CoCo's World

i miss the sun

he so rarely comes to see me anymore from the sacred pools

i cannot make my offerings as i once did…for i have nothing left to sacrifice

my jewels, my crown, - all gone for with a blurred price

a lady unable to command / a boi who cannot hear my inner cries

yearning to deserve pleasure and consensual pain

all that is left is memories of grandeur and a reflection so plain

ah! to feel grand, needed, desired…not merely just here …a warm hand…

drowning in sorrow for my past decrees that i cannot take back

gasping for a breath of reprise from this attack

i don’t dare speak a breath of this pain i feel

for to cast into words these demons i fear i would make them real

what kind of rule could the queen execute when all decisions are in doubt?

her once fertile fields lay fallow in drought

your loyal subjects know too much / fear too much

you have forgotten your laws - a new ruler has come to town

you might wear her dress and regale her crown

but you are not she - how could you be?

you are a mere shadow

of a fallen lady

Coming back to my hometown has been terrifying an eye-openin in so many ways. Not the least of which is how people view fatness. In three days I have been told I look like an elephant when I swing my hips by my mother, I had a little girl trace my stretch marks on my arm and then say “that’s fatness”, and have old cronies tell me how wonderful I used to be. Like, how people used to want to have my body, how “bangin” my body used to look, an how my family “used to” give me anything I wanted to eat because I was a skinny young lady.

Did my getting accepted into college with no high school diploma not matter? Getting accepted into the same dance school as Barishnikov not really count musta not been a damn thing - its not like it was a science or math program. Graduating summa cum laude in my Bachelor’s program or being invited to join Phi Beta Kappa I guess didn’t matter cause it wasn’t like I earned those high grades from an important white school like Harvard or Duke or Yale - it was “merely” an HBCU. The fact that I’ve worked at an LGBT clinic and served as a health educator and outreach worker for a hard to reach population must not really be an achievement either. Maybe its because I did all those things while fat. You mean I coulda just not done anything or gone anywhere so long as I stayed skinny and that woulda been something important?!

Disgusted. Frustrated. Sad. And slightly ashamed…for the moments it has gotten to me and I look at something while I’m hungry and wonder if I should really eat that. I remember all those times my mom sent me to bed hungry. The times she sent me to school hungry or during school opening my lunchbox and finding 4 apple slices for my lunch not because we didn’t have something to eat (now granted, sometimes we legit didn’t have something to eat…but more often it wasn’t because of that) - but because she didn’t want me to get fat. Ha! And yet she remembered me always eating?! And I remember all those times she called me fat. She must think I’m as big as a dinosaur now.

Fuck fat-phobic assholes who believe my major fuck up is that I got fat. I tell folks and truly believe that getting fat was the best thing that has ever happened to me. Because once I realized that some moat didn’t open up, or monster crawled out from hell, or the president disavowed my citizenship I could go on and live my life with genuine, loving and caring people who knew what true beauty looks like and feels like.

Well this dinosaur is still doin’ things, goin’ places, and loving life with her he-wife. And about to eat a big ass sammich.

*drops the mic*

I am seriously going to explode at the next person making assumptions of the queer agenda where marriage is concerned. I identify as queer. I identify as poly. I identify as a woman, a femme, and I’m a person of colour.

Now, given the latest that I’ve read this may shock you given all the other identities I have listed above… I’m also a wife. I was recently and legally married to my he-wife. I suddenly am faced with feeling like I have to withdraw one of my identities (my queer one) and find new one simply because of my marriage. Will my queer community support me anymore? Do they see me? Do they know when they blast marriage as some out there institution they are blasting me? I didn’t get married to appease some heterocentric ideal, to get some mysteriously absent legal benefits, or just cause I could. I was married because I wanted to walk into the court house, and not only walk out with a paper recognition of my union, but I wanted the public, the jurisdiction and my family to be present when I got married - when I told this wonderful and amazing person that I want to spend the rest of my life with them.

Being gay married is way different that cis/hetero married, for the record. I still have to worry about someone potentially taking me to court if something terrible happens to my partner and someone from his family thinks I don’t need/deserve/whatever to have our business, our home, or our kids. When I went to the emergency room recently, when they asked me if I had a support system and I said my wife the doctor made a stank face at me, left the examining room…and I had to wait another 15 minutes for another doctor to finish my exam. When my wife was in the hospital, they said I couldn’t see him because I wasn’t his immediate family. I can’t file jointly on my federal taxes because it is against the law and I could be sent to jail. The tax person told me it is actually cheaper to file separately for the state. I can’t cover my partner with my health insurance policy unless I have a cool job and even cooler insurance company. My partner or I would still have to have a second parent adoption. My wife couldn’t receive my pension benefits if I worked for the Feds. (Or, at all if I didn’t have a will…) My wife doesn’t automatically have power of legal or medical attorney. The minute I left the state with my “valid” marriage, I lost all access to state things that said show us your marriage certificate and we might think about honoring it.

So where’s all these legal and financial benefits that I’m supposed to be reaping for having been married? Where’s all this sudden red carpets to access? I got news for you, it doesn’t exist. At least not yet. So why the hell did I do it? Because I wasn’t interested in increasing my privilege. I wanted to be married - which, I would hope - is why people got married for in the first place.

PS - I’m not saying fund marriage over other important issues. We must fight for access to all rights simultaneously for this to be an all-encompassing movement. If you feel marriage is unfairly funded in your area, tell your local organization to fund other things as much. If you have the time to blow up in your blog, Facebook and other social media about it, you have the time to send a well crafted email or make an intelligent sounding phone call. I am also not saying for anyone else to be married. But if you want to get married and you can, do. If you want to be married and you can’t, fight. But those who don’t want to be married, please think about what it means to deny someone access to something simply because it doesn’t fit what YOU want to do.