Abortion, again? Really?

I am most likely preaching to the choir, as I am lucky enough to be surrounded by lovely, feminist men...but I'm severely rageful and have to get this out. If I want to have an abortion and wear the "baby's" bones as a fucking necklace...that's my right. Why?

Because the paltry wad of cells a man shoots toward my cervix is the extent of his physical involvement in the matter.

Should a baby come to term, I carry it. I deal with the morning sickness, the flat feet, the heartburn, the abused and battered and broken body. I could be forced to experience vaginal tearing, dystocia, or, worst case scenario, death. Should I be fortunate enough to experience a breezy, pleasant pregnancy, with zero symptoms outside of glowing skin and an aura of maternal calm, I know myself...I would 1. hate or resent the child, or 2. feel absolutely nothing for it.

I know what you're thinking...how could someone so consistently pleasant, with such a sunny disposition, possibly foster such cold feelings toward an infant? Shocking, I know.

Being a mother, in our culture, means a lot of things. In my experience, a LOT of people in our culture believe that it is the sole event that ushers a woman toward becoming a complete human being. Women who cannot (or choose not to) experience this phenomenon are seen as lesser creatures. Cold, selfish, incomplete. Not by everyone, of course, but the majority. Motherhood gives women a reason to live, to be noticed. Example: had she not had a passle of children that she couldn't afford with a cheating douchebag, no one would know that fucking Kate Gosselin existed. She's as deep as a puddle at high noon, with a bad dyke spike haircut and deplorable taste in men. She's a nobody. Same for Nadya Suleman.

Being a mom is awesome, it's to be applauded, it is heaven on earth...if you want to do it. Want to know what happens to a woman who has kids, even though, deep down, she knows she probably shouldn't? That, secretly, kids annoy the shit out of her outside of that first five minutes that she finds them cute? A woman whose friends keep jumping up her ass about the "joy of motherhood", when they don't even stop to think that some women really don't give a FUCK about the adorable booties and the adorable diapers and the pants-shitting "joy" of being covered in vomit and shit until the kid learns to use the toilet?

I don't know, maybe you should ask Casey Anthony.

Abortions are necessary for a lot of reasons. Rape, incest, life-threatening complications can occur...and those are always the first defense that women bring to the table when defending our (already granted and perfectly legal) right to an abortion. All are completely legitimate. In my opinion, however, women are not NEARLY CUNTY ENOUGH when it comes to defending our right to feel how we feel. I don't want kids. I won't say that I never will, but I find it HIGHLY doubtful. Whatever starry-eyed asshole conservative douchebag believes that, upon gazing at my child's face, I would suddenly have an overwhelming urge to cuddle it and love it and sprinkle it with fairy dust and treasure it's widdle head forever and ever...you, sir or madam, do not know me. I'd put that thing up for adoption faster than Michelle Bachmann signs her welfare checks...excuse me, foster parent's public assistance check. I would absolutely feed it and clothe it and hold it and read to it and treat it with all the tenderness that a newborn deserves, until I could find a loving, sane, stable family with which to place it (whom I would screen to absolute hell and back, to verify said qualities).

I would not look back. That is my right, and it does not make me a monster. It makes me a woman who knows what the fuck she wants, and who the fuck she is. It makes me someone who does not want to put a child through the pain of being resented by it's own mother just so she can flounce with all her friends at Baby Gap.

Men are the main presenters of this recent tide of anti-abortion legislation. If you are a man, you have absolutely no right, whatsoever, at all, to put in your two cents when it comes to the children, fetuses, three-day-old cell clusters that occupy the bodies of the women you've never met. You do not experience the physical and emotional pain of pregnancy, childbirth, or motherhood. If the thought of a woman scraping meaningless cells from the walls of her own body parts makes you clutch your pearls in horror...don't fuck women you're not married to. Keep your dick in your pants until you die. Forcing women to keep children that they don't want makes women miserable, and children miserable. There's nothing sadder than being raised by someone who resents you.

Women: we have to speak up, rally, sign petitions, write to our state representatives. I have no need for abortion services, but I will fight for them. We are not cattle, or sows, to be shackled and bred. Do not stay polite and silent.

On behalf of loudmouth cunts everywhere: Keep your hangups to yourself, asshole.

...And for fuck's sake, leave Jennifer Aniston alone.

It Gets Better. My GOD Does it Get Better.

This is my contribution to the It Gets Better Project.

I had a dream a few nights ago.

Rarely do I put any stock into dreams. People interpret them, write them down, try to determine if they are predictions for the future or visions of lives past. Personally, I believe them to be brain vomit. I think we store a lot of unnecessary crap up in there, and our brains are just browsing through forgotten tabs, left open, old documents on the desktop, half written. Delete delete delete. Oh and morning-after-a-roaring-drunk dreams are your brain smashing control, alt, delete until your keyboard catches fire.

This particular dream, this dream I had a few nights ago, almost died in my brain along with thousands of other forgotten dreams trampled to death by my profound exhaustion. I've always envied people with excess amounts of energy, those who experienced sugar highs, people who actually WANT to get on a fucking treadmill and run, grinning like madmen as the wind whistles between their teeth, grinning till their teeth crack. Puberty crawled up my ass and died when I was barely 11, and when it died, it decided to take all my crazy little-kid energy with it. Remember being able to play freeze tag for 7 hours, until your socks were full of bush-stickers and the lightning bugs came out? I don't think I experienced the sensations of sweat OR shortness of breath until after puberty. I could run for days. Suddenly, 11, I can't run anymore and I've got fat pockets hanging from my chest and I'm fucking TIRED forever.

A bug pulled me out of the tired. I felt a bug on my arm, and, being an insanely light sleeper (seriously, I've had the sensation of my own eyelashes on my cheek awaken me. I also realize that it's weird that I'm constantly tired but so easily awakened. I blame most of my bad teenage decisions on chronic insomnia.)...I woke up. No bug. I swear it was there.

It was the dream I'd been having that was important, anyway.

I was in the car. My father (who committed suicide in 2005) was utterly drunk, raving and screaming obscenities at myself and my family. I knew my family was in the car, but I didn't turn around to look at them, because I was helping my father drive. Every now and again, I'd grab the wheel, turn it right, mumble something to help my dad stay on the road. It was pitch black outside, and we were on a tree-lined road, weaving dangerously close to the scattered trunks. Eventually my dad decided he was tired of driving, and put me in charge outright. I started to steer the car...and the road got smaller. The light got brighter. Everything disappeared, and I was suddenly steering a bike. I was on a bike on a narrow dirt road surrounded by high green grass and late afternoon sunshine. I was in control, and alone, and relieved.

This struck a chord because, to some degree, this actually happened.

It was sometime in high school. I have a famously shitty memory when it comes to timelines, so I don't know the year. All I know is that my dad died a few years after this happened. My mom was at work, and my dad was eyeballs-deep in his addiction to prescription medication. I was desperate for money (my parents were constantly poor and I thought that "allowances" were a fairy tale that only happened on tv, like unicorns or non-alcoholic fathers), so I wanted a goddamn job. I'd had a few crappy jobs, one from which I was fired for stealing (I'd "damage out" items to give to my friends as gifts), the other I liked, but didn't pay well enough (life guarding). I'd applied for a job as a cater-waiter, and it was rumored that they paid EIGHT DOLLARS AN HOUR. I wanted that job, I NEEDED THAT JOB. The interview was a ways away, and I couldn't really walk. I needed a ride. I asked my dad.

My dad said yes. Popped some pills, made some coffee to help himself "wake up", and got into the car.

I spent the entire car ride praying that we wouldn't die, and occasionally making an especially loud noise to startle my father into half-consciousness.

His meds made him drowsy. Most of the multitude of prescription pill bottles my father kept over the kitchen sink had icons of little sleepy eyeballs or crossed-out martini glasses plastered on the side, indicating that one may experience drowsiness and should not imbibe alcohol while taking this medication. My father did both, in large quantities.

He was weaving slightly between the lines, eyes half open, trying to clutch his coffee cup and steer. When his eyes drooped enough, almost closed, I'd clap, or say HEY DAD. His eyes would pop open, about half-mast, and I knew we'd be alright for another thirty seconds or so. It never occurred to me that he might pass out altogether, as he was wont to do. The Christmas before he died, he took so much medication that we couldn't wake him up with full-fledged slaps to the face, and he was snoring so loud it sounded like he would gulp down his own uvula and choke to death. I just prayed that we'd make it to the interview on time, in one piece, and that my mom wouldn't be pissed that I'd let my dad drive like that.

We made it. I got the job. We made it home.

I envied kids with complete, mostly-sane families. In 2004, if you'd given me a choice between a VW bug full of 100 dollar bills and burritos, or my father's health and sanity, I would've chosen the latter, hands down. I just wanted to be able to get a ride to a job interview, to find my way, to make some money to buy some manic-panic hair dye and jeans that weren't from fucking Kmart. I wanted a life that I could control, that wasn't cradled in the hands of a man who so hated himself, who wanted so badly to die, and whom I so desperately loved.

Through that dream, I'd realized, although it had taken WAY fucking longer than I'd preferred, I'd gotten just that.

I have a bike, bought for me by my fiancee. Her name is Tracy. She's crazy smart, completely gorgeous, and makes fun of me for being vain. She likes Simon Pegg and cats, she dresses up for Halloween like I like, and makes really good fried rice. We ride bikes together on the weekends, when it's not too hot. We're getting married, probably outside, under the trees, like I'd like. If I could take a snapshot of my life, on bikes with my gorgeous soon-to-be-wife, and hold it up to that 14 year old kid...if only. If only I could give her hope.

It gets Better. So much fucking better. Hang on, trust yourself, work hard for what you want. Money doesn't grow on trees. Figure out how to budget, and STICK with it. Do the math after taxes, figure out how much money you need to make in order to pay rent AND utilities AND your phone bill. Realize that, if you are born poor, you may stay poor for a while. I had no income other than by donating plasma and keeping a part-time job for over 8 months, and I still made rent. Get out of your shit town, your shitty life, get away from the things that hurt you. Don't settle for people who don't love you like you are the SUN and MOON and STARS. Unless they carve your name in their arm or break your windshield when you piss them off. Those are the crazies. Know the difference.

It's going to get better, and my fucking god, is it worth the wait.

Fat Vogue, Thin Vogue, Shackles Either Way.

http://jezebel.com/5816282/plus+size-model-on-plus+size-issue-of-italian-vogue-we-need-fashion-to-catch-up-to-women-of-size

The above article features plus size women featured on the cover of Italian vogue.

Okay, I'm all about inclusion, but in my opinion promoting obesity is just as bad as promoting anorexia. Both diseases have similar outcomes (heart disease, risk of early death, bodily deterioration, i.e. bones or tendons), the symptoms are just acquired for different reasons. You're not balancing out the scales by promoting the opposite-yet-equally-unhealthy end of the spectrum (in fact, calorie restriction, within safe bounds, is likelier to extend your life than remaining obese/overweight, and myriad studies have proven this to be true). Here's what we need: a muscular, healthy, animalistic portrayal of powerful women.

Fashion is an industry that is predominantly aimed at women, and, at least partially, RUN by powerful, strong women. Yet we insist upon starving the shit out of a bone-white near-fetus and propping it up on a marble pedestal. Then everyone gets pissed at this hampered, shackled, wing-clipped creature who can't bear the weight of her McQueen armadillos. They get pissed, then secretly go home and lick tidbits of fat-free Yoplait off the back of a spoon and yearning for visible backbones. Fine, the fashion industry says. Here's a "healthy", Rubenesque "beauty". Her features are regular, her skin is beautiful, but she's pounding down the runway with 75 pounds of extra body fat dragging her to the floor.

If a woman is hampered, shackled, chained, she is beautiful. Healthy, wild, and free...she is a threat.

Give me a muscle-bound, brown-skinned bitch with kinky hair, an indeterminate nationality, and a spear. Send her down the runway in dainty lace, sexy leather, a foot-high green velvet bonnet, or whatever other weird shit that fashion decides to pelt at my eyeballs. Dead-eyed, bleach-skinned, starving androids are boring, expected, and at this point, a dime a dozen. If you want to get my attention, provide the alluring dichotomy of a cavewoman who'll both stare me down...and rock that petticoat like a fucking champ.

No Respect

I, like the late, great (?) Rodney Dangerfield, do not get respect.

The line be deliberately misquoted. While he, Rodney, did not receive respect from his fellow man, I do not get the need to dole out respect to certain individuals.

...I never said I was a comedian. If you're looking for comedy, try Sarah Palin's "book".

I like being respected. I like Pleases and Thank Yous and smiles from the occasional non-creepy passers-by. I was raised to be a polite, tolerant, even-tempered human being.

I am, however, violently sick of being told that I must respect the fundamentally, or, dare I say it...the moderately religious.

Even Christopher Hitchens, the fundie-bashing genius that he be, stresses in a passage of his MAGical book, God is Not Great: he genuflects before entering a pew in church, he bows at all the correct intervals, he respects his fellow man's religious rites and rituals. I understand, obviously. In no way do I find it permissible to walk into a church, tear up a few hymnals, and turn them into an open air litter box. I am tired, however, of being told that a church is entitled to tax exempt status, that I should respect the "right" of the Mormon church to literally scare up a gargantuan fortune for the express purpose of preventing homos from obtaining the right to marry (the fortune would probably have fed thousands of starving Haitians for weeks, by the by), that I should respect those whom, with oh-so-compassionate "moral" fortitude, smile upon me, tell me they love ME, they just hate my SIN.

Allow me to point out a similarity between the activities that occasionally take place in the basement of the average Christian fundamentalist church vs. the basement of your average BDSM club frequented by homosexuals: from time to time, someone's getting sodomized. In the BDSM club: ready-and-willing, consenting adults. In the church basement: thirteen-year-old boys. The club is required by government law to pay taxes. The church is not.

In the words of Will Ferell...I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

In my opinion, religion should be used as a basic moral blueprint, at best. By that, I mean people can logically deduce that SOME Christian/Islamic/Jewish teachings can be beneficial in your day-to-day life, i.e. turn the other cheek, respect your parents, etc. (These teachings are also, one might argue, common sense. They can exist independently of religious dogma. When wanting to thrust a chopstick into the eye socket of a shrill-voiced Greenpeace street bully, I've never felt the need to turn to Jesus for a moral power up. I don't want to go to jail for the fleeting satisfaction of watching an under-sexed self-righteous enviro-nazi roll around in a pool of her own blood. Logic.) The second you turn to religion/god for actual guidance/comfort/advice, i.e. praying...you've lost me. I'll never feel the same way about you again. I'll refrain from mocking you in public (unless you're Ted Haggard), but you'll forever have lost most of my respect.

Allow me to do some 'splainin': if I met a grown woman who still really, truly, fully believed in the mythical Santa Clause, and she really, truly, fully believed that, if she just wished hard enough, that he would bring her presents...I would immediately chalk her up as unstable. Mentally bankrupt. Intellectually inferior.

Thousands of grown adults with access to billions of tomes chock full of scientific literature still look to the sky and pray (read, wish) that a magical (yes, mythical) sky being will grant them their fondest desires...if they just pray hard enough.

I cannot respect it. I've honestly tried. There was a time when belief in gods was a permissible idea: we had to explain lightning/pregnancy/the general malaise and chaos that circles the human condition somehow. It is, however, time now, kids. It's time to accept that the scientific method is a much more practical way of dealing with the crushing complexity that is our humanity and environment.

I think that true wisdom will only begin to come to one the day that one truly realizes that one is nothing but an ignorant bag of shit. Stephen Hawking, brilliant theoretical physicist, knows only an infinitesimal fraction of all there is to know about this boundless universe that surrounds us. He is, an ignorant bag of shit. And I'm quite positive that he knows it. The day one makes that realization, with any luck, one will have the common sense to learn as much as one can within a human lifetime. That still will not entitle one to wisdom, or even elevate one above ignorance.

Such is our condition.

I will never respect the Ted Haggards, the Jerry Falwells, the Pat Robertsons, the Anita Bryants, the George W. Bushs (any Bush, for that matter) of the world. Ever. If there is such a thing as willful ignorance, they actually long to possess it. Embracing Christianity means looking life full in the face, and rejecting the opportunity to become something other than an ignorant bag of shit...only to become an even BIGGER ignorant bag of shit.

Let me just state that I do not find myself to be better than anyone else based upon what I believe (or don't believe). The road of an atheist is a sad, lonely road littered with glaring billboards advertising my own mortality. I just know that when I die, nothing's going to happen. My brain will blink out. I'm fucking dead. Forever. Nothing at ALL I can do about it...but at least I've done enough research to know it.

I also fully advocate the teaching of religion in schools. All I ask is that, in this class, there be two books that are required reading: the Bible, and God is Not Great. We'll see who comes out smelling of atheism.

HALLELUfuckyou.

I've seen the light! I don't know what I was thinking! I've let God's light into my heart!!

I've been reading some posts by some very dedicated Christians, and their arguments have really hit home. Of COURSE marriage should be between a man and a woman, otherwise how will our nation continue to produce children? And, following along this brilliant vein of logic, we really should revoke the marriage rights of infertile couples or couples who would (GASP) actually CHOOSE not to pump out babies! How dare they, wanting to prove and solidify a commitment to each other without the intent of filling their house with the sound of pitter-pattering little Christian soldiers? I mean, everyone knows infertile women are basically worthless. Let's revoke their citizenship, while we're at it!

Another absolutely breathtaking piece of wisdom I SOMEHOW missed: changing the definition of an institution that has remained the same for thousands of years?? I SHUDDER TO THINK. Marriage has been defined as a union between a man and a woman for CENTURIES, HOW could we think of overturning such a sacred precept?! EVERYONE knows that the way things have always been is ALWAYS the best way, right? Duh! Change is dangerous, silly, detrimental! On that note, let's revoke women's right to vote, own people who are a different color than us, and why the hell not, shove some Jews back into the ghettos they belong in! TRADITION!

I don't know how I've been missing this all along, I feel so ashamed of myself. If men are allowed to marry other men, then maybe pedophiles will be able to marry children!! GASP. How could I be so stupid, of COURSE a grown, consenting adult marrying another grown, consenting adult is EXACTLY the same as an underage child, unable to give legal consent, being forcibly married to a mentally unstable adult! LOGIC.

I've seen the light! The man in the sky hath waved his magical Jesus wand and changed my life! All of my future decisions will be based upon a compilation of racist, sexist, violent, and often severely contradictory texts, also known as the bible.

God, I am so fucking brilliant, I amaze myself. See y'all at church!

Prop 8 Fiasco

Prop 8 and all the nonsense by it spawned is all bullshit. Here's my two cents as to why ('tis a bit wordy, I apologize).

Untitled from Tracy Kapp on Vimeo.

The delayed closing and the muttered "Shit" under my breath was because I thought I had fucked up and not recorded that whole thing :P

Tribute to a Strap-on

Beads of sweat upon my palm are pressed into the lacquered grain of the door. I press, it jingles, swings. The scuttle-footed lady at my back stays close, breath at my shoulder. The shop is well-lit, sparse, artistically and lovingly arranged. We stand, shoulder to shoulder, saucer-eyed kids in a very naughty candy store.

Tubes and shafts and oblongs, curlicues and cylinders and unnameable blobs. Oh, my. Some glitter, others glow. A few feature vein-y protrusions, as though they are flexing for our benefit. I wonder, vaguely, if cocks can technically flex. Hmm. Anyway, must focus. Focus on the fake cock shopping. Oh god, we're cock shopping. Another gallon of fluid coats my already sopping-wet palms.

No big deal, really. We can't exactly mask our intentions. I mean, if there was a variety of produce on one side of the store, and a menagerie of love-rockets on the other, one may be able to meander amongst the starfruit and kumquats, frowning in a disapproving fashion upon prospective dong shoppers, before hastily purchasing a dong of one's own. Nope. No fruit stands here. Just rows and rows of synthetic cock. Both beauty and bane, this knowledge. Knowledge that we are all here for the same thing.

This knowledge is absolute. This being a rather upscale toy store, one would not find a gaggle of middle-aged bar-blonde harpies giggling over cheap vibes as potential gag gifts. No flickering neon XXX lights glaring in the window. Only blonde wood displays, subtle track lighting, black velvet cushions upon which precious merchandise may rest. This is a serious operation, which belies serious intent. A holy intent. Therefore, we are all aware of one another's desire and devotion, want of benediction and penance, our blazing need to worship at the altar of FUCK.

Right. Well, we all know what's up. So just pick up the fucking harness.

I look at her, she looks at me, scratches her nose and shrugs. I cough, and recommend a leather one to prevent chafing. She clears her throat and says okay. We lift a strappy contraption from the bar upon which it hangs, fiddle with the buckles. She holds it up to her pelvic region for the purpose of determining relative sizing. And then the dreadlocked shop girl proclaims loudly that there is a room upstairs we can use if we wanna try it on. Why, thank you, oh-so-helpful shop girl, with your multitude of piercings and excellent vocal projection. We both bid her a boisterous thank you, and scurry up the stairs as though the cops and clergymen were hot on our heels.

In the upper room, amongst zippered leather hoods and kits specifically designed for "medical play", she slips the leather over her jeans, steps back, slaps her hands to her thighs, looks at me. And when her eyes meet mine, the knot in my chest unravels, and I laugh. She laughs, and we laugh. And I kiss her. And I feel silly, but safe, because I'm with her.

We flounce back downstairs together, hand-in-hand, pore over the display case. She vetoes a pink piece, I veto a monstrous one. We settle upon a middle-of-the-road, sleek, black number, head to the counter. We giggle like school girls over bejeweled butt plugs as the shop girl tallies our purchase, which we split right down the middle. We chuckle, again, that this is to be our first piece of common property. We say our goodbyes, the shop door jingles, and we head out into the softly falling snow.

And I feel silly, but safe, because I'm with her.