Wouldn’t it be beautiful if there was a queer tarot deck filled with all of our feelings? A deck of cards made from the personal stories of LGBTQ people, where each card was explained as part of the individual and/or collective queer experience? Let’s make that happen!
In the February of 1996, I sent David Carr two poorly conceived college-newspaper articles and a chapbook of black-nationalist poetry—and David Carr hired me. I can’t even tell you what he saw. I know that I immediately felt unworthy—a feeling that never quite faded—because I was a knucklehead and a fuck-up. But what I didn’t then know about David Carr was that he’d written and edited the knucklehead chronicles, and published annual editions wholly devoted to the craft of fucking-up. I think that David—recovering crack addict, recovering alcoholic, ex-cocaine dealer, lymphoma survivor, beautiful writer, gorgeous human—knew something about how a life of fucking up burrows itself into the bones of knuckleheads, and it changes there, transmutes into an abiding shame, a gnawing fear which likely dogs the reformed knucklehead right into the grave. Perhaps that fear could be turned into something beautiful. Perhaps a young journalist could pull power from that fear, could write from it, the way Bob Hayes ran with it, because the fear was not of anything earthly but of demons born from profound shame and fantastic imagination.
These songs are perfect for all the times when you may be mixing potions in your kitchen, preparing to perform dark rituals with friends or just lounging around your house with your favorite black cat.
Won’t lie. Spock was my favorite character throughout my TOS journey. His character brought such an incredible range of intersectional awareness to the public during the 1960s and beyond. Long live Nimoy! http://www.autostraddle.com/tag/star-trek-n00b/
Having a high IQ doesn’t mean you are going to be successful. It just means your brain works faster. It recognizes patterns. It can reach conclusions quickly. I’m laughing at jokes as soon as the punch line comes out; I multitask and boredom is my nemesis. I’m always doing five things at once. My mom hates it when we go out for dinner. I have two phones, one for work and a personal one, and I am always on both. I’m still keeping up with the conversation and I don’t understand why she’s so upset.
I like to approach my own trauma through laughter… What was interesting was that the natural impulse to want to laugh about it, and laugh with other people about it, was really hard to do. It was almost impossible to find somebody to laugh with! Because they were often so traumatized by hearing that I was a survivor that they totally shut down from laughing… Like faking tears when I talked to people, when I wasn’t sad! I just knew they would be able to hear my story better if I looked really sad.
Show us the world through your eyes in this week’s FRIDAY OPEN THREAD! Get in here, guys, we love you.
Callie says it’s an unwinnable battle, and they say they promise to never stop fighting. But she’s tired, you know? Like how many times can one person get adopted and un-adopted and re-adopted and un-re-adopted in the six in-show months that have passed since The Fosters started? It’s hard on a heart.
Hey there space invaders! Please send us any of your burning questions for the next Dear Sour column. We love you!
