Uprose @ Power Shift 2009
Report Back, March 3, 2009
The 2nd annual Power Shift conference on Global Warming organized by the Energy Action Coalition took place between February 27 and March 2, 2009. I attended the conference to learn about the youth work done by organizations throughout the nation. 12,000 people, mostly youth, attended the conference. Of this number, only 1100 were people of color: this included Indigenous peoples, African Americans, Latin@s and Asian and Pacific Islanders. In a city that is 73.6% people of color, it was strange to encounter a DC where the overwhelming majority of the people, 90%, were White. I spent the first day swimming through a sea of dangerous liberal ideas and organizers in a daylong institute on the use of personal narrative as a method of organizing. I listened to participants tell their stories about changing the world and the dire conditions of their privileged, private college campuses. When I shared with them that when I was a child I was obese because there were no green spaces in my community on Chicago’s Southwest side for me to exercise and that on one end of my neighborhood was a mega-county jail and on the other end was a coal burning power plant, I received blank stares and nods of- confusion? empathy? understanding? solidarity?
I continued navigating the conference and linked up with other organizers of color and learned they were having similar experiences and shared my criticisms about the conference. Some of these people were:
Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus in DC,
SeaSunz/AshEl Eldridge of Art in Action in Oakland,
Jihan Gearon, ED of the Indigenous Environmental Network AZ/MN,
Nia Robinson, ED of the Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative in Oakland,
Among many others.
One of the observations I made was the challenge in making environmental justice work appealing to youth. After participating in a few workshops given by Jihan and Nia, I realized that environmental justice as it is understood by these organizers in particular, the handful of EJ of color organizers at the conference and by UPROSE, is a fierce, complex, and holistic method of organizing that considers economic, social and environmental injustices. I also realized that, unfortunately, EJ often get’s written off as “some white shit” or a white person’s struggle. After attending the workshops given by the “Rev.” of the Hip Hop Caucus and SeaSunz from Art in Actions, I was reminded that arts, music, and creative expression draw in the youth. After multiple conversations throughout the weekend with Julien Terrell, the youth organizer at Youth Ministries, I learned that YMPJ, too, is struggling to recruit and retain youth and struggling to get the youth to fully understand the issues and the value of becoming educated about the issues and agreed the absence of youth voice in the EJ movement is a priority.
While taking all of this in, I couldn’t help but think about how urgent it is to have a conference on climate and environmental justice for youth of color in NYC. This calling was especially inspired by one of the youth I met from Youth Ministries. In a workshop on Climate Justice we both were in, he was asked “Is change possible?” by the workshop facilitator and he responded, “Of course it is possible! If there was no hope or if it wasn’t possible, then we wouldn’t be here. We have to have hope! Otherwise we all should just go home.”
And so it will come to be. On the evening of the Sunday of my departure from DC, multiple EJ youth groups convened to debrief and discuss the potential for a national action by youth of color. I had spoken to most of the organizers that attended that meeting about the environmental justice encuentro we are planning for the spring of 2010. I return to Sunset Park, inspired, connected, and hella busy with work!!
Axé,
Joaquín Sánchez, Jr.
Youth Organizing Coordinator,
UPROSE
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
a brown man's environmental study
sunday evening, march 1, 2009.
the window i look out of is lightly tinted,
along highway 895,
riding north on a commercial bus,
from washington dc to new york city.
i was in 'dc' to attend a conference on,
climate change,
'global warming',
'global chaos',
'this generation's challenge'.
i return to new york with a wealth of knowledge,
about our adapting climate,
and a sense of the urgency these changes have-
on working class and poor communities-
brown, black communities,
first nation peoples communities,
and an understanding about these communities in particular,
as environments targeted by fuel burning,
money making,
governmental endorsed agencies.
i return to new york-
clear that this 'generation's challenge',
is code for the dangers the privileged of this land are in,
clear that in addition to the economic and social injustices
people of color,
we, the land tillers,
have endured for more than half a millennium-
of colonization,
we have paid the price for the violence enacted upon our environment,
by those with wealth who carelessly consume resources -
and intoxicate our earth.
'this generations challenge',
still does not hold the privileged self or a privileged people accountable.
i return to new york,
inspired to continue questioning-
and educating-
those who are affected most,
about the issues that create,
living conditions on the edge of demise-
physical, mental, emotional.
and i am reminded of my own articulated struggles,
the nursing and health i find when i am able to sit and write,
mark my place on the world.
i am reminded of a performance piece i worked on in 2008.
i haven't had the opportunity to share it with many people,
and i invite you to continue reading.
below is an excerpt from the introduction.
i welcome your thoughts, questions, and offerings...
looking out a window,
to the future and working to make that possible;
a snow storm is expected-
this first night of march,
i hope it doesn't hold me back...
excerpt:
I stand here at a crossroads in my life.
I entered graduate school and began questioning:
“am I living in the post-identity?”
As an undergraduate student, I first struggled and then fought to articulate a voice of difference that challenged the dominance of normative expression and values: heteronormatives, racial normatives, economic normatives, linguistic normatives, and intellectual normatives.
This fight initiated a furious examination of my self, my body, and my ideas.
After deep soul searching I recognized,
maybe it isn’t me?
After entertaining that thought
I examined the people who conform to the institution that maintains
the oppression of difference.
With this offering,
I invite you to reflect on the ways in which you participate in that conformity,
in those oppressive practices,
to celebrate the ways in which you resist those practices.
I challenge you to do more.
I am at the gate of the academy,
crossing another border.
I am under surveillance,
I am being asked to show them mí pasaporte,
the whiteness that should have been instilled in me by now
that allows me to pass,
on to the other side.
Pero soy mojado.
I got this far crossing through the rio Bravo,
from the streets of the Chi to the academy.
This Chicano body is a match striking against the surface,
through resistance,
I become fire,
I throw myself in the river to cool off,
and i float with the river current,
de costa a costa,
not cutting through el rio como el gringo has tried to convince me to do.
When I was younger I thought Chicano was a word that married Chicago and Mexicans.
It is.
The movement prophesized our arrival.
Claiming territory,
their territory,
just as they colonized our territory.
The 1.5 million Mexicans living in Chicago is no coincidence.
We migrate far north and settle in lands that were never/
have always been
our own-
to reclaim the territory stolen from our first nation brothers and sisters.
We impregnate the land con nuestra raza,
convert commercial spaces in to botanicas,
spiritual warehouses where one finds the tools to practice our indigenous and African religions.
We replace their God with ours,
and mount Nuestra Madre,
Coatlicue,
Tonantzin,
Guadalupe
on the altars of their temples.
We convert their schools into fortresses of resistance,
sites where the reproduction of their culture is disrupted and transformed into something new.
What does our resistance generate?!
Many of us work within these sites of new beginnings and resistance to contribute to the formation of a critical resistance,
critical cultures,
cultures in movement,
cultures that have arrived,
culturas informadas por la facultad de cada uno de nosotros.
Our bodies enter the confines of their movement towards spiritual sterilization,
the institutions of education en el America,
and we respond viscerally to the sting,
a chemical and soulful reaction.
We stare them in the face and in ours they see reflected the failures of their technologies,
y durante todos estos intercambios,
buscamos a la America.
My body, with the river,
sails along and through the land,
con la gracia de nuestra madre yemaya-
movement without ever touching the land you stole from me.
The earth facing the sun is burning.
Once the feathered serpent on land and in the sky,
I am now a scaled coyote, submerged in water.
I, the river dweller, make my way through the land without ever getting burned.
I know your landscape well,
better than you know yourself,
because you can’t see yourself.
I leave a trail for others to follow.
Under water, we can’t be seen.
I am at a crossroads in my life,
never really here,
never, really, will I ever be,
there.
i search for the rifts in your anatomy to fill with water.
To lubricate the incrustations,
the calluses of your feudal system that stifles the germination of a world
that loves itself.
once the dry earth,
you will be the fluid river for me to move through.
This performance is about corporal movement.
The movement of brown queer bodies.
The movement of this brown queer body,
as it documents the movement of other brown queer bodies,
in this country,
in these institutions,
or absent from these institutions.
the window i look out of is lightly tinted,
along highway 895,
riding north on a commercial bus,
from washington dc to new york city.
i was in 'dc' to attend a conference on,
climate change,
'global warming',
'global chaos',
'this generation's challenge'.
i return to new york with a wealth of knowledge,
about our adapting climate,
and a sense of the urgency these changes have-
on working class and poor communities-
brown, black communities,
first nation peoples communities,
and an understanding about these communities in particular,
as environments targeted by fuel burning,
money making,
governmental endorsed agencies.
i return to new york-
clear that this 'generation's challenge',
is code for the dangers the privileged of this land are in,
clear that in addition to the economic and social injustices
people of color,
we, the land tillers,
have endured for more than half a millennium-
of colonization,
we have paid the price for the violence enacted upon our environment,
by those with wealth who carelessly consume resources -
and intoxicate our earth.
'this generations challenge',
still does not hold the privileged self or a privileged people accountable.
i return to new york,
inspired to continue questioning-
and educating-
those who are affected most,
about the issues that create,
living conditions on the edge of demise-
physical, mental, emotional.
and i am reminded of my own articulated struggles,
the nursing and health i find when i am able to sit and write,
mark my place on the world.
i am reminded of a performance piece i worked on in 2008.
i haven't had the opportunity to share it with many people,
and i invite you to continue reading.
below is an excerpt from the introduction.
i welcome your thoughts, questions, and offerings...
looking out a window,
to the future and working to make that possible;
a snow storm is expected-
this first night of march,
i hope it doesn't hold me back...
excerpt:
I stand here at a crossroads in my life.
I entered graduate school and began questioning:
“am I living in the post-identity?”
As an undergraduate student, I first struggled and then fought to articulate a voice of difference that challenged the dominance of normative expression and values: heteronormatives, racial normatives, economic normatives, linguistic normatives, and intellectual normatives.
This fight initiated a furious examination of my self, my body, and my ideas.
After deep soul searching I recognized,
maybe it isn’t me?
After entertaining that thought
I examined the people who conform to the institution that maintains
the oppression of difference.
With this offering,
I invite you to reflect on the ways in which you participate in that conformity,
in those oppressive practices,
to celebrate the ways in which you resist those practices.
I challenge you to do more.
I am at the gate of the academy,
crossing another border.
I am under surveillance,
I am being asked to show them mí pasaporte,
the whiteness that should have been instilled in me by now
that allows me to pass,
on to the other side.
Pero soy mojado.
I got this far crossing through the rio Bravo,
from the streets of the Chi to the academy.
This Chicano body is a match striking against the surface,
through resistance,
I become fire,
I throw myself in the river to cool off,
and i float with the river current,
de costa a costa,
not cutting through el rio como el gringo has tried to convince me to do.
When I was younger I thought Chicano was a word that married Chicago and Mexicans.
It is.
The movement prophesized our arrival.
Claiming territory,
their territory,
just as they colonized our territory.
The 1.5 million Mexicans living in Chicago is no coincidence.
We migrate far north and settle in lands that were never/
have always been
our own-
to reclaim the territory stolen from our first nation brothers and sisters.
We impregnate the land con nuestra raza,
convert commercial spaces in to botanicas,
spiritual warehouses where one finds the tools to practice our indigenous and African religions.
We replace their God with ours,
and mount Nuestra Madre,
Coatlicue,
Tonantzin,
Guadalupe
on the altars of their temples.
We convert their schools into fortresses of resistance,
sites where the reproduction of their culture is disrupted and transformed into something new.
What does our resistance generate?!
Many of us work within these sites of new beginnings and resistance to contribute to the formation of a critical resistance,
critical cultures,
cultures in movement,
cultures that have arrived,
culturas informadas por la facultad de cada uno de nosotros.
Our bodies enter the confines of their movement towards spiritual sterilization,
the institutions of education en el America,
and we respond viscerally to the sting,
a chemical and soulful reaction.
We stare them in the face and in ours they see reflected the failures of their technologies,
y durante todos estos intercambios,
buscamos a la America.
My body, with the river,
sails along and through the land,
con la gracia de nuestra madre yemaya-
movement without ever touching the land you stole from me.
The earth facing the sun is burning.
Once the feathered serpent on land and in the sky,
I am now a scaled coyote, submerged in water.
I, the river dweller, make my way through the land without ever getting burned.
I know your landscape well,
better than you know yourself,
because you can’t see yourself.
I leave a trail for others to follow.
Under water, we can’t be seen.
I am at a crossroads in my life,
never really here,
never, really, will I ever be,
there.
i search for the rifts in your anatomy to fill with water.
To lubricate the incrustations,
the calluses of your feudal system that stifles the germination of a world
that loves itself.
once the dry earth,
you will be the fluid river for me to move through.
This performance is about corporal movement.
The movement of brown queer bodies.
The movement of this brown queer body,
as it documents the movement of other brown queer bodies,
in this country,
in these institutions,
or absent from these institutions.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
excerpt from: navigando fronteiras
Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, México
Pueblo Chiquito, Infierno Grande
|
Ferry Boat, Caribbean Sea
Playa del Carmen-Cozumel, Quintana Roo, México
9/15/2003
“I can’t believe I’m on this ferry boat. I guess I was lucky to catch the last one. I hope he has his cell phone on. I have no idea where I’m going… I wonder where el grito de la independencia is on the island? Maybe I can just drop off my bags and go join the party, wherever it is. I hope he has his phone on…”
An extended vacation? How dare I. What is a lifelong sacrifice for many of those I work with in this small city has been referred to as an “extended vacation” by me. Typical of an American that is oblivious to her own freedom, her own privilege. An “extended vacation”? Labor in the sun, selling your knowledge of a place, a country, a moment you call home, to American tourists. Parched throat. Disorienting headaches caused by the heat, causing amnesia. Extended vacation? Where did I pick up that idea?
The sunset, the sunset, my reward is gained all in one simple sunset to the west, adjacent to the Bahia de Banderas, Vallarta! Tastes like a paleta de limón after walking from el Mercado en el Viejo Vallarta to the edge of the serra, on a bench in the plaza in front of la Catedral de la Virgen de Guadalupe, I sit, content, licking my paleta, “tan rico que sabe.” I smile, am comforted by the company of the liberated pigeons pacing back and forth in the plaza y la compania de la Virgencita… that is what the sunset in Vallarta does for me- it raises its white flag to me, or is it I who raise a white flag to the sunset, to myself? And I am reminded that I am where I am. Nor could I, nor would I, be anywhere else at that moment. Or all the moments added together, all those moments that would amount to a day, a week, a life.
That moment: Jorge fue el amor de mi vida una noche en agosto. His thick Mexican accent sounded like atole that fills you with heartiness. The tamale in between his legs filled me with just as much life. Entangled in one another’s embrace. “estas- tienes calor or estas caliente?” -is heat not the condition for arousal? Was I in a state of lust? Drunken stupor? Casual? Connection? Maybe he said a line of two that caught my attention. “I’m here today and who knows where I’ll be next year…” “I hate responsibility.” Or maybe waking up next to him this morning was just as comfortable as it seemed… as if though there was no other possibility in regards to my awakening that morning, or lack there of.
He was my supervisor, though. Was he harassing me? Was he exploiting his position of power?
Those kisses, the dandelion colored highlights in his thick dark hair. The Pond’s brand powder foundation compact that made his complexion flawless (although a few shades lighter than his skin color), the smashed and smudged lip and eye liner on the counter in his bathroom. Lube. Condoms. Make-up. Mouthwash. Cotton swabs. Cologne. His Queer necessities. The kiss to my hand before he fell asleep. His long, heavy dark arms, and dark legs, el pecho, la panza, y la cara- cafés. The sweat above his lip as we walked down the cobblestone streets of el Viejo Vallarta late that night. He hugged me as we walked up the sidewalk ascending on a slope. He kissed and kissed- he kissed my teeth after I hit myself with a bottle.
Why do these moments, these thoughts, torture me, fill me?
“Todo esto para mi?”
Am I naïve? I’m very attentive, very affectionate, very vulnerable. I’m shown the littlest affection and I evaporate. I need to balance between my solids and evaportations. What is my liquid state?
Una noche en octubre, fue me perdicion. I should have known I needed to stay away from him after I learned about his addiction. After the times he stood me up and didn’t give an explanation. After the messages he left me to call him back and when I would, his phone would be turned off. This was our last chance to be together, for him to be healthy, for him to open his eyes. “Jorge, I’ve come to see a lot of ugliness in this world. The last thing I want to do is contribute to the corrupt heart. El Corazon es doloroso, esta dañado- mi motivo es tranquilizarlo.”
We made plans to leave el Infierno Grande called Vallarta together, where addictions, Jorge’s crack addiction, are nurtured. I had been squatting in an apartment at a tenement on the southern side of the city. The day before we were scheduled to depart, the place where I’d been squatting had been padlocked. My passport was on the other side of the lock. I would not be able to board the plane without my passport. Jorge left. “Quedate en mi departamento until you get your passport, then you meet me in Cozumel.” I made arrangements with the landlord of the apartment where I squatted to remove my personal belongings from his property the day we were supposed to depart, the day Jorge departed. Jorge departed. I stayed behind. I collected my belongings and took my bags to Jorge’s apartment. Prepared to travel the following day, to join Jorge, mi enamorado, en Cozumel. I was scheduled for a flight early the following morning from Vallarta to Can Cun with a layover in Mexico City. I would then take a bus from the airport in CanCun to Playa Del Carmen. From Playa, I would take a ferry to Cozumel. “Aqui te espero, chiquito” dijo el.
Before I laid down for a nap at 2 am the morning I was supposed to travel, I sat on the toilet, reading, thinking, among other things. I heard voices coming in through one of the windows. “La Llorona!” I was filled with fear. Finished up on the toilet, washed up, walked out of the bathroom into the bedroom, then into the kitchen. I saw human figures on the other side of the glass door and screen door in the kitchen that led outside. The human figures then knocked. “Llorona, eres tu?” I thought to myself.
“Si, quien es?” I said.
“Policia Federal.” They said.
I was in shock. I opened the door. I thought they we bringing me news about the plane Jorge was on having crashed into a skyscraper in Mexico City.
“Donde esta Jorge?” a woman asked.
“Se mudo a Cozumel. Hoy se fue.” I responded.
“Y tu, quien eres?” she asked.
“Un amigo de Jorge. Me dejo quedar aqui por una noche. Manana me voy.”
“Amigo de Jorge? El no me dijo nada? Por que estas en mi propiedad y donde estan mis muebles?” she said scornfully.
Apparently, the furniture and the TVs Jorge had sold before he left Vallarta we not his property and were apart of the fully furnished apartment that he was renting from this woman who stood before me.
“Well, I don’t know where Jorge is. All I know is that my furniture is missing and I don’t know who you are and you are on my property” said the landlady to me.
Pause.
“You are under arrest,” said the Policia Federal.
I couldn’t open my mouth. I stood still. Let them tie me up. And before being led out of the apartment, asked if my two bags could be brought along with, still hopeful that the situation would work itself out and that I would be on the morning flight away from this big hell. I was thrown on to the back of a pick up truck, in my pajamas. I had just had my hair done. Tight braids against my scalp. My hair is long and thick and I felt hotter when I had it down. So that I wouldn’t need to compromise my desire (perhaps need) to have long hair, I had a woman on the beach braid it for fifteen dollars, a price she gave to locals. In order to preserve the braids, I would need to wrap it up and tie it. That was not possible where I was going.
We arrived at the police station. I was questioned. Read my rights. At the time, none of what was being told to me made sense. I was arrested a few times before in the u.s., in Chicago, as a minor, and practiced my rights as a minor, conscious that no real action could be taken against me. In a Mexican context? I was 19 now. Very adult. They spoke a language I didn’t understand. The searched my bags. In one of my bags I had a plastic bag that was tied up. They tore it open. Pulled out a Sergio Valente denim skirt, a black Baby Phat blouse, a bra and silicon-filled breast enhancers, my titties, a pair of strappy and pretty Dolce & Gabana stilettos, and a long, straight, black wig. Before moving to Mexico, I was cross dressing and doing sex work in Chicago. I had brought an “emergency kit” just in case I couldn’t figure out another way to make money in Vallarta. I refused to go hungry. They asked me if the clothes and wig belonged to me. I said yes. The three men in the room laughed, said “ladron y puto?!” and tossed my belongings back in the bag. I was placed in a cell with a dirt floor with ten other men. The sun began to rise. The ceiling of the cell had a small crack to let in very little light. I stood, barefoot, near the bars, away from the filth, the stench of a cell that was never cleaned, away from men who’d been in and out of the jail, who seemed to be familiar with the conditions. I was eager to have another opportunity to speak to someone about my situation. While staring out of the cell, I felt a hand on my shoulder by one of the men in the cell. “Estas bien Chiquita? Quieres que te ayudo calmar?”
No words.
No expression.
Four days.
My mind popped out of my body.
And traveled.
Is still traveling…
“Bienvenido a Cozumel” I hear on the loudspeaker. “I hope he has his phone on.”
Pueblo Chiquito, Infierno Grande
|
Ferry Boat, Caribbean Sea
Playa del Carmen-Cozumel, Quintana Roo, México
9/15/2003
“I can’t believe I’m on this ferry boat. I guess I was lucky to catch the last one. I hope he has his cell phone on. I have no idea where I’m going… I wonder where el grito de la independencia is on the island? Maybe I can just drop off my bags and go join the party, wherever it is. I hope he has his phone on…”
An extended vacation? How dare I. What is a lifelong sacrifice for many of those I work with in this small city has been referred to as an “extended vacation” by me. Typical of an American that is oblivious to her own freedom, her own privilege. An “extended vacation”? Labor in the sun, selling your knowledge of a place, a country, a moment you call home, to American tourists. Parched throat. Disorienting headaches caused by the heat, causing amnesia. Extended vacation? Where did I pick up that idea?
The sunset, the sunset, my reward is gained all in one simple sunset to the west, adjacent to the Bahia de Banderas, Vallarta! Tastes like a paleta de limón after walking from el Mercado en el Viejo Vallarta to the edge of the serra, on a bench in the plaza in front of la Catedral de la Virgen de Guadalupe, I sit, content, licking my paleta, “tan rico que sabe.” I smile, am comforted by the company of the liberated pigeons pacing back and forth in the plaza y la compania de la Virgencita… that is what the sunset in Vallarta does for me- it raises its white flag to me, or is it I who raise a white flag to the sunset, to myself? And I am reminded that I am where I am. Nor could I, nor would I, be anywhere else at that moment. Or all the moments added together, all those moments that would amount to a day, a week, a life.
That moment: Jorge fue el amor de mi vida una noche en agosto. His thick Mexican accent sounded like atole that fills you with heartiness. The tamale in between his legs filled me with just as much life. Entangled in one another’s embrace. “estas- tienes calor or estas caliente?” -is heat not the condition for arousal? Was I in a state of lust? Drunken stupor? Casual? Connection? Maybe he said a line of two that caught my attention. “I’m here today and who knows where I’ll be next year…” “I hate responsibility.” Or maybe waking up next to him this morning was just as comfortable as it seemed… as if though there was no other possibility in regards to my awakening that morning, or lack there of.
He was my supervisor, though. Was he harassing me? Was he exploiting his position of power?
Those kisses, the dandelion colored highlights in his thick dark hair. The Pond’s brand powder foundation compact that made his complexion flawless (although a few shades lighter than his skin color), the smashed and smudged lip and eye liner on the counter in his bathroom. Lube. Condoms. Make-up. Mouthwash. Cotton swabs. Cologne. His Queer necessities. The kiss to my hand before he fell asleep. His long, heavy dark arms, and dark legs, el pecho, la panza, y la cara- cafés. The sweat above his lip as we walked down the cobblestone streets of el Viejo Vallarta late that night. He hugged me as we walked up the sidewalk ascending on a slope. He kissed and kissed- he kissed my teeth after I hit myself with a bottle.
Why do these moments, these thoughts, torture me, fill me?
“Todo esto para mi?”
Am I naïve? I’m very attentive, very affectionate, very vulnerable. I’m shown the littlest affection and I evaporate. I need to balance between my solids and evaportations. What is my liquid state?
Una noche en octubre, fue me perdicion. I should have known I needed to stay away from him after I learned about his addiction. After the times he stood me up and didn’t give an explanation. After the messages he left me to call him back and when I would, his phone would be turned off. This was our last chance to be together, for him to be healthy, for him to open his eyes. “Jorge, I’ve come to see a lot of ugliness in this world. The last thing I want to do is contribute to the corrupt heart. El Corazon es doloroso, esta dañado- mi motivo es tranquilizarlo.”
We made plans to leave el Infierno Grande called Vallarta together, where addictions, Jorge’s crack addiction, are nurtured. I had been squatting in an apartment at a tenement on the southern side of the city. The day before we were scheduled to depart, the place where I’d been squatting had been padlocked. My passport was on the other side of the lock. I would not be able to board the plane without my passport. Jorge left. “Quedate en mi departamento until you get your passport, then you meet me in Cozumel.” I made arrangements with the landlord of the apartment where I squatted to remove my personal belongings from his property the day we were supposed to depart, the day Jorge departed. Jorge departed. I stayed behind. I collected my belongings and took my bags to Jorge’s apartment. Prepared to travel the following day, to join Jorge, mi enamorado, en Cozumel. I was scheduled for a flight early the following morning from Vallarta to Can Cun with a layover in Mexico City. I would then take a bus from the airport in CanCun to Playa Del Carmen. From Playa, I would take a ferry to Cozumel. “Aqui te espero, chiquito” dijo el.
Before I laid down for a nap at 2 am the morning I was supposed to travel, I sat on the toilet, reading, thinking, among other things. I heard voices coming in through one of the windows. “La Llorona!” I was filled with fear. Finished up on the toilet, washed up, walked out of the bathroom into the bedroom, then into the kitchen. I saw human figures on the other side of the glass door and screen door in the kitchen that led outside. The human figures then knocked. “Llorona, eres tu?” I thought to myself.
“Si, quien es?” I said.
“Policia Federal.” They said.
I was in shock. I opened the door. I thought they we bringing me news about the plane Jorge was on having crashed into a skyscraper in Mexico City.
“Donde esta Jorge?” a woman asked.
“Se mudo a Cozumel. Hoy se fue.” I responded.
“Y tu, quien eres?” she asked.
“Un amigo de Jorge. Me dejo quedar aqui por una noche. Manana me voy.”
“Amigo de Jorge? El no me dijo nada? Por que estas en mi propiedad y donde estan mis muebles?” she said scornfully.
Apparently, the furniture and the TVs Jorge had sold before he left Vallarta we not his property and were apart of the fully furnished apartment that he was renting from this woman who stood before me.
“Well, I don’t know where Jorge is. All I know is that my furniture is missing and I don’t know who you are and you are on my property” said the landlady to me.
Pause.
“You are under arrest,” said the Policia Federal.
I couldn’t open my mouth. I stood still. Let them tie me up. And before being led out of the apartment, asked if my two bags could be brought along with, still hopeful that the situation would work itself out and that I would be on the morning flight away from this big hell. I was thrown on to the back of a pick up truck, in my pajamas. I had just had my hair done. Tight braids against my scalp. My hair is long and thick and I felt hotter when I had it down. So that I wouldn’t need to compromise my desire (perhaps need) to have long hair, I had a woman on the beach braid it for fifteen dollars, a price she gave to locals. In order to preserve the braids, I would need to wrap it up and tie it. That was not possible where I was going.
We arrived at the police station. I was questioned. Read my rights. At the time, none of what was being told to me made sense. I was arrested a few times before in the u.s., in Chicago, as a minor, and practiced my rights as a minor, conscious that no real action could be taken against me. In a Mexican context? I was 19 now. Very adult. They spoke a language I didn’t understand. The searched my bags. In one of my bags I had a plastic bag that was tied up. They tore it open. Pulled out a Sergio Valente denim skirt, a black Baby Phat blouse, a bra and silicon-filled breast enhancers, my titties, a pair of strappy and pretty Dolce & Gabana stilettos, and a long, straight, black wig. Before moving to Mexico, I was cross dressing and doing sex work in Chicago. I had brought an “emergency kit” just in case I couldn’t figure out another way to make money in Vallarta. I refused to go hungry. They asked me if the clothes and wig belonged to me. I said yes. The three men in the room laughed, said “ladron y puto?!” and tossed my belongings back in the bag. I was placed in a cell with a dirt floor with ten other men. The sun began to rise. The ceiling of the cell had a small crack to let in very little light. I stood, barefoot, near the bars, away from the filth, the stench of a cell that was never cleaned, away from men who’d been in and out of the jail, who seemed to be familiar with the conditions. I was eager to have another opportunity to speak to someone about my situation. While staring out of the cell, I felt a hand on my shoulder by one of the men in the cell. “Estas bien Chiquita? Quieres que te ayudo calmar?”
No words.
No expression.
Four days.
My mind popped out of my body.
And traveled.
Is still traveling…
“Bienvenido a Cozumel” I hear on the loudspeaker. “I hope he has his phone on.”
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
intersextions conference, malinche, and me
i've been mia, reflecting on my time and work in brasil
and preparing for the upcoming interSEXtions conference happening this weekend
(organizingintersextions.blogspot.org)
but i came across this piece in my archives and thought i'd post it in a blog. it's an excerpt from my memoir...
...more on brasil is coming shortly.
--------------------------------
♫♪ Desde el cielo una hermosa mañana, desde el cielo una hermosa mañana, La Guadalupana, La Guadalupana, La Guadalupana bajo al Tepeyac…era Mexicana, era Mexicana, era Mexicana su porte y faz ♪♫. Every 12th of December was the only day of the year Papá would wake up early to go to church. We arrived at the church before 5:00 am to hundreds of believers who filled the church and crowded the street in front of the church, joyous and holding each other closely for warmth. They wore heavy layers of clothing to defend themselves from the violent Chicago winters. Winters whose skies are filled with snow, rain, and crushing wind; these conditions often provoked the Chicago Mexican to decipher whether leaving the motherland, where the summers were long and the winters were festive and full of familia, posadas, pozole y tequila to keep you warm, was the best choice.
We would find a place to sit or stand in the nave of the church or paint ourselves against a wall. The high pitch of my voice, my insistence on having hair that was longer than your typical boy, and my ways of seeing the world more from the eyes of my mother than from the eyes of my father made me feel like an art installation at a museum, rather than a painting resting against a church wall. The procession would begin with a nine-member mariachi leading the fellowship in singing Las Mañanitas: “This is the song of the sweet mornings King David would sing, since today is the day of your saint, we now sing this song to you, awaken my dear, awaken, look the morning has come, and the little birds are singing, and the moon has gone to sleep.” On those mornings, I stared in awe of the church filled with deeply reverent believers to the Virgen. I asked myself why did this event take place at 5am? Why were the only people who celebrated this holiday Mexican? And who is this saintly figure depicted in a framed painting we have come to put a crown on and praise? The image de nuestra virgen, like many other Catholic churches attended by Mexicans in this country, had made its way to a permanent corner in the church, separate from the chancel of the church, and would become the focal point of prayer for that morning in December. “Who is this woman my father and I have woken up so early in the morning to praise and call mother?”
(papí, did you miss your mother, mi abuelita? Is that why you beat mamí? Was mamí for you an image of a woman who was no longer a part of your life and beating her would bring your own mother out of her, back to life?)(Is this who the virgen has become for Mexicans who have migrated to the north -a surrogate mother?). (papí, why did you beat me when you found out I was gay? As a Queer man did you fear I wouldn’t represent your legacy? Did the continuation of the man you are/were die with my Queerness, and by beating me, were you trying to bring yourself back to life? Did you fear I was ending our Mexicanidad by adopting this “western” tradition? Tengo tu nombre pero no tu manera de ser.)
The Virgen appeared to Juan Diego on a morning in December more than 400 years ago, after Malinche had led the Spanish Conquistadores to the central basin of México to conquer Tenochtitlan. Malinche was a “prostitute” and “slave” to the Conquistadores. She spoke Nahuatl and Maya, learned Spanish and used language and sex to spin cultures together. Oh, how I worship her art. She gave birth to one of the first mestizos; Hernán Cortés was the father. From her birth canal was born a new breed of people made-up of equal parts of Spanish domination and indigenous subjugation, to form a species called resistance. Mexicans today are umbilically connected to La Malinche; our indigenous roots hang from her vagina and are embedded in her uterine imagination.
The oxymoronic Mexican accepts the Holy Trinity as a post-colonial treaty and La Virgen de Guadalupe is the condition under which Christianity is valued. Some say La Virgen is a mestiza version of the Virgin Mary. And this is a partial truth to México’s treaty to self. In an effort to save herself from colonization and European domination, Tonantzin, Coatlicue, the lunar mother goddess, the goddess of the lost and the abandoned, an indigenous goddess, appeared before Juan Diego. She asked him to gather flowers in his tilma on the hill of Tepeyac and to present the flowers to the Bishop Fray Juan de Zumárraga. In her ability to transform to the needs of those who needed her most, when Juan Diego presented the flowers he had gathered at the request of Tonantzin, before the Bishop was the image of a woman who was later named La Virgen de Guadalupe by the Church ♫♪ Era Méxicana, era Méxicana, era Méxicana su porte y su faz. ♪♫. She was Mexican, she was Mexican, she was Mexican, her demeanor and her face. ♪♫.
and preparing for the upcoming interSEXtions conference happening this weekend
(organizingintersextions.blogspot.org)
but i came across this piece in my archives and thought i'd post it in a blog. it's an excerpt from my memoir...
...more on brasil is coming shortly.
--------------------------------
♫♪ Desde el cielo una hermosa mañana, desde el cielo una hermosa mañana, La Guadalupana, La Guadalupana, La Guadalupana bajo al Tepeyac…era Mexicana, era Mexicana, era Mexicana su porte y faz ♪♫. Every 12th of December was the only day of the year Papá would wake up early to go to church. We arrived at the church before 5:00 am to hundreds of believers who filled the church and crowded the street in front of the church, joyous and holding each other closely for warmth. They wore heavy layers of clothing to defend themselves from the violent Chicago winters. Winters whose skies are filled with snow, rain, and crushing wind; these conditions often provoked the Chicago Mexican to decipher whether leaving the motherland, where the summers were long and the winters were festive and full of familia, posadas, pozole y tequila to keep you warm, was the best choice.
We would find a place to sit or stand in the nave of the church or paint ourselves against a wall. The high pitch of my voice, my insistence on having hair that was longer than your typical boy, and my ways of seeing the world more from the eyes of my mother than from the eyes of my father made me feel like an art installation at a museum, rather than a painting resting against a church wall. The procession would begin with a nine-member mariachi leading the fellowship in singing Las Mañanitas: “This is the song of the sweet mornings King David would sing, since today is the day of your saint, we now sing this song to you, awaken my dear, awaken, look the morning has come, and the little birds are singing, and the moon has gone to sleep.” On those mornings, I stared in awe of the church filled with deeply reverent believers to the Virgen. I asked myself why did this event take place at 5am? Why were the only people who celebrated this holiday Mexican? And who is this saintly figure depicted in a framed painting we have come to put a crown on and praise? The image de nuestra virgen, like many other Catholic churches attended by Mexicans in this country, had made its way to a permanent corner in the church, separate from the chancel of the church, and would become the focal point of prayer for that morning in December. “Who is this woman my father and I have woken up so early in the morning to praise and call mother?”
(papí, did you miss your mother, mi abuelita? Is that why you beat mamí? Was mamí for you an image of a woman who was no longer a part of your life and beating her would bring your own mother out of her, back to life?)(Is this who the virgen has become for Mexicans who have migrated to the north -a surrogate mother?). (papí, why did you beat me when you found out I was gay? As a Queer man did you fear I wouldn’t represent your legacy? Did the continuation of the man you are/were die with my Queerness, and by beating me, were you trying to bring yourself back to life? Did you fear I was ending our Mexicanidad by adopting this “western” tradition? Tengo tu nombre pero no tu manera de ser.)
The Virgen appeared to Juan Diego on a morning in December more than 400 years ago, after Malinche had led the Spanish Conquistadores to the central basin of México to conquer Tenochtitlan. Malinche was a “prostitute” and “slave” to the Conquistadores. She spoke Nahuatl and Maya, learned Spanish and used language and sex to spin cultures together. Oh, how I worship her art. She gave birth to one of the first mestizos; Hernán Cortés was the father. From her birth canal was born a new breed of people made-up of equal parts of Spanish domination and indigenous subjugation, to form a species called resistance. Mexicans today are umbilically connected to La Malinche; our indigenous roots hang from her vagina and are embedded in her uterine imagination.
The oxymoronic Mexican accepts the Holy Trinity as a post-colonial treaty and La Virgen de Guadalupe is the condition under which Christianity is valued. Some say La Virgen is a mestiza version of the Virgin Mary. And this is a partial truth to México’s treaty to self. In an effort to save herself from colonization and European domination, Tonantzin, Coatlicue, the lunar mother goddess, the goddess of the lost and the abandoned, an indigenous goddess, appeared before Juan Diego. She asked him to gather flowers in his tilma on the hill of Tepeyac and to present the flowers to the Bishop Fray Juan de Zumárraga. In her ability to transform to the needs of those who needed her most, when Juan Diego presented the flowers he had gathered at the request of Tonantzin, before the Bishop was the image of a woman who was later named La Virgen de Guadalupe by the Church ♫♪ Era Méxicana, era Méxicana, era Méxicana su porte y su faz. ♪♫. She was Mexican, she was Mexican, she was Mexican, her demeanor and her face. ♪♫.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
again, responding to the epidemic of college "journalism"
college "journalism" seems to be infecting campuses throughout the united states. my brother Jaison Gardner, scholar at the University of Louisville sent me his diagnosis of this and you can read it here:
http://www.louisvillecardinal.com (search Gay agenda, U of L promoting societal problems)
here was my response to this article written about PINK, an annual LGBTQ awareness-raising, pride event at UofL.
so many angles of criticism one can take to expose this delusional portrayal of "journalism". however, one only needs to read a few sentences to understand the limitations of this writer's understanding about diversity or humans as socially evolving, complex beings. on a personal note, it reads like a diary entry, a confessional, articulating his own frustrations, perhaps with not being able to find a long-term girlfriend because of the "breakdown of the family structure" by "gays" and "feminists".
On a professional level, well, there isn't one. His use of pop-knowledge about the movements and the issues add no new knowledge and simply reproduce/represent an ideology that Queer people, feminists, womynists, anti-racist workers, activists etc., are aware of and resist daily. His "article" is to be used as a case-study of the primitive, patriarchal, white man in America, mourning the loss of his "power", left to build his identity from the outside in, from the ground up, in a world of fluidity and difference. If one day he happens to wake up, he'll realize that it will work to his advantage to align himself with consciousness-raising groups, as opposed to running into the intellectual fire where he is now burning.
"next white person in line, please?" says the gate keeper to cognitive freedom.
http://www.louisvillecardinal.com (search Gay agenda, U of L promoting societal problems)
here was my response to this article written about PINK, an annual LGBTQ awareness-raising, pride event at UofL.
so many angles of criticism one can take to expose this delusional portrayal of "journalism". however, one only needs to read a few sentences to understand the limitations of this writer's understanding about diversity or humans as socially evolving, complex beings. on a personal note, it reads like a diary entry, a confessional, articulating his own frustrations, perhaps with not being able to find a long-term girlfriend because of the "breakdown of the family structure" by "gays" and "feminists".
On a professional level, well, there isn't one. His use of pop-knowledge about the movements and the issues add no new knowledge and simply reproduce/represent an ideology that Queer people, feminists, womynists, anti-racist workers, activists etc., are aware of and resist daily. His "article" is to be used as a case-study of the primitive, patriarchal, white man in America, mourning the loss of his "power", left to build his identity from the outside in, from the ground up, in a world of fluidity and difference. If one day he happens to wake up, he'll realize that it will work to his advantage to align himself with consciousness-raising groups, as opposed to running into the intellectual fire where he is now burning.
"next white person in line, please?" says the gate keeper to cognitive freedom.
Monday, March 17, 2008
17 Março 2008: notes from brasil
Caminando yo, por las calles de Salvador. Un poco confundido con mi propósito en esta tierra. Porque he venido tan lejos de donde yo he nacido? I woke up this morning, terrified of my existence in this country, Brasil.
Last night, I had sex with a man from São Paulo. I returned to the hostel late last night after having a few caipirhas and cervejas com Jaiza e Regina, umas bahianas muito amables, y Ben, el arquitecto aleman que ahora vive em suisa whom I met at the hostel. Before I went into the dorm where I am staying, I opened up the locker where I keep my valuables to put away my wallet. He walked out of the dorm in the direction of the bathroom. He wore only his underwear; they were white boxer briefs with a red waistband. They fit his body nicely. He stood by the door to the bathroom and looked over to me and gestured for me to follow. I did.
“What’s your name?” he asked in Portuguese.
“Joaquim” I responded with the Portuguese translation of my name and told him
“Não falo português.”
“De donde eres?” falo ele.
“México” in my best Brazilian accent. “Y tu?” “Você?”
“São Paulo” he responded as he unbuttoned and unzipped my pants and reached into my underwear. I reached into his provocative briefs and stroked his piece. He squatted down and hungrily took my cock into his mouth and with his tongue soothed my anxieties about being in a country so foreign to me. He wanted more, he wanted me to enter him, to penetrate him, he wanted me to take his cock into my mouth. I did not. My mind became preoccupied with my lover back home. He rose from his position, turned around and bent over, rested one hand on the wall, pulled me in with his other hand and rubbed himself against my member. He came. Perhaps it was the excitement of our public display. I did not. He asked me if I wanted to cum and I told him I did not and that I was tired. I pulled up my underwear, washed my hands and face and retired to my bunk. He remained to take a shower.
In my bunk, I stared at the ceiling and evaluated what had just occurred. He re-entered the dorm, in his underwear that I idolized, and looked over to me. He turned away and climbed in his bunk, looked over to me again and smiled. He gestured for me to join him again. I did. And we continued our play as the three other men in the dorm slept through the humid Bahian night.
Sex is a form of validation, a way to access a location, to acclimate myself to a foreign environment. When I was fifteen, the foreign environment was called my sexuality. When it was with middle-class Ryan, un Filipino, working class Jason, un Afro-Americano, o el fresa de Steven, un gringo, the environment was called social, racial and ethnic difference. Sex is an emulation of a power I do not possess biologically, a literal entering of and being entered by another’s life. I fuck so that I might be impregnated by an element of the land, to impregnate the state where I am on the outside. Through sex, I integrate myself into my surroundings; I become aware of myself in my surroundings. It’s a form of conscientização.
“Não falo português” and the sex I had are linked. I use my body to act on, to be enacted upon. To learn. To inscribe upon. In Brasil, I am starving for fluidity in my expressions and interactions with the people here and sex is the language that gives me access, at this moment.
As I write this, I continue to think about my lover in nyc. He, a southern Black man, a southern gentlebelle. Educated. Trained. For what? We toss ideas back and forth about that often. An introvert. Obsessively brilliant. He and I traveled to Montreal together. We traveled with our friend Mariela, an activist, a Mexicana lesbian from the Midwest, my hometown Chicago. She had recently moved to nyc to grow, shed the layers of conservatism and constraints that shaped her work in Chicago. Her migration to the east coast was her own search for language, for freedom, for work towards freedom, in a country, in a moment, during a war for resources that didn’t empower us, in a moment when freedom felt tenuous. He and I were helping her transition. We invited her, and ourselves, to push more and challenge her newly adopted, our previously adopted and current home, the borders/borderland of nyc, and to embark on a migration to the north, in an impulsive act encouraged by Ogum and Elegua.
“Vamonos, cabron! Andale, vamonos!” said Mariela. “No te apures, me encanta manejar. It’s only six hours; I can kill them.” We traveled. He and I with a passport, Mariela without one.
El y yo, hand and hand. Juntos. Con cariño, sin dudas, assured by our citizenship validated by the little blue booklet with date stamps from the various places we had traveled. Ella, no tanto. She seemed stressed. Maybe it was the long drive. Maybe it was because she was traveling with a tattered copy of her birth certificate and her Illinois State ID. As we approached the Canadian border, he said to me, “you know we can get married in Montreal.”
My heart and my mind missed a few pulses.
What was he saying? What was he reaching for? Was this a proposal? What type of proposal? One resting on the liberty to do something that our own country did not allow us to do? One resting on his love for me? In what other ways does the state determine what we can and can not do, how we can and can not feel?
“Then let’s get married.” A challenge I posed (who was I challenging?).
Silence.
“I want my mother present when I get married” he responded moments later. “She would want to be at my wedding.”
“Your mother’s heart is socially constructed,” a thought that occurred in response to him, a language I constructed in a moment during my first year of college, during a conversation with Maygin Kinney and Jacqueline Lewis, others in my cohort, about the institution of marriage and its relation to our personal values, inspired by an Introduction to Feminist Thought and Action course we were taking with Ann Snitow at the New School. I should have said it out loud to him. Instead, I swallowed my words and began digesting a divergence entering our relationship as we were crossing the border.
It became evident to me then that the state had the capacity to enter our personal lives in violent and intrusive ways. It became evident to me how we experience border crossing and the effects of migration are unique to the individual. The individualization imposed upon us by the state sometimes, as in our case, leads to chaos beyond the immediate grasps of the individuals involved.
“Where are you from?” asked the border patrol officer, a reddish-pink faced woman with short orange hair.
“From Chicago, but I just moved to New York” said Mariela, still negotiating the fact that she was now living in nyc.
“So where are you coming from and where are they from?” pointing to us.
“Chicago, well, New York, we’re coming from New York, they’re from New York.” Responded Mariela. I noticed she had become nervous and started sweating.
“Where are you going and what is the purpose of your trip.”
“We’re going to Montreal. We are going to a conference at McGill University” (our boarding pass to freely enter the country).
The border patrol officer’s shoulders relaxed and she casually asked, “How long will you be in Canada?”
“A couple of days.”
“Are you carrying more than $10,000 with you?”
“I wish!” I shouted. I couldn’t help myself. The earlier moment was too thick and I felt she was lightening up; I wanted to keep on that path. And I did wish I had $10,000. “But we’re not carrying more than $10,000.”
“Enjoy your time in Canada.”
Driving away from the border, into Canada, we were individually exhausted, frustrated and upset. When we arrived to Montreal, we had ceased from communicating with each other. Frustrated with the signs on the expressway in French, we drove around in circles until we found the campus, drove around in circles, trying to get a sense of the culture, how the city and people operate, drove around in circles, in silence, questioning our migration, our relationship to the state, our previous state, and each other.
What did solidarity look like for the three of us in that moment? Would sex rectify the crisis between me and my lover? Where was the space to be real, in the flesh, with him and with Mariela? Our minds and bodies contracted because of the unsurity of the place where we had arrived. This unsurity is the same one that accompanied me in my trip alone to Brasil, and I argued with the discomfort of this unsurity without him, and with another.
After wrestling sexually with the Brasileiro, I wrestled all morning with myself about whether or not and how to share this with him. Nos encontramos por el hecho de los santos. But our connection wass still new, still fresh. What is “new” or “fresh” in relation to an ideology that operates beyond the confines of manmade time?
(my connection with the “him” of Montreal materially, did, and, did not yet, exist during my connection with the “him” of Brasil. What is common is my ability to engage in a form of spiritual linking that I was incapable of in a previous state; the “him” for me is non-linear.)
What shapes my relationship to him as his lover in a context where that naming is not encouraged?
While thinking about this, an image entered me of my body trajected into the sky, across continents, far from where I began. Dis and re-locations lead me to hold the memory of my previous state close to me. Is meu enamorado now a part of that previous state? Am I reborn in this place, in this moment called Brasil? When meu enamorado was in my presence, was he filling the role of the present tense of a previous state?
(what are the elements of that entity that I am naming “previous state”? I speak of a “previous state” as the state of domination, the state of incarceration, the state of criminalization, the state of dehumanization, the state of inferiority and as a consciousness that moves beyond the lived experience of disempowerment.)
I am reminded of my mother and think about how far I’ve grown away from her. My father and his imprisonment. He wrote me recently. I received his letter the day before I came to Brasil. I have never received a letter from my father. I didn’t know what to expect. He said the imprisonment of his body has led to the liberation of his mind. Was my father, too, encountering his previous state? Might it be “joint-talk,” maybe. It all depends on him. Reading his “cuantas letras” was an agridulce moment I hope I will always have the memory of. Since I’ve been in Brasil, I have carried the letter, like the memory of my sweetheart back home, with me everywhere, to keep me company, to protect me, to encourage me. My personal Iyewà. A blessing to push me forward through my ignorance of the “Portuguese” language and my mission to learn about and become Brasil.
Last night, I had sex with a man from São Paulo. I returned to the hostel late last night after having a few caipirhas and cervejas com Jaiza e Regina, umas bahianas muito amables, y Ben, el arquitecto aleman que ahora vive em suisa whom I met at the hostel. Before I went into the dorm where I am staying, I opened up the locker where I keep my valuables to put away my wallet. He walked out of the dorm in the direction of the bathroom. He wore only his underwear; they were white boxer briefs with a red waistband. They fit his body nicely. He stood by the door to the bathroom and looked over to me and gestured for me to follow. I did.
“What’s your name?” he asked in Portuguese.
“Joaquim” I responded with the Portuguese translation of my name and told him
“Não falo português.”
“De donde eres?” falo ele.
“México” in my best Brazilian accent. “Y tu?” “Você?”
“São Paulo” he responded as he unbuttoned and unzipped my pants and reached into my underwear. I reached into his provocative briefs and stroked his piece. He squatted down and hungrily took my cock into his mouth and with his tongue soothed my anxieties about being in a country so foreign to me. He wanted more, he wanted me to enter him, to penetrate him, he wanted me to take his cock into my mouth. I did not. My mind became preoccupied with my lover back home. He rose from his position, turned around and bent over, rested one hand on the wall, pulled me in with his other hand and rubbed himself against my member. He came. Perhaps it was the excitement of our public display. I did not. He asked me if I wanted to cum and I told him I did not and that I was tired. I pulled up my underwear, washed my hands and face and retired to my bunk. He remained to take a shower.
In my bunk, I stared at the ceiling and evaluated what had just occurred. He re-entered the dorm, in his underwear that I idolized, and looked over to me. He turned away and climbed in his bunk, looked over to me again and smiled. He gestured for me to join him again. I did. And we continued our play as the three other men in the dorm slept through the humid Bahian night.
Sex is a form of validation, a way to access a location, to acclimate myself to a foreign environment. When I was fifteen, the foreign environment was called my sexuality. When it was with middle-class Ryan, un Filipino, working class Jason, un Afro-Americano, o el fresa de Steven, un gringo, the environment was called social, racial and ethnic difference. Sex is an emulation of a power I do not possess biologically, a literal entering of and being entered by another’s life. I fuck so that I might be impregnated by an element of the land, to impregnate the state where I am on the outside. Through sex, I integrate myself into my surroundings; I become aware of myself in my surroundings. It’s a form of conscientização.
“Não falo português” and the sex I had are linked. I use my body to act on, to be enacted upon. To learn. To inscribe upon. In Brasil, I am starving for fluidity in my expressions and interactions with the people here and sex is the language that gives me access, at this moment.
As I write this, I continue to think about my lover in nyc. He, a southern Black man, a southern gentlebelle. Educated. Trained. For what? We toss ideas back and forth about that often. An introvert. Obsessively brilliant. He and I traveled to Montreal together. We traveled with our friend Mariela, an activist, a Mexicana lesbian from the Midwest, my hometown Chicago. She had recently moved to nyc to grow, shed the layers of conservatism and constraints that shaped her work in Chicago. Her migration to the east coast was her own search for language, for freedom, for work towards freedom, in a country, in a moment, during a war for resources that didn’t empower us, in a moment when freedom felt tenuous. He and I were helping her transition. We invited her, and ourselves, to push more and challenge her newly adopted, our previously adopted and current home, the borders/borderland of nyc, and to embark on a migration to the north, in an impulsive act encouraged by Ogum and Elegua.
“Vamonos, cabron! Andale, vamonos!” said Mariela. “No te apures, me encanta manejar. It’s only six hours; I can kill them.” We traveled. He and I with a passport, Mariela without one.
El y yo, hand and hand. Juntos. Con cariño, sin dudas, assured by our citizenship validated by the little blue booklet with date stamps from the various places we had traveled. Ella, no tanto. She seemed stressed. Maybe it was the long drive. Maybe it was because she was traveling with a tattered copy of her birth certificate and her Illinois State ID. As we approached the Canadian border, he said to me, “you know we can get married in Montreal.”
My heart and my mind missed a few pulses.
What was he saying? What was he reaching for? Was this a proposal? What type of proposal? One resting on the liberty to do something that our own country did not allow us to do? One resting on his love for me? In what other ways does the state determine what we can and can not do, how we can and can not feel?
“Then let’s get married.” A challenge I posed (who was I challenging?).
Silence.
“I want my mother present when I get married” he responded moments later. “She would want to be at my wedding.”
“Your mother’s heart is socially constructed,” a thought that occurred in response to him, a language I constructed in a moment during my first year of college, during a conversation with Maygin Kinney and Jacqueline Lewis, others in my cohort, about the institution of marriage and its relation to our personal values, inspired by an Introduction to Feminist Thought and Action course we were taking with Ann Snitow at the New School. I should have said it out loud to him. Instead, I swallowed my words and began digesting a divergence entering our relationship as we were crossing the border.
It became evident to me then that the state had the capacity to enter our personal lives in violent and intrusive ways. It became evident to me how we experience border crossing and the effects of migration are unique to the individual. The individualization imposed upon us by the state sometimes, as in our case, leads to chaos beyond the immediate grasps of the individuals involved.
“Where are you from?” asked the border patrol officer, a reddish-pink faced woman with short orange hair.
“From Chicago, but I just moved to New York” said Mariela, still negotiating the fact that she was now living in nyc.
“So where are you coming from and where are they from?” pointing to us.
“Chicago, well, New York, we’re coming from New York, they’re from New York.” Responded Mariela. I noticed she had become nervous and started sweating.
“Where are you going and what is the purpose of your trip.”
“We’re going to Montreal. We are going to a conference at McGill University” (our boarding pass to freely enter the country).
The border patrol officer’s shoulders relaxed and she casually asked, “How long will you be in Canada?”
“A couple of days.”
“Are you carrying more than $10,000 with you?”
“I wish!” I shouted. I couldn’t help myself. The earlier moment was too thick and I felt she was lightening up; I wanted to keep on that path. And I did wish I had $10,000. “But we’re not carrying more than $10,000.”
“Enjoy your time in Canada.”
Driving away from the border, into Canada, we were individually exhausted, frustrated and upset. When we arrived to Montreal, we had ceased from communicating with each other. Frustrated with the signs on the expressway in French, we drove around in circles until we found the campus, drove around in circles, trying to get a sense of the culture, how the city and people operate, drove around in circles, in silence, questioning our migration, our relationship to the state, our previous state, and each other.
What did solidarity look like for the three of us in that moment? Would sex rectify the crisis between me and my lover? Where was the space to be real, in the flesh, with him and with Mariela? Our minds and bodies contracted because of the unsurity of the place where we had arrived. This unsurity is the same one that accompanied me in my trip alone to Brasil, and I argued with the discomfort of this unsurity without him, and with another.
After wrestling sexually with the Brasileiro, I wrestled all morning with myself about whether or not and how to share this with him. Nos encontramos por el hecho de los santos. But our connection wass still new, still fresh. What is “new” or “fresh” in relation to an ideology that operates beyond the confines of manmade time?
(my connection with the “him” of Montreal materially, did, and, did not yet, exist during my connection with the “him” of Brasil. What is common is my ability to engage in a form of spiritual linking that I was incapable of in a previous state; the “him” for me is non-linear.)
What shapes my relationship to him as his lover in a context where that naming is not encouraged?
While thinking about this, an image entered me of my body trajected into the sky, across continents, far from where I began. Dis and re-locations lead me to hold the memory of my previous state close to me. Is meu enamorado now a part of that previous state? Am I reborn in this place, in this moment called Brasil? When meu enamorado was in my presence, was he filling the role of the present tense of a previous state?
(what are the elements of that entity that I am naming “previous state”? I speak of a “previous state” as the state of domination, the state of incarceration, the state of criminalization, the state of dehumanization, the state of inferiority and as a consciousness that moves beyond the lived experience of disempowerment.)
I am reminded of my mother and think about how far I’ve grown away from her. My father and his imprisonment. He wrote me recently. I received his letter the day before I came to Brasil. I have never received a letter from my father. I didn’t know what to expect. He said the imprisonment of his body has led to the liberation of his mind. Was my father, too, encountering his previous state? Might it be “joint-talk,” maybe. It all depends on him. Reading his “cuantas letras” was an agridulce moment I hope I will always have the memory of. Since I’ve been in Brasil, I have carried the letter, like the memory of my sweetheart back home, with me everywhere, to keep me company, to protect me, to encourage me. My personal Iyewà. A blessing to push me forward through my ignorance of the “Portuguese” language and my mission to learn about and become Brasil.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
exit song
Departure: Delayed
querida patria,
hoy sali a brasil para conocer a tierra extraña.
querido mexico,
perdoname por haberte abandonado para la mujer morena del sur.
querido, siempre si o siempre no, tierra estados "unidenses",
divididos y conquistados,
me voy porque me quedo disilusionado por ti.
queridos sueños,
contigo viajo,
contigo me ubico,
contigo amanezco,
contigo nacaré.
i find myself in the borderlands place called JFK.
rubbing against varied purposes of travel.
rubbing against reasons,
bodies,
that have been pursuaded to unroot themselves
and traject their bodies
into another land,
land,
that one hopes to be fertile.
The body a seed,
to pollinate
Brasil.
Me,
a strange cactus,
surviving tierra familiar,
no a mí.
---
Arrival: On-time
They look at me and they gag.
They know that their ancestors
set it up so that my kind
wouldn't be here with them.
They have erased
an acknowledgment
of our humanity
of our existence,
but I've learned how to manipulate
the shadow you've casted over me
to manipulate my invisibility
to you,
to walk through walls,
and expose my presence
around the conference room table,
the lecture halls,
front and center,
counting your money,
we/i and Here.
I have always been here.
I have come to Brasil to understand better
how the world
intersects.
Sangue Africana
Raizes Indígenas,
Sujeira européia, Suciedad europea, european dirt.
querida patria,
hoy sali a brasil para conocer a tierra extraña.
querido mexico,
perdoname por haberte abandonado para la mujer morena del sur.
querido, siempre si o siempre no, tierra estados "unidenses",
divididos y conquistados,
me voy porque me quedo disilusionado por ti.
queridos sueños,
contigo viajo,
contigo me ubico,
contigo amanezco,
contigo nacaré.
i find myself in the borderlands place called JFK.
rubbing against varied purposes of travel.
rubbing against reasons,
bodies,
that have been pursuaded to unroot themselves
and traject their bodies
into another land,
land,
that one hopes to be fertile.
The body a seed,
to pollinate
Brasil.
Me,
a strange cactus,
surviving tierra familiar,
no a mí.
---
Arrival: On-time
They look at me and they gag.
They know that their ancestors
set it up so that my kind
wouldn't be here with them.
They have erased
an acknowledgment
of our humanity
of our existence,
but I've learned how to manipulate
the shadow you've casted over me
to manipulate my invisibility
to you,
to walk through walls,
and expose my presence
around the conference room table,
the lecture halls,
front and center,
counting your money,
we/i and Here.
I have always been here.
I have come to Brasil to understand better
how the world
intersects.
Sangue Africana
Raizes Indígenas,
Sujeira européia, Suciedad europea, european dirt.
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