Dear thighs,

You have been through a lot: my mom calling you ‘a little heavy, dear.’ hearing my dance teacher telling me that you looked ‘masculine,’ because I was using you wrong for extensions. the insult of ‘thunder thighs’ from junior high school girls. The horrible ugly and baggage-ridden tattoo I placed on you in a fit of rebellion because my fiance at the time told me he thought tattoos were stupid.

But you’ve always come through for me.

Even when the rest of my legs began to behave in baffling ways: the left knee buckling for absolutely no discernible reason, the right foot dropping in a way that made it feel as if the earth had reached up to slap the bottom of my foot, you kept on plugging away.

When I realized that I could still bicycle years ago, you took me everywhere: to the movies, to work, to the lake, to friends’ houses, bar hopping, out with family on the Greenway.

You even come through for me when I have a flare-up and my entire body feels sluggish and heavy. You hold me up in my wheelchair; you rally and hoist me up when I need to reach things on high shelves no matter how exhausted you are, or how heavy I get.

But I have not been good to you, dear thighs. I have not been good to you this past year and a half at ALL. I have neglected you. I have ignored you. I have plopped you down in front of the television and in the driver’s seat of cars and kept you still.

But what did you say when 394 became mostly closed and I asked you to carry me and my ancient laptop and a pannier of clothes to and from work 13 miles away?

“Okey doke,” you said. (You speak in the sort of dopey, deep, voice cartoons give faithful big dogs.)

And then you just kept going and going. This week, despite all of my neglect of you, you churned your way steadily through 80 miles. EIGHTY MILES.

I am in awe of you. I do not deserve such steady, faithful companions. And yet there you are. I am so lucky.

Hell, yes you are thunderous. You are mighty. I raise my water bottle to you.

PS As for you, butt and twat: I have nothing but abject apologies. Nobody needed to do you wrong like that.

The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest. White that knowledge must come the recognition that laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter.

Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied. Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.

It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality. Here the marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in essence unequal: same-sex couples are denied all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples and are barred from exercising a fundamental right. Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.

(crossposted from FB)

Recently, one of my sisters told me I was like my dad in how much I loved her. I have never felt so thrilled in my life, because although he was as flawed as the next person my dad expressed love and joy so powerfully that sometimes I felt knocked back by it: his adoring gaze, his laugh at something one of his daughters had said, the way he said the word ‘daughter’ as if it was the most beautiful word in the world.

Everything good about me, I got from him.

(Including various goofy looks, one of which I’m posting now.)

I think a lot of my friends don’t get why I am sometimes so ANGRY, and why I can’t always give well-meaning people the benefit of their well-meaningness.

So I’ll share my trip to the grocery store yesterday with you all, which is a common occurrence (especially in wealthy areas, and this was a Whole Foods in Minnetonka, near I work– not my local Cub in the Hood. Don’t blame the victim, man. I needed some decent gluten-free bread.)

Yesterday, I was having a good day, legwise. I almost didn’t even bring my crutches into the grocery store. I used only one, since my mobility is so variable and might give out halfway, and strode along rather quickly as I was on my lunch hour.

As I came through the doors, an employee saw me and said: “Hey, kiddo!”

I was somewhat surprised as I am a middle-aged solidly sturdy and not-remotely-willowly-girl-like woman with salt-and-pepper hair, but she was older than me and perhaps just jocular. I pushed out of my mind any notion that she was infantalizing me due to my crutch. Don’t be paranoid, I said to myself.

My trip through the grocery store was what it nearly always is: everywhere I go, people back away from me smiling condescendingly, pityingly, or nervously and give me TONS of space to do my thang.

They also apologize. If I am just STANDING next to someone looking at the collard greens while she looks at the kale, she says: “Oh, sorry!” and moves away.

I am sure each and every person was very pleased with how they’d treated the handicapped girl at the store. They always look out for those less fortunate.

This happened, in a very quick visit to the store, at LEAST ten times. Near the gluten-free crackers. Near the yogurt. Near the frozen vegetables. At the lunch buffet line.

I found myself smiling very hard and taking deep, cleansing breaths. When a man asked me if he could help me find something I nearly snapped at him until I realized I was looking lost, and so I let him help me find the hummus. (That dude was only doing his job and wasn’t being disablist in the least, btw.)

I bought my stuff; I walked briskly and without any difficulty through the doors and out to my car. I had one crutch supporting my left arm and I carried a very small paper sack in my right hand. I was moving fluidly and easily toward my car.

Ms. ‘Kiddo’ was on her way in.

“You need any help?” she asked the clearly not-struggling woman.

AGAIN I thought: “This is Whole Foods, where customers are so bent under the weight of their own wealth that they often cannot manage their own bags. She is just doing her job,” so I mustered all the strength and good will I had left and I smiled a nice, warm smile and said: “I’m good! Thanks, though!”

I put extra effort into sounding genuine.

She put her hands up as if I had just shouted HOW DARE YOU MADAM and says: “I was just asking! You’re doing GREAT. But I just thought I’d ask.”

GRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEAAAT.

She used her Very Special Voice. That voice that makes me and every other disabled person for miles around want to stab people in their vocal cords.

You guys, I was doing great! She was super impressed by how I managed to walk with seemingly very little impairment if any toward my car while carrying four pounds of groceries.

I WAS DOING GREAT.

I stopped. I took a deep breath. She whisked by me, radiating smug confidence that she just brightened someone’s day a little by complimenting their walking and carrying abilities and I stopped.

Did I have time to educate her?

Did I care about educating her?

How late would this make me for work?

I sighed and I got in the car. I drove back to work. No one at work held open the door for me, but if they had, how do you think I might have reacted?

Hey, folks! For various reasons, some of the answers I write to people can’t run in Bitter Butch — either the audience is quite small, or they are too graphic, or they just don’t fit the tone of the blog. I’ve gotten permission from my gracious editors to sometimes run letters here that aren’t quite right for them. I’m going to call these posts “Parking Lot” posts — conversations that you keep having even when everyone has gone out to the parking lot to go home, that matter, even if they aren’t in the official discussion spot.

Here’s my first one!

Dear Bitter Butch,

Bisexual/queer, poly woman here. I just started a new job in IT and am faced with the age old debate of how to come out at work. We have a pretty visible LGBT group at work and I literally flag with a rainbow badge, so coming out queer is not as much of an issue as coming out poly.

I have two committed partners (who aren’t romantically involved with each other, if it makes a difference), so it’s more important to me to be out than if I just had one primary and some side action. In my last job, I tried to talk about my partners casually without spelling it out, but eventually ended up with some people thinking I had just a girlfriend, some people thinking I just had a boyfriend, and only a few realizing my actual relationship situation!

It feels weird to me to just say it, but I also feel weird being seen as monogamous and having to tip toe around the subject of one of my partners because people haven’t gotten the hint. Ideas on good ways to be clear that I’m poly while not feeling like I’m oversharing?

Dear BQPW,

First, I have a question for you: do you think your co-workers worry about ‘oversharing’ when they mention their opposite-sex spouses, or their kids, stepgrandmothers, half-brothers, or stepkids? No. Their families can be just as complex as ours, but they don’t feel the need to hide any of themselves.

I resent that society has made us feel as if we are oversharing or overstepping or ‘looking for attention’ when we are just sharing our lives in the same way everyone else does.

That said, because you are a sexual minority twice over, you are going to have to do some explaining.

Because, while it is sometimes necessary to stay there, being in the closet SUCKS. You feel dishonest, like you’re betraying the people you love most, and accidental exposure. You fear losing your job. Your family.

Don’t let people’s obliviousness shove you into that horrible, dark place.

Now: a few concrete suggestions.

A new job is a great chance to bring this up organically: put photos in your cube of everyone. When people ask, just say matter-of-factly: that’s me and my girlfriend, and that’s me and my boyfriend.

Wear a poly symbol pin on your lapel next to that rainbow flag and explain about it when people ask. Answer honestly if people ask what your plans are for the weekend, even and especially when the answer is: “Poly game night!”

Whenever you have the urge to mention one or the other of them as it comes up in conversation, DON’T bite your tongue. Say it. Even use the word polyamory if it makes sense. People who care and are interested will ask for more info.

Don’t let the monogamy-obsessed, heteronormative culture we live in make you feel like you’re being a bother to other people just by being yourself. Fuck that shit. Be you. Let ’em figure it out, or not. But never bite back your truth.

You can catch the rest of my advice column at bitterempire.com, and send questions to bitterbutch@bitterempire.com. Thanks, folks!

Hey, folks! I’ll be reading with a local group of wonderful writers from the new anthology Listen to Your Mother at Subtext Books, 165 Western Avenue North, in Saint Paul from 7-9. These are essays from our performances in the “Listen to Your Mother” series of performances, and there are some WONDERFUL readers. We talk about being poor and queer and adopted and crippled but mainly about being mothers. I really like my fellow readers– they are terrific folks. I hope you’ll come out and listen!

Dear Cis Men,
If a young woman of your acquaintance describes street harassment to you, please keep in mind that it is categorically impossible for you to have any idea whatsoever what she felt like in that situation.

Whatever advice you want to give her about being strong and straightforward, or nicer and more understanding, is NOT HELPFUL.

PS if you are a woman who wants to reply to a story like this with “You should have. . . .” or “I would have. . . . ,” pretending that you have the perfect answer in every situation that gets you respect and autonomy and that you have never felt gut-churning fear and paralysis in that situation, you are a liar who feels powerful stepping on other women’s backs. Knock it the fuck off. Be a friend. Put the blame where it actually lies.

You guys I have done a HORRIBLE job of publicizing this; I’m so sorry. I’m doing a reading this Thursday at the Nicollet Diner with a bunch of other fabulous bi*/pan/queer folks! I mean a slam. The cool kids slam.

I am really excited about the other folks I’m reading with; check it!
http://www.bisexualorganizingproject.org/home/bi-story-slam