, there’s hardly a single person in the entire community that isn’t affected. We all grieve together. We go to bed and wake up with a hundred people who are all crying with us. It wasn’t until hours later that I realized life was still going on outside of the dorm, and that it was a regular Thursday night of drinking and partying and everything else. It’s almost assaulting to finally walk out into that after an experience like we had. I can’t even write about how I found out because it was such a horrifying realization when it finally clicked for me, and all I could think about was finding Kayla… never mind trying to fathom how this could happen to someone like Onion. But returning to normalcy, I’m realizing, is even more frightening. I’ve slept in Kayla’s room for two nights, avoided the dining hall, avoided leaving Demarest at all, and cried with people I don’t think I’ve ever had close relationships with at all. I think we’re all getting over the initial shock of it together, and I’m amazed at how supportive our entire community has been, but it’s not easy to know how to grieve when someone passes away like this. I do know that we’re all lucky to have known Onion, and for now, that and the support of our Demarest family is what’s getting us by.

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Luckily, Hall Government was cancelled tonight so that the love birds amongst us could spend the evening fornicating, and the rest of us learned about and composed erotic fiction in the Main Lounge (a joint section between Creative Writing and Sex, Sexuality & Gender — it’s a hit every year). You’d think the cancelled meeting would allow for plenty of free time, but somehow I ended up still awake at 1:30, blogging instead of sleeping… I should really work on that, considering I wake up at 6:30 during the week…

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I’m late with this post, and although I don’t seem to have much to do these days I haven’t slept since yesterday and I’m feeling anxious about nothing, as usual. I’ve managed to finally perfect my list of resolutions, though, and this photo is one of the 52 self-portraits I’m supposedly going to take this year (I once attempted the 365 project and made it to day 3, so we’ll see). The editing here was simple enough to do, and the main difficulty I had was actually posing for the shots – the last clone I added in was of me pulling my hair up, a last-minute decision that replaced another clone sitting on the left side of the couch. I shot this one by mistake, but I soon realized it was the only shot that added depth to the image. All the other clones are posed in alignment with the couch, as I was more focused on the actions of each clone, making them look in communication with one another, etc. than anything else. So, I went with the random back-turned, hair-fixing clone. Once I finally replace my ink cartrige, I’ll print this for one of my journals – I promised myself that by the end of the year, I’ll compile the entire 52 weeks project into a 2010 book (even though I have 2 unfinished journals still to work on from previous years).

And now for the resolutions in their entirety (well, minus some others that I’m not going to post):

1. Read 50 books – my standard challenge. I’m on my third book of the year, having just finished Wasted by Marya Hornbacher and The Freedom Writers Diaries with Erin Gruwell. The second I enjoyed (despite my concerns about its authenticity and racial implications), and the first I’m not sure I’d recommend (seems like she wrote the memoir prematurely), though the parts that irked me the most were admittedly due to personal bias.

Also, I’m going to figure out why my booklog isn’t working so the books I read will actually show up somewhere on this site…

2. The 52 weeks project – explained above (Flickr group: here).

3. Finish the journal I’ve been “working on” (read: watching collect dust) and start my 2010 book.

4. Work on some of my eating habits and remember to take my vitamins/calcium… doc says it builds strong bones, who knew?

5. Sleep.

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Venus (my mom): Move out of my way. I have to get my plantain out of the refrigerator.
Me: Why do you put them in the refrigerator?
Venus: If I leave them out, they get too smushy.
Me: …you mean ripe?
Venus: Well, I like to eat them when they’re still green-ish. Otherwise they start to taste too sweet, and you know me, I’m sweet enough already.
Me: So… you eat it raw? In your salad?
Venus: How are you supposed to eat it?
Me: You typically fry it…
Venus: Well, I like to use it in my salad instead of the regular bananas. They’re too sweet.
Me: Of course. Because everyone puts bananas in their salads.
Venus: Are you making fun of me?

My lunch was a version of Todd’s Waldorf Salad, which consisted of an apple, half an avocado, a few tomato slices, and cayenne pepper. Normally, I get made fun of for this. The next time someone comments on the weirdness of my eating habits, let this serve as proof that I have evolved significantly from my Venusian roots. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about… my mother believes she’s from Venus. (No, seriously. She signs her e-mails from ~Venus~)

Video coming soon.

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I feel much differently about holidays — it doesn’t count as a real Thanksgiving until folding chairs are brought out to fit everyone at the table, until at least 3 dishes break, or until at least one child throws a fit over being forced to eat vegetables. Kayla, knowing this, graciously offered to come fetch me on Thanksgiving day and bring me over to her house, where a real Thanksgiving dinner was being held. I ate far too much, engaged in a number of awkward conversations with a strange and non-related guest who apparently teaches photography, pretended to understand football, and became the newest crush of Kayla’s 5-year-old brother. So, all in all, it was the best holiday I’ve had in a long time.

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I visited my high school on Friday — a trip that’s always followed by a frantic search for old photos, essays, projects, and whatever else I can find as I subject my friends to cheesy anecdotes and a list of complaints about changes I do not approve of (a maroon carpet, really?). What I found last night were these photograms, made during my senior year with whatever jewelry I was wearing that day in the fall of 2007 and the help of a pen flashlight from my Harriet the Spy phase. If you’re wondering why I was still carrying around my spy gear at age 17, take this as a hint that you should never have private conversations within earshot of me…

So, in the midst of a rant about the class registration process, I mentioned to my former photo teacher that I’m taking Digital Storytelling next semester, a class he was already familiar with, as the new film course at Prep is apparently an offshoot of some of the Literature & Technology courses at the Writers House. They created this course with the help of the former chair of our English department at Rutgers, whose daughter I had just met, randomly, in the art studio… and I’m now absolutely certain of my theory that when you graduate from Rutgers Prep, the “six degrees of separation” phenomenon is cut to just half that. I’m hoping that next time I visit, I can meet a student who is somehow related to Mariah Carey. In the meantime, I’ll begin composing my list of reasons why I’d make a better spouse than Nick Cannon.

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Tonight, Demarest co-sponsored its second LGBT Shabbat dinner with Hillel, and this time Kesher (the Reform group within Hillel) and Kol Halayla (the Jewish a cappella group on campus) also got involved. Last year we were ecstatic that about 30 or 40 people showed up, and this year, our attendance doubled. I don’t know if it was because of advertising, because we did a better job of reaching out to various communities on campus, or because the timing was just right (a week after our unified protest against the Westboro Baptist Church), but either way, it was a huge success.

Rachel, on the left, is a high school friend who is active in Hillel and played a big part in organizing the event. Next to her is Kenny, yet another friend from high school, who ran the service. We soon realized that altogether, there were 5 Rutgers Prep alumni in the room at once, spanning across 4 different years (Adam left before the picture was taken). Considering our high school is only a few miles down the road from our campus, this probably doesn’t seem so exceptional, but when you consider the fact that my graduating class consisted of about 80 students, it’s rather impressive.

As Kenny ran the service, he talked about the relationship between his Jewish identity and his gay identity, so there were lots of different ideas thrown out about how to interpret Leviticus, how to approach various laws from the perspective of the Reform movement, and how to rectify one’s sexuality and religion. On one level I understood the idea of wanting to break away from religion because of its intolerance of homosexuality while feeling a longing for the culture and beliefs that we all grew up with, but to some extent I’ve always struggled with the very idea of returning to my “Jewish roots” — mainly because I don’t have any. I was raised Catholic until a couple of years past my first communion, only turning to Judaism out of curiosity and as some bizarre act of rebellion in middle school. (Rebellion is clearly something I failed miserably at — while other girls were piercing their bellybuttons in the bathroom and making out with boys at the municipal grounds, I was enrolling in Hebrew school and becoming a vegetarian. In some of my more daring moves, I stole chocolate and engaged in political debate with my parents.)

So, once my mother converted to Judaism and became more interested in the study of it, that turned me away entirely. It still does, even as I become more interested in Jewish culture, largely because she uses religion to stand in place of her family… by no coincidence did her interest in Judaism coincide with her father’s death — and even more directly, her actual conversion coincided with her ultimate decision that “those people” (meaning her mother and sisters) were not a part of her family. I think that’s why it always upsets me to see her lighting the Shabbat candles alone and saying the prayers by herself, because these are such family-oriented practices that seem completely out of place at our kitchen table. That’s where I’m left unsure of what it means to have Jewish roots, because I’ve always been more interested in the culture and community than anything else, and that’s where conversion becomes an extremely controversial topic within the (ethnically) Jewish community, as it’s not really possible to “convert” to a culture…

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