Queer by Choice

seifaiden recently pointed out to me 30 Journaling Prompts for Self-Reflection and Self-Discovery. I don't think they all merit separate entries, but I decided to throw together a few of the ones I have short answers for.

My favorite way to spend the day is . . .
Sleep late, read in bed, pet my cat in bed, get up, harvest pecans with my dog, plant some plants, discover new flowers in my yard, take pictures of the yard, go for a hike, take pictures of the hike, write about it on LiveJournal.

If I could talk to my teenage self, the one thing I would say is . . .
You will manage to handle so much more than you think you're capable of handling. (Also so much more than you have the slightest idea you'll ever need to handle. But I won't tell you that part, because the optimistic belief that virtually everything will go right all your life is a valuable survival mechanism that I do not wish to rob you of.)

The words I’d like to live by are . . .
No one can love you completely unless they know completely who you are, so you must never, never, never do anything so terrible that you can't bring yourself to confess to it later, because if you can't bring yourself to confess to it later then you can't ever be known completely and loved completely.

I couldn’t imagine living without . . .
People I trust who know me completely. Or as close to completely as is achievable between human beings with fallible memories and finite amounts of time for communication.

When I’m in pain — physical or emotional — the kindest thing I can do for myself is . . .
Recognize it, acknowledge it, examine it, describe it in writing and in conversation.

What does unconditional love look like for you?
Unconditional love does not seem particularly sane to me. If someone you love murders everyone else you love, will you still love them afterward? Should you still love them afterward? Maybe if they're your child and you feel responsible for making them into the horrible person they became, you'd have to. Other than that, though, I think you should switch to hating them instead. That's putting a condition on your love for them, and I think you should go right ahead and make your love conditional upon that.

What would you do if you loved yourself unconditionally? How can you act on these things whether you do or don’t?
I think my love for myself is also conditional upon my not murdering people, and I'm okay with that too. I do not desire to love myself unconditionally.

I really wish others knew this about me . . .
1. I'm queer by choice.
2. I'm quite open about who I am and what I want. Our interactions will go more smoothly if you don't spend your time constantly worrying that I might secretly be wildly different than I claim to be.

Name what is enough for you.
1. A stable supply of enough money that I don't feel a need to worry about money. I can comfortably do without things like cellphones, cable TV, restaurants, and hotels, but I need to be able to decide on a whim to buy several dozen plants or half a dozen new skirts and not have to worry about whether I can really afford that or not.
2. Access to a wide range of books.
3. Access to the Internet.
4. Access to people who understand me extremely well.
5. Access to nature in reasonably wild form.

Using 10 words, describe yourself.
Independent, unusual, creative, literate, rational, stable, reliable, determined, committed, whole-hearted.

(Not sure whether that counts as 10 words or 11 words, but I think it's close enough. Several of the words are near-synonyms of one another, but some concepts about me apparently require emphasis.)

What can you learn from your biggest mistakes?
Mostly, to be more suspicious of people. Also (variations on the same theme, but with different nuances) to ask more questions, and to recognize that sometimes I ought in fact to start an argument, because some arguments need to be had.

What’s surprised you the most about your life or life in general?
It's far more difficult and painful than I had expected.

I feel most energized when . . .
I'm with people I can relate to well.

In honor of Susan's and my second anniversary, which was August 19th, I am stealing a LiveJournal survey from bay_bus_rider and arlan_bishop. What, you don't think filling out a LiveJournal survey three days after the event is a good way to celebrate an anniversary? Okay, okay - I also gave her flowers and sonnets, and she took me out to dinner. But now I'm doing the survey.

How long have you been together?
Two years.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
We corresponded for two weeks before we met. When we met, we talked for maybe an hour or two before it became an official relationship.

Who asked out whom?
She asked me.

( Continued )

There's a list of questions going around LiveJournal lately; people post the list of questions and ask their readers to answer the questions. I answered it, but I didn't find very many of the questions particularly interesting. So I decided to make my own list of questions that I do find interesting, and post my own list instead. You should answer these questions, because I wrote them myself based on what I'm actually interested in knowing! But feel free to skip some questions if otherwise you won't answer it at all.

1. What's a recent achievement you're proud of?
2. What's the last good book you read?
3. Who are some of your favorite authors?
4. Who are some of your favorite bands or musicians?
5. Do you know how to play any musical instruments?
6. If you were given $10,000 dollars today, what would you do with it?
7. If you could live in any building you wanted, what kind of building would you want to live in?
8. What are some of your favorite plants?
9. When you were a kid, what future did you imagine for yourself?
10. What's something that you're hoping will happen to you soon?
11. What's a great thing that happened to you once?
12. What color is your bedspread?
13. Do you know how to sew, embroider, knit, crochet, cross-stitch, or latch-hook?
14. If you could make your own clothes or ask someone else to make them for you, what's something you'd like that's hard to find in stores?
15. Have you ever done any woodworking?
16. Can you speak any languages other than English?
17. What are some of your favorite foods?
18. What are some of your favorite beverages?
19. What species would you most like to have as a pet?
20. Do you have any pets?
21. When did you last ride a bike?
22. Can you change a tire on a car?
23. If you've been to college, what was your major; if you haven't been, what would your major be if you went now?
24. What's a major that probably doesn't currently exist, but that you'd like to see added to a college curriculum?
25. What are your favorite websites to spend time on, other than LiveJournal?
26. What are your favorite things to do at home, other than use the Internet?
27 What's your favorite place to go, away from home?
28. What's the best pastime you've ever invented yourself?
29. If you meet me in person (or if we've already met, then if we meet again), what should we do together?
30. If you were stuck in an elevator with me, what would you do?
31. Are you more of a pessimist or an optimist?
32. Do you believe in any supernatural phenomena?
33. What do you like most about your body?
34. What do you like most about your mind?
35. What's one pet peeve of yours?
36. If you wanted to change one thing about your personality, what might it be?
37. Tell me one weird fact about you.
38. In one word, how would you describe yourself?
39. In one word, how would you describe me?
40. Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?

Adopted a cat. Bought real health insurance instead of just the catastrophic kind. Made a latchhook rug without a storebought pattern - a larger latchhook rug than I've ever made before - and completed all the post-latchhooking final touches myself for the first time. Was pre-approved for a mortgage loan big enough that I could actually buy a residence of some kind if I found one that I wanted. Trained coworkers on a much more extensive and long-term basis than I ever had before. Started actually divulging fairly large amounts about my personal life to coworkers.

( 2006 has been a great year. )

lil_e_beth tagged me for this one, and it's way too hard. :p

List ten fictional characters that you would like to have sex with. Then tag five friends to do the same. (I refuse to tag anyone to do anything this hard!)

1. Teddy Ottinger, the bisexual female aviatrix/journalist/third-to-last survivor of the human race, who was entirely unwittingly tricked into bringing about the human race's extinction, in Gore Vidal's novel Kalki.

2. Jeanette, the semi-fictionalized autobiographical narrator of Jeanette Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, who's a lesbian being raised by scary Christian fundies, and who opposes the notion of a biological basis for sexual preference, too! (However, I would most likely not have sex with the real Jeanette Winterson, if only because it might make me feel guilty about the fact that I haven't really been that fond of any of her more recent books.)

3 & 4. Both the autobiographical narrator and her girlfriend Yan, who struggle to carry on a covert relationship in a totalitarian work camp in Maoist China, in Anchee Min's novel-like autobiography Red Azalea. (Technically they aren't fictional characters, but the book has some mildly surreal elements that lead me to think of them in the same way I'd think of fictional characters; also, I might have the same problem here in that I haven't liked any of Anchee Min's later books nearly as well as this first one - but I've liked all of Anchee Min's books better than a lot of Jeanette Winterson's, so the problem would be milder here.)

5. Christopher Ferris, queer domestic-violence victim in Maria McCann's novel As Meat Loves Salt.

6. George, the aging gay professor whose lover has recently died, in Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man (although I might need to somehow get him to mistake me for a man in order for him to be interested).

7. Janet Evason, the woman from a future Earth in which a disease has made men extinct but women have made medical advances enabling them to reproduce without men, in Joanna Russ's novel The Female Man.

8 & 9. Tracy Johnson and Sara Polatkin, the lesbian couple who have an extremely unpleasant dinner with Sara's parents in Sherman Alexie's short story "Indian Country."

10. Mr. Pierre, the lavender-haired gay hairdresser in Rita Mae Brown's novel Bingo. (Again, I'd probably have to somehow miraculously get mistaken for a male by him to have any chance; but really, he was far more my type than any of the queer female characters in this book.)

gamesiplay has commanded me to do this survey, so I must.

1. Total number of books in your house: EEEEEEEEEEE! You can't seriously expect me to count them all! I'd be here counting for the rest of the year! Look, I learned my book-collecting tendencies from my mother, and my mother . . . well, let's just say that when I was in college, I once wrote an autobiographically-inspired short story about growing up in a house that had so many books in it that you couldn't walk down the hallway without turning sideways to squeeze between the bookshelves on each side of you. (The story was hyperbole, and there were no actual bookshelves in our hallways, but there were bookshelves almost everywhere else.)

Okay. I shall now devote the next half hour to attempting to estimate reasonably accurately how many books I have in this place. And you shall have to be satisfied with a mere estimate, because unlike gamesiplay, I refuse to count.

I have approximately 33 books on each of 9 identically sized shelves, which makes a total of approximately 297 books so far.
I have an additional 188 books on a set of shelves that I had to actually count because the numbers of books on each shelf were not similar. That's 485 books so far. (And I've read all of them - I don't put books on shelves until after I've read them.)
I have an additional 35 books (that I've also read) in bureau drawers, because I haven't bought new shelves to put them on yet. That's 520 books so far.
I have 23 books lying on the floor next to my bed. Those are all books that either I'm currently reading, I've recently finished reading, I've recently taken off a shelf to look something up in, or I'm planning to read next. That's 543 books so far.
I have 49 books stacked on a table next to my front door. Those are all books I haven't read yet. That's 592 books so far.
I have 5 books sitting on my desk next to the computer. Those are all from the same categories as the books lying on the floor next to my bed. That's 597 books so far.
I left 1 book (that I just started reading today) in a drawer in my cubicle at work today. That makes a total of 598 books! (Except that this was an estimate anyway, so let's just say 600.)

600 books! You can see why I've only moved from one residence to another once in my life. Too many books to carry. :p

2. The last book you bought was: My last book purchase was a bunch of books at once. So, the books were:

• The Man Who Wasn't There by Pat Barker
• Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
• Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis, edited by Robin Ruth Linden, Darlene R. Pagano, Diana E. H. Russell, and Susan Leigh Star
• Henry James' Midnight Song by Carol De Chellis Hill
• The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing
• Kalki by Gore Vidal
• At Home: Essays 1982-1988 by Gore Vidal

So far, I've read the first three and was mostly disappointed by all three of them. But I just started the fourth today, and I'm not disappointed with it so far.

3. What was the last book you read before reading this? The last book I read part of was Henry James' Midnight Song by Carol De Chellis Hill, which I just started reading during lunch as work today. It looks great so far. Before that, I last read part of A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, and before that, I think the last book I actually finished was the Spanish translation of a German children's book, Querido Señor Diablo by Christine Nöstlinger, which, my dear chisparoja, I recently discovered you had accidentally left behind under my bed last January.

4. Write down five or ten books that you often read or that mean a lot to you:

• When I Was Five I Killed Myself by Howard Buten
• Because They Wanted To by Mary Gaitskill
• Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and Law Enforcers by Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald
• As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany: The Youth Movement, the Gay Movement and Male Bonding Before Hitler's Rise: Original Transcripts from Der Eigene, the First Gay Journal in the World, edited by Harry Oosterhuis and Hubert Kennedy
• Ida: A Novel by Gertrude Stein
• Julian by Gore Vidal
• The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol
• Native Son by Richard Wright

5. [I am adding this question because I think it desperately needs to be included.] Write down five books that you hate or strongly dislike:

• Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed
• Gold Rush by Miri Yu

6. Which three people will you 'pass the stick' to? mariness, theobscure, and read_o_rama . . . you're it! (And I have extra sticks for anyone else who wants one, too.)

(stolen from lm, but with questions added because I found the author selection insufficient)

Hardback or Paperback? paperback
Highlight or Underline? highlight
Lewis or Tolkien? neither (haven't read either one)
E. B. White or A. A. Milne? White
T. S. Eliot or e. e. cummings? cummings
Stephen King or Dean Koontz? neither
Barnes & Noble or Borders? no preference
Waldenbooks or B. Dalton? neither . . . really I'll just go to Powells.com
Fantasy or Science Fiction? a little of both, not much of either
Horror or Suspense? horror (I get severely annoyed by suspense but I can deal with horror)
Bookmark or Dogear? If I'm at home, face down on the floor breaking the spine. If I need to take the book anywhere, either little plastic clips or folding the page vertically in half (my alternative to dogear).
Hemingway or Faulkner? Faulkner
Fitzgerald or Steinbeck? neither (hated Steinbeck and haven't read Fitzgerald)
Homer or Plato? Plato
Geoffrey Chaucer or Edmund Spenser? Chaucer, a million times over! Spenser was the most horribly awful experience ever and Chaucer was great.
Pen or Pencil? purple gel pen
Looseleaf or Notepad? whatever
Alphabetize: By Author or by Title? author, then chronologically by title
Dustjacket: On or Off? off
Novella or Epic? epic
John Grisham or Scott Turow? neither
J. K. Rowling or Lemony Snicket? Rowling (haven't read Snicket)
John Irving or John Updike? Irving
Amy Bloom or Amy Tan? Bloom
Arthur C. Clarke or Arthur Conan Doyle? either, in small doses
Charlotte Brontë or Charlotte Perkins Gilman? Charlotte Perkins Gilman
E. L. Doctorow or E. M. Forster? either
Emily Brontë or Emily Dickinson? Dickinson
George Orwell or George Bernard Shaw? Shaw
Henry James or Henry David Thoreau? James
Jack London or Jack Kerouac? Kerouac, but that doesn't mean I really like him all that much either
James Baldwin or James Joyce? Baldwin
Joseph Heller or Joseph Conrad? both, really
Kate Millett or Kate Chopin? Millett
L. M. Montgomery or L. Frank Baum? large helpings of both, please
Margaret Mitchell or Margaret Atwood? Atwood
Michael Crichton or Michael Ondaatje? Ondaatje
Ralph (Waldo) Ellison or Ralph Waldo Emerson? Ellison
Robert Frost or Robert Bly? Frost, though I'm no big fan of his either
Samuel Beckett or Samuel R. Delaney? either
Thomas Hardy or Thomas Mann? either
W. H. Auden or W. B. Yeats? Auden
William F. Gibson or William S. Burroughs? neither (haven't read Gibson and don't much care for Burroughs)
Fiction or Non-fiction? fiction
Historical Biography or Historical Romance? biography, but preferably novelized
A Few Pages per Sitting or Finish at Least a Chapter? at least 100 pages
Short Story or Creative Non-fiction Essay? either
"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"? either
Buy or Borrow? buy
New or Used? used
Kingsley Amis or Martin Amis? either
Arthur Miller or Henry Miller? either
Alice Walker or Rebecca Walker? Alice (haven't read Rebecca)
Robert Browning or Elizabeth Barrett Browning? either
Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker? Shelley

1. What is the geekiest part of your music collection: I don't really understand this question. What constitutes geeky music? Maybe Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator"?

2. What do you eat when you raid the fridge at night: Chocolate ice cream.

3. How much money would it take to give up the internet for one year: Wow, that would completely destroy my social life. Um. Enough money for me to be able to never have to work again would do it.

( survey, continued )

1. What dead British monarch would you like to make out with? Ooh, let's go for incestuous shock value and pick one of my direct ancestors. In fact, since I don't really like any of them that much, let's go for double shock value and pick a saint. That narrows it down a lot since I'm only descended from two saints. Now, let's go for triple shock value and pick the female one. I pick St. Margaret "The Exile" Aetheling of Wessex, Queen of Scotland, 1043-1093. Yes, that's right, I've always wanted a chance to fuck my sainted many-greats-grandmother. Actually, the thought had never occurred to me before, but I'll just pretend I've always wanted it.
( I'll be honest: it doesn't really get any better than that )