The Thing About 9/11

I'm going to say a thing, and it's going to sound kind of hippie-ish (especially coming from a hard-ass bitch such as myself). It feels a little weird, to be honest. The whole "KB, Hardcore Crusader for Justice" concept has turned into "One-With-All-The-People, Cup Full 'o Compassion." All zen preachy-like instead of HIT IT WIT A SLEDGEHAMMER. #notmystyle

It also seems horribly naive to feel the way I'm feeling about this. And I'm a bit scared to post this, because of how naive it feels. (I'm sure in a year from now I'll write some self-deprecating blog post retracting this statement. Such fickle creatures, we.)

But.

Today has been a kind of mortifying day on Facebook. It's election season—hell, it's open season on a lot of groups, and the amount of hatred is already unfathomable. But today is a day for remembrance and for respect. What did you learn on 9/11/01? Did you learn to attack your fellow countrymen? Did you learn the art of blaming others? Did you learn to keep hatred alive? Vengeance? Is that really what those of us that died would want us to do? This is most of what I'm seeing, and it makes me sad.

"Never forget" does not mean "harbor anger" or "hold a grudge." It means "remember what happened." And, I wager, to most of us that means "honor."

I don't mean for this to be a holier-than-thou situation. Believe you me, I can be just as hateful as the next person. But it's exhausting, harboring resentment. And on a day like today, we could all use a little compassion.

Do grieve and mourn, but please, respect the grief of your fellow countrymen. That includes shutting up about Kaepernick, about Hillary's health, about Trump's idiocy, just for once. We do not need conspiracy theories, we do not need racism, we do not need blame. We do not need any more hatred. We don't. Allow the man his freedom to kneel; allow Hillary to recover from her pneumonia; allow Trump to be whoever he feels he needs to be. Stop calling each other terrorists because of peaceful protests. Stop with the aggression for just a second. All of it matters to someone, myself included, clearly, but that is not the point today.

The horror lies in the fact that 9/11 happened. No matter what each one of us thinks, no matter what political leanings we have, this wretched thing happened, terribly, and every single person in this country has been affected. And we damn well should be.

Just for one day, let all of us be united in compassion. Let us learn to heal from our collective pain, and not inflict more. Let us not point fingers, and instead try to curb the rage, even for only a little bit. Let us appreciate the one thing that all 325 million of us crazy humans out here have in common: we are Americans, for better or for worse. We are each different kinds of patriots; we are Americans nonetheless.

Let us respect the idea of the liberty that each person in this country craves, and fully respect the different ways of feeling it rather than the different ways of acting against each other. Let us try to understand each other. Let us learn. Please. Just for one day, this remembrance of a day where compassion didn't matter at all. Because if we all do this—if we try for some compassion? Maybe it will be a little easier tomorrow.

Goddamn Americans

A year ago to the day (thanks for the reminder, Facebook!) I wrote this post. I'm embarrassed that it even exists, really, because of what it says about who I used to be as a person. In a nutshell: I'd said "all lives matter." Then I checked myself. I checked the privilege and subliminal racism that my Black ass had been harboring simply from growing up and remaining in a primarily white community.

And I continue to check myself. I grow older, I learn more. Sure. I also make it a point to read the damn news.

God knows I don't want to. God knows I want to turn a blind eye to all of this. It's horrible to watch. The world is heartbreaking. I'm already enough of a mess in my little apartment in Podunk. Why would I bring the world, which is worse than my life, into a life I already can't handle?

A friend of mine—white guy, local to the Valley, choosing to not vote this election, and yes, all of that does make a difference so don't even start with me—asked me why I even bother. His reasoning was, what can we even do as individuals when it comes to all of this? When it comes to Florida, when it comes to Black lives, when it comes to Syrian refugees and France and Palestine and Islamophobia and hatred and fear?

The answer I had for him is: I don't fucking know. One of the 8000 tragedies this month (I can't even remember which one) pushed me over the edge. He came to my house so we could go for a hike and he found me crying in a corner on the floor in the dark, smoking a stale cigarette and swirling a large glass of Jack. "He's going to win," I kept saying. "He's going to win. I'm so scared. He's going to win. I'm so scared."

The answer he gave me was so sweet and so genuine that I adored him for it: "It's okay, Boatwright," he said. "You're safe here, today, now. He's not coming after you."

I looked up at him. I put down the cigarette. (I don't even fucking smoke. I found that thing in the bottom of a purse. It had to be at least 5 years old.) And I said, "Wanna order a pizza?"

I saw this on Facebook last night, and I loved it, and I shared it:

If you'd like to see the responses I got on it, feel free to check out the original post on my Facebook page; I made it public. 

I wasn't particularly riled up about any of the responses until someone said, "Such a ridiculous post." 

Okay. Okay.

I wish I were the kind of person who could just get up and take her purse and leave (read: I wish I were Viola Davis), but yes, I took the bait. Pat yourself on the back; you've once again successfully started shit with Kyle Boatwright.

Okay.

At the end of the day, politics are really what you care about as an individual, are they not? Who you gonna vote for? What works for you? What doesn't?

The problem is that if we vote like that, we're just...not very good members of society. Which has been the problem all along.

I get the appeal of a third party candidate. I really, really, really do. But now is not the time, because realistically: it will not work. This country is in a state such that it is literally ready to elect Trump—this country is NOT ready to elect a third party. The paradigm shift that you're looking for is a good one, and it's one that I look for ultimately as well. But it's not happening this year. What will happen if Trump gets elected? What will happen to your sisters, your friends of color, 99% of society? 

I don't know the answer. But I know that it will be terrifying. So yes. Today, I will settle for the lesser of two evils.

I do not approve of the shit that went down with the DNC and Bernie. I do not approve of a lot of what Hillary has to say. 

BUT.

I do not have the luxury of voting third party. Nor do I have the luxury of simply not voting. I am a low-income Black woman in the arts with a very large number of health problems.

So yes, on this blog, on this post, on my Facebook page, it boils down to the vote with self-interest at hand. Who am I gonna vote for? What works for me? Hillary works for me, because at the end of the day, Hillary is not the evil that will take us back to a place where white men dominate even more than they already do. 

And it's far bigger than me. Yes, I am voting in the interest of me not ending up dead or worse. But what does this country need at the end of the day? People are dying in the streets every damn day, our people, American people, and what is being done about it? I can't know how I would vote if I had a different background, of course I can't. But I can't see myself in a different life voting so as to prioritize, say, the economy or my taxes (I'm playing nice right now) over the lives of my countrymen. These are LIVES. Say it with me. THESE. ARE. LIVES.

And you white men who are my friends, you who call my voice "ridiculous," even you who don't care one way or the other: it is what it is, man. You are entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your opinion, and to everything else you receive on a day to day basis that you don't even notice: that's what white male privilege is. (Please note that this is not me hating you for it. This is me pointing out that it exists. Check your privilege, absolutely. Ignorance leads to disaster. But I am quite aware that you have no say in being born a white male in America any more than I have say in being born a Black female. This is not that conversation.)

Imagine. Imagine being so white, so male, so straight, so cis, that voting for a third party just to prove a point is a risk that you can afford to take. Imagine that luxury. 

Would that I could. Would that I could write in Bernie (who, by the way, is calling for unity within the party, just a heads up...) and prove a point. 

I'm entitled to my opinion as well. I'm entitled to the freedom that you have. I'm a goddamn American.

Wherever Is Your Heart, I Call Home

Well, I crashed a few reunion parties this weekend.

That sounds entirely dramatic and kind of badass. What I actually did was steal some food from the Amherst Class of 2001 reunion tent and roll up to the 2006 tent gnawing on some pork ribs. It was lovely, classy, and one hundred percent true KB style.

No one loves their alma mater like Amherst alums love Amherst College. (Just ask our endowment. Or Marshall Nannes. Or anyone who's gone to an Amherst reunion who did not actually attend Amherst.) Seriously—this is true of every Amherst reunion I've ever stolen a pork rib from—there is nothing but love on that campus from start to finish. It's even good to see the peers who you hated with a blazing passion. I mean, you definitely still hate them. (You DEFINITELY still hate them.) But there's something more important going on than all the horrible things they did or said to you: it's that we all had this shared experience. Most of us were pretty emotionally homeless, yeah? That seems to be the default for adolescents. But I'm pretty sure we all started to find a home once we got to the college on a hill.

My fifth reunion a few years ago was pretty great for exactly one reason: I was hotter than I'd ever been in my life. I was living in Vegas, which means I'd actually learned how to do eye makeup and dress myself. I'd also lost about forty pounds through a combination of major surgery, anxiety, and a healthy diet of Xanax, raw cookie dough from Fresh and Easy, and sugar-free Red Bull. And I had this BOMB orange dress, in which I now just look like a big-tittied Halloween cupcake. So naturally, when this weekend rolled around, I was nervous. A friend asked me why I was so anxious about seeing a bunch of people from an entirely different lifetime, and yet another asked me who I was exactly trying to impress as I was scowling at myself in the mirror, trying on eighty-seven different outfits to find just one that screamed, "IMPRESSIVE."

Here's the deal. Amherst College alums are successful. Period. Amherst alums are not fucked up, psychotic, or really actually broke. Amherst alums come to their 10th reunions with jobs and life partners and babies and a clear path ahead of them. I lack pretty much all of that. And yes, of course, I know that this is a gross assumption and that none of us really know what the hell we're doing and that we all have issues and none of this is actually real or reasonable to believe. But that common sense doesn't take the nerves off. (Frankly, I think if we didn't have these ridiculously high expectations of ourselves, none of us would've been at Amherst to begin with.)

What did, in fact, take the nerves off? The camaraderie. It's been a long time since I felt as safe as I did last night, sitting in the midst of these people who did—do—love me. They don't even know me all that well, but they've already seen a core element of me and they've accepted it, simple as that. The folks who were seniors when I was a freshman were there this weekend. Sam took care of me during my brief yet wretched tenure in my a cappella group. I remember him lending me his car so I could go to a doctor's appointment. It was the first time anyone had ever lent me their vehicle, and I was amazed that he thought I could be trusted. Raul was the very first upperclassman to bother to connect with me. We'd talked during my freshman orientation, and I remember feeling so relieved and fortunate that some of the kids from my floor had connected with him and that we had such a big, good personality on our side. The girls who taught me to play rugby freshman year were tearing up the dance floor, and everyone who I saw as a leader as soon as I set foot on campus was thriving. Really? Everything was right.

It's not just that Amherst is home. It's that these people are home. These are the types of hearts that are home for me.

I live here now. I live here still. Most everyone at reunion told me they were jealous that I live here. There was a lot of, "Omg, is your life amazing now?" and "I wish I could come back. I'm trying to find a way back."

By contrast, very few people I met in Las Vegas understand why I wanted to come back. One person told me I was "pussying out of life and running home to Mommy." Someone else said something like, "Oh, I guess you couldn't stand to be around all us plebeians, what with your fucking rich bullshit Amherst College degree." True friends in Vegas say, "I miss you. Come home."

I have to say something now that I restrain myself from saying to them, because it seems like it's harsh: Las Vegas is not my home. And I am very grateful to say that I know it never will be. It is harsh. It is a very brutal reality. But home does not treat a person the way that those years out West treated me.

I do miss my apartment. I miss the weather. I miss my dog. I miss the mountains and I miss the drive to LA. And I miss the real friends I made there, of which there are many. But, to be frank: some bad shit happened to me out there.

So. Maybe I did want to pussy out. Maybe I couldn't stand to live the way I lived, watching the same Family Guy episodes over and over until I finally fell asleep because even Lois Griffin whining was more soothing than the loudest of the real voices I heard there. Maybe I wanted to be treated like a person worth working with, worth remembering. Maybe I wanted to get paid or at least get credit, maybe I wanted to have a voice, maybe I wanted feel as though I had control over my own future. Maybe I wanted to feel like I could open my mouth without having entire relationships and careers come crashing down. Maybe I didn't want to wrestle addicts and cruelty or have shit stolen from me or get fucking slapped around or face life-altering diseases or even just date someone who was so willing to settle on life that they panhandled in the desert for fun. BAD. SHIT. Dear Jesus and Tony Marx, get me away from all those plebeians. (But actually: the kind of person who chooses an education like Amherst is not the kind of person who thinks it's a brilliant idea to panhandle. Call me a fucking rich pretentious bullshitter if you like.)

But also, maybe I wanted to like myself. Maybe I didn't want to be walked on and maybe I didn't want to be abused. Maybe I just wanted to be okay.

It is exhausting. Wanting those things, putting on the game face, trying to make yourself so self-possessed that you do actually deserve those basic human rights.

As safe as I felt this weekend, as happy as I was, as much as I knew with my whole self that nothing would go wrong this weekend because it couldn't possibly, it can't with that much love so close—one can only summarize one's life and scream "IMPRESSIVE" so many times, even in the best of situations.

I told the truth all night, I really did. And it's not unimpressive. I live here now. I didn't stay for all these years after graduating—I left and went to Las Vegas, and I didn't like it, and I came back. And I do theater and I love it, I do it because I love it, and I don't do anything else. I work in a bookstore. It pays a bill. I live alone with my cat. No, I'm not married, and I genuinely love being single. Yes. This is as it should be. Very, very much so. I don't know that I'm happy (who is?), but I'm where I should be, I think.

But I hit a wall last night as I was talking to a guy I hooked up with literally ten years ago and have had no other actual connection or conversation before or since. I hit that point where I didn't feel like just smiling anymore. I've been putting on the heavy duty game face since I moved to Vegas. So? I didn't bother.

Frankly, if I saw this dude on the street I would not recognize him. (Thank the powers that be for name tags, because that entire encounter would have been way more awkward if he hadn't had one.) He asked me how I was, and I told him all of the above. And then, I told him that I didn't just dislike Las Vegas—I loathed it. I told him that the worst things that have ever happened to me happened in that city with people I didn't understand, and I told him I was scared and am still scared. I told him that it all changed me in a way that I hate. I told him the truth.

What's tricky about this is that no one wants to hear this shit. The general population is not interested in sob stories and insecurities. People at gatherings, Amherst or not, want to hear that your life is impressive. They want to hear that you are successful, and then they can tell you that their lives are impressive and successful too. It's that thing we all do in polite company, and of course we do. In these kinds of situations, people ask us how we are and they don't want to hear "bad." Lord, if every alum I encountered this weekend told me about the worst thing that had ever happened to them, I'd be lulling myself into a semi-permanent slumber with Alex Borstein's best squawking for the next year at least.

But you know what? It was easy to tell this one guy about the maybes and the backtracking and the nevers and the awful and the fear. And he accepted it warmly, and then he told me some of his scary truths. Then we high fived. Then the DJ started playing "I'm Real" and all serious conversation was over, because I turn into a monster when Ja Rule asks what his motherfucking name is.

When I see that alum in another five years, I will pray for more name tags and hope that his face doesn't change too much. I am entirely certain that I won't recognize him. Again. But I will recognize that he is a kind of home.

I know, of course, that Amherst has its flaws, some of which run very deeply. I know that a lot of those flaws have come to light in recent years, and I know that a lot of them relate directly to me and others of my demographic. And God, the school is named after a genocidal maniac. That's probably half the damn problem right there.

Nevertheless. In high school, when it came time for me to choose a college, I was desperately torn between a few options. I finally point-blank asked the guidance counselor what he would choose for his own kid. He said something I'll never forget: "You can go to Oberlin or Bates or Vassar or any liberal arts school and get a great education that would suit you. You can do the same thing at Columbia or another Ivy League. But in all my years of doing this job, I've only found two schools that will give you an entirely unique experience. One is Princeton. And one is Amherst College."

I find home in these flawed and yet lovely hearts, and I know with all of mine that he was right. Terras irradient, my friends. May light shine on your world in the way that these people have shone on mine.

The Shoulders We Stand On

I have 1,653 Facebook friends. Scrolling through my newsfeed today, I've seen roughly 12 posts about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have literally seen more pictures of David Bowie today than recognition of Dr. King.

I've seen that video of that hamster tucked into a blanket eating a carrot for the fifteenth time. I've seen about 89 things about Harry Potter that aren't even related to the loss of Alan Rickman. I've seen my idiot ex's drugged out face. I've seen the new (terrible) haircut of a man I'm terrified of and have gone out of my way to avoid. And I've seen the same damn video about how to create bacon cheese egg muffins, which, frankly, are wholly unnecessary.

And 12 posts about Dr. King.

What the actual fuck?

This man's bravery is inimitable. He was a martyr in the truest sense of the word: he died for his cause. He fought for change through peace and wisdom, knowing full well that he would die for it. He did it anyway. How many people do you know of that have fervently devoted themselves to a cause for the greater good, directly, unabatedly conscious every morning when they woke up that their lives would come to an end for it? I can think of three off the top of my head. One of them was a contemporary of Dr. King's. The other one died a few thousand years ago, and I'm pretty sure that the majority of the people in this country have his unauthorized biography on their shelves.

I'm not saying that Dr. King should be worshipped. He was a man, after all, and carried a man's vices with him even as he brought change down upon this world. But his bravery should be admired. The revolutionary political figure accepts that they might be assassinated. Black men walk to the grocery store at night, afraid that they might be assassinated. He knew. Without a doubt. And he did it all anyway.

"Pictured here is one of the last pictures of Dr Martin Luther King's loyal lieutenants inspecting their leader's mortal remains one last time.
January 12, 1929 - April 4, 1968. Dr. King was 39 years old at the time of his death. Lest we forget..."
—Chuck Hobbs

I have more white sisters and brothers than I can count. And I guarantee that had Dr. King not been born, I would not have those sisters and brothers, and they would not have me. Not in the way that they do. Not in the way that I do. My grandmother, born in 1925, couldn't vote when she came of age. And yet, she lived to see a man elected President of the United States who was the same race as she. Would that have happened for her without Dr. King's work? Would life as it is happen if not for his achievements? Look down, everyone. We stand on his shoulders, and on the shoulders of everyone before him.

I've shared this jarring, ugly photo as a reminder. This country rarely, if ever, gives all 100% of its citizens a common something to appreciate. But it has given us this day to remember that Dr. King was born, and what he did for all of us in his short life.

"We shall overcome someday." He believed that fully, and we of course have infinite chances to. But we haven't yet. Almost 50 years after this man laid down his life, we haven't. His life, and death, is not for nothing, not by any means. But if I met him right now, after all that he'd done, I would be ashamed to tell him that everything has changed and yet nothing has.

His death is not fresh in anyone's minds. It was half a century ago. But today, it should be.