I had a nightmarish dream last night. It felt like i dreamt it recently. LIke i just woke up from it. It was definitely inspired by the episode of How I met your Mother last night in which a sweet looking 13 year old boy named Scott tricks Marshall by pretending to look up to him. He leaves Marshall up on the roof of his house to put up christmas lights while he has a party inside the house. He then takes a picture of his penis using marshalls phone as potential blackmail. 

first… hm. I’m remembering the begginning now. 

i/the main character/very muscular righteous white man/later became Alex James was playing this tackling game. There was one guy there who was really intense about it. I also remember there being lots of different ages present. young boys and middle aged men were all dressed in these TINY ridiculous booty shorts, and the really intense guy was making it pretty clear that the fun part of the game was tackling the boys and then rubbing yourself all over them. When I/handsome man didn’t rub my self all over the boys but instead played the game intentionally the other players, especially the intense guy, got mad at me. 

The next thing I remember which was clearly after the rugby type games was me/alex james running away from really intense guy who seemingly had turned into or had always been a young good looking teenager (12/13-years-old). The next part I remember the though Alex was thinking to himself very clearly. I/Alex was dressed in drag. I had gotten away from him, off the field, and inside what seemed like a school building. He had given me a rape drug and since I was wearing high heels I fell multiple times. I was really scared he would catch up me. He was coming after us with a weapon he had fashioned with razor blades. he kept punching, kicking, stabbing, cutting us. I ran into the bathroom as Alex and hid myself in the large bathroom. I hoisted myself up so he couldn’t see me if he looked under the doors. When he came in I prepared myself to swing down and kick him in the chest. But he was really mean, and VERY TRICKY. then somehow a female bodied friend joined us who apparently had also been running away from him with us. More action/cutting ensued. Whenever we would try to hurt him back to defend ourselves he would remind us…. “Go ahead break my finger. It’s not like everyone will think you were trying to rape me” We finally found people to help us but it turned out they were his supporters. Apperently he did this a lot and had therefore established an adoring group of grown ups that believed him and protected him from “perverts and rapists”.  We tried to get out of there as quickly as possible. On our way out we passed throught this room which was completely dedicated to him. It had his name on huge signs and booths and posters all singing his praises. As we got out of the building and walked towards the car we saw the monster kid crying to his father and I recognized the father as a friend on the rugby team. this made my heart sink.

We were finally in the car, and at this point i was waking up so I knew I was in my bed. But I was also in the car with them and although I had things to do in the dream I wanted stick with my friends to process what had just happened. Alex and the girl said, i though you said you wanted to go out for a drink or something. I having forgotten (that why I was in bed) said OH, yeah! and then realized I was in my bed and thought I would have to get out to rejoin them in the car/my dream.

That’s when I really woke up, still slightly traumatized by being chased and cut. 

I’m  fourty year old man/good looking and fit and I’m with  large group of people outside by  community pool. Without giving it  second’s thought I jump into the pool fully dressed. I start talking to people on the edges of the pool when rachel conrad/or someone like her comes up to me and asks me to stop doing that becuase the pool is supposed to be a place where you meet new people by realy appreciateing the space and using it. She says “I love with the pool co-ordinator (which I assumed was Emma French) and she’s put a lot of time and effort into trying to make everyone comfortable by getting them to branch out from the people they already know”. I thought this was a little ridiculous, but I started swimming anywaze. All of a sudden I come up for air after having been swimming for a while and everyone’s looking at me from outside the pool in a kind of adoring way. I look around and realize that i’m the only one left in the pool. “Oh c’mon guys, I’m really the only one left here?” And I want to get out but they cajole me to stay and let them take photographs of me because for some reason my being a forty year old man seems to be somewhat of a novelty seeing as how everyone else are young female bodied people. I pose cutely for the people taking pictures, at one point I even fall from the edge of the pool with my arm flexed facing the crowd. I get kind of bored of this and swim underwater (i’m an incredibly strong swimmer). At the bottom of the pool, in a shaded area, I find a little girl just standing there. Now that I’m awake she kind of reminds me of the cute little child me and Robbie saw in the mall yesterday. I think I remember her trying to say something, but I was really confused because I thought she was speaking Spanish “even though” she looked like she was Indian. Bubbles sprayed out of her mouth but she didn’t look concerned at all. I whisked her to the surface and everyone appreciated my act of saving her. The little girl went to talk to her even younger sister and again I was confused because i couldn’t really discern what they were saying but it sounded like Spanish. They were saying something about their parents. Then suddenly I/the main character in the dream turned into my dad and he was going on and on about how he’d had enough with the U.S. and was finally moving to Europe. He was off to go ask Carmo and Fernandes if he could live with them.

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I love you.

I thank you.

These are some words for all of you to whom I owe dozens of epiphanies, hundreds of hugs, and thousands of love whispers. Please don’t feel obliged to read all of this, just what is helpful.

I’m sitting here on the bed I grew up in facing my wall-length mirrored closet and I thank God I no longer see my 16-year-old self staring back at me. The person I see reflected back at me is someone unbelievably thankful that they has had the support and love they needed to become the person they is in this very moment. All I can think about is wanting to be back in Claremont with you, my beautiful friends and activists- my beautiful community. A community that is constantly inspiring me to take part in beautiful and painful formative experiences. 

I came into this semester scared shitless. I might not have shown it but I had no idea what I was doing. So many people who had come to define my experience in Claremont had graduated, returned home to Europe, were studying abroad, or transferred. I pretended as best I could that none of their absences bothered me, but loneliness set in like an old friend making itself ready for a long stay. 

I will never understand the “truth” of this semester nor do I want to. All I know is that I have changed into the person I want to be by allowing myself to simply live and breath among all of you. I have stopped trying to ascribe meaning and narrative to every experience or emotion in my life and instead have tried to allow for experiences and emotions to flow through me at an easy pace, taking as much time to process as need be.

Many of you are old friends who began this journey of constant revelation with me years ago and many of you are friends I fell in love with this semester. Beware: I fully intend to continue falling. 

I feel so lucky to have been part of so many vitally vibrant, justice-seeking, paradigm shifting communities: QQAMP, the QRC, Racial Politics of Teaching, Queer Theater Activism, Feminisms in Community, Drunk On Dance, the Tree house, Queer Burlesque, YCCA and more. I am constantly astounded by your willingness to sacrifice comfort, sleep, and safety for what you believe in. Thank you for being the most glorious role models a person could ever dream of having. 

I am so honored that I was given the opportunity to take you into my heart. It is a courageous act to love, and you are all so brave. 

I have learned about the wrinkles of the world from you. Thank you to everyone who sat down with me in the Motley to have a life altering conversation or squeezed my hand while something problematic happened during class or got naked and danced and laughed with me or came to our fabulous queer parties or fed me stories on a long road trip or cuddled with me in my ginormous bed or listened to my heart troubles. Thanks to your challenging questions and your radical honesty I am constantly reunderstanding connection, love, privilege, accountability, communication, and community. 

I especially want to thank you for supporting me as I began asking people to use the pronoun they/them with me. Gender is a wondrous magical thing but it can also tear your whole world apart. Using your love I am trying to sew my world together, always making sure to leave extra thread so I can continuously add to this splendid mess.

I look forward to a lifetime of loving, dancing, working, learning, touching, and laughing with you.

Angie

I just stared into the mirror and instead of finally seeing ME as I did in the bathroom next to my poststructualism class in september I see a sixteen year ld girl staring back at me instead of the twenty year old genderqueer person I know I am. 

this mirror has blessed and plagued me wtih just enough and too much self reflection.

I don’t recognize myself in my eyes. 

i don’t belong in this house. i miss belonging. I belong in claremon.t here… i’m not so sure. why do i feel differenlty all of a sudden? when i came home for thanksgiving I crawled into bed and burst into tears.

now i feel disconected. and all i want to do is take the car and go. i’m afraid. afraid that i’ll never be ver ANDi. right now looking into the mirror i see myself with him, much more than i see myself with caitlin.

i’m scared i’ll see her and nto be in love wihth her anmore. i’m scared. scared that i’m a coward. which is so hypocritical.

I just saw sophie sholl. she will not have died in vain because I will tak her message to heart and fight tirelessly for my communities. be the best ally i can be and VOICE myself. i need to VOICE myself to epoeple. like who?

like daddy and robbie about being genderqueer. to people I love. about how much I love them.

I hold my breath trying to square my body around the walnuts of my experience. Trying to turn these bendable, splendid, limbs and cores into the static and strict nutcracker my elders have taught me to assume. Angela, you cannot put your hair into a bun with only three pins, she said as she grabbed me by my ponytail and dragged into the center of the studio. My 9-year-old classmates giggled and I again twistedly return into tension.

I breath in and out, allowing myself all the time in the world, to sit in my experiences. Uncover narrative from the books i’ve assembled on the shelf of my so called life so I can marinate in the truth of this momment, which is always changing. It’s hard enough to understand a single moment in time, impossible even. How are we so audacious as to think we can string each infinite moment together to form a story? How do we patiently sit at our desks and color in the cover of our books, when really each time we look back out our paper the lines we’re meant to color in have changed shape, we’re just too scared too color outside the lines.

I blow my breath into your mouth, checking for signs of love. I’ve given you at least 5 good compressions at this point and although we’ve all been told that humans have an instinctual will to survive, I’m doubting whether or not you see loving me as living. I would just walk away, but we talked about this before you purposefully swallowed that walnut whole, and I remember you saying you were interested. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong, how long have I been here, bent on my knees staring into your face?

I have just gulped swigs of water-and my throat has never felt so alive. I felt each drop of water caress the walls of my mouth while also experiencing this swig of water as whole, almost solid. Right now I feel a stretch in my lower back as my body corouches to write on this paper, a canvass for my thoughts and the worlds shadows. Penumbra, is the stat I’m in, clearly out of focus, a state of loud silence, the air is filled with the humming of pens on paper and I”m reminded of dreaming. There is a liberty in this space I’ve found in other nooks and crannies of my life: sex with Andi was mutually freeing, just taking so we could give. I feel high, as if I’ve been smoking,. My spirit is moving around inside/outisde of me and I feel like I’ve melted into myself - I’m in complete relaxation but instead of being sleepy - I’m completely alive/alert in that sleepiness. My eyes ache with watching, I long only to touch and be touched - but some people can only exchange in that kind of economics, economics of connection with their eyes closed. I want to do it with my eyes wide open. I feel open like each chakra, the millions of them have discovered even more of themselves to open. Each pore is saying thank you to ll of you for your touch, your gaze. I want to open the rest of my life, the rest of every moment, expecially this one, finding myself in others eyes. It hurts me when eople look away. I take it as rejection. I know its uncomfortable but what I do, to hold osmone’s gaze is to think “thank you” in my head. IT allows me to accept the gift of their presence. We are so afraid of the her and now

Where will these pages be in a year from now? Carefully tucked into pretty folders or a the bottom of a landfill? Will they have been recycled and turned into fascist propaganda? The possibilities are endless, as are the feelings lighting up inside. I smell myself on me, the sweat, the longing, the men’s deodorant I use. I want to feel safe in this space, but I feel whiny, I second guess myself all the time. I just wanna shout “You’re objectifying me! You’re reading what you want into me.” Now I’m Angry. You see me and think what a kind young woman. Oh look at them fawning over the men, all the young women. I am not a woman. But you don’t ask me. I’m not a woman. Ask me, who am I?

In every cloud 

there is hope to transform

wisps in to stories

haha. That’s exactly how I feel. Dogs?

I had this dream last night when I was sleeping at Jacey’s and I can’t quite remember it (at all). I just know it had something to do with stuffed dogs coming back to life.

I BARELY remember this dream.

There were chapters or levels to my dream. And every time I came to a new level I would have to choose new lovers. All i remember is that the lovers I was forced to choose for the first level were two older gay men? something about anal sex.

It’s so frustrating. i wake up and I FEEL as if i’m in the middle of something. My brain tries to rewind to what it was doing before, but it has been trained to see the dreamworld and the wakingworld as two different things, so as it closes in on dreamworld it encounters a glass pane and no matter how far along the pain my brain walks… it is never ending. I get frustrated at my dreamself. WHY can’t you remember anything you lazy sleeping dreaming Angie? It is youuuuu who have put up the glass pain. Yes, me.

oh! just remember a little clip from another dream. Somehow Butch and Sundance ended up in the same cage and they WEREN”T eating each other. it was very exciting =) but Also very stressful because I had to get butch out of there before Sundance killed him.