I was swinging, waiting for you to come back. My head tilted back, staring at the stars, getting dizzy. Wondering what you’d say, wondering if you’d come back, wondering how this is going to go. Our secret meetings in the park under our special tree with your boxed wine and your shaking hands, when we would miss each other, and we’d go to the wrong place, and we’d sit in silence, because we were too nervous to speak words. When we’d leave and come back because we didn’t want to be apart. When we’d sit and stare at each other because we didn’t need words. When you left my car and you shouted that you loved me and I didn’t know if I heard you right. I couldn’t believe my ears. I remember and you pretend like you forgot, but I remember everything. I remember the staircase, her looking over my shoulder, me giving you your birthday card, because I already loved you and I didn’t know it but somehow she knew. I remember looking for you at the festival and walking around for an hour trying to find you just to tell you happy birthday, because I didn’t know I loved you. I remember sneaking into your house hearing my ex in the next room coughing while we were on drugs and I had to make sure you were okay. I remember you looking at us in the mirror and wanting me to look with you. I remember you being too scared to have me drop you off in front of your house and I had to drop you off a block away. I remember you getting into your car to talk to me on the phone because you didn’t want people to hear. I remember making out in the bar even though you were still with her and anyone could see us. I remember, and you tried to make me forget. You tried to tell me that nothing bad ever happened. That you never made a mistake. I remember meeting you at the bar and I remember you putting your arm around me and I remember you putting your hat on me and my heart on you and I remember you convincing me to leave him and telling me how awful he was and you turned out to be just as awful as him. I remember you going home to her. I remember me going home to him. I remember us walking there together. I remember having nightmares that night. I remember crying next to him as he slept. When I slept, I dreamt of you. The next morning I couldn’t live with myself and I left him because I felt like I had cheated on him, but you just kept cheating on her for months. You would sleep with me and go home to her. We would go to the motel and get so drunk. I remember and you act like it never happened. You act like we never did these things but they happened. I remember you wanting me to touch you exactly how she did, while you were still being touched by her just like that. Why would you do that? I remember taking this drive so many times thinking of you, thinking about how much I loved you, texting you, calling you, audio messaging you, I remember my thoughts were consumed by you on these long drives. And now on these long drives I just think about how much I hate you.
DO NOT BEG MEN TO LOVE YOU
Everyone reblog this as much as possible over the next two weeks for good luck
In just four months, the unthinkable has happened -
I have reversed the roles in my life. I am in control; men take a backseat. I have learned how to say “no.” I’ve come to acknowledge my bodily autonomy and maintain the integrity of it.
I have used a socially unacceptable method to surpass the torment invoked on my psyche. Somehow, the glitter and strobe lights and slippery poles have taught me to regain control of my body after countless men have claimed it as their own. No man can deny my femininity; no human can control my actions. I am my own and only my own.
Despite my newfound comfortability with myself and my past, this world is still seedy and exhausting. We may not reside in the Times Square peepshows of the past, but the modern-day strip club is still equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.
Hollywood’s portrayals of strip clubs don’t even come close to what you’ll endure past the velvet curtains: grabby hands, crumpled dollar bills tossed towards you like you’re a wastebasket - being rejected again, and again, and again, until you flee to the dressing room to be comforted by your fellow Pleaser-clad warriors.
You’ll learn how to cope with being told “no” a thousand times a night. You will be called horrible things, and have rumors made up about you, both at work and in your daily life. You will struggle with the thought of coming out to family and friends - “mom, dad, I grind on strange men’s crotches for money. I swear it’s not that bad.”
People will ogle you from afar, whisper, laugh, and refuse to give you a single dollar. You will feel the burning intensity of a hundred eyes on you as you spread your legs in front of someone’s partner. Your hot pink bikini will cause a lover’s quarrel, and your cheeks will burn red-hot as you watch a girlfriend storm out the door.
People will tell you you’re breaking up marriages. That you’re a tramp, a home-wrecker, you’re dirty, you’re unloveable, you’ll never be taken seriously. That taking control of your life and refusing to work for some old white man in an office is degrading. That punching into work at 7am is somehow different from signing in as “Candy” on a club’s night sheet at 2am.
I can’t tell you how your experience will be. I can’t tell you how everyone else’s experiences are. This is the most unstable industry you could enter. It’s up to you to decide if that instability is worth it.
In my four months, I’ve cried tears of joy counting mountains of bills. I’ve wept after spending eight hours half-naked being rejected by bald men, who didn’t deem me worthy enough of even a tip.
Most importantly, the greatest lesson I’ve learned as a baby stripper, is that beyond the bleach-blond extensions and bejeweled butt plugs are human beings.
Remember that.
- Andy Schiaffino
(BABY STRIPPER, a piece written for All Sex Workers Go To Heaven)
Poems written by elementary school students to greet fliers at Miami International Airport
who cares, do better, move on
- Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath
(via soracities)
İstanbul by Sergio Díaz De Rojas
Piano piece composed for “Life is flux”, a film project by Müge Yıldız.
A few weeks ago I went to the Milwaukee Art Museum with a friend and we got to go into this glass box called The Infinity Chamber. Inside there are mirrors and lights and together they resemble the stars and constellations; outer space. It’s probably one of the coolest things ever. Credit: Stanley Landsman, Walk-In Infinity Chamber, 1968
Yamamoto Masao (Japanese, 1957)
Wilson Alwyn Bentley, Dew on a Spider Web, c.1910 (source).
Fritz Scholder
