Response

You stared at me, wide-eyed innocence in a
not so innocent face.
Bi now
Gay later.
The blood stopped flowing in my veins while you perched your suddenly
ugly glasses on your squished pug nose.
In a breath and a blink you were now
too skinny
too pale
too leggy
too closed-minded
To be attractive.

In a moment, in what you told me was a
Funny Joke before you told it
You looked in to my eyes and erased
My existence.
Standing directly in front of you, I was not only
Invisible
But I
Disappeared.

Because you know
You said it, knowing
Expecting me to laugh not just at myself
But at who I am.
And you
You got angry and defensive
When I did not.
You got angry and defensive
When I could not
Diminish
My existence.

And I sat there, the blood no longer flowing from heart to lung to brain and all I wanted was the cigarette I haven’t smoked since I last saw Laura. Since I last felt each and every day she told me I did not exist crawl over my flesh and I wanted to burn the memory from my skin with the lit, smoking end of the cigarette I craved.

I have been out almost longer than you have been alive and yet you tell me
I will change
Because, who I am, to you,
Is funny.
Is worth laughing at and mocking.
Because it makes you feel better.
Because I make you uncomfortable.
Because gender is the last thing on my mind when
Ani sings on repeat
And I want to fuck him and his untouchable face
And I was a superhero when she came along.

Until him
With words like cock and balls
Her
Celebrating words like pussy and breast.

But I love passion and liberalism and
Strength of character over strength in body.
I am attracted to his mind
Not just what is between her legs.

Because
Sex
To me is
Conversation and laughter
And the way he strokes me with his fingers
And the way she moves above me and below me and in me.

Who he is turns me on
Does she
Command?
Attach?
Cling?
Push?
Pull?
Fuck?
Love?
Live?

Are you jealous?
Nervous?
Scared?
Just when you’d defined what it meant to be you I came along
And refused to back down from a joke that was once made about you.

It’s just a phase, right?
Just a choice?
Just something to laugh at because you are young and experimenting.

Fence posts are uncomfortable
And I don’t flip flop
And my experimentation in bed has EVERYTHING to do with curiosity!
I am attracted to strong shoulders
And a sense of humor.
I love a smile and laughter and the ability to say
Feminist and liberation and
Deconstruction
Without wincing.

~Shauna Brock, March 2011