Gender Queer

IX. Gender Queer

"Are you a lesbian?"

Will definition save me from criticism when I switch from lace to flannel in the middle of a season? Has the word ever rescued any of my girlfriends from being called sir as they went to change tampons?

No, I'm queer.

They can't take the word queer because it is an in-between; it offers us a world where we fit without specifically defining, a world that goes without explaining because all of the lines between us have been replaced by hands.

"Well, what does that mean?"

I have no sexual preference or solid gender definition I can connect with. Today I kissed a boy while packing a soft harness. Yesterday I was knuckle deep inside of a beauty queen who touched me through lace. I'm like an avocado. I can be a nut, fruit or vegetable depending on how we connect. We are fluid creatures.

We cut our hair short; nails clean and grow into different people each second. We break all the mirrors- images are abstract anyway. That's what you want, isn't it? An image? If I fit an "image" you can associate me with an "idea" of people who are "like" me before I have even opened my mouth.

"But you live with, and sleep with, a woman…"

And tomorrow I could be pregnant. This is fluid. Our definitions are twigs in the dams of consciousness. I am that I am and that is all that I am and that is forever changing, thus is the genuine nature of all things upon the earth: to grow, change, nourish, transcend. It is the choice of the human individual to be only one way when there are many options. It is a choice denied repeatedly to the non-speaking world, to women, to children, to nonwhite minorities, to the non-straight monogamist-tradition breakers, to the redwoods, the monarchs, polar bears, the buck within firing range, to those who listen first to the voice of our great mother and who question without yielding the illogical motivations of man.