58 Gratitudes for 58 Years

I was born in 1960, which technically makes me a "boomer" - a much maligned segment of the population. This could be why I feel increasingly irrelevant and why I feel like I am merely wasting space and dwindling resources. Why have I been allowed to live this long when others with more promise were not?

My birthday falls on ... no, "falls on" is too dramatic, too momentous to describe my birthday. My birthday elbows its way in between Christmas and New Year's. It is overcrowded, overwhelmed and overrun by the slew of holiday parties and family rituals mandated by this point on the Gregorian calendar. I suppose this is the reason feeling relevant has been one of my biggest challenges.

This feeling of lacking relevance has most recently manifested itself in the arena of motherhood. The people that I allegedly birthed - because the idea of it is so hard to conceive of at this time - are adults living in different cities, living their own lives. I am contacted periodically by one or the other of them. I contact one or the other of them from time to time. There is happy chit-chat. But there is an underlying discomfort in my lack of understanding of my role in their lives at this time.

I feel sorry for myself for not knowing. Not knowing how I should be using my talents, not understanding why I chose to derail myself so severely at an early age - a derailing that has required years of putting things right with myself - not knowing what I mean to the people I allegedly gave birth to, not knowing how to care for my aging parents, not knowing what my role is in the larger scheme of things. I feel sorry for myself for not knowing.

Because one of the things I measure my success by is travel, every year on and around my birthday, I grow depressed at my lack of will, my lack of initiative. Because I allowed another year to go by without taking a trip out west. I have never been out west, you see. And I feel like something is waiting for me there. But year after year, I ignore this. Here I stand, again, in Greensboro, NC, wondering what the Hell is wrong with me.

All this gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair aside, I recognize I have done unique things in my life that have enriched it, even if they were hard at the time. I recognize that I have encountered and even personally known a great many exceptional people who have brought meaning to my world. I recognize that while my family is not perfect, they are my family, my place of origin, my roots. And for them, I am grateful.

I decided this year to relive my life briefly by stating 58 gratitudes that include moments lived, people known, tasks achieved. They are not in order of importance. They are in the order I recalled them.

1. I am grateful for being born in the small clinic in Denton, NC with a head full of thick black hair. I gave people something to talk about and was, at least for a day, the town attraction.

2. I am grateful for snakes. They mysteriously pop up in my dreams and my waking life and draw me in to a world both of mystery and deep knowing.

3. I am grateful for horses. All pre-adolescent girls, from what I'm told, love horses. That may be. But horses became and still are a huge part of my psyche. They represent the untamable power inside of me. They represent freedom, dignity, and grace. Always.

4. I am grateful for my father. He taught me to read. He taught me an appreciation for music. He taught me playful mischievousness.

5. I am grateful for my mother. She taught me about love. She taught me to sew. She taught me to color. I am even grateful that she passed along the curse of perfectionism because it makes me push myself to be better.

6. I am grateful for my sister, Rebecca, who has helped me to survive 58 years on the planet. She is younger but in many ways wiser. She helps me get off the train of self-destruction. She helps me put positive spins on situations. But she also joins in when I need to bitch about something. Beyond all that, she makes me laugh most heartily.

7. I am grateful for my family physician, Dr. Stephen Hux, who first diagnosed my depression and prescribed medication for it. He helped me get right with myself after many years of self-annihilation.

8. I am grateful for Dr. Edith Wallace, who taught me that I have everything I need to solve my own problems. I have a direct link to a divine source of creativity that will teach me, heal me and help me to be my best self. She taught me to honor my inner jester. She helped me remember to play.

9. I am grateful for my sister, Helen, who helped me to understand that the ways of the patriarchy need not be my ways. She modeled an independence of thought and action that I aspire to even today.

10. I am grateful for my brother, Robby, who taught me hard lessons about standing up for myself.

11. I am grateful for my brother, Brett, who taught me silliness and to embrace the weird.

12. I am grateful for my two children. I am grateful for the experience of being pregnant and giving birth. I am grateful for the experience of breastfeeding two beings, nourishing their bodies through my own. (What a uniquely intimate experience this is! I never would have known this intimacy otherwise.) I am grateful for the residual stretch marks that remind me that all of this really happened. I am grateful for the strength that arose in me from knowing motherhood. I am grateful for the lesson of unconditional love that my children taught me.

13. I am grateful for the being that my daughter has become.

14. I am grateful for the being that my son has become.

15. I am grateful for Robin White Star, who reunited me with the parts that had broken off due to trauma. I am grateful for her wisdom and healing over the many years that I have known her. I am grateful for her teachings of Native American spirituality. These have enriched my life greatly.

16. I am grateful for the love of my friends. There are so many who have braced me up when I have fallen, who have laughed with me, cried with me, danced with me, played with me, listened to me and talked to me.

17. I am grateful for Tim LaFollette. I am grateful for having had the privilege of serving him as he lived with ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease. I am grateful for his grace, his wit, his passion, his determination. I was honored to observe the many changes his body went through during his journey with ALS. I was honored to give him care.

18. I am grateful for Britt Harper Uzzell, a.k.a. Snüzz, who by some stroke of luck caught wind of one of my stupid songs and invited me to record it. His generous spirit and fun-loving nature enveloped me, making me feel important and well loved.

19. I am grateful for Lee Wallace, who taught me about bravery. He shared his love of music and great movies with me. And he shared his dog Stella, whom I spent lots of time walking. All over, we walked. We explored. Stella helped me get out of my stuffy brain and enjoy the beauty all around me. I am grateful for that time of being in Lee's life, helping him by walking Stella, listening to his pondering, seeing a miracle performed that saved his life, watching him grow stronger and able-bodied.

20. I am grateful for WQFS, a college radio station at which I had a weekly radio show. For roughly 15 years, I sat in a tiny MCR and sent my musical love letters out into the world. I gained friends there. I gained awareness of new bands. I gained a sense of meaning by simply attempting to inspire listeners.

21. I am grateful for UNCG, where I learned to trust my instincts and study theatre.

22. I am grateful for Deborah Bell, who taught me mask-making.

23. I am grateful for Marsha Paludan, who taught me so much more than simply how to be in my own body. She exemplified a spiritual approach to performance that now exists in my bones.

24. I am grateful for Lorraine Shackelford-Giddens, who introduced me to Gabriel Roth's Five Rhythms. This is a life-changing practice that I return to again and again for release and clarity.

25. I am grateful for Bob Hansen, who taught me about the history of theatre, who cultivated in me an even deeper respect for the medium and a joy of academia.

26. I am grateful for Great Aunt Minnie Lee, who exemplified true Christianity with her unconditional love, generosity, and grace. I am grateful for the feeling of genuine acceptance I experienced when in her hugging arms. I am grateful for the example of integrity she left me with, for her creativity and her humor.

27. I am grateful for all my relations. Aunts, uncles, cousins. All the family get-togethers. All the many shades of myself I experienced in their presence.

28. I am grateful for nature, for going outdoors and sitting in the sun, for taking long walks in the woods, for riding down a river, for climbing a mountain, for sleeping in the cold, for looking up at the stars, for feeling the rain pour down on me, for playing in the snow, for seeing new landscapes, for witnessing wildlife, for the smell of rich dirt and decaying leaves underfoot.

29. I am grateful for my dogs Soupy Sales and Flossie Mae, who teach me about love and playfulness, about loyalty and service and who help me get exercise.

30. I am grateful for the life of Melchior the cat, who was seriously my soulmate. She was with me through all sorts of maladies. She comforted me. She amused me. She loved me and I loved her.

31. I am grateful for music in all its forms. I will listen to be inspired, to learn about different cultures, to break down barriers in myself. I will play music to learn discipline and how to create sound that moves others. I will sing to release joy, sorrow or to be silly. I make up songs to make people laugh. I love music that makes me cry, that pierces my soul with longing too epic to describe. Nothing else can do this.

32. I am grateful for the radical people in my life. The ones who do not accept the status quo. The ones who understand that our current system of government is by its very nature oppressive and must be eliminated. I am grateful for the people who are brutally honest with me about politics and systems of injustice, who call me out when I'm being lazy or naive, who help me to examine the ingrained biases I have. 

33. I am grateful for Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, a single mom who exemplifies the struggles that I experienced as a single mom with much more integrity than I ever had. She forges a path of fighting for a more just world. While it seems idealistic, even unrealistic, this path needs to be forged. And I need to be reminded of it.

34. I am grateful for the experience of having been married to Steve Mitchell. From it, I learned to be true to myself, to honor who I am with great ferocity, to never allow violent words or acts be directed at me, to fight the patriarchy with all my might, to value my gender, to defend and fight alongside my sisters who are struggling against a system of oppression.

35. I am grateful for the many routes my activist nature has travelled over the years. Writing letters to foreign governments asking for the release of prisoners of conscience, marching in the streets with signs and banners, shouting slogans, painting graffiti, organizing Really Really Free Markets, engaging in community dialogues, listening to others. While I still don't know how to save the world, I am dedicated to continue trying.

36. I am grateful for learning to trust my inner knowing enough to heed it.

37. I am grateful for great literature. Victor Hugo. Mark Twain. John Steinbeck. Kurt Vonnegut. These writers helped shape my world view. I am grateful for good books that immerse me in a world unlike any I've known and carry me away on a storyline that I believe in wholeheartedly.

38. I am grateful for film as an art form and the directors who know how to use it as such.

39. I am grateful for writing. It is something I have done for as long as I have known how. (My first book was titled "Happy the Duck." I wrote and illustrated it.) I have poured my heart into notebooks and journals, periodic articles in local rags and blog entries. Some things are read by others. Some not. Sometimes I gain praise. Other times, I write only for myself. Outside input is nice, but I write as a way of putting order to a world which often seems to lack it. I am grateful for words.

40. I am grateful for dance. Truly beautiful choreography executed flawlessly by physically capable beings. And spontaneous dance combustions executed clumsily by my self.

41. I am grateful for food. For growing my own vegetables, for preparing meals, for enjoying nourishment as I take it in to my body. I am grateful to have this luxury of being able to nourish my body when so many are not able to do this.

42. I am grateful for my health. I have experienced health crises in the past. Cancer. ITP, which I still live with. But in general, at this point in time, my body is healthy and able to do the tasks I need to do on a daily basis. I am grateful to have mobility. I am grateful to have the use of my brain. I am grateful to have strength to move and to make things.

43. I am grateful for the doctors who have helped me achieve health.

44. I am grateful for the teachers I have had throughout my life who taught me more than just the subject at hand. They taught me to think independently, to be myself, to love myself, to explore knowledge, and to question.

45. I am grateful for my creativity, my urge to make things. Whether it is a painting, a play, a song, a mask, an embroidered piece of fabric, or a patch for some jeans, I live for making. Without the spirit of creativity, I am nothing.

46. I am grateful for humor. For all the beings who help me laugh at myself. For all the beings who help me laugh at the idiocy of this world. For all the beings who taught me about the idiocy of this world through humor. Laughter heals. I am grateful for this healing force in my life.

47. I am grateful for all the animal beings that inhabit the planet. All the creepy-crawly insects, all the furry four-leggeds, all the winged creatures, all the reptiles, all the ocean dwellers, river dwellers, creek and pond dwellers. I am grateful for the quality that each of these beings brings to the world. I am grateful for their unique wisdom and teachings.

48. I am grateful for my grandmother Helen, whom I never knew. She died when my mother was nine. But I feel as if her presence has always been with me. I feel as if she has moved through me in loving and playful ways. I feel as if I would have loved her greatly had I known her. But then again, I feel as if I have known her.

48. I am grateful for the roots that my family has here in North Carolina. I am grateful for this state's mountains and coastline. I am grateful for its history and its pre-history. I am grateful for the town of Winston-Salem and the special affinity I have with it.

49. I am grateful for my time spent serving The Garage, a now defunct music venue. It was so much my heart and soul for a time. I am grateful for all the musicians that enriched my experience there. I am grateful for the different sound people but especially for Brian Doub, who was most consistently there and who always produced the best sounding shows. I am grateful for Vicki Moore, Doug and Molly Davis, who worked with me in the beginning of my stay there. I am grateful for Richard Emmett for creating The Garage in the first place and then for providing me with an opportunity to work there.

50. I am grateful for my experience working around books. Kernersville Public Library, B.Dalton Booksellers, Waldenbooks, Borders Books and Music. These were my loves. Everything about working there was a pleasure. The people I worked with, the people I met, the joy of reading which turned into the joy of spreading the joy of reading via the distribution of books. I had so much fun in all these places.

51. I am grateful for the experience of managing a little gift shop in Harper's Ferry, WV. It was a magical little place filled with warmth, lovely smells, beautiful objects, silly cards and music. I honed in on my business skills and my love of creating a pretty and welcoming environment. I met interesting people from all over and made a lasting friend.

52. I am grateful for the hard experience of living at Claymont. It served its purpose of acting as a sort of pressure cooker to expedite needed change. It served my children well by offering them both the wild-ness of the landscape and a nurturing school environment. It gave me rich and challenging experiences which helped me to grow into the person I needed to be. Above all, it reinforced my need to maintain my individuality and my critical thinking.

53. I am grateful for the experience of attending the NC School of the Arts in high school. I am grateful to have been shown that world. Though challenging in its own right, it definitely impacted me positively. I learned of whole different populations that I had previously not been privy to. Gay men, gay women, transvestites, transsexuals, artists. It broadened my perspective and appealed to my desire for a more liberal and liberated life.

54. I am grateful for the lovers in my life who valued me as a partner. Who honored my sexuality by pleasuring me.

55. I am grateful for my current ally, Brian Talbert, who offers me all manner of support, who honors me for the person I am, who calls me out on my bullshit, who makes me laugh a lot, who taught me about riding rivers and gave me immense thrills by taking me down white water. We vowed to make our lives better together, both individually and collectively. And he has upheld his end of the bargain. He makes me happy. I am most fortunate.

56. I am grateful for the house I live in. I am grateful for the neighborhood, for the neighbors, for our yard, for the dogwood trees, for the front porch. I am grateful to share this house and my existence in it with Brian. I am grateful for the work we both put into keeping the house in working order as well as looking pretty.

57. I am grateful for the people who currently employ me in a variety of ways. Cleaning houses, pulling weeds, doing estate sales, making masks and Bohemian Prayer Flags. All of these people are granting me a form of freedom that I need in order to feel more fully myself. For this, I will be eternally grateful.

58. I am grateful for today: my 58th birthday. A day in which I may reflect on my life, on the errors and subsequent corrections I've made. On my ability to overcome obstacles and remain true to myself. On my ability to survive all manner of challenging situations and come out victorious. I am grateful for all lessons learned and all teachings that remain. I am grateful for this path, which is uniquely my own. I embark upon my continued journey without judgement, with an open heart, and love of the unknown.

Suck It

Homophobic remarks make me cringe. Actually, any sort of derogatory remarks about other human beings make me cringe. But when a person is derided because of something as intimately personal as their sexuality, it seems especially harsh. To attack an expression of love is in my book, the lowest of the low. Then, the fighter comes out.

At a pool party, a large-bearded white man asked a less large-bearded white man, "Which would you rather do: suck a dick (and finish the job) or be a vegan for a year?" And then, "Which would you rather do: suck a dick (and finish the job) or consume nothing but hot dog water for a year?"

Let me clarify the fact that I was not present when these questions were asked. Let me also clarify that since I was not there, I cannot say with all certainty that these exact words were spoken. I am piecing together two accounts of what was said and coming up with my own version. Let me also clarify that these questions were asked by a grown man, not an adolescent.

Instead of being present when the above-mentioned questions were asked, I was at a cookout at my gay neighbor's house. It was peopled by many other gays. We talked about music, movies, and books - things that I am familiar with and enjoy talking about. It was a nice time and I was not too eager to leave. But I had committed to go to another function. The above-mentioned pool party.

It was early evening. All I knew about this party was that it was next door to my ally's friend. So I went to the ally's friend's house and sought evidence of a pool and people around it. I timidly walked into the backyard of a person's house whom I'd never met before. There was a pool. There were people lounging around it. I looked for someone I recognized. Once I confirmed that my ally was there, I proceeded to enter the gated area. I walked by a string of people whose faces I did not know, needless to say their names. Was I to introduce myself? Was someone that I knew supposed to meet me at this string of people and introduce me? I didn't know. I just said "hi" and walked on by.

I sat down in a small cluster of people I know and chatted with a friend whom I hadn't seen in a while. That was nice. But our chat was interrupted by the extraneous happenings of people made boisterous by alcohol. It was during one of these interruptions that my ally filled me in on what had been said: the above-mentioned questions that I found offensive. My ally said this had been going on all afternoon and it was pretty funny actually.

No. It actually was not funny.

I felt like I was in enemy territory. I immediately put up my defenses and scouted the faces around me for hostility and aggression. I experienced that elevated heart rate and quickened breathing that occurs when anxiety hits. I, this person who inhabits my body, this person who attempts to manifest love in a world sorely bereft of it, felt threatened. In the past when I felt threatened, my tendency was to run. This time, I was alert and ready to fight.

I became quiet, knowing that anything I said could be used against me. This is the paranoia of anxiety. I observed the people around me. A group of people departed, leaving significantly fewer people to worry about. One woman's gaze was fixed to her phone most of the time. I did not perceive her as a threat. Then, a whole row of people were staring into their phones. It was at this point that I began to wonder why I had come at all. My ally informed me - after the fact - that things were winding down when I arrived, that I had missed all the fun. After the fact, I realized there was absolutely no reason for me to have left the comfort and ease of my neighbor's cookout. Except actually, there was.

As I was not given an opportunity to speak out against remarks that had been made before I arrived, I felt a pesky dissatisfaction. I felt such a great hostility and disdain for the sort of homophobia that breeds such remarks. I thought of all the great things I would have said to the large-bearded white man if I had been present when his remarks had been made:

So are you suggesting that sucking a dick is bad?

Then:

If dick-sucking is so bad, then I guess you don't allow women to suck yours?

Or:

Sounds like someone wants to suck a dick. Why don't you just do it?

Or:

Being vegan is a bad thing?

Or:

Are you simply saying that being vegan, drinking hot dog water and sucking a dick are all such ecstatic experiences, it's hard to choose?

Alas, I was not able to say these things to this large-bearded white man. I watched him leave with his children and felt a huge sorrow for his children and an increased loathing for large-bearded white men.

This incident - which doesn't even qualify as an incident since I did not actually experience it firsthand but experienced the aftershock - further awakened in me a conviction to put up with bullshit less. It reminded me of my responsibility to call out ignorance and intolerance. It convinced me to proclaim with ferocity that from this day forward, if I ever hear anyone make such confounded and confounding remarks, they will feel my wrath. I will not run. I will not be silent. This is the dawn of a new era in which the voiceless will use their voices against all oppressive forces. Even the ones that emerge casually and in jest at a pool party.

Especially those.

Welcome to Job-Hunting, kathyclark Style

On this first day of April, 2016, I applied for a job in a manner consistent with my authentic self and completely appropriate for a day that celebrates The Trickster. In other words, I had fun. It is doubtful that anything will come of this application. But it might quite possibly entertain someone in a cubicle somewhere - someone needing a bit of fresh air.

The job market is insanely saturated with people looking for gainful employment. I honestly do not know how one expects to get noticed amidst the barrage of electronic submissions. In the past, I have agonized and strategized to no avail. So I have come to the realization that I need not invest more time and energy into an application than a potential employer invests in looking at one. This seems only fair.

Here is my simplified process for creating a job application:

1) Create a blogger or wordpress site with links to all sites that indicate the breadth of your knowledge and experience. If you do not have sites representing the breadth of your knowledge and experience, then clearly you must develop some. Good luck.

2) In your resume, type only two sentences: "(Your Name) requests you look at this web site: (insert the link to the web site which lists links to all other web sites)." End with "Resulting questions will happily be entertained."  Use your own verbiage to make it fresh and authentic.

3) In your cover letter, type the bare minimum of information: your name, what you can do (in one sentence), and your hope to meet someone from the company for a chat.

4) Dress these up with any homemade graphics.

There you have it.  No fuss, no muss.

Applying for jobs need not be such an all-consuming and grief-filled process. The more you can streamline it, the more time and energy you will have to apply for even more jobs! And in today's economy, the more times you can circulate your name into the magical cloud of data that is the internet, the better.

Poisson d'Avril!  

Brain Drain #1: Making the World a Better Place In the Tiniest Possible Ways

It is difficult for me to embrace the changing of the seasons.  Particularly this year, as I have enjoyed a good deal of sunshine this summer.  Spending time in the sun has, in fact, become part of my daily routine.  I will miss it when the days grow short.

September is much different for me this year.  I left my job at Planet Care and have been doing odd jobs to make ends meet: jobs such as weeding gardens, cleaning out gutters, pet-sitting, interior house-painting.  I've been using my muscles, sweating, getting dehydrated, re-hydrating, but especially spending time in the sun. This sort of hard, physical work, this being outdoors and next to the sun, has helped me to feel my Self - an unadulterated sense of who I am, how to take care of myself, and how to begin to peaceably co-exist with others.  

I was walking my dog, Soupy Sales, this morning when I noticed a student walking to the Higher Education Area Transit (HEAT) stop.  She seemingly wanted to avoid any interaction.  But I spoke a greeting and wished her a good day.  She smiled in a genuine manner and seemed grateful for this small kindness.  And I wondered about that.

Do today's youth feel it is necessary to be prepared for bad things at all times?  Do most of us feel this is necessary?

I have a lot of compassion for today's youth because in my opinion they have lost a connection to their source: the earth.  Not all of them.  But it occurs to me that people who grow up in cities without easy access to nature are cheated.  They are exposed to a denser concentration of culture.  And maybe that serves as a means of connecting to the earth.  I may not know what I'm talking about.  It just seems to me that there is a fundamental urge in us all to feel connected to the land.  And this may not be immediately apparent to people who have never had access to nature.

Maybe I'm projecting.

But the youth of today have extremely challenging conditions in which to grow up.  There are not many decent role models in positions of leadership, for example.  The current state of the economy creates significant financial obstacles.  Prejudice comes in many varieties and manifests in extreme forms.  The environment needs tender loving care, yet power possessing beings who are controlled by greed and power lust will continue to do things to the environment to further hurt it.  I don't know how I would feel growing up in such a world as this.  When I was 18, I was aware of the bullshit in the world but felt a sense of hope, a sense that obstacles could be overcome.

I continue to experience this hope, though it has taken on a different form from that of my 18 year-old self.  When I was 18, for example, there seemed to be breathing room, a sense of expansiveness left on the planet.  This was in 1979.  Today, there is less breathing room, less space left in which to create something new.  Maybe this is just a perspective of my advancing age.  But it seems that as compared with 1979, there are many more obstacles to overcome in this world.

Far from making me discouraged, I believe in the resilience and the intelligence of human beings.  I know that we are smart.  I know we can create a better set of conditions in which our youth may grow and carry hope in their hearts.  I feel a deep responsibility to future generations to work like hell for the duration of my life to address all the issues I mentioned above.

I have a request to make of you at this point, gentle reader: I ask that you consider every action, every word spoken, with great care.  Consider how it will help.  And I would ask that if you see there is no use in contributing an action or a word to our planetary zeitgeist, if it would be harmful rather than helpful, would you please refrain from executing this action or this speech?

Be mindful that every small word and deed affects the greater whole.

In a similar vein, rather than focus on each other's differences, can we please focus on our similarities?  For example, I feel relatively secure in making the following statement: all of us wants to be healthy and happy.  In order for us to be healthy and happy, all of us needs a means of providing ourselves and our families with the resources to make these concepts a reality.  We all need healthy food, clean water, shelter, clothing, access to healthcare,  We all need these things.  Can we focus on this for just one moment a day?  Then stretch that moment to the next moment.  Until soon, we can accept this truth with all of our being.

I believe we can learn to love others and have compassion for their journey to achieve health and happiness.  But each of us needs to work very hard to attain this love.  We need to cease being judgmental and begin to stretch our imaginations to consider the circumstances in which others speak or act out.  I direct these comments to my liberal friends as well as my conservative ones.  Because we all are guilty of making reactionary judgments.

All I am asking is take a moment to think before speaking, before acting.  Just stop and think for a moment: how will this statement or this action help put the world in a better place?

Thank-you for reading.

Love,
kathyclark

Ladies and Gentlemen

Gender perplexes me.

As a girl, I ran around in the summertime without a shirt on - just like my big brother and his friends - until one day when my mother scolded me for being shirtless and told me to go inside the house and cover myself up. I protested that my brother and his friends didn't have shirts on. "It's different for them!" she said. "They're boys!" I was about six years old.

In the autumn of that same year, my brother and his friend took me and my friend into the woods to make us show them our panties. We subserviently complied by lifting our skirts. Then we were told to pull down our panties. I had no idea why this was being asked of me. But I knew that it was wrong. And I knew that I was being made to feel ashamed for being born a girl.

Boys have penises. Girls have vaginas. Women have breasts. Bosoms. Boobs. Tits.

I became non-gendered, possibly asexual to a certain extent. I alternated between dressing in men's shirts that were way too large for me, 1940's-style trousers, vests, neckties, fedoras and wearing skimpy tops with no bra, low-cut blouses or shirts that I would leave unbuttoned way past the acceptable collarbone level, and short shorts, which defied respectability and manifested a certain raw girl power.

The first time a group of men commented on my hot adolescent body, I was confused and embarrassed. This confusion and embarrassment continues to this day to a lesser degree. But it's still there.

I think I just don't see sex in the same way as other people. As a result, I typically don't experience women and men as women and men. But I will say this:

I have a strange fascination with boobs lately.

I can't help it. Whenever women with full and perky bosoms come through my line, I notice. I catch myself wanting to stare at their chests, at the line that separates Boob "A" from Boob "B," at the slope and curve of their breasts and how they fall onto their torso. Am I a lesbian? Or do I covet young healthy breasts since mine are old and partially mutilated?

I don't look at men's crotches. But some men appear to me to be penises walking around with small heads housing small brains that think small thoughts - all basically amounting to, how can I make myself feel more virile today?

That's just some men, though.

Women do things to make themselves attractive to men. They tease their hair up into piles and plaster make-up to their poor faces in an attempt to make their eyes look larger or smaller or their lips look larger or smaller or their cheeks look shinier or less shiny. They wear tall shoes that make their butts more noticeable. They wear sparkly jewelry on their ears, necks, wrists, ankles, fingers and toes. They put on smelly stuff that burns my nose.

Men do weird things to attract women. They walk in a studly manner. They wear smelly stuff that burns my nose. I can't tell that they dress to impress. But they walk with a swagger, like a braggart, as if one's penis is erect, it is one's dance partner and it is leading.

I've noticed lately that some women begin to look like men as they age but men rarely begin to look like women.

I've noticed some men who are dressed up as women.

I've noticed some women who look like men who are dressed up as women.

One man dresses in women's clothing and does so with great style and flair. He also sports a fabulous handlebar mustache. He seems genderless - the way I always attempted to be genderless. He just seems to be having more fun at it than I ever did.

There is a woman, who I think was a man, but changed to a woman. I had the hardest time telling whether she was a woman or a man. And because of this, I was attracted to her. Now that I've decided that she is a woman, I am still attracted to her and behave like an awkward schoolboy in her presence. Am I a lesbian? Or am I attracted to the male that she once was? Or am I simply in awe of a person who seems to transcend gender definitions?

According to the Bem Sex Role Inventory, I am Female sex-typed. But I border on Androgynous.

According to Sandra Bem, the creator of the Bem Sex Role Inventory, "The concept of psychological androgyny implies that it is possible for an individual to be both compassionate and assertive, both expressive and instrumental, both feminine and masculine, depending upon the situational appropriateness of these various modalities. And it further implies that an individual may even blend these complementary modalities in a single act...."

Conversely, people who are strongly sex-typed (male or female) may be less adaptive, their attributes less advantageous to their growth as individuals.

Gender perplexes me. But I suppose I do identify with women more so than men. When I see the older women who have begun to look like men, I want to soften the hard edge that has formed in the corner of their mouths. I want them to grow their hair long and let it blow wildly in the wind. I want to see a spark of joy in their eyes.

When I see the women who look like men dressed up as women, I want to ask them why they pattern their views of femininity upon a male construct - as if they must pretend that they have not become fully masculinized in order to operate in a man's world. They must denounce the imposition of masculinity in much the same way as a transvestite denounces the imposition of their gender. I want to wipe away their bad make-up and cut off all their bad hair and allow it to grow back without bleach, without perms, in exactly the way it was meant to be.

When I see women heavily laden with sparkly ornaments around their necks, arms, and ears, I want to free them from slavery. I want them to recognize the beauty that exists without all the ornamentation. I want them to feel pretty and bold and confident without jewelry.

I am more interested in the plight of women throughout history than I am in the plight of men.

I am more proud of the accomplishments of women than those of men.

I like wearing dresses more than neckties.

I like having the freedom to express my emotions.

I like being girly.

But I still like being Tom-boyish from time to time.