Old and Crotchety

I want to be Sophie or Dorothy when I'm older.
Or Morgana, but she's not crotchety so I couldn't picture her here.  She's just cool.

This post is called "Old and Crotchety." It's about me being crotchety, and getting older, but "Old and Crotchety" is not the subject of the post. That's just the name of the post. That's why I call the post "Old and Crotchety."

Now it all started twenty one years ago… When I came out in 1993, I came out as bi, not as gay or straight. It was the closest thing that fit. It was a small republican town (not Stockbridge, MA). I quickly switched my terminology to lesbian because lesbians got a lot less flack, weren't seen as flaky, and even if I occasionally fucked a man, it was easier to identify as lesbian than to deal with people asking when I was going to pick a team.

Then it was 1994 and I rediscovered words like queer and dyke. They weren't restricted by terminology that used the word sex. That was important. My sexual orientation wasn't always about sex. It was about politics. It was about friendship. It was about picking up litter. And yeah, it was about sex.

Queer was less confining, less rigid, less academic than bisexual and homosexual and lesbian. Those terms sounded medical and antiseptic like I was gonna get injections, inspections, detections.

If someone asked, "Kid we only got one question: are you straight?" I'd answer no, and regardless of the term I chose for myself, they were going to find a way to denigrate it, so I might as well pick a word I liked, and queer was Strong. Powerful. Political.

And if they later asked, "Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself and gone straight?"

I'd go over and say, "You got a lot of god-damned gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough."

Remember, they started reclaiming the word queer in the early 90s.  I was pumped up on my newly discovered women's studies courses. I was 19. I wanted to reclaim and exclaim and do just about everything so that the whole world knew that I was into women. I wanted to create a nuisance.

I was a happy little queer, although I did use the term bisexual when outed at work in 1997. Queer wasn't an acceptable term for the workplace, and I liked (and more importantly needed) my job.

I finally saved up enough money that I went on to a university with my small town Associates degree. By 2000 I'd been out and queer for quite a while. My car was covered in rainbow stickers, and I didn't think about my sexual identity any differently than I thought about my morning yogurt because it was just a piece of me that I'd grown into. Well, not often.  When someone from church tried to set me up with her daughter, I was awed at just how liberal the Unitarian Universalists are.

I met a boy at college (he was a 30 year old grad student, I wasn't robbing the cradle). He gave me flowers, which nobody had ever done. In fact, no one had ever made a romantic gesture towards me unless they wanted something (for example that guy a friend made me date when I was 18 because she was worried people thought I was a lesbian because I didn't ever date guys - he attempted to woo me but that's just because she didn't know his green card ran out).

This was different. This was me actually being wooed. For the first (and only) time.  All previous girlfriends had been friends who became dates who became more. We didn't really do romance. We eschewed the trappings of romance as hallmark traditions.

It turns out I like being wood and treated like someone that someone has a romantic interest in. So I married him. Then we moved and suddenly everyone assumed I was straight. Then we married and moved and was in a monogamous, lifetime relationship with a man. Even when I told someone I was bi, they just glazed over because a married woman who's bi isn't really bi, she just wants to sound cool. Right? Right? Of course.

After separating and moving to the Boston area, I went back to calling myself queer. I eventually set-up an OKC profile where I met people who told me that I couldn't call myself queer because I was obviously only feminine. There was no gender fluidity in my being.

They're right. There isn't. I'm a cis woman and haven't ever questioned questioned it or needed to. So I figured ok, words have been redefined. I learned the rest of the alphabet and moved on with my life. But while bisexual completely works for me, it isn't as inclusive as it needs to be because I date along the gender spectrum, not just exclusively male or female folks.

So I tried on pansexual for size. It's a word that makes sense, but whenever I apply it to myself I giggle and giggle and picture myself wearing crystals. I don't know why, but when applied to me, pansexual sounds so new age.  It doesn't fit me.  It's a great word, but it's too new.  I'm an old fashioned woman.  So bisexual works better than pansexual to me.  I don't feel like a fraud.

However, the problem remains.  Bisexual is binary, and like pansexual, it still includes the word sex.  But queer... Queer works for me. It worked back then in the 1990s, too. For me it means standing up and saying what you want, choosing who you will be, defining yourself instead of letting other people define you.

Are you young and queer?  Do you want to argue with my decision on how I define myself?   Well, I have a problem with you taking a term I was using when you were still in diapers and saying that I'm not good enough for it.  I am not some wild revolutionary like I thought I was going to be.  One of the few things I have been a part of was participating in the reclamation of the words queer and dyke. I don't give a flying fuck what you think. Now go to your room while the grownups play.

And the only reason I'm typin' you this post now is 'cause you may know somebody in a similar situation.

Or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that, there's only one thing you can do:

Walk in wherever you are, just walk in, say "You can get anything you want when you're queer," and walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think ze's really slick.

And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots.

Arlo Guthrie

And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin' in, singin' Queer and walkin' out? They may think it's an Organization!

And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day ...
Walkin' in, singin' I'm queer and walkin' out? Friends, they may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's what it is: the queer movement! 
and all you gotta do to join is to say it the next time it comes around.

Ok, yeah, iconic song. Totally ripped it off for for my rant, but dammit, you can do anything you want at Alice's Restaurant!