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It's a grim honor to contribute to this year's Lit for Queer Liberation fundraiser again. I've got three lots up for auction:
- a signed copy of THE L.O.V.E. CLUB (x3)
Bidding runs March 1-7. More info about the Queer Liberation Network, which is running the auction, here.
I do my best to put my head down, do the work, keep it moving, but sometimes the demon days really get me, stick pins in my eyes, put lead in my heart. Two roads diverged in a desiccated wood and the powers that be chose cruelty, willingly, gleefully, knowingly bestowing hatred chaos and harm.
I survive by putting blinders on. People are always surprised that I’m not following the news beat by beat. I feign a sort of jesting amnesia—oh, I must’ve missed that update, haha!—because the truth, that learning the specific ways people want to annihilate violate silence suffocate kill other people who are on paper in practice like me, makes me want to shrink until I am precisely the weight and size of a mote of dust, isn’t something I can quite transmute into water cooler talk. It would be an honor and a historic lucky streak to be swept aside if it meant I could live to an age that, when I die, makes others remark, “They lived a good life.” God, I pray as I will myself to get out of bed, Please let me have the kind of life that doesn’t make people say, “They had so much more to offer.”
For the record, no matter what happens, I already have my cremation vessel inscription prepared: I WAS JUST GETTING STARTED! The caps and exclamation mark are important. It’s been a good life, however close or far from this moment the veil of death drapes over me. I routinely come home—to a home!—to a house I call a home!—and marvel over the hot water, the bright windows, the selected art, the comfortable furniture, the little living quivers breaths and whines of our featured creatures, the bed with many blankets, the green air, the green world just outside.
Here’s a quick segue into the new Mitski album, which I listened to as I walked to and from the Korean grocery. I didn’t like it upon the first listen (to be clear: this is something that happens with almost any new record by an artist I love, with the record itself becoming beloved over time), and still don’t really like it upon the second but there are specific songs that feel like someone’s taking a steel bar to my shins or my funny bones. “If I Leave”/”Dead Woman”/”Instead of Here” in particular does something dreadful (positive?) to me.
I won’t regurgitate my whole thing about Mitski (here’s the primer) but her music makes me feel as though someone’s playing Operation on me live. Here’s the stomach; here’s the heart; here’s the brain; don’t miss; don’t miss; every slip of forceps into hot flesh makes me tremble, makes me weep, makes me sink deeper into a psychic badlands both beautiful and deadly. It has something to do with her gift for melody and texture, though yes, like a real Bury Me binch, I will always looove the scuzz (like: the final stretches of “Where’s My Phone?” and “If I Leave,” the electric instances of “Lightning”) and the dead-eyed clarities (“Dead Woman,” “Charon’s Obol”) (sidebar: Mitsuki, have you played Hades?).
The musically critical part of me asks, Where are the moments of transcendence, where’s a “Thursday Girl” or a “Valentine, Texas?” The part that loves music asks:
Back to life. I did an “Instagram takeover” for Sine Theta Magazine recently. sinθ is special for a few reasons, but to me the primary ones are: They were Thee first place to publish my short fiction, and, they’ve been building a Sino diaspora creative network long before the era of “Chinamaxing” or whatever began. Like many indie publications, they raise funds via Patreon, and I encourage anyone who even kind of enjoys my writing to contribute to their very humble supporter tiers.
I can’t remember if I’ve gotten into this subject before, but for most of my childhood, being Chinese was to put it lightly NOT! COOL! ACTIVELY UNCOOL! BAD! BULLY BAIT! I wish I could unremember all the instances I was made fun of for my race weight gender all combinations thereof but even when I try to elide description the memories rise like shit in a bad pool. Which is to say, I skim the NYT trend reports and Tumblr sincereposts about importing the Beijing bikini and red-and-gold cigarettes and low stool noodles and have nothing to add except that the world will turn, and the climate will change, and I will have little choice but to let my body bear the burden of culture’s fickle spotlights.
That said, I’m as guilty as the next person RE: fetishizing cultural signifiers. In real time, I’m hung up on the plum blossoms that carpet the sidewalks with pale pink petals this time of year; several months before, I couldn’t help but stop at every golden ginkgo in my path. But it’s also true that people from different cultural backgrounds won’t have the same foundational appreciation—of aesthetics, or historical significance—of certain natural features that I would share with other people Like Me.
The bleakly funny part To Me of this entire exercise of identification—in writing, in life—is that it’s mostly white people who misgender me and mostly Asian people who treat me as though I’m not Asian enough to clear some low bar that /JOKE ABOUT HOW ONLY PAID SUBSCRIBERS CAN ACCESS THIS CONTENT WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT I WOULD NEVER GO ON THE RECORD WITH WHAT I THINK ARE COMMONPLACE OPINIONS THAT NONETHELESS ARE INCENDIARY #ONLINE TAKES WHEN SITUATIONALLY STRIPPED OF ANY OPPORTUNITY OF NUANCE & ALSO THIS SHIT IS FREE/ and mostly other queer Asian people who make me wonder if outward claims of identity actually do anything for You (as in me) at all, besides paint lurid targets on our backs and enable grifters to set up shop under the guise of #solidarity.
I digress. So much of what I just wrote is in bad faith, a defensive kneejerk reaction against what exactly? The truth is, my greatest political/personal betrayals have come from people who should’ve been on my side; those same people entered my orbit because in theory they mobilized resources manpower spirit to change the culture around them. It’s a conscious effort for me to locate organizations who are actually Doing The Work in the world, and it’s because of this disappointed thirst that I push myself so far into my own endeavors, with the bookstore, with the fruit, with writing that will not just leave an impression but bring a steel bar to your shins.
Anyway, to those of you blowing whistles, checking in on neighbors, organizing supplies, running relocation logistics, turning a blind eye to mismatched IDs, speeding up some paperwork, delaying others, raising material support, providing physical shelter: it may not feel like it means that much now, but history will reward the kindling you add to good faith, which is the hearth that can never go out.
And to those of you who are trying to nurture freedom in your bodies, your communities, your minds despite inhospitable conditions: I see you, I know you, I am you. Big love from the Bay to Kansas to Texas, to anyone trying to create a space where their existence is not a talking point not a controversy not a debate. A great poet once sang "I am the only one now / you may not be around"—the true unfuckedworld, the dream that can never be compromised, is one in which I am not the only one, and you are all around.
Exit music:
Thanks for "listening." Stay tuned...!
♬ xoxo Lio
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