"Warring Ideals in One Dark Body"

1) Some of the more remarkable, annoying or dangerous positions or locations I’ve worked--bricklayer, telemarketer, teaching assistant, rent boi/house boi, substitute teacher, radio station, salsa production plant, radiology film archive, freelance reporter, security guard, cell phone sales, delivery driver, homeless youth counselor, health food store, ethnographer.

2) I am well aware of the historical and cultural contexts of Black women and hats and still did not care for Aretha Franklin’s hat at President Obama’s Inauguration. Not sorry.

3) I’ve been a periodic insomniac since I was in 10^th grade.

4) My first word was, “fantastic.”

5) I tried to leave my gifted-talented program in grade school after the “teacher” tried to tell me wunderbar didn’t mean wonderful in German and hit me over the head with a rolled up newspaper for calling another teacher a liar. (They wouldn’t let me go.)

6) I have a rapt fascination for blood, even on microscopic slides.

7) I was first chair violin in high school.

8) I turned 35 a couple of weeks ago.

9) I have a back injury that hurts more than it doesn't hurt (and I have a referral for a massage therapist two houses down--yay!)

10) I neither consider myself a cat person nor a dog person.

11) I’m not out as genderqueer to my family, and though I have no plans to change that, I’m getting tired of it.

12) I think if people are going to throw shoes for any reason they need to practice first.

13) I have an increasing respect for my mother’s culinary abilities and that she put a plate of mustard greens in front of us at least once a month.

14) I've taken a perverse, infantile delight to hearing a certain tone from my office mate that indicates I'm irritating her. I think this means I'm bored and don't care for her.

15) I can do a head-stand.

16) I sold The Audacity of Hope before I finished reading it. With the exception of a one-month stint at Dusty’s Barbecue for $2.13/hr, I’d been jobless for nine months, and as I told my sister, “It’s a good read and everything, but it’s hard to resolve that title with not being able to find a job. It’s like ‘Hope: Yeah, That Shit is Pretty Fucking Audacious, Barack.’”

17) I dissected a rat a couple of weeks ago. When I went to pin it down, I broke its arm. The horror of my lab partners amused me secretly.

18) I have submitted to the indignity of urinating in a cup so that I could get a job. Having sex for a place to stay, favors or drugs seemed comparatively less humiliating.

19) Of all my identities, "survivor" is paradoxically the one I'm most proud of and least able to talk about.

20) I like soft, fuzzy things and sharp, pointy, metal things.

21) My spiritual practice discourages recruiting or even claiming it as an identity.

22) I did not figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up until about two years ago.

23) I can roll my tongue up and my earlobes are attached.

24) I've lived in Atlanta, New Orleans, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Oakland.

25) I intensely dislike dried coconut.