Teatro Tears

Last night, I feel my eyes glaze over and attentions fly away in the midst of the post-reading buzz of feedback, compliments, and exchanges. Not because I don’t appreciate such exchanges, just because I am really hungry. And worked all day, and picked up children from after school activities and rushed home and gave them dinner, and dressed, and grabbed my books and papers, and left them when they didn’t want to come saying ‘ok, but don’t call after 7pm, just send a text message,’ and felt guilty, and sat in traffic on the Bay Bridge for 40 minutes while listening to one song on repeat the whole time and working out choreography and pacing in my head because this piece, for the tour, is a thing I’ve slacked on. And then looked for parking for 15 minutes. And then showed up a half hour late (but it was all good, cuz it hadn’t started anyway).

I refused to be stressed out about any of these things. Everything happens in good time, so I will sure take mine. What else am I gonna do? Yes, I will always take the time to pull over my head a clingy black dress, to fasten strings of red beads around my neck, to honey my collarbone and nipples before tucking them into cups of coral lace. I think of the Darkside Astrology book which says of Leos something to the effect of: you don’t worry about being late because you know that nothing would ever dare begin without you. Perhaps, perhaps. But I do reason that I am moving quick as I can and doing what I need to in order to be well.

In the post-reading buzz, there are the people who tell me I have touched them. There are the people who want to touch me. There are people who have only known me through words on a page and are intrigued by the physicality of me and sound of my voice, as can happen when you meet writers in the flesh. And then a sweet chicana butch comes up to me and introduces herself and tells me I made her cry. I guess that would be two of us.

Yes, this would be the second gig in a row at which I have cried. This time it was in a dark corner, while another writer was reading and after my jotito friend had left. I felt a little ridiculous. I was glad nobody noticed. I figured it was the rawness of the stuff I read. I wondered if this is what it’s gonna be like til this season is over.

While I sinffle, I take comfort in the fact that it’s rumored that M cries at every engagement, play opening and lecture she has. And that the other Fur/Pelo actress cried right after the play was done while M and I held her. See. It’s ok, I tell myself. I remember that before the stage lights went up and the house ones down, I looked up to M for reassurance, only to see her sobbing into her lap in the very back row. Shit, I am on my own, I thought, and gathered my fuerza, despite the pre-show shots of tequila swimming through me. That show was also some rawness.

The story goes like this. Michael is an odd collector and character who inherits a pet shop after the previous owner dies of AIDS (read as from loving strange animals too much). Michael loves Citrona, the hairy butch monster girl he finds and buys from a circus sideshow after her mother sold her to the circus. Michael exoticizes Citrona and is in love with, and lusts for her, particularly her desires and wildness. And Michael keeps her caged. Citrona falls in love with Nena, the straight, sassy, femme fatale animal trapper who Michael hires to care for Citrona. Nena is in love with Michael yet intrigued and disgusted by Citrona all at once.

It’s a piece full of sexual tensions, rawness, lust, violence, power and control, and un-love, in the sense of unrequited love and desire, the unloveables, and love and lust that is not acknowledged, accepted, or respected. And in the end? Well, there are a lot of ways to imagine the ending because the play stops mid-scene before you know the fate of all the characters. It is most often read as Citrona killing and eating Nena, and then killing Michael, who finally unlocks the cage. Heavy stuff, right?

It’s not that I have a problem crying, I just don’t usually at engagements. It’s just that (vainly) I can’t stand to have tear streaks on my face, or to walk around so vulnerable-like and opened in the midst of strangers who have instant intimacy with me because of the things I share through my work. This doesn't have to necessarily be negative. It's just complicated right now. Yes, it’s time for a break. But in the meanwhile, I need to figure out a strategy for self care and being alright through the coming months’ gigs.

Thoughts?

Other Moments

From other lives. 2 gems from the archives.

Adventures with powertools

I had a crush on somebody who wore a Fraggle Rock shirt

Pre-Caffeine Confessions

I don’t (usually) like parks. It’s how the grass itches. It’s the bugs. It’s the way one’s shoes sink into the ground. It’s how there is nowhere to comfortably be. These things make me frown.

The last time I had an outdoor reading was on a beautiful crispy fall day in Dolores Park. I was exhausted, a tiny bit hungover, and freezing the whole time. My stilettos kept getting stuck in the ground which left me in danger of tipping over and toppling down the hills. The wind kept blowing my skirt over my nalgas. My arms were full of books and papers so there wasn’t very much I could do to counteract the skirt blowing or tipping over. So one friend walked in front of me and would push me back upright when I started to tip, and another walked behind me to pull the skirt back down over my ass.

But then they started to drink wine and I was kinda left on my own. And didn’t get very much wine, consequently. By the time I went on I was freezing and couldn’t feel my toes or my ass cheeks. My hair had blown everywhere. My nose and cheeks were red. I was sniffling. All I wanted was a long draw of warming tequila and a blanket.

I have a reading in a park this weekend. I just don’t like the park. I just don’t enjoy having to brave and trample across acres of nature to get to the stage. And I refuse to wear sneakers and earmuffs. But other than the nature and the elements, it should be a good time.

So I made the announcement recently that I’m taking a break after my spring season is done (June 2nd, yay!) from booking readings, spoken word or theater stuff. I said that it was much-needed, which it is. I am really tired. I’ve spent increasing amounts of time over the last few years traveling to perform. Over the last year at home, it meant a three hour drive to the airport and then the trip and then a three hour drive back from the airport. That is a lot. I also think I just need a minute to recuperate from moving and rearranging my life here. These are the practical pieces of it.

At the heart of it, I realize I have not been having fun. That word sharing in public, and theater have started to feel like a chore to me recently. I am tired of my work. “I know what you mean,” a writer friend says to me when I tell her of my struggles “ I hate my whole fucking book.” Well, it’s not that we really, really hate the stuff we’ve created, published, produced, written. It’s just that if this is the way I am feeling, I need a break and need to do some soul searching. This is not the space I want to be in with my work. This is not the space I ever envisioned being in when I was a young writer.

The first time I took a stage was six years ago. I need time to reflect on the paths and directions my work has taken since then. I am trying to remember my early experiences of the rush and joy I get (yes despite everything, I still get it) at sharing my work with people. I am trying to remember what this sensation was like when it was new to me. I am trying to remember how a blank page to me, as a little girl in rural migrant Washington state, was an open road. And how a blank page to me as a young femme far from home gave me room to remember, and how a blank page as a grown up femme holds so much possibility, so many open doors. Very Ellegua.

Because of life circumstances, I have not had the space or capacity to grow my work the way I need to over the last year. Because of this I am displeased with myself. In a writing retreat for writers of color last year, the first thing a writing mentor had us do was an exercise on how we have learned criticism. Who is your critical self? Who are you as a critic? This was and still is deep to think about. The ways we are criticized and receive criticism are so deeply embedded in us.

I struggled not to cry in workshop as I talked about this. For me criticism has meant shame and never being good enough. I had a long list of things that started with my mother’s and female relatives self-criticism around their bodies, aging, and preservation and the ways this meant survival to them that went on to early experiences around class and race and ended somewhere around the ways that queer poc bodies are displaced, policed and controlled. In between was stuff around surviving sexual assault, fearing I was never really smart enough throughout college, and a bunch of other shit too. These are some of the ways and experiences through which I have learned and experienced criticism in its different manifestations.

The ways in which I have been critical of my self are rooted in the ways I have been hated and violated. I have to struggle to be conscious of this, to make the distinction and work actively to undo the ways in which I have internalized these experiences. This has everything to do with my work.

But in being critical of myself I also need to not be. I need to recognize my accomplishments and that it’s not been a bad year for me. I cranked out hundreds of pages of new work, won a cool award that was very meaningful to me in a personal way, and had the honor of sharing my stuff with beautiful audiences all over the place. This is good.

So what am I excited about right now?

I am excited for Mangos with Chili (more news coming). I am excited right now in this moment about new paths I’m taking in developing qpoc dance theater. I need to establish what this means for me, what it will look like, and how it connects to my earlier work, before I can shape it and share it with others. I am excited about the written page. The solitude and quiet of it, and worlds created in my head coming to life. I am excited about collaborative work that’s gonna be in development over the coming year. None of this is bad right?

I also said I was taking sabbatical because I wanted to finish my book. I realize this terrifies me. I fear I can’t do it. I fear I will and then hate it. I know I will finish it. Maybe not in the timeframe I am hoping for it to be completed by, but it will get done one day. And you know, if it doesn’t, it’s gonna be ok. If there is one way I have grown artistically over the years, it’s that my ego is no longer attached to the work I produce, and this makes worlds of difference.

Of course I did say that it was still ok to approach me about potentially doing stuff. Because sometimes despite one’s best intentions, it’s just impossible to say no. And because there are some places I wouldn’t mind going. Like more time in New York. And anywhere (warm) by a beach. But overall, I am feeling happy about my decision and excited to see the ways I might grow in the coming years.

In other news, I was quite flattered to be described recently as being “a dirty hot smart best thing good stuffs right here ladycake.” Awwwww, thanks friend! For reminding me.

Night Sounds


I.
I sleep nowhere like I do in the desert. Maybe it’s the way the empty is so familiar. How in the empty there is so much room for my dreaming and the places this will take me. Maybe it’s the still of the air on hot nights, pressed against my mouth like a kiss, a remembering of touch I feel for a long time after. Or it could be the smell of the desert, sun on skin, the perfume left after the wind has wound its way into my walls, under my sheets, and into my sleeping.

Of course it’s the sounds. The roaring of vehicles on the highway, hurrying to move past this place that is my home, this place not easy to leave. It’s the music of crickets and other creatures moving through the night. The clamors of grief, rancheras crackling over old radios, the crush of beer cans under boots, the screeching of novelas viewed by the tired hearted, and prayers whispered to lit altars through the breaking lips of those who believe in salvation.

These are the sounds I am used to sleeping under. The first few nights in new places I stay awake through all the hours just to listen. To learn all the new noises.

There is typically an absence of clocks in the spaces I live in. Many people notice this when visiting me. Many people are driven crazy by this and can’t handle it. And in the rooms I walk through there is usually an abundance of mirrors. People notice this too, and often can’t handle it either. I have loved the mirrors I have owned for the truths of myself they have shown me, for holding the images of the people I have loved, and for reflecting moments of my life back at me. My very favorite mirror was a copper Mexican mirror I found in a stack of discounted mirrors. I was drawn to it because I could feel the sadness of the maker in it. I could tell the maker was a man. I could tell he had cried when making it. I didn’t know why. Just that this made me love the mirror, with much of my heart. It hung at the end of my bed in my last home. It held me naked, every day.

I don’t have the mirror anymore. It hangs on the walls of someone else’s rooms. I don’t know if they ever noticed me in it. I don’t know what the mirror sees or hold now.

(I’ve prolly told this story of my beloved mirror on this blog before, and am most likely starting to repeat myself already in this third decade of my life. But if I did tell the story of this mirror it would have been at least a few years ago, in the warm months, and I would have told it differently).

During my sleepless nights in my new rooms, there are no mirrors up yet to remember or look forward in. And no clocks. I think of the seconds I have passed up til now. I remember my body small, terrified of swaying water when walking over bridges in my mother’s shadow. I think of my body now, in the seconds unfolding before me, giving themselves to me. I dream my body an old woman. What will I look like? Where will I walk? Who are the people that will walk near me?

The world is never really quiet. Not in the desert. Not in the woods. Not in the city. Not in my pink bed now. Even the stars have their moments of screaming. They know life and dying just like any other creature.

Seis Palabras

I fucking love words. And I like fucking words and fucking with words and words that make me want to fuck. So here are my six word love stories, like Fabi and others have done. Of course each sentence in itself tells a story, but sequenced together they tell more story. So here we go. Three sequences, three stories.


One.
Dirty stolen kisses, a bathroom stall
Pull my skirt down, walk out
This is how you remember me
Twisting under drumbeats and your hands



Two.
Tonight I could ride you forever
Black satin glove in your mouth
My teeth grip your belt buckle
Push me over, pin me, strike
Yes, deeper, make me say please
(please please si yes ayyyyyyy por favor)



Three.
Brought our ghosts with us here
Home, a pupa blooming between us
Sweet is this memory of s/kin
The secrets of me you hold
This hunger lingers, against my will

Moving Day

I am woken at 9:15am by a text from the reina pirata that says: Happy Moving Day Mamita! It is ok that I am awake. Today is moving day. I am glad she thought to remind me. And anyways, I have to be up early for my Brazilian class. This would be the grueling two hour class that can tear the skin from the bottom of my feet and make every muscle in my body ache for two days after. Even my crotch muscles (I can now flex and isolate them). It would also be the class that I just can’t bear to miss, because it is one hell of a class and because it feeds me spiritually. Also because the community of dancers and musicians in it is slowly becoming family to me, and because the live music makes me remember the music and musicians I grew up with. And in this way I am daughter there, and know some home there, and it is a good bridge between many pieces of my life, and in being so is a space where things are both realized and exorcized.

So at the beginning of my day this is what I imagined my schedule would be like:
11:15 - 1:30: Dance
1:30: Drive home, bathe and dress
2:30: Meet up with friend to pick paint colors for my new place
3:30 - 6:30: Move
7:00 - ? Painting Party

Ok, I know that maybe it’s not wise to start a moving project at 3:30. But really, because of the flood, I don’t have that many things to move. I have clothes, products, files, books. One dresser. My pink bed linens. Small items recently acquired. That’s all. So I figured three hours would be fine. Everything til 1:30 went as planned. On the way back from dance I start to call everybody to tell them to come over for a painting party. (Even though I hadn’t bought paint yet). And then I reached the friend who I was supposed to pick paint with who says let’s all go to the flea market! Let’s all play in the sun. And because I haven’t been to this particular flea market in forever, and because it is really sunny and warm, I agree.

When I get home I do not shower. I decide that because I will be in nature (kind of) and because I will be moving, I will only get dirty again, and I will shower after all of that. So I change. I am feeling a brown and gold motif with either red or hot pink accents. So it’s out of my dance gear and into a hot pink bra and panties, a geniusly cut and adorable brown and cream striped tank top (stripes are horizontal on the cups, vert on the body) which the bra sticks out of, brown skirt, stacked brown suede platforms with gold trim, gold earrings, and a hot pink bag.

The time spent at the flea market is lengthy and ridiculous. We have too many visions and concepts and ideas and outfit schemes and decorating schemes amongst us which makes an event like the flea market potential chaos, tantrums, disaster and exhaustion for everyone involved. Before I know it three hours have passed. I have purchased an utterly beautiful yet questionably useful red glass heart shaped dish held in a golden metal labyrinth of twistiness with a stand sticking out of it off of which hangs a miniature spoon. It shall live near my bed perhaps. It shall be perfect for having future lovers feed me things out of perhaps. And I have purchased books, which I have carried with me all over the place.

I bring myself home. I realize that after stomping around in heels for hours and frolicking in the sun and carrying heavy books while doing so, I am just exhausted. I also realize that I still have to move. And that I must cancel the painting party because I have no paint. I proceed to make calls.

I basically tell friends: “Ay friend. I am overwhelmed. I am not having a painting party because I forgot to get the paint. I must move now. Which means I must put on sneakers. Which means I am sad.” Except I say it longer and I think I cry.

So I go ahead and put on my moving outfit. It consists of really tight dark wash jeans, a sheerish black scoop neck shirt, a really tight blue hoodie with gathers flaring out from the zipper, glittery thick black hoops, and red glitter sneakers.

I am ready to move! Except there is one problem. I am so fucking hungry I really might tip over. I realize that it is 6 pm and all I have eaten all day is a banana and an apple and coffee. I should go grocery shopping, I think. But I realize this creates another dilemma. I don’t know which house to take the groceries to. If I take them to my new house, they will be with me as they should be. Except I won’t have anything to cook them in or eat them off of. But if I bring the groceries to the ex’s where there are things to cook them in and eat them off of, then I will have to move them. Have you ever moved food? That’s just no fun. It’s usually the last thing you move, and it pisses you off. And it can get sloppy. Mayonnaise jars can break and juice can spill because someone didn’t put the lid on properly.

My solution is to change of course.

I decide to not go get groceries because of the above dilemma. I decide to go get take out. Meaning I can’t go out in my moving outfit. I mean, either way I would have had to change. But before this can happen, Roommate comes in the door. Thank the stars. I need company and support in these pre-move moments. And to be driven around. Want to go to dinner? I ask. Yes she says, but first I have to go the art supply store because I need a new sketch book. Ok, I say. And we are off. “You look different Cherry,” she says glancing at my get up as she drives. I realize I have forgotten to change. I almost make her turn around, but then realize that by the time we turn around, I change, we come back, go to the art store and find food, I will be ready to eat my arm. Or her.

We go to the art store and get the sketch book. When we are back in the car, Roommate asks if I mind if we go clothes shopping for a minute. If you have been around me when I am physically drained and have not eaten for a very long time, you know that I can’t recall things, finish thoughts or sentences, and become very still and quiet. At this point I am too weak to respond audibly and she deciphers the moan I do manage to bellow, which really means ‘I need to eat now,’ for a ‘No, Roommate, I don’t mind at all.’

I mean, not that I do, really. It is not in my nature to refuse any excursion involving looking at, trying on, or taking home clothes, accessories or shoes. And despite my near fainting state, I am eager because I have been denying myself clothes so as not to dip into my furniture and relocation fund. So what do I find myself drawn towards in the store? Fucking jeans. If you know me, you also know that I don’t like to wear jeans very much, that I feel out of my element in them, and tend to limit my wearing of them to things involving nature. Like parks, or to the ocean when it is cold, or in the terrible desert outpost I just came from. If you know me well, you also know that I have been wearing jeans a whole lot since getting here and that this grieves me terribly. Part of it is that most of my clothes are in storage, part of it is that the weather is weird, and part of it I just can’t account for.

I don’t know why I am looking at jeans, I say to Roommate.

Well try the skirt section over there, she says. But I did, and found them unattractive. So I find myself uttering in response something that shocks me: Well. You can never have too many jeans. This is not a thing I believe in for myself. Roommate responds: Yeah at one point I got down to two pair and it was insane. Two pair is all I recently had, til I got two more a few weeks ago. I enter the dressing room and as I try the jeans on, I start to wonder if this place I have relocated to will cause my fashion deterioration. Because none of the jeans suit me, I go over to the lingerie. I do not need any lingerie. I have more than is reasonable now. This is what I am thinking when I see it. It is red satin, fishnet over the cups, black rosettes where cup meets strap. It’s size 36D. It should be mine. As usual when it comes to potential lingerie purchases I reason with myself ‘but it will be so good for the stage’ and in the span of 45 seconds I’ve constructed a whole concept, set and lighting scheme, and chosen music, props and the rest of the outfit. All while holding this one underthing in my hand.

In the end I don’t get it. I exercise incredible self control and do not dip into my furniture fund. I tell myself that there will always be pretty clothes waiting to be found in the world. Instead I wait in line with Roommate and look at accessories. I am unable to converse at this point. I have a 3 foot necklace tangled up around my neck which I can’t remove, stacks of bracelets on both wrists and keep bursting into uncontrollable giggles randomly and inappropriately because I doubt I have the energy to disentangle myself from all of this. People begin to look at me. Did something funny happen Cherry? No, no, I say. I can’t even tell you what Roommate and I talked about at this point because I don’t remember.

I have no recollection of walking to the car either or of the ride to our favorite Hawaiian barbecue place. I do remember ordering chicken with an extra scoop of potato salad and spam musubi though. And I do remember eating the fuck out of it.

When we are eating I am like a new woman, with boundless energy, believing that anything is possible. And moving is the farthest thing from my mind. Let’s go to the bath house! Let’s go to the beach and look at the moon! Let’s -! I am full of let’s.

And by the time we are done with eating, night has fallen, and my muscles have started to ache, and all I want to do is soak in the tub, sip a bit of tequila, and be chill.

Moving day can be tomorrow. And the paint getting and party another day too.

Things Left Unsaid


Part I
I lied.

For shallow reasons, like Leo pride and not wanting you to know you were capable of hurting me again. And I lied for some not shallow reasons like I did not allow myself to feel hurt for a few days, and it feels better to me to choose to just not engage with you anymore. It would not be productive. And I sense that you don’t really care. That is alright.

But I do hurt. It’s not devastation. It’s not heartbreak. It’s not shattering. It’s just sadness. And disappointment. It’s an ache I imagine to glow the color of sea glass through my core and over places your mouth has known. It’s a sting like a scrape, stunning and sudden, like blood you have drawn from me.

It’s just that I am still, as ever, puzzled by whatever motivations, intentions, and desires you had for me. None of it makes very much sense to me. I don’t understand why you chose to pursue me and involve me in your life multiple times when you didn’t have the capacity to. Why? How was this fair to me? It was not. I don’t understand why you chose to bring me unknowingly into the middle of the ongoing strife and unfinished-ness between you and your ex. Again, why? How was this fair to me? Had I had clarity about these things it would have affected the ways in which I chose to interact and be involved with you from the beginning.

You withheld information from me and in doing so were dishonest with me.

Your actions and behaviors have repeatedly caused me to feel unwanted, unimportant and unappreciated.

Your actions and behaviors have caused me to feel manipulated and used by you, and really quite disposable.

You were not responsible with my heart.

And in not being upfront and straightforward about the status of your previous relationship, you were not responsible with the trust I placed in you.

All of these things hurt. But I don’t hold any ill will towards you. I wish you healing. I wish you self-determination. I wish you strength. I wish you future loves in which there lives truth and trust. I wish you future loves in which your needs and desires are met, and in which you feel valued. This is what you deserve, and then some.





Part II.
When relationships transition, shift, dissolve, fall apart, blow away, blow up, or cease to exist as they once did, there are things I tell my lovers and things I don’t. The things I choose to tell I try to keep simple, clear and brief. I am not always successful at this.

The things I don’t tell are things that are for me to work out, things like the note above. These things are not meant for my lovers’ eyes or ears. Why? They are my feelings, and they are not the responsibility of my lovers to bear. While things experienced in a given relationship might have caused them, the reasons they surfaced, their significance to past trauma and experience, and what they mean to me are my responsibility to decipher and process. Not anyone else’s. It’s not fair to burden lovers with these things. They are not able, and it’s not their responsibility, to decipher these things for me.

For me to consider are things like this, for example: What does feeling unwanted, unimportant and unappreciated mean to you? What are the things that have made you feel unwanted and unappreciated in the past? What exactly is it about this current situation that has caused you to feel like this? And where else (outside of this person or relationship) do you find that validation or have that need met? And with this information, clarity and knowledge I grow and become more solid.

I’ve been reflecting on endings a lot lately, and how as we culturally celebrate death, all endings can be celebrated as well.

I celebrate the end of my relationships and honor them for what they are and were, for the moments and energy exchanged, for the things I learned from my lovers, and for the feelings generated during and after which have pushed me closer to knowledge and to life.

I celebrate the endings of my relationships for the possibilities that endings and transitions offer. In an ending there is possibility of newness. Possibilities waiting to be found in the self, in the way I approach my life, in future interactions with my once lovers. Possibilities in a world that is full of moments waiting to happen.

The actions and choices of other people will always be out of my control. What is under my control are the choices I make based on the things I need and desire. What is under my control is remaining clear about what I need and want and being up front about it with others. What is under my control is not tripping when others are, and respecting and not judging the choices of others. What is under my control is my beautiful and very full life, and all the possibility it holds right now.

Time to let things begin.