The more I watched Ursula speak the more i realized that we lived in different orbits—i wasn’t going to find entry into her world. She had too many people around her: she was bound to be recognized, here, on earth, for all that she was and all that she could be. She’d realize her potential directly—i believed that. I, on the other hand, lived and worked somewhere else—on a different pitch, with respect to a different time. Of course I thought: “I want you,” but then I also thought, “Who am i kidding?” Some unknown voice asked me, then, who’s the beard? “Not me,” I replied, since, as it happens, I do what i want, and i don’t want to be intimate with a man. But did i want to be intimate with Ursula? I think, of course, that i already am. I’m just waiting for at least part of my true identity to be recognized, so that, in the future, I’ll be able to say, “Yes, I can afford to raise a child—I can afford to visit with people, etc.”
The more powerful she became, however, the more influence I had on her—because of this pitch. I’d been with her for a little while, now, about nine months, I guess—that might not sound like a lot, but, when you consider that, for a greater part of that time I’ve been using her voice as a bellwether, things start to add up. I was happy about that—and thankful, simply, for the time we’d shared, if, that is, her star should align elsewhere—out of my reach. Now, two things, however, had changed over the weekend: one: I recorded myself singing and found that my voice sounds a little different than the voice, for myself, that I’ve been using, and, two: I listened to Ursula speak again and realized that her voice actually had a slightly higher pitch than the one I’d been using. It was a little harder to reproduce.
keep your panties on she’d said that a few times, now, and I think she was making a joke—gaslighting me without really gaslighting me; i think that was her way of testing me: she was saying: it’s okay to wear panties, thinking, I imagine, that her approval was all i needed to identify myself as a homosexual—someone that has no feelings or desire for the opposite sex. I didn’t really appreciate what she was doing, although, I suspect, this form of gaslighting was something i should expect if a public eye should find fault with me. Maybe that was the whole point, I don’t know. But my love-life, as I understand it, based on what little experience i have, is a little liberal: i go on impulse, and the impulse, sometimes (not all the time) knows no bounds.
Now my wine-drinker uncle was trying to say something to me but I couldn’t make it out. I could hear the sound of his voice but everything was garbled—no words were coming out. if you can, you should i heard him, then. Don’t know exactly what he was talking about, unless he was talking, in general, about navigating the choices that life has to offer. Was he saying, then: “If you can wear panties, then you should?” Or was he saying, “If you can behave normally, then you should?” Or was he saying, “Be gay, if you can?” Or was he saying, “be straight, if you can?” I think, in general, his philosophy is that you should try different things if you think you can do it—because you wouldn’t think about it at all if it wasn’t something you wanted—or even needed.
In my case, however, for the time being, I can’t do anything—which is why I identify as queer without identifying myself as a homosexual. I guess I was just going to have to get used to her sense of humor, which, like any great sense of humor, bends the rules and makes what otherwise might seem absurd or forbidden as seemingly plausible. I kind of subscribe to the following notion of morality and reality: “Nothing is inherently evil: all that matters is that you leave people, when you interact with them, happier than they otherwise would’ve been.” That goes for bad people, too—you should always leave a bad person with some notion of true happiness, even if, sadly, they would seem inherently bad—or evil beyond repair.
how are you? It was nice when she asked me how I was doing—i really felt that she cared, one way or the other. She said something incomprehensible, then, now you know. Stand with me or against me: that didn’t sound like her to say that, but I quickly realized i was wrong—she meant it. I say that because of the pitch—the way it interfered with what I was putting out destructively interfered with what I was thinking, leaving this piqued silence for an indestructible moment. Was she giving me some kind of ultimatum? I hardly ever stand entirely for or against someone, but, in her case, I stand with her, of course. But the more I thought about it—she wouldn’t say, “Stand against me.” So she must have been in a mood: I know she found certain democrats—corporate and or elite donor driven spines—to be infuriating, and I also knew she had some momentum behind her—if she didn’t run for president, she was bound to take over as a senator, replacing a prime example of the aforementioned long standing centrist democrat.