J said-What is this thing u call femme?

The Beginning...
What is this thing.. that you call femme???? Is it the conscious desire to please only men.. or to be attractive to everyone? What is this state of mind.. that you call femme? The willingness to obey and behave, or the power to control through silent sexual weaponry? What determines who…will be called femme? Is it me.. wearing my heels and stockings and makeup (when I have the time)…is it him sashaying down the street...with the jeans and the timb’s and the cap… but the hips are a little too sweet? Is it her…short hair…short nails…but face and figure of a goddess… or is it anyone…who doesn’t look manly… act manly..or talk manly….whether man or not. What is this…Attitude.. that says.. _you_ are femme…but she is not. *shrugs*


These little boxes that people insist on shoving me into are starting to rub me the wrong way. They are starting to aggravate my very delicate sense of balance. They are beginning to intrude on my peace of mind. I am not femme. *sighs* and I am not butch. I am simply… woman…female…not man. Anyway…this is Catharsis right? The purging of emotions... which I am finally ready for. To spill it all out… year after year... to see my shaping into me…


The first thing that I can remember, without the assistance of pictures or tales from my mother is hmmm.. my first house in D.C. We lived in southwest, and my preschool was right down the street..at least that is what I remember. We had a gorgeous tree outside of out back porch..and a highway behind us. I had my own room..and had pictures on the walls.. the usual .. ones of Grover and Oscar and Bert and Ernie (yeah.. I was a sesame street kid) I remember imitating my mother reading her school books and studying. I think that is what made me want to read as much as I do. The sight of her..my mommy.. the center of my world, poring over these books all the time, let me know that there must be something very valuable inside of them. We lived there for a long time.. and I remember my first and only Halloween party. I dressed up as Sylvester the cat.. but my costume was too big and I kept ripping over the legs of it. I remember walking to my preschool.. and walking under a rainbow. *smiles* I was quite frustrated because I couldn’t touch it..and when I got too close it faded away. Hm. I wonder if that was a portent of things to come. I remember slumber parties with my best friend..and wondering why she was so pretty…and kissing her. I remember nightmares from those same pictures on the walls… I remember the sunlight coming through the window shade that were so bright and yellow in felt like the sun was sitting right outside of the window…god I remember so much and yet so little…


I can next remember when I had to stay with my great aunt while my mother went to school. I wonder why she sent me to live with her.. because I was older then..Aunt J lived in a small town near Philly, and I went to school there…*smiles* I was ahead of all of the other children because I knew how to read so well. Even then I was a very ….completion conscious child. The only time that I got in trouble was when I slapped a little boy I was tutoring because he preferred to play around then learn his alphabet…I remember wearing dresses and a head piece all the time.. so I guess my mother had embraced Islam by then. And I remember falling a lot…*smiles* I remember dancing on my Aunt’s porch.. trying to be a ballerina…not because she was a ballerina..but because I wanted to be strong and graceful… I know I missed my mom.. but I loved my grandmom. Wow. That was before she retired.. because I could only stay with Gramma on the weekends because she was still working. And my Nana..remembered my name.. and my cousin was still in high school. I went back to live with my mom..after she graduated.. I suppose… and later… the year that I turned five… the most momentous thing that has ever happened to me occurred. My mother met A.


A,for the longest time would be the only man..the only male figure of any kind in my life. I can remember the first time I met him. We were at one of my mom’s friend’s houses, so that they could server as chaperones. We ate fried chicken, and he played with me. I was barely five, and I had a passion for outer space…and I still do, yet I have no clue where it came from. Anyhow, he played with me, making the teddy bear into an astronaut by putting an old plastic goldfish bowl over it’s head. I was in love. From that moment, I loved him. He was my Ab (Arabic for father) He was my guiding force in my life, the last word in everything, from who I would talk to, to what I could read. And I loved him.

The early years are fuzzy. I remember us moving to Boston, so that we could be closer to an Islamic community. I was thrilled. I had a new cat to play with, and we were leaving D.C. in a big ole truck.. I believe that was the beginning of my love and wanderlust…

We got into a wreck on the way up there…my mom tried to tell him to pull off and go to sleep.. but he wouldn’t listen. And since he was the man of the marriage…he was the last word..in that and in all other things. SO we kept driving.. and he drove us off the side of the road. I don’t really remember what happened…just that I lost my cat because it ran off…and that the truck was tilted crazy like off the side of the highway.


Somehow we made it to Boston. And for a while, we lived with the Imam’s family (Imam is along the lines of a Pastor). He had a huge family… when we moved there in…what was that ’83? They had 3 children I believe..but it felt like so many more. *sighs* I’m trying so hard to remember.. but I feel like my life was a blur…until I was around 14…. *smiles* that was when everything became interesting. The few tings I do remember from that time was the start of my home schooling.. learning Arabic and how to read the Q’uran. Memorizing verses, and sayings, and Hadiths. Reading compulsively anything that I could get my hands on..but that was years later. *sighs* We moved into our own place..where…I cannot remember….I guess we lived there for about 3 years..because I know that by the time I was 8, we had moved to Chester.


My great great grandfather had recently died (I remember the smell of pipe smoke and ollld whiskey from him) and left us a gorgeous house..not in the best of neighborhoods, but it was a house all the same. With a huge tree in the backyard, and a attic that had it’s own lil hidey closet..and enough rooms so that we each had one of our own. I think hat the time I spent there was the happiest. I learned like a sponge…soaking up everything that my mother taught me. And she taught so well that some of the other Muslim women sent their children to learn with us.


Where did I get my overwhelming interest and desire for sex from? *sighs* I don’t know. But I remember sneaking to read ‘Our New Baby Sister” and loving the pictures that showed just how the little girl was made. I remember having the WORST kind of crush on one o the little boys who came to the school. When I was eight was the last year that I went without glasses…8 was the year that I learned how to evade spankings by putting on every pair of draws that I owned.. 8 until ten kinda flew on by..and then they got divorced…and I can’t even remember why anymore. But we moved…

They were together… either in actuality or just with little breaks in between for ten years.

One day, very close to the end of that time, my mother and me had an entire day to ourselves. He had gone out, to work perhaps...but I don’t think he had a job at that time. We cooked, and cleaned, and talked, and did all of those mother daughter things, easily and with a sense of freedom. We weren’t under his gaze,we didn’t have to worry about conforming to his thoughts. I cooked that night, well we cooked actually. A wonderful dinner...lamb chops with garlic-mashed potatoes and fresh green beans. Biscuits and apple pie. I hadn’t eaten the entire day, and was so hungry...from the smell of the food and from the simple joy of being really happy.

Then he came home, and the entire house fell silent and tense…almost like even the cats knew that one could no longer be open and free and themselves. I was so nervous and upset I couldn’t eat. And the bitter awareness that the simple silent presence of this one person could ruin my entire day…my entire train of thought...the closeness me and my mother shared...that simple awareness turned my heart so cold…so miserably sad and hard… that I am quite sure that on that day... I stopped loving him.


I think that I started to despise him long before that…about a year or so. They had been through their second divorce... and he had returned. My mother and me had finally achieved some peace, she had a job as a nanny to three Arab children, and I assisted… tutored, read, and helped organize the mother’s office. The mother was in the US finishing a medical residency...and she was about to return to Saudi Arabia…she wanted to bring me and my mom along…to continue to take care of the children. It was hard to balance the incredible opportunity to see another culture for free, with the severe restrictions that simply living in Saudi Arabia would out in the both of us as single women. Then... another of my mother’s friends invited us to go on a tour of Pakistan that she was taking…with her husband and two sons. Who could be our escorts…we had the change of a lifetime… to go to another country for free… safely… with introductions to many families who lived there. But he came back into her life…and told her that he loooooved her… and that there was no one else for him… and she stayed. She stayed, and kept me here with her...and married him. For the third time... Then…I despised him…and her… and even more than that.. I began to hate this thing called love. What was it other than something that made you do stupid thing s that in your heart of hearts you KNOW is not for the best...simply to be ‘with’ this other person. That was when I learned that love hurts… it will make you cry scream and fuck up your entire life for an emotion… that can turn into hate in under 9 months.


That was how long it took. 9 months. Almost like a pregnancy… in reverse. Instead of ending in a new life...it ended with the total death of a relationship. I thank the gods it didn’t last any longer. I wonder if I would be still sane if it had. I remember I would hide in the attic… curled up in front of a sunny window… with my cat and a book...watching the people outside...making up names for them...and learning from them how people …real people lived. Sometimes I wished I was dead… or somewhere else…any where else. I loved my mother too much to run away…and I despised him too much to stay…so I became someone else…self-taught acting lessons. I smiled and laughed and joked and pretended nothing had changed. But ohhh…how I wished it could all be different. I wished him gone. I wished him dead. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house… unless I was with him… or unless I was running to the corner store for something. I think I started to decay... not physically but psychically. It was like all that I thought was me was squashed… not only words.. or even actions. But by emotions. By looks…by snide sly comments…by watching my mother hunker down into herself... watching him make this wonderful woman who managed to raise me... pull herself out of a shelter and into a wonderful good paying job... this woman who I knew was brilliant an intelligent and beautiful...be made to feel worthless and ugly because she didn’t get pregnant….while he blithely assumed that the problem was her. *snorts* SHE had a child…he never did.


Actually…the brightest day in my life wad the day that we packed the remains of our life into a Uhaul...and traveled up the highway to Chester. I think that day should have been remade my birthday… because before that... I wasn’t alive… I breathed… I grew...only physically…I was a 7 year old child as far as social skills went…in a 15 year old body. With a good dose of self hate and low self esteem tossed in for good measure.


I realized that it doesn’t really matter what happened between 5 and 15. I wasn’t really alive then. I was shaped like clay dough... and grew more withdrawn.


I think...and I pray…and I examine myself every day with the useless hope that all I brought from those years was extra weight…a fast and easy way to wash dishes…and a mile high brick wall around my emotional self…because if I brought anything more from him...I think that some of my hate that I have for him might began to rest on/in me…and I’m not strong enough for that…


And what makes this even sadder? Every once in a while he will track us down. Call us…and ask to talk to me. He still thinks that I love him. I guess he never understood how much I hated and feared him at the end. Why would he…children always loved him.



J.