I think of myself as a writer. It took a long time for me to embrace and adopt that label (or title, or name, or identity, use whichever you like; they are all, in many ways, interchangeable).
But I did not pop out of my mom writing. Writing is something that I learned, over a very long period of time, to do. As a kid, I didn’t journal. I didn’t tell stories. I barely read books. I did not have any adults around me who were writers (nor big readers, for that matter). But I loved to play outside (sports, Playmobile, tree-climbing, with the dog, wandering in the woods). It was the priority. At some point, which I *think* I can pin down to senior year in high school, I started liking to write poetry. This “like” grew in college, facilitated in no small part by a wonderful professor of contemporary poetry, and by the time I was 23 years old, I started regularly writing poetry in my notebook in Bart’s cafe in Northampton, Mass. Soon, I moved across country, got an MFA in poetry. Then got a job not in poetry, but the MFA got me a job in fundraising which is heavy on writing…and practice + environment makes you who you are. And here I am.
I don’t write poetry regularly anymore. I write mainly fiction**, or, I write here (or in my little notebook) about ideas*. But every now and again, probably more often than your average bear, I go back to poetry. A few days ago I picked up this old poem again:
Untitled + Unrequited
Like every baby gay I loved my best friend.
Hugged too long and slipped my hand
where it didn’t belong.We practiced making out, and traded clothes.
I’d go home with a lump in my throat,
crawl into bed with her coat.As long as I didn’t say the words
she’d do this with me, just girls
being girls.
After all this time, I still like it (it’s at least 12 years old). The bittersweetness reminds me of being an emotionally clumsy teen. But as I read it and re-read it, something felt unfinished.
Maybe it was the title. “Untitled” is clearly unfinished. The professor noted above did not allow us to submit any work that was untitled. She made you work hard. Figure it out. Pick something.
Maybe it was the unrequited nature of the story. What was between the two girls was doomed to be forever unfinished. Maybe that was what I was feeling?
Or maybe it was the words, the words. Two little nondescriptors in the first line of the last stanza. What was I implying by writing that? What words? Same gender loving? Lesbian? Girlfriends? Lovers? Would a kid that young use those words to describe themselves? Would a kid that young even think of those words? Did I when I was that age? In that circumstance?
That’s when it hit me: the problem was the words—but not that I had left it up to the reader to decide what the words were. It was the whole idea of it; the whole idea of labeling. Throughout our lives, we are either forbidden from doing it, or we are forced to do it. When we label things—name things—it changes how we treat ourselves, how we treat others, and how others treat us. There are so few times in our lives when we actually get to label ourselves, and when we do finally try to decide who we are, there are few labels or names available that truly capture our experience of ourselves. So, we compromise, and take the best of what we can get. Because we have to do it, from filling out the M or F and sometimes “other” on employment forms, driver’s licenses, health insurance; to adding in our pronouns on our emails, or writing our bios, or introducing ourselves. We have to do it; because, if we don’t do it, it will be done for us: someone will look at us and decide based on their own perspectives and biases who we are and how they’ll treat us. They’ll decide what we’re capable of. What we deserve and don’t deserve. And on and on.
So my mind wandered into a fourth stanza:
Titles are the hardest thing. To label
it, you fence it in. You stake
a claim. You shame.
If we do decide on a label and “fence” ourselves in with it, we just might push to every possible edge of the corral, coming to know just how much we’re capable of, and doing it all. Labeling ourselves can be incredibly liberating: stake your claim! Like I eventually did, with writer.
But if others “fence” us in with a label, we can be harmed. We are limited, controlled. For a lightweight example, people often see me as a soccer mom from the mid west, or as a lesbian, sometimes with the addition of the pejorative “angry” at the front. I’m not a soccer mom. I’m not from the mid west, and I don’t use the label “lesbian” either. Sometimes, however, I am angry.
I remember when I was the age of that person in the poem. I wasn’t “gay.” I had no idea what gay was. The word, quite literally, did not exist in my universe (small town Polish Catholic community). The concept did exist, though: men (only; always) who were “visibly” gay (read: not cis/hetero normative) were considered “funny.” I clearly remember my mother wrinkling her nose when she said it about some boy passing by. “Funny.” This is what was ingrained in me. Not “gay” as one of a billion possible identities a human might embrace. “Funny,” and in reference only to men. Rendering me invisible; outside both the epithet, and the identity. Words matter, as we know. But when we use, and do not use words; and how we use and do not use words is the matter.
Would I have called myself gay or queer when I was that age (mid-1980s)? Probably not, but it probably would have been really helpful to know the words existed, so that when I was ready to say (to myself) who the heck I believed myself to be, I‘d have some context for it. Some idea of relatedness—of not aloneness—to know that I was somewhere among the people—as opposed to outside them, isolated and strange, which is what I thought about myself for a very, very long time.
To be honest, I don’t feel sure about that last stanza. Because I am on the fence about labels and identities. By that I mean—not that they should or shouldn’t exist. I just don’t like that they must constantly be uttered, and fought for, and explained. I know that neurologically and biologically, human beings categorize. Sometimes we do it on purpose; we’re always doing it unconsciously. So it’s not surprising, this constant battle to name or be named. But almost every day I wonder: what if I interrupted the constant categorizing going on in my mind when I interacted with others? What if I interrupted my ideas about how to treat people (even those I’ve known for a long time—even myself!). What if I waited, openly, to see what people revealed to me and responded accordingly—whether it was meeting them for the first time, or meeting them after decades of friendship or acquaintanceship? What could that world look like?
In the context of the poem, I think the two girls could possibly go on like that forever—loving each other until maybe the hormones changed and they didn’t anymore. Or, maybe they would have been together forever. Maybe they wouldn’t be together, but maybe they wouldn’t have fallen out of touch, either. Without the external pressures of naming and labeling, could that relationship have evolved indefinitely, in a positive way?
In the context of me as a “writer,” I keep that definition as broad as possible. I’m still running all over that pasture to find where the fenceline is. See below…
—MBF
*Same as May Sarton, who wrote in At Seventy: A Journal: “writing for me is a way of understanding what is happening to me, of thinking hard things out.”
**As many of you who read Unfit regularly know, I am working on a (two) novel (series). It is moving slowly but I’m not judging the process. Just keeping on keeping on. The book is part book, part musical, part rainbow adventure, so there are songs, as well as visuals, that I am creating for it. For me, this novel is as much about playing in unfamiliar and fun territory as it is about practicing my craft. So, I wanted to share some of the fun/play part with you here. This is a quick video of the visual I created, which includes the timelapse drawing, the final loop, and a clip from the song. I made the visual on Adobe Fresco on my iPad one night when I was refusing to go to bed because I did not want tomorrow to come (you know you’ve been there). The song was built with Garageband, a casio keyboard posing as a “midi”, and Vocaloid6, which is AI-generated singing software. I didn’t know how to use Adobe Fresco (it animates, and has that fun time lapse feature); I also did not know how to use Vocaloid6. And Garageband, well, when the pandemic hit, I was desperate to find something to play with, and that was it. I say this to say that playing, especially in creative territory that you don’t think “you’re any good at” or “can’t do at all” is important, valid, and super fun. That’s all the reason you need to do it.
I really appreciate what you are saying here about labels, titles, names, the whole catagorizing thing we humans do. The fences. How can we just be open to non-catagorization? To open beingness? Thank you for exploring this so beautifully.
First of all: that fourth stanza! So good.
Second: the queerdoes! Are they in the novel? I sure hope so.