matters of the state.

yesterday, i was at the state department for an awards ceremony honoring various foreign service employees, one whom is one of my bosses, and you know how sometimes experiences just confirm everything you thought you knew anyway? yeah. so, sure, the administrative/support awards went to women. so, sure, everyone else who received awards were men. so, sure, everyone who gave out the awards (usually the sponsor of the awards or the family members of the person who sponsored the award) were white men, with the exception of one white woman. things were going very briskly for the first several awards, and then things slowed down a bit because there were awards given for "constructive dissent", and so we heard some speeches. the first was pretty impressive. this guy who works in the office in panama was speaking out against the profiling of muslims entering the united states and the lies told and the conditions under which people were held, and it was powerful and good and right and true. until the whole patriotic hegemonic part that he cushioned it in at the end. but still. more than i was expecting at an event like this. the next guy gets up, and before he even got up, i felt myself groan a little on the inside not because i don't believe in partner rights, because my god, of course i do. but because i will admit to having suspicions that gay men representing the cause will have tendencies for the dramatic in a way that doesn't seem all that relevant to me. and as he started speaking, i felt a little bit of me die inside. why the hell else would there be so much controversy about access to marriage if marriage itself didn't come with its own sack of privileges? not to say that i really believe in it other than to say, yes, marriage does exist, though usually not for long or very well, but sure, it exists, and sure, the appealing thing about marriage is the legitimacy of one's relationship. sure. but goddamn it, i don't want to be force-fed a much too long speech about family values and whatnot, how this is not about changing the definition of marriage, how this is about human rights...for fuck's sake, i'm a woman who's dating a woman, and absolutely, if she needed health insurance or whatever, i would do what i could to arrange that, but c'mon - i would do that for anybody i loved because access to health care? now that's a right. i would fucking do that for my ex. marriage is a goddamn privilege if you want to call it that. come back to me when you're ready to actually change the institution of marriage or eliminate it altogether as a bastion of inequality. so let's just cut the shit and say that everyone should be allowed to pick one person in their life who has access to all the shiny things in the embassy you work in, because that's really what it's about isn't it? if i was single, i think it's fair that i could choose a friend of mine to come with me and live with me somewhere if i worked in the foreign service. life partners be damned. we all know there's a pretty solid half and half shot that that's not gonna happen. when he's finally done scraping away at my intellect with his blunt object, what happens? he gets a fucking standing ovation, that's what happens. the man who got up before spoke about people in panama who were subject to inhumane treatment by us authorities - he got some nice clapping. but this guy? this guy gets up here and talks about how as an ambassador, his partner should have access to the embassy and training and whatnot, and he gets a fucking standing ovation? who the fuck are we kidding? progressive politics are laughable.

but besides that, and besides my sweating in my suit walking over there, and besides thinking my feet were going to fall off from wearing real shoes, i was in the state department, yo. in the reception area, and it was pretty cool. except, you know, when people were talking and stuff.

unpacking.

things are, for the most part, out of the boxes and bins, and with the exception of a few things scattered here and there that have yet to find a place, my place has become more or less my place. and i look in the final bin of things that remain unpacked for lack of furniture, and there's a little turtle that makes me smile and takes me back. when i was a senior in high school, my best friend's mom bought us matching stuffed turtles that were the softest things we had ever seen, and i slept with mine, and my friend took it with her through her various moves. i named mine torpid, torpy for short, and he was the one thing that i couldn't bear to leave home when i left for what i thought was going to be six months in thailand, but turned out to be a bit longer. at the end of my time there, all the things that i had brought as gifts for my host family seemed insufficient to express how much i was going to miss this place, these people, as crazy as they were, as crazy as i was then through a tumultous time that really made me, allowed me to be this person right now. so i offered torpy as a gesture of my love. for all of what i had experienced, as hard as it was sometimes, as much as i cried sometimes, still, my love. for who i knew i had become. and my host family was a little appalled, knowing that this was the one thing that gave me so much comfort at the end of the day, the one thing that allowed me to fall asleep, and they asked how i was going to be able to fall asleep without it, and i said that i would find a way because in that moment, i was wondering how i would fall asleep anyplace but this place that i had grown to love so contentiously. after some back and forth, my host mom squeezed it to her belly, as if the harder she squeezed, the less she would feel like crying, and i knew the feeling well. i came home without torpy, without my old self, except i still was kind of, though my family had a hard time recognizing me at first. we still have those moments, i think. but word got around about torpy because certainly i was never the type of woman who was ashamed to say that she liked the comfort of sleeping with a stuffed animal, and i was hanging out with ryan, who was my only nephew then, and he was showing me something, and my mom was there, and he said, aunt laura, you don't have a turtle anymore, you can take one of mine because i have two. and my heart...my heart. my sweet sweet boy. he was six years old then. my mom started crying, and saying to me, i didn't tell him to do this...he still breaks my heart. this turtle doesn't have a name. but he has the best story. i think i like it better that way.

sometimes.

sometimes, things are going well, and you've moved into your own place that you've lusted after as long as you have memory of being old enough to think about having a space all to your own because you never have shared well, and you're the type of person who is difficult to live with, and even your mom likes to remind you of that every so often, and your girlfriend buys you beautiful shiny knives because one of the first times you met, you said "i like knives", and you knew that something was happening because she thought it was funny and charming and not just crazy, and you've bought yourself that shiny new coffeemaker that you've always thought would look nice in a kitchen of yours, and you learn that you qualified for that credit card that allows you to buy that new laptop you've had your eye on earlier than you thought, and you go to the apple store and your girlfriend realizes that you qualify to get that black nano that you've drooled over but could never justify paying money for since you do have a nice shiny silver mini that has done you well, and law school is starting in a few months, and even though you play it tough and act like it's no big deal, everyone sees right through you, and you actually are a little excited at the prospect of doing something academically challenging, and after battling the internet connection, you finally get it to work, and things with your family have been rough, but lately, things have been pretty good all things considered, all around, and there will be another nephew added to the family, and your two boys who are the loves of your life are well and happy and growing so goddamn much but they still remember you and want to talk to you and want to see you, and other people you love seem to be doing well, and the people in your classes laugh at your jokes sometimes and seem to get at least some of the stuff you're teaching, and the office is going smoothly with no complaints from the higher ups and they're sad that you're leaving, and relationships are evening out, and the lsat is happening soon but the one person who is taking it right now who you actually really care about in terms of how well she does has suddenly gotten her mojo and is scoring so much better than perhaps she even let herself think about, and and and...you're tired, but it's good because you're making money, and things are aligning, then stop. stop. you get an unexpected phone call that lets you know that no matter how many shiny new things you acquire, what you really want you can't buy no matter how many hours a day you work. because what you really want is to bring close all those people you love and protect them from everything. everything. even the things you don't know about and the things that they won't tell you about because they want to protect you. and you sit at your desk and you want to cry because you know you can't. everyone knows that. lord knows, they might need protection from you sometimes. but there is so much physical distance between you, and you want to just say hey, i will get on a plane right now and fuck all this other shit because it doesn't matter (because it really doesn't in the end, does it?), because you want to be that friend who would do that, but you don't because you think you can't, and you're probably right about that anyway. and for the past several weeks (months?), you have been running from one job to the next, sleeping when you can, eating when you remember, talking to a few friends (not enough) and family on the way to or from, and you get a phone call that you answer only because it's that one person you don't talk with a lot, but nearly always answer the phone for if you can, even if it's to say, hey, i'm at work, lemme call you back, and she makes you stop. is she ok? i don't know. are you ok? am i ok? so. sometimes it's like that. sometimes you have to be reminded about the difference between the things that look good on you, and the people who make you and suddenly the things that look good just make you feel a little nauseous because they do nothing to protect you and they certainly do nothing to protect the people you love. sometimes you don't know if you're fine with the prospect of not making a lot of money because you know that all the money in the world doesn't give you what you want, but then you think, if you had all the money in the world, you would build a huge complex where everyone you loved could have a place with everything they could possibly need or want and then, maybe then, money could buy you what you want. but you're not entirely convinced, and even if you were, you think that it might take awhile to get all the money in the world and are not sure how you would go about it since your decisions thus far have led you far far from that path. in any case, sometimes, you stop. and you think about things like that.