Drawing Lines with Our Eyes
January 22nd, 2008 maggie
H. and I go to Jaded Lounge for all-queer, all-asian cabaret. We eat biscuits, corn, and mac and cheese from Kentucky Fried Chicken, I have a beer that I’ll only drink half of and she has something pink. We look around. I whisper, is it bad that I’m wondering why the white straight-appearing couples are here? She says, I was wondering that but then I told myself that’s fucked up.
We have so many stories about being alone, we come out into these amorphous communities and all we want is to not be alone anymore. Our monkey brains say, categorize to survive, separate enemies from friends, know your tribe. We’ve been rejected so many times and we want to know who’s safe, so we draw these lines with our eyes to say who belongs and who doesn’t. We hurt each other this way, but we keep doing it.
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