We're Out of Sponges Again

Morning, tribadists!

It's another beautiful day in Chicago.  


And by beautiful, I mean a searing, white-hot sky overhead, a heat index of 104 degrees, and a certain baby rabbit named Midgeon P. Bundlesworth III melting into a bun-puddle on my kitchen floor.

Poor Midgie.  

Bitch is not having it.

Anyway! while I was sweating my tits off this morning, I got a call from The Straightest Girl in the World.  


She was tanning in a beach chair in Seattle and wanted to let me know that "having a pool in your apartment building is just so luxurious!"

Isn't that awesome.


Besides bragging, Kelly also wanted to badger me with questions about being gay.  

So, because you need something to read while you suck down your iced latte and wait for work to start (I know you went in early for the air-conditioning, you sneaky little bitch)...

Um, Kelly Has a Question.

Q:   Ok, Krissie, so - usually in a straight couple, the girlfriend ends up still being the person in the relationship who cares more about what the house looks like and does stuff like planning dinner and doing dishes.  It kind of falls to her by default.  It's really annoying, and I'm not saying it's ok, but I was wondering:  What is that like for lesbians?  Who does what, chore-wise, when everybody's a girl?  


A:  Kelly, this is actually a great question!  And I hope a toddler craps in your pool.


Who's in charge of which household duties in a lesbian household?  

Did you mean, "If everyone is a girl, who does the 'girl' jobs?"
I have a feeling that's your real question.


Well.  Let's start.  
What's a 'girl' job?  
I think we know what classic girl jobs are.  

Cooking dinner.  Shopping for groceries.  Washing dishes.  Laundry.   Sweeping, mopping, scrubbing.  Defrosting the freezer.  
Anything that involves wearing rubber gloves, threading needles, or Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser.


And what are classic 'boy' jobs?

Umm, let's see.  


Garage stuff.   Lawn care.  Taking out the garbage.  Fixing shit.  Anything involving hot coals and hunks of raw beef.  Changing lightbulbs, making the toilet work, hauling sofas up the stairs.  Killing spiders.


But that's all bullshit now.  
You hear me, Kelly?  Boool-sheeet.


Men stay home and look after babies.  
Women fix the Ford Windstar.  
Dudes bake cookies and ladies stop the sink from dripping.  

It's 2010, darlin' - it's anyone's guess who the bitch is now.


Yep.
Since this isn't 1954, Kelly, I think the short answer to your question about dyke households is:


The one who does a particular chore is the one who cares more about getting that chore done.

For instance, at my house:  


CJ cooks dinner.  There are two reasons for this. 


1) CJ is a brilliant cook with a penchant for 'hiding' vegetables in recipes so I don't notice them; and 


2) I cannot cook, refuse to cook, and, were it left to me, would happily eat Peanut Butter Captain Crunch every night for the rest of my life. 

I could care less about cooking and good nutrition.  If left to my own devices, I eat like a child.  

I'll buy a value pack of something enormous (i.e. a large sack of jasmine rice) and eat it, three meals a day, until it's gone.  
Then I'll buy six watermelons and do the same thing.  


I do not care.


The goal for me is a full belly - you can do it the hard way and spend  hours making Jamaican Pork Stew with Yam, Beans, and Apple Cider-Braised Kale, or you can do it the easy way and buy yourself a fuckload of green grapes and Nutella.

CJ cares more about dinner, so...CJ cooks.


My job is to wash the dishes, which coincidentally, is the chore that CJ hates most.


It's only fair. 


Kelly, I will say that when you're dealing with two lesbians, the division of labor seems...fairer than the deal that I've seen some straight relationships cut.  


Nobody should have to shop for groceries, cook the meal, and clean up afterwards.  That's re-goddamned-diculous. 

Lesbians, as a whole (heh) seem to have a firm grip on what is fair when it comes to dividing up the chores.


CJ lifts heavy stuff in our house - not because she's the butch, but because I have the upper-arm strength of a deer fetus.

I have a pathological need to have a bathroom so clean you could eat a snack inside the toilet, so I always clean the bathroom. 

CJ cleans out the bunny cage, but I sweep up.


You might be tempted to think that gayelles fall into stereotypical roles - like, whoever is more butch does the 'manly' jobs.  And sometimes that's true - I know butch/femme couples where there's a girly-girl who makes dinner in a ruffly apron while the butch dyke hoses out the gutters.  

                                                [via closetdiaries]


But the difference between straights and gays, in this instance, is - say it with me! - irony.  


It's funny to be all Leave It To Beaver when you're a homosexual - it's like playing house! 

It's fun to play at stereotypical gender roles when you're two women that fuck each other on a regular and unholy basis. 

                                             [via robotsnhearts]


But not all lesbians are butches or femmes, obvs.


What do two butches in a relationship do about chores?  
What would two femmes do?  
How would a sporty-dyke and a boi divide household duties?  


There are centipedes in every house, Kelly, and those centipedes have to die!!!  Who's going to do it?  Who's going to fucking do it????


The answer is simple - the one who is less afraid.  

                                                [via leahjeane]


Kelly, I would hope (I would fucking hope, in this day and age) that all couples, regardless of sexual orientation, take stock of each person's talents and use them accordingly to divide up chores.  


The one that doesn't clean is the one who gets up every morning to let the dog out.  


The one that always unclogs the drain gets let off the hook when you find maggots in the flour.

Fair's fair, Kells.  
There are clothes to wash and buttons to sew back on.  
There's motorcycles to fix and cats who need their claws clipped.  Dinner has to be made and DVDs have to get returned - whoever is more bothered and has time is the one who's going to do the chore.

                                             (via hello bum)


Lesbians are not mythical sparkling endangered white pandas from a planet where everyone knows how to cook and the houses smell like french-vanilla candles.

We're women who fuck each other and live together and use the same bathroom.  
Just like you, Kelly, we have to negotiate things like whose turn it is to buy Q-tips ("They have to actually be Q-tips, baby, don't buy the off-brand kind like you did last time, unless you want me to have a punctured eardrum") and whose turn it is to deal with the landlord.  

Just because we're two girls doesn't mean the apartment is always clean.  Just because we're women doesn't mean we have a pie cooling on the counter and the plants don't die.

                                          [via baubauhaus]


There are crusty dishes in every relationship.  

Ok?
And Kells?  For god's sake, withhold sex if you think you're getting a raw deal.

                                               (by MKestfou)
Duh.


Homos, for Kelly's benefit, let me open this up for discussion:


How do chores work at your house?

They Let Anyone In

Hi there, homophiles!



This summer is getting on my fucking nerves.


Here's why: 

I live across the street from a Ukrainian Orthodox Church. 

Now, this was a selling point when we looked at the apartment last year.

It would be so pretty, right?  We'd look out our front window and see green, well-manicured lawns. 
We'd see priests in odd hats. 
Mosaics and shit. 

We were thrilled.

There was actually a choir singing as we signed the lease.
How quaint!

Well, as it turns out, this branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church likes to throw parties.
At least once a week, they rent out a sound system and have themselves one helluva polka party. 

                                                        [by water&sleep]

All the neighborhood old people come to dance, and there's a rummage sale, and a wiener roast, and lots of beer drinking.  Rousing choruses of old country songs.  Right across the street!
Fun, right?


Drunken Ukrainian karaoke ensues.
Until about 3 in the morning.


I used to think this was charming - an adorable quirk of my neighborhood.


But now...I would do anything to get the Ukrainian polka music to stop. 

Do you hear me. 

ANYTHING.

The church members don't care that the whole neighborhood calls the police every Friday and Saturday night since summer started - the congregation is first-generation, they're all in their seventies and eighties, and they're all tough as fuck.


They're like, "Ooh, look, the cops are here.  We're making too much noise. Well, guess what, officer?  We survived Chernobyl. What now, bitch?"

Hmph.

I'm also sulking because I have been humiliated this summer.

I went to a party last week, and while I was publicly mocking CJ for thinking the words to 'Besame Mucho' were 'Tresemme Mucho' (so, what - kiss me, but make sure you have plenty of volume and shine?), she got fed up and accidentally-on-purpose let it slip to a room full of lesbians that I failed Women's Studies in college.

My secret! My closely-guarded lesbian secret!  CJ told on me!

The room went silent.

Twenty pairs of lesbian eyes cut to me.  Twenty sets of lesbian lips quirked upwards.
There was a split-second of quiet, and then...

Twenty lesbians started laughing at me.

Laughing!  At me!  Not with me - at me!
The shame!  The unmitigated shame!

That's the last time I tell lil' CJ anything.

My secret's out.  
And fuckit, I might as well tell y'all - it's a true story.

I failed Women's Studies in college.
Failed. Got an F.

                                                          [via justmeamandaleigh]

But homos, it wasn't my fault.

I was 20 and newly gay.  I was dying to have a girlfriend, and I had heard that Women's Studies classes were full of lesbians.
So I signed up for Women's Studies to meet girls. 
Brilliant, right? 

Probably no baby dyke in the history of the world had ever thought of that before.

                                             [via smartmouthkillerhand]

But when I showed up, pink with excitement, for the first day... there wasn't a single cute girl in my class.

Except for one.

My professor.

                                              [by Alyssa Noches]

My professor, Sharada, was an incredibly beautiful Indian woman who had this long, black, shiny, thick braid.

You guys, it fell past her knees.

I had never seen anything like her.

Sharada was in her mid-40's and had gorgeous brown skin and liquid dark eyes.  She wore dangly gold earrings that shimmered in the light.  She talked really fast, had skinny wrists, and perched on the top of the table in the front of the room as she taught.

It was love at first sight.

                                                [via hellogirls]

My god. My GOD.

Sharada could have been talking about anything - I was captivated.

As I stared at her, week after week, phrases like "the other" and "culture of oppression" came swimming to my ears like something out of a golden dream.

I blinked and nodded for months.

Whatever she said. 

Societal expectations.  Normative.  Patriarchal structure.

Whatever.

I sat in the front row, inhaled Sharada's smell, and never missed a class.

                                               [via ohcardigan]

So...I didn't pay attention. 

But here's the reason I failed:

Every day, while sitting on the table expounding about the history of feminism, Sharada would pull her braid into her hands and absentmindedly undo it.


She would talk to us about matriarchal civilizations while dipping her fingers through that thick twist of black, silky hair.

Cool black water running though her hands.  A slinky snake of shininess.

I was transfixed.

What the fuck.

What was she trying to do to me?
All I wanted was to bury my face in that hair.

Or, um, lay naked while Sharada cloaked my body with her midnight tresses.  

When the final exam  (80% of our grade)  came, it was like being startled awake while sleepwalking. 

I stared at the pages of the test in shock - the questions were like a foreign language.
The essays I simply skipped.

Women's Studies, to date, remains the only class I have ever failed.

And the irony is that I failed because I was studying a woman.

Gayelles, a few years later, I looked at my notebook from that class.

Apart from approximately 33 sketches of a faceless woman with long black hair, I never took a single note.

There is not one note. 
Not one date - not one sentence in my Women's Studies notebook from Fall Semester 2004.

Twinks, I always kinda thought that failing Women's Studies made me a "bad" lesbian.

That's why I never told anybody about it.

It's something that goes against the culture of our tribe.

It's like being a beaver who wants to take Irish clogging instead of learn how to build a dam.

It's something that simply isn't done.  It's on par with not knowing who Ani DiFranco is or not having a crush on Angelina Jolie.

It's like being a dyke who's repulsed by vaginas.
It's like admitting that you've never read The Well of Loneliness or getting drunk and telling a bar full of lezzes that you've always found k.d. lang to be a little cheesy.

WHAT KIND OF A LESBIAN ARE YOU???

So now I have a question for you, queers:

What's YOUR dirty little secret?  What makes YOU a bad lesbian?

[via lesfemmes]

Please tell me.  I could use some comforting right now.

He Is Risen and I Can't Get Up

Ciao, you filthy perverts. 

Remember how, in the last post, I told you about being a little bit, um, accident-prone?

I have outdone myself.

I officially cannot be left alone for even a few hours.

Here's what happened on Easter Sunday:

I was staying for 24 hours at my sister's house in Minneapolis.  But Shelley was in Phoenix, so I was hanging out with Wes, her fiance. 
Real quick - I am so fucking delighted that these two are getting married. 
Because
1) I've known Wes for years and he makes my sister happy
2) I've always wanted a brother
3) Maybe they'll have a baby and then I can buy little useless Puma sneakers for it; and
4) Marriage is great because it increases the pool of people in my life that can't say no to me because I'm family.

Wes made me a delicious steak for dinner. 
Once I got to to the middle of it, though, I saw blood, and that's where I usually draw the line for my steaks.

"Don't be offended here, Westopher, but I'm going to go microwave my steak a little bit,"  I said.  "It's kinda raw in the middle."

"Bah.  Don't microwave it.  Go throw it on the grill again.  It's still going,"  Wes said.

I turned slowly around and gave Wes a withering stare.

"Wes.  I don't have insurance."

He laughed, but I was serious.  You have to learn to make choices when you're poor.

Ruin the char-grilled flavor of your steak OR wind up in the ER with 3rd-degree burns all over your arms and spend the rest of your life paying the bill.

I choose safety.  Every time.

Now, keeping my safety-conscious choice with the grill in mind, fast-forward a few hours. 

Wes had left, and I was doing my laundry. 
Everything in my suitcase was dirty, so I rummaged through my sister's drawers and found (among other things I'm not going to think about) a cute white t-shirt and some shorty-shorts.  

Upon trying on the shirt, I discovered it was see-through.

Who cares?  I thought.  Who's gonna see me? 

I tramped downstairs and pulled out my clean wet clothes. 
Then, outside, to hang my dripping sweaters on the big lilac tree.

As I strained, on tiptoes, to reach an empty branch, there was a soft *click*.

The back door.  The back door that locks automatically.

I was locked out.  Locked out in a completely see-through shirt and ass shorts. 

No key.  No shoes.  No phone.
 
And Wes had already said he wouldn't be back 'till late.

What would you have done? 

I couldn't sit on the front stoop.  I was basically naked.

It was Easter Sunday, and the neighborhood was full of kids hunting for eggs in frilly dresses. 

I couldn't hang out in the backyard.  The neighbors were grilling.
 
I didn't have any money.  I couldn't walk to a coffeeshop and use the phone. 
And also, thanks to technology, I don't know anyone's phone number, anyway. 

Helpless.
It was like being 5. 
Like being a 5-year-old dressed like a slut.

Furious with myself, I sat down where the neighbors couldn't see me and had a good cry. 
How could I have done this?? I had been looking forward to spending the whole day in bed!

But crying doesn't do any good.  Eventually, you have to take action.

I began casing the joint.

How could I get in? 
I circled and circled.  Inspected all the windows. 
Tried to get Artemis, the cat, to use his paw to open the lock on the door. 

That useless bastard.

The neighbors all saw me rattling the doors and trying to push the windows up from the outside.

Obviously, we don't call the police if a white girl is trying to break in.  What harm could a Caucasian female do?

And then!  I saw it.  A window was open.  There was just a screen.  And the screen had already come off a little bit.  I could peel back the screen and get in without even ruining the window! 
Genius. 
Problem-solver.

I grabbed a lawn chair and peeled back the screen. 
Then I pushed the window up a liiittle bit more, eyeballed how much I'd have to jump, and leaped!!!

As the glass shattered around me, I realized I'd done some poor math. 


I broke the window with my great head.
I was halfway into the house, my booty-shorts still out, and I was covered in glass. 


My first instinct was to pull my head out immediately, but it was like I suddenly heard a voice inside my head:  DON'T MOVE.


Gingerly, I shook my head.  Glass shards flew out of my hair.
I realized my hands hurt and turned the palms over.
Bleeding copiously.
Like, stigmata-style.

I reached cautiously around to feel my neck, which also hurt. 
My hands came back wet.  Ohhhh shit.


Slowly, slowly, I pulled my head out of the windowsill and eased back down onto the lawn chair.


I had seriously miscalculated how high I needed to leap to get into the window.

Wes and Shelley were going to be so mad.


But I still needed to get into the house. 
And I'd already ruined the window.
So I wrapped my hand in an old rag from the backyard, tapped out the rest of the glass shards in the window, and threw them into the house. 


I brushed all the glass dust off the sill, dragged over 4 more lawn chairs, steeled myself for more carnage, and leaped through the window again.

This time, I managed to slice up my ass, shoulder, and lower back.


I was like a little pink Easter ham.  A little hammy, all carved up.

The most difficult thing about being awesome is not having a body double.

Btw, do you know how hard it is to get glass dust off yourself?  Lemme tell you, a hot shower does nothing.

After I had cleaned up everything, bandaged myself, and thought up a story to tell Wes about how the cat did it, I took a nap. 

And woke up in the middle of it because my head itched. 

When I scratched my head, sluts, do you know what happened?

I pulled a shard of glass about 1/4 of an inch long out of my scalp. 
No lie.

I spent the rest of my afternoon on the bathroom floor, running my fingers over my scalp and placing the little bloody bits on a paper towel.

Today's topic:  I could have full health care coverage if CJ and I were allowed to get married.

That is all. 
Fuck you, America.