Take my soul to where it wants to go.

Radio is easily my second favorite Emily King song. At times I am salty about the fact that I possess no musical ability besides decent scores on the ol' Magic Mic. Most of my cousins on my mom's side are musicians because their parents are musicians. Perhaps what I have inherited from my mom is a real affinity for hoarding.

Hey love, time to get up.

When I heard Distance, I thought I was going to combust. Shame on me for not being in the loop earlier because Emily King was in Las Vegas weeks ago. The last time I experienced music on a religious level was when I was introduced to Beach House. It has been years since I have been excited about music. Distance gives me the (gay) ghost. It makes my heart explode and fills me with optimism amidst the hilarity of my own love life in tandem with the horrors of police brutality, domestic terrorism and presidential campaigns. Its video is as visually pleasing as it is ear delicious (shout out, Neil Sedaka). And hello, BYIMM is EV. REE. THING.

30 Views in One Sitting? I'm Chuffed.

In my past life as a devout Mormon, I became friends with another single woman and she was the older sister I wished I had: the kind that would sit next to me at church, the kind that would take me to Sephora and urge me to buy things that I did not need, the kind that let me talk incessantly about the bands I liked, the kind that had a filthy car and did not flinch when that I told her that she was gross, the kind that met the dudes I was into and gave me real talk. Some Sundays, she would lean forward as a signal for me to scratch her back and I hated doing it because I knew it made me look really gay, but I did it anyway because I loved this woman like she was my sister. This memory of scratching her back during Sacrament Meeting and subsequently, my mom shooting daggers at us, made me laugh out loud because of the absurdity of same-sex back-scratching equating to lesbianism. Whether or not I wanted to admit it at the time, I was already on the queer-er end of the sexuality spectrum stemming from an intense crush I developed on a brunette I met my third or fourth year at Girl's Camp. Scratching another woman's back was not my sapphic catalyst into lezbroism. That's all Tegan Quin...and maybe a dude that burned me so bad that it caused me turn my back on men entirely. But that's all water under the fluidity bridge because not all men, am I right, ladies? You live, you learn, and you invest in pharmaceuticals.

Perpetually Making Things Weird

Occasionally, I am reminded of the time when I kissed someone who I was really into for the first time and we got caught by a mutual friend. I do not know why this memory pops up every now and then. I am not nostalgic for it, but I do not regret that it happened either. This person and I are well past those feelings, and when we do interact, I like to think that the vibes are relatively normal. However, when this memory pops into my head and says, "Remember when this happened?" I become embarrassed to the point that my face flushes red and I am moved to scream into a pillow. Maybe I am embarrassed because I got real handsy real fast. And perhaps what I am nostalgic for is the consequent rush that is felt after a first kiss. Either way, does this mean that my mourning process has reached its end? Let us do the math: 5.5 years / 41 days later = DTF *insert smiling emoji with sunglasses here*

The World Doesn't Stop

Part of me has died and I mourn indefinitely.
Pseudo engagement rings and hypothetical kids be damned.
The love of my life is gone and I am paralyzed by impeding solitude.
I don't want to keep my hopes up because my hopes don't mean a damn thing
and my hopes are a memory of the life that I anticipated and the life that I no longer live.
But I cannot help but dream of a moment when this is vocalized as a big mistake.
Yes, I still love you. Yes, I'll come back to you.
But the desperation for reconciliation is one sided and pointless.
My heart breaks harder than it ever has and I doubt my ability to persevere
without my best friend and favorite person beside me.
I am selfish, I am sad, and I cannot.

Two for Two

I have made a fool of myself and continue to do so as I spill my broken heart onto the internet. For the past five and a half years, I have loved and grown and somehow managed not to be enough. Thirty-four seems too old to feel like this, although I know it happens to everyone. I am embarrassed for believing that 5.5 years was going to lead to marriage even after I reconsidered becoming a parent. You know detrimental me: giving everything I have to those I love without actually investing in myself. I end up with nothing except for heartache and the hard-earned knowledge of what to avoid in the future: single parents, younger people and in general, falling in love.

Kissing My Employee Discount Goodbye Forever

I guess I'm just going to use this blog as a place to post old quickie papers I wrote because I don't have the ability to post in the moment. I am never taking all upper division classes ever again...until I have to. In April, this Gap Kids ad went viral and I don't know why I read the comments section to anything. Because I'm secretly a drama queen? It is incredible to me that people really think that the above photos are the same pose. Let me break it down: little Black girl as arm rest is not standing in a power pose like little white girl as arm rest. No one cried foul about the black and white photo because little girls of color are already perceived as unladylike, they can't be organic bendy yogis. But I digress. People really believe that a two-term Black President equates to a post-racial society. If anything, white supremacy has become more overt and identical to the postbellum South. Anyway, here is a short essay that will possibly cement my inability to return to Gap Inc.:

Fall into the Crap

A week has passed since the Gap issued their “apology” for offending the Twitterverse with their ED by Ellen ad depicting the head of a Black girl’s as an armrest for a white girl. Having dedicated five years of my life to the Gap along with a lumbar strain that has since curbed my amateur bowling career, the viral nature of this story filled me with disbelief. While the Gap likes to pride itself as a progressive company, their non-apology (we’re sorry if you’re offended) speaks to lazy corporate management, lackadaisical public relations and unethical ad tactics. In an attempt to engage my former coworkers via Facebook in a conversation surrounding race representation and the historicity of Black stereotypes, the dominant discourse for defending the image in question as “not a race issue” was rationalized through reverse-racism theories, anecdotes by the vertically challenged, and the fact that the armrest and resting arm happen to be sisters through adoption. I am continually awed by the belief of a contemporarily post-racial society, or that white supremacy is only recognizable in white cone-shaped hoods with eye holes, by white nationalists with YouTube channels, and by observing the attendees of Donald Trump rallies. Upon realization that the dialogue was not going to evolve into focusing on the role that photographers, style directors and ad executives play in constructing body narratives, I stopped contributing to the conversation.

Forty-two pages into Between the World and Me, a specific passage made me mad again at the Gap and mad at the individuals who were unwilling to consider how racist the ad is: “’White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining).” The disgruntled retail employee in me is finding difficulty in believing that the Gap is clever enough to pose a Black girl in the style of a somber lawn jockey among a trio of organic white yogis-in-training for a collection of clothing intended to empower girls as a sly nod at framing Black girlhood as subservience. This is the same Gap that published an article in the company’s monthly newsletter citing Kanye West’s name-dropping of the retail chain in the song “Spaceship” as a compliment. It is as if no one was available to review the lyrics before sending the final draft to the printer:

“If my manager insults me again, I will be assaulting him

After I fuck the manager up, then I’m gonna shorten the register up

Let’s go back, back to the Gap

Look at my check, wasn’t no scratch

So if I stole, wasn’t my fault

Yeah I stole, never got caught

Take me to the back and pat me

Askin’ me about some khakis

But let some black people walk in

I bet they show off their token blackie.”

Simultaneously, white supremacy’s pervasiveness in print media is to the extent that the un-woke consumer has grown accustomed to racist aesthetics. Whether it is Lebron James as King Kong to Gisele Bündchen on the cover of Vogue, or the calcification of Kerry Washington on the cover of Adweek: body autonomy for people of color is not a thing.

I also think that Gap Inc's P.A.C.E. program is a farce. Empowering women of the Global South while still utilizing sweat shops to produce mediocre clothing? Ok. Imperialism remixed with white liberal feminism at its finest. Well, there goes my chance to re-break my back for $10-something an hour. Bye, Felicia.