tranny roadshow 2006

Sadly, the tranny roadshow won't be doing shows west of the Mississippi. However, they are touring and promise a western show in 2007.

Always cool, here's the language they provide to inform and entice:

The Tranny Roadshow 2006 is coming!!!
What is the Tranny Roadshow? It is a multimedia performance art extravaganza. It is an eclectic group of artists, each one self-identified as transgender, that includes poets, rappers, storytellers, rock bands, comedians, actors, folk singers, zinesters, and more. It is a unique variety show full of intelligence, fun and humor, where the expression of gender and the expression of self are inseparable. And if you're east of the Mississippi River, it is coming to a town near you.

This year's performances feature Dylan Scholinski (author of The Last Time I Wore A Dress), Imani Henry (actor/playwright of B4T), Citizen Rahne (singer/songwriter from Baltimore's Charm City Kitty Club), Tona Brown (violinist and vocalist from the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music), Kelly Shortandqueer and Jamez Terry (zinesters and co-founders of the Denver Zine Library), and many others.

Full performer listings.
Complete schedule, April 1st through 30th, 2006.

New Series : The Necessities

I love doll shoes. They hold up impossible bodies. There is an architecture in each shoe that could hold a whole world - hey - cada cabeza es un mundo...

All this to say I've gained a bounty of Barbie and assorted girlie doll shoes and will be posting photos of them here. If you have some photos or actual doll shoes please send them to me [jrboitel@yahoo.com].

Let the fun begin!

To welcome Spring, how about these great little pink mules. Nothing like these shoes to show everyone you are rejoicing that the sun is out, the wind is cool and it's new make up season!

I would love to hear faggotgirl's comments on the whole shoe industry. Now that she's come out in video, made a name for herself in Crawford and is among the dykiest of the dykey, she's a potential political/social voice. Whachu say mama? (Bonus on this sight is a picture of my child in Crawford with faggotgirl, wearing her Orange you glad you're in Florida shirt, no less!)

Puff Daddy, the thrill seeker

Puffy, Tigrette's hamster, is living large in SA. He was getting big in Austin in that tiny cage. No exercise and plenty of food maybe. Tigrette claimed she exercised him but I don't recall seeing that tiny purple ball rolling around the house all that often.

So, moving here I decided to get rid of the plastic cage (plastic is dirty!) and bought an aquarium. But then the brother needed new furniture with his new digs so in came a house-combo-feeding station, a running wheel and a big ole' water bottle. And Puffy was lean in no time. The first day with the wheel he did an all-nighter: ten spins on the wheel, a sip of water, a climb on the house and back on the wheel.

That was early February.

Now having moved to the apartment Puffy's enjoying the space and likes being downstairs where all the action is (damn, what happened to the action happening upstairs?). But I made the mistake of running home one afternoon in late February and having a cat walk into the house. Obviously comfortable being with people or he wouldn't have. Well, he must have smelled something he liked because even after shooing the cat away 5 minutes later he came back in. This time he and Puff Daddy were face to face and that cat looked hungry.

I screamed out for the intruder to get out but since then, I swear, all these cats have been "hanging out". Tigrette says it's Cat Country and those cats better watch out or she's going to have to hurt them to keep them away.

With that in mind, Puffy terrified me a couple of days ago when he managed to climb out of his cage and got himself lost. I've seen that little houdini get out of all kinds of situations, flatten his body to pass under impassable things and generally always know the fastest way out of any situation.

I had to go to work so after a 1/2 hour search I left his food and water out on the floor and confided in my mom just how I did not want to find a dead body in the house. My mother picked up the little one at school and they came to the apartment. After much searching it looked dim. He could be stuck under an appliance. He could get outside and be a nice lunch for the many calicos in the 'hood. He could have burned himself on the space heater.

Out of no where my mother saw him. Bad Puff Daddy! just resting in the christmas tree holder in the storage closet.

He was upset for a couple of days after - he liked the freedom, even if he did trip out and put himself in the closet. He liked it and he was glum for days.

Now he's fine, eating from my hand again, generally bright and energetic.

I'm just waiting for him to decide he wants out again. Like so many other things, you can't make them stay.

girls, don't even think about college.

how sad - we teach our young women to be all that they can imagine, to have this.

I'm not the kind to say college is for everyone but, unfortunately, in this social climate, it's as necessary as lip liner on feathery lips.

missing

there's this song by everything but the girl called "missing". i keep thinking about it as i'm missing my community. connections here have been hard to foster considering i have so much work and am doing single parenting again.

i didn't think it would be a big deal for the interim to have so much going on. i'm still unpacking even. but i haven't been able to give adequate time to write since i'm taking some work home, and while fixing the furniture has been a creative outlet it's not the same as a good purging that writing gives me.

because of this i've started sleep walking at least twice now. once i woke up and my toothpaste tube had been squeezed and paste had come out, all spilling. another time i woke up to the toilet running. it's been doing this so we have to jiggle the handle but this time i must have tried to fix it while asleep because the lid was not sitting right and the entire stand that holds the balloon was sticking out.

i miss someone to talk with, someone with the same language. maybe i need some mama-ing.

oya coming as a hail storm

I've been writing, very slowly, the Oya piece. Somewhere in the middle of starting this I realized the language I carried wasn't going to work for this play so I'm coaxing a new voice, new language out. This as I hear the news that a huge storm with tornadoes and hail is approaching our area.

I have this so far for that play in poem form:

Oya circles Oggún’s fire,
nothing like the scent of smoldered ore
burning oak nothing like the rich tinge of hammer to metal

Y’moya had heard the cry,
brought a flood onto the land
but the people had not heard Mama Watta

and Oya prepares herself
nothing like the shine of a warrior’s outfit

Oya stands in the moonlight
Soon there will be no nights
only days – the bright light of Oya
on this earth.



Scene I
Act I

the clouds uncomfortable in their sky
darkness entering them swiftly
even hydrogen is suspicious of its oxygen counterpart
sediment swaying left and right, fighting the magnetism building in this high place

viral deep affecting the energy of each creature
below as above

purple swaying skirt in the sky
falls softly to the earth
a visit from Oya is never without change

testing, 1 2 3...

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

New University Course : Burlesque 101

I've been reading papers online since I don't have television in the house. Not that television provides adequate news most of the time anyhow.

I found this interesting piece on burlesque and it always makes me think about starting a big girl burlesque group. There are several in the country. All very hot. I saw one in San Fran at last summer's dyke march.

But there's also this incredibly troubling news about shaving money from minority scholarships for those who don't identify as such. It's amazing to me how universities, once viewed as spaces where future thought on changes to our society were bred, are now anticipating government's condemnation by actively modifying their scholarship programming to avoid the very necessary leveling of access to education and experience for all our people.

The institutions are reacting to two 2003 Supreme Court cases on using race in admissions at the University of Michigan. Although the cases did not ban using race in admissions to higher education, they did leave the state of the law unclear, and with the changing composition of the court, some university and college officials fear legal challenges.

Talk about the personal being political. Maybe universities shouldn't just keep teaching about how race is a social construct and instead look to truly living that belief. If scholarships didn't focus on race but chose other unique characteristics this might not be happening at all. But because of this even those who are differently gendered (i.e. women) wouldn't also have their scholarships given to those who don't identify as women.

In some spaces, like burlesque schools and shows, those who are distinct are taught to play up those differences. In others, like universities around the country, being different once again means we are calling attention to ourselves and don't deserve "special treatment".

ah, the local color...

Last week a supposed alternate voice for one of the Morning Mess crew (Xavier the Freakin' Rican and Biggie Paul) was "outed" as gay because he put his hand in the crotch of the DJ Biggie Paul and told him he loved him. The hosting radio station is The Beat, 98.5, a local hip hop/r&b station.

Part of the theatrics was that Biggie Paul threw a chair. The "gay" character, Hau Ping, is a psychic from Dallas who was utilized to provide horrible scopes and give away tickets and prizes. Hau Ping is already stereotyped with a huge accent and mischevious anecdotes.

It's all play but the stereotypes abound, including the fact that queer men just grab at another's crotch. And while the Hau Ping character was always played somewhat effeminiantly, the whole gay identity is a new thing that manifested last week.

After the chair throwing, the whole episode had Hau Ping calling from a cell phone on his drive back to Dallas while speaking dramatically/emotionally. There was no other talk about Hau Ping or the scene until this morning when Hau Ping returned to the phone saying he was going to sue, that he had a lawyer, etc. but that he wouldn't sue if Biggie Paul would go out on a date with him.

All the while, Biggie Paul and Xavier are both saying there's nothing wrong with being gay but that straight people shouldn't be subjected to gay advances (and, they say, the other way around).

It seems like something small but it's hurtful to me. Immigrant accents abound, stereotypes of what it means to be Asian, what behavior is deemed appropriate to queers, etc. all works to bother me.

I don't know what inroads have been made into radio regarding lgbt issues but this is a local radio program, not syndicated. I've talked to friends at GLAAD for advice.

The queer community here is in shambles since the Diversity Center closed but I'm committed to building up what I can including, if nothing else, a kind of media response group. We do have the Esperanza here but, to be honest, they've alienated some, and the MCC church here, which also has a limited audience at times. Both, however, are supporting Diversity Center programming now that their doors have closed.

gone camping

some of the youth who attend the center I work for are going camping for spring break. I managed to, unfortunately, hear a gay joke about the whole trip - someone saying "there won't be no brokeback mountain". you can be sure there'll be no love happening on that camping trip - I've seen who would be going.

straightback mountain

I've not written about the movie Brokeback Mountain. In this country, every queer has seen it, talked about it, felt hurt and understood it and, eventually, written about it.

I had difficulty putting all my thoughts down together. For me, as a queer woman, I can completely relate to Jack's inner destruction when someone he loves cannot take on the struggle of love. I can see Ennis' role in denying a label which brings with it so much responsibility and pain (even now in queer-"tolerant" spaces). Somewhere in the middle we carry the homophobia that was fed while still young, while knowing we were different but maybe not having the name for it.

I remember meeting my tia, Osvaldo, in Miami for the first time. I was eleven and loved him. He was so comfortable in his body. Long nails, housecoats and slippers. He was not a woman. He did not identify or want to be a woman. He didn't even take "gay" as his label. He called himself, and most others, maricon.

This was in the early 80s, before AIDS was fully realized, before gays were normalized - whitewashed - sanitized. He just knew what made him comfortable - and comfort included a young boyfriend who wore t-shirts with the Superman emblem (deserved, I'm sure) - comfort included red velvet curtains gathered at the floor, and a room reserved for countless animals of all species.

I knew I was more like him than I was like my mother. I may have had my mother's female body typing but physicality doesn't carry our presence. I was more maricon than I was wife and mother. Still am. I wanted that incredible force of love that was indefinable, which carried no markers and refused to be easily defined. I felt that potential for groundbreaking that was in me because I was like my tio.

All this to say that, just as people of color have had to see white people portray us on everything from tv commercials to feature films, there is a courage associated to straight actors who have the guts to portray queer characters. And queers go running to see films that have queer characters because there are so few. We are sold some illusion of our community, our history. I am not saying we should not see these films. I do, however, wonder how much gay-oriented movies are truly for the straight majority. For reasons as diverse as allowing them to show their politically-correct side to being labeled risque, straights manage to take on gay films and look holy for their acceptance.

Here's a great article I found that touches on some of this.

sex survey for women

Someone forwarded me this link for a sex survey and my curiosity got the best of me. It's a long survey but the poet in me loved it for the several hundred adjectives I could use to describe my sexual self.

Scope it out: https://www.psychdata.com/surveys.asp?SID=10816.

updates

Tigrette and I went shopping for meds at the Walgreen's last night and she told me that her classmates told her she was weird for not having a father. I asked her if she was the only one in that classroom without a father and she said no. I was going to be hurt, started thinking about why they are even having that discussion when I finally understood she was saying that the classmates were saying it was strange she was made without a father. Kids today. They are first-graders and already understand the basic needs for creating another one of them.

I did explain to her the difference between "weird" and "different" and we talked about what different families looked like. She had one friend living with her grandmother and another who had foster parents. Tigrette's been able to see different combinations of all kinds of things in her tiny life and you can see the difference it's made - she's well-rounded (for a 1st grader) and open to situations others would naturally question the validity or truth of.

I have had lots of activities and things going on that have been, for me, blog-worthy, but I'm so over-extended between work and single parenting and my own stuff and still living in boxes. At this point I'm thinking that I must not need it or I would have unloaded the box already.

I had a small breakdown moment at work once 3 weeks into the thing when I realized how interdependent my role is with other positions. So, I felt my hands tied when, completing a simple project meant there was a complete revamp of the process around that project. Yes, I'm enjoying my job but that, coupled with incomplete data and I was feeling a little frustrated.

A similar thing happened to me at home this week. Between the packed boxes, the boxes to dump, the furniture painting and design in Tigrette's room and learning to live in the kitchen I've inherited, I am wrecked. I keep thinking I shouldn't work so hard to make the place attractive but setting is always important to me. Without ambiance I don't feel at home. And it's evident : I'm eating quick foods and not sleeping well. I caught some cold Tigrette had and it's thrown me out completely. I haven't called my friends despite my knowing they have stuff going on.

But, I got hit a couple of days ago with the feeling that I had no community again. I came into the city intent on building and finding community for myself because I so enjoyed and prospered under a community feel.

Maybe it's because I haven't had the space to write. I'm completely reupholstering my couch and bought a dining table I'll be redoing so I'm not feeling the creative pull even as I know that a couch does not replace good purge time.

There is the potential for community - my next door neighbor is a queer Santero and the guy next to him is, as my neighbor says, "flaming, girl". Always nice. But I'm back in San Anto where I just too straight-looking for the rucas. I shouldn't even be concerned with that but it is one more straw that makes it hard to connect.

I think I'm going to go to the new Ruta Maya here in San Anto for their weekly poetry reading - let me get some stuff out! That is, after Tigrette presents at the science fair. She was, as she says, "the only 1st grader in the 1st grade hall to do a science project on magnets!" My baby.