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Dangerous Compassions

joyful girl

“Will you be a punk grrl with me?” I asked Ming.

“Yeah!” he said.  He started dancing around a bit.

“Do you know what punk means?” I asked.

“What’s it mean?” he asked, still dancing around.

“Smashing the patriarchy.  Yeah, basically,” I said.  “Prettymuch.”

He mentioned pamphlets.  I said, “Yeah, we can make pamphlets too.”  That’s how we’re funny when we talk about zines.

I had been trying to find Don’t Need You on some free movie streaming website, a favorite movie of mine, a movie about riot grrl.  It was the most empowering thing I’d ever seen.  It made me feel like I could do anything.

The library has the dvd, and the library has The Punk Singer dvd also, about Kathleen Hannah.  But I thought we had no dvd player, but Ming says the computer he got from his kid has a dvd player.  He’ll test it.

Another gendery thing was Ming’s fantasy that we take P’s hot tub.  P’s moving and getting rid of almost all his stuff.  I said if we lived in a lesbian intentional community, it could be ok.  I was imagining some advanced amazonian body liberation lesbian separatist nudity fun stuff.

But this place is predominantly dudes.  I don’t think my nudity would be a good idea.  Ming and P mentioned putting the hot tub by the laundry machines, where the clotheslines are.  No way in hell would my naked body be ok right there.

I’ve never been a lesbian, but I have some good fantasies about women’s music festivals and conflict between terfy weirdos and the regular weirdos.  All the unshaved vulnerable tough awkward ladies listening to Ani Difrano and hooking up, with me all alone, staring at the moon or something.

One time I had a dream about that.  It was a dystopian lesbian separatist intentional community post-apocalyptic romance dream.  Probably like anarchoprimativism.  How do you say that?  The green offgrid luddite superfeminist anarchists.  Solarpunk? 

I wrote a letter to someone I loved on a tree, right on the bark.  It was hard to read afterward.  I needed to tell her something really important before I left.  But maybe she was an agent.  I guess I’m crazy even in my dreams.

Hey, everyone’s crazy in their dreams!  This is still my favorite Ani Difranco song.

i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head
i know there’s no grand plan here
this is just the way it goes
when everything else seems unclear
i guess at least i know

–from “Joyful Girl” by Ani Difranco

By Laura-Marie

Good at listening to the noise until it makes sense.

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