What's Weird Wednesdays - 8 December 2010

Happy Humps, y’all! It’s Wednesday, my favorite day of the week. You’ve already got two whole solid weekdays under your studded belt and only two more until the weekend. So much potential! During Mondays and Tuesdays you’re thinking about starting your week. On Thursdays and Fridays, you’re mentally planning your weekend. So that leaves Wednesdays to think about what’s weird. Welcome to What’s! Weird! Wednesdays!

Readers, you are highly encouraged to send in observations, eavesdroppings, daydreams, nightmares and generally weird nuances that stick to your shoe as you walk through your gay day.

See, this would be a good example of something weird. Cute, yes. In a fish hat kind of way. But weird nonetheless.

You know what’s weird this week? When your mom’s friends or any citizen of that general age range refers to female friends as “girlfriends”. Does that not totally throw you off every time? Just a little? “Where are you and your girlfriend going tonight?” Asks your conservative Republican neighbor. Instantly, your internal monologue rages. So she did see us kissing in the driveway last night! I knew this faux hawk was a weird idea today. Wait a second… “We’re probably just staying in for the night,” you seamlessly answer as you realize she’s talking about your actual friend. And that's enough for her to be on her way with a little Oh That's Nice Dear. Close one. NOT. She has no idea. Isn't that so weird? It is.

It's Wednesday,and that’s what’s weird.

Interreligious Dating

Sometimes it just takes a circle of lesbians to make everything feel a little better

Interreligious Dating

Just call them Holidays

I can only speak for myself when I say most people I know don’t think twice about dating someone of a different faith. Usually, when pursuing or being pursued by a girl, my friends have everything on their minds but religion. However, of course some couples of different faiths sometimes struggle to connect on issues of religion. While I have sympathy and the utmost respect for the sensitivity of interreligious dating dilemmas, this is less about that and more about how I love having a Jewish girlfriend. There it is.

Although I went through fourteen years of Catholic schooling, I am not Catholic, but I do believe in a higher power, wherever She is. My girlfriend is Jewish, and I love it. For me this means learning Yiddish, attending services at the local Hillel on high holidays and lighting the menorah. (I’ve had to Google like five words already). Growing up in both New York and South Florida, I am no stranger to you Jews. You are my neighbors, my best friends, my bakers. Now you are my girlfriend, and so only now am I getting to know the more intimate parts of you. The interesting thing about participating in the traditions of other religions and cultures is feeling so new to rituals that have been taking place for so long. It’s interesting to feel yourself navigating through such established ceremonies for the first time. Wait! Before you get bored and dismiss this as a holier than thou rant, please note that me feeling myself navigating through an established ceremony was me feeling myself starving after deciding I’d be the best girlfriend ever if, in solidarity, I too abstained from eating on Yom Kippur.

I was a nightmare all day. It was awful. My plan went all wrong. Instead of cruising through the day like a supportive champ, I kicked and cried (I think I did actually cry) and sassed my way to sun down. But at the end of the day, as we scarfed down vegan noodle kugel and got drunk on Manischewitz, I knew it had brought us closer and that participating in that holiday was an experience I would later write about.

Tonight, as I walked to my girlfriend’s house, a bottle of cheap red wine in one hand and a menorah in the other, I couldn’t help but feel excited to take part in Hanukkah, the festival of lights. This means I unsuccessfully lit the candles. I never do it in the right order and I never remember the whole prayer. But hey, she’s happy that I share and I’m happy that she’s happy. L’Chaim. To Life.

I guess I lucked out with a Jewish girl. There are much tougher eggs to crack.

What We're Bobbing Our Heads To

What We’re Bobbing Our Heads To:

Girlfriend Island by Frankie & the Outs

“Hold my hand. You know that it makes me feel better.”

Today’s song to add to your December playlist is “Girlfriend Island” by Frankie and the Outs, a Brooklyn-based all girl band. Front woman Frankie Rose has played for a healthy handful of great bands like Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Shitstorm (now Grass Widow) and my personal favorite, Crystal Stilts. Besides having a title that I decided should be the OutHaus staff’s band name, “Girlfriend Island” has those crunchy chords, catchy female harmonized vocals and snappy beats to keep your pace fast enough to stay warm in the cold weather. Stream it for free at Grooveshark.com

(Meatless) Chicken Soup for the Soul

It's been a while, and a lot has happened. None of what has happened falls into any previous post's predictions of what would happen, by the way.
It's time to reinvent this blog. To draw a new me.
ANYWAY
I'm starting a new project to become a better writer. One hour of writing every day for the first month. Two hours a day for month two. After those two months, starting with month three, three hours a day.
Having graduated over a year ago now (........) and living largely outside of the academic realm, left to indulge only in the intellectual spheres of NPR and the New York Times (sometimes), I'm losing the intellectual muscle mass I'd spent years building up. Or at least losing sight of it.
So, in a dazzling attempt to clear the channels of expression, de-clutter my hallways of thought, reorganize the library of my mind, I will be delving into lost vocabulary and attempting to navigate those schools of thought of which I am now an Alumnus.
See how this post is a little muddled and maybe hard to follow, assuming you've been compelled to read this far?
Yeah? Well, just wait til month FIVE!


-If You Can't Hear It, Turn the Mosephine UP!

And For My Next Trick

I was a 23 year old college graduate living in a state of purgatory more unfulfilling and limbo-like than that of Dante Alighieri himself. Stuck in a place lined with ice and resentment, detached from a heart trying to keep warm by residing 1011 miles away, I found solace only in morning coffee often turned late-afternoon coffee and various forms of communication with those closer to my distant heart.

Ok. Now I have to edit past tense to present and remove traces of victimization by explaining that I have practically single-handedly created this entire situation. Was it propelled by some greater-good tail wind blowing me in a direction towards a purpose untraceable by even the most honest parts of my heart? Or proof that I am a deadbeat jackass who best get her head on straight before attempting to continue on living? Because this sure ain't a life with which I'd like to keep on keeping on.

What a shame. So miserable, surrounded by a buffer of months and miles through which I've plowed and must continue plowing to break free of these shackles. It's as if I am a twenty first century David Copperfield and have strapped myself into a straight jacket, suspended myself hundreds of feet above solid ground and made a bet between myself and the heavens to make it out alive. I despise you, Copperfield.




-Mosephine's on the pursuit of happiness

Don't Make It A Big Deal. Don't Be So Sensitive.

In these tough economic times, one is forced to mindfully navigate the day to day routine in such a way as to expend the most frugal of economic energies. This is not really what I think. I just wanted to implement the ubiquitous phrase. I, myself, don't feel affected by a harsh economy any more than usual, except for the rising price of cigarettes and burritos. Just kidding. I don't smoke or eat.

What I mean to say is that I have felt more compelled to navigate my day to day more mindfully than usual in terms of my self awareness in relation to my thoughts and feelings. I had not been kind to my heart over the past few years. This is to say, I recklessly allowed myself to think emotional symbiosis was occurring when, in fact, there were varying degrees of leeching going on in varying flows in varying directions. While processing my lovelorn emotional self, I remember telling myself that it was time for me to try to thicken my skin, pull in the reigns on the impulses of my heart, refrain on falling in love with everyone I meet. [See perhaps the moment of this plan's conception here: Bleeding and Pleading Pygmalion. You've been warned]

So I tucked that to-do plan into the back pocket of my psyche and trudged ahead. I now find myself, after having focused for so long on my one foot in front of the other, having succeeded, having developed a thicker version of discipline than my former self. Compare it to today's leather jacket with yesterday's thin sheath of rice paper. I fear though, dear readers, that I may have succeeded too well. That I've maybe zipped up my leather jacket at the expense of feeling even the sunlight on my skin, even the smallest tinglings of rapture in my heart. (Keep in mind I am using this space to vent the most severe version of this potentially fearful fantasy and that I do no, in fact, think I've lost all sense of loving) It's just that in the past year or so I have successfully channeled the way I have in the past obsessively attached myself to crushes into the musings of other writers. I used to page through past lovers in my head almost daily, recollecting the injustices they performed against my infinite capacity for loving them (editor's note: I mean this halfway sarcastically. Only half way). I realized myself obsessed rooted in self-doubt. Michelle Tea says: How Could An Attraction Rooted In Such Insecurity Not Result In Obsession? Amen. Recently I have found myself at the gate to the door to the living room to the bedroom of love (meaning I've been confronted with the potential of a potential for some degree of romantic intimacy) only to carry less and less heat at every step. And so I've not entered the gates as quickly as I used to. I have not entered them at all. I instead have turned around and out of the space of an us, returning only to a Me. It was not out of fear of any kind, as may be expected. It was hardly a question to entertain, in fact. As if there were no messages in the inbox of correspondence between heart and head. I have struggled with deciding whether or not this is based on a legitimate un-attraction or if my leather jacket successfully keeps my emotions focused in on myself, preventing the possibility of attraction.

I'm not exactly disappointed, though. In fact, I'm almost proud of myself. Because for the first time in a long time, since, like, puberty, I genuinely do not feel the need to seek this kind of affirmation elsewhere. I have it beneath the lining and in the hidden pockets of this leather jacket. I seek solace within my own thoughts. Instead of searching for the qualities in a mate that would make me feel more complete or whole or whatever, I have long since been working on cultivating them within myself. Not only do I feel I have developed a better relationship with myself, but now I feel like I am cultivating things that will make me a more capable and accommodating lover, one who could fulfill someone I also sought fulfillment from, creating a wider, more vast capacity for genuine love, instead of the kind where one or the other or both seeks a satiation of fear from the other. I think from where I am now, I'm continuing to look inward and waiting for the right moment to reveal that my jacket is reversable.

I think I'll end (if you're still reading this far, thank you) with something from my journal 2 years ago and something from my journal now.

(At this point in time my writing style was rather cryptic on purpose. Not writing names or actual events made it feel more romantic to write about. Everyone was also incredibly dramatic.)
Circa January 2007:
'doctor, please. can't you see my insides & how they
twist & knot around themselves? as if they
were dire attempts to protect each other from
that which lies outside the outermost layer of organ.
It was for him that thing you thanked me for
in repugnance. like that tongue dance I know
you've performed a few more times than once &
refuse to partner up with me for. You left me
without a chair, &, musical or not, the map you
left me lead directly to the floor.'

And now- circa March 2009
'It's like being really
fucking hungry - starving -
& bitching about it
all the time &
envisioning the bliss
of being
full
but then
your food comes
& you just kind
of look at it
& feel naseous &fat'

Which brings us back to now for now.







Mosephine wants to chase you around the table, wants to touch your head

Who Would Suspect Me Of This Rapture: Atlanta RoadTrip Phone Photos

On 4 June 2009, one Roberto Ruben and one Mosephine packed our pillows, mix tapes
and num nums and road-tripped to Atlanta to see PJ Harvey perform with John Parish
and friends. The trip was a much needed departure from Gainesville's routine and familiarity.

Here are the resulting photos taken with a Motorola Krazor.



We stayed with our friend Albert who is staying in Atlanta with his family for the summer.
Here is Mosephine and Albert waiting for our burritos at El Myr(pronounced like Beer)
in Little 5 Points, ATL



Pictured below is a sparkly Lady GaGa sticker on one of ATL's bus stop signs.
Both Robert and Mosephine were bummed that they missed the Lady a few months prior.


Albert in his new shirt from Rag O Rama, a consignment store in Litte 5 Pts.
The 3 of us walked away with a new or 2 or 3.



Robert in front of Rag O Rama giving Elaine directions to us.



Elaine eventually found us. We dropped Albert off at his residency before heading to the venue
to see PJ and John.
Here is Elaine and Robert in front of the ATL sky line arriving at Center Stage.




We got pretty good spots save the drunk goth guy in front of us inappropriately grazing some girls'
backs to the beat of each song. It was really annoying and distracting. He fell back onto
Mosephine more than once.
Regardless, here is the lovely and amazing PJ Harvey fixing her bra strap or something sexy like that.



One of my favorite pictures from the trip. PJ Harvey and John Parish mimicking the city sky line





Robert's Tori friends met up with him at the show. The dark, shadowy picture of him is with Berry who
bought our tickets for us at the venue so we wouldn't have to pay service fees.
They were great.





Robert and Elaine at the Chevron while we fueled up for the late night 5+ hour drive home.



After buying a few (more than a few) 40oz. beers for our friends at home in Gainesville (where
40s are illegal and only experienced through Michelle Tea and Cristy Road memoirs),
Robert and Elaine get one last round of directions from the gas station attendant.
We mainly used the GPS for directions. [Read: Gas Pump Style]



We got some locals to take our picture to commemorate our last moments together in ATL before we forked.
Elaine had to drive back to Savannah. Mosephine and Robert to Gainesville.



Here, Robert and Mosephine try to use expressions that would adequately convey the feeling
of driving through the night after a full day in ATL and the PJ show, which is emotionally draining
in and of itself.
Robert is the best road trip partner. The 5+ drive felt like >5 minutes. We spent the time analyzing our hopes,
dreams and fears and drawing connections between our lovelorn lives.








Mosephine thinks she saw you in the shadows