Page 17 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run
Scratch: I’m not trying to be coy. I just want to keep the discussion more abstract. As soon as we know each other’s sexes, it limits us.
Winc: You mean genders.
Scratch: Oh, yeah. Sex means something else, eh?
Winc: Right, I use sex to mean biological distinction. Gender is a personal or cultural category of human.
Scratch: Sex is biology… gender is… wow. Gonna have to think about that one.
Winc: Uh huh. So what is it you’re exploring?
Scratch: That lots of people respond *sexually* to this form of me. Some of them wish I would be more yang, some more yin, but there’s still a sexual response! From different levels within one gender, and from different genders.
Winc: Whoa!
Scratch: Yeah! I get more yang when more yin types are around. It’s weird.
Winc: ::settling back against a large tree, listening, fascinated:: You mean, if you’re being a hippie boy, you get more response from hippie girls, and if you’re being a gay man, you get responses from other gay men.
Scratch: Yes. But it goes deeper. Within the gay men’s group, there are maybe 100 other more ways of being yin and yang. Like you just keep going down down down into the variations.
Winc: ::a bit confused:: You mean like people have to go *some* kind of yin when someone else is yang?
Scratch: Exactly! They can’t help it! Even if they’re really macho with one kind of person, if they met up with another macho person, they might get less macho.
Winc: So gender is interactive.
Winc: Scratch?
Winc: You still there?
Scratch: Oh, fine, you sum all that up in one perfectly succinct sentence.
Winc: ::blushing:: I’ve been working on it.
Scratch: Well, the more I think about it, the more I panic: whoamIwhoamIwhoamIwhoamIwhoamI…
Winc: Oh hon.
Scratch: If I’m talking to a guy and all of a sudden he becomes a girl, what does that make me? Especially if I’m attracted?
Winc: ::softly, slowly:: Hmm.
Scratch: And then I go to the store, to the park, a bar, to work, and I’m told: You are _____. Even though I was born as a biological male/female, I’m *supposed* to belong to one gender.
Winc: ::nodding, listening intently::
Scratch: I haven’t been as willing to push, and let go, and just float ::looking around:: out here…
Winc: ::murmuring:: yes yes yes.
Scratch: … and if our two genderless spaces are attracted to each other, as they clearly seem to be, no matter the package… why did *we* of all people… immediately put them into such tight extremes of male/female?
Winc: Yes, good question. ::leaning over, kissing you gently:: Because we’re frightened? Human? Because we recognize that we have to take that journey and we want to lay in provisions?
Scratch: Yeah! And because one needs traction in order to make any movement at all?
Scratch: Winc?
Scratch: Hey did I say something bad?
Winc: No no no. You said *traction*. That makes so much sense. That makes pieces come together into a whole. Gender is interactive and dependent on traction. Cool!
Scratch: Oh man. So deep. I gotta take a break. Brb.
END WINC JOURNAL ENTRY
To: Editor, They/Them magazine
From: D.I. Drew
Subject: Two Little Words, So Many Meanings
Hi Asa,
Those two words being: sex and gender. I found it interesting how early this area became a snarl in the discussion.
People in ‘the gender community’ now have all sorts of definitions for sex and gender.
But we understand those definitions differently from each other.
We can’t just sit down and talk and know what everyone else means by those words.
Oddly, I notice the more terms we introduce, the more confusing and even restricted things get.
For example, I blithely summarize myself as a dyke, polyamorous, kinky, sometimes asexual; my gender is nonbinary (currently), and femme (mostly). And that still doesn’t say much about me. I love how simple things seem to be between these two; they just love each other.
Cheers,
Drew
NARRATIVE ENTRY, JABBATHEHUT
Wally Budge is reading a full page ad in his favorite tageblatt, The Daily News .
It reminds him of his old days as a beat cop in NYC.
Nowadays, he walks his beat on a screen, in whatever race they sign him up for.
He was a lot happier, he realizes, when the only pressure he got came from upstairs.
Now everyone’s getting into the act. To wit… .
A P UBLIC A PPEAL FROM C ONCERNED C ITIZENS
In June of this year, a 12-year-old child was repeatedly assaulted via electronic mail by evil men interested in tarnishing her.
The nation’s security is being compromised by the dissemination online of top security documents.
Terrorists obtain access to electronic files, which they turn around as weapons that threaten the fabric of democracy.
Yet the government, and its all-too-willing sponsor, Allied Consumer Industries, do nothing.
We concerned citizens have formed a grassroots network: Family Values Above All. We call for the immediate apprehension and severe punishment of these criminals, and a tightening of restrictions regarding the Network. And so, we pray:
God, help us care for our children. Give us wisdom to fashion regulations that will protect the innocent.
Guide our Government when they consider ways of controlling the pollution of online intercourse and how to preserve one of our greatest resources: The minds of our children and the future and moral strength of our Nation.
Give us the power and the might of your own arm so that we may rise up in Your Name and strike down any individual or government who opposes Your will, on earth or here in cyberspace. Amen.
Wally Budge shakes his head wearily as he scans a list of approximately 500 individuals and organizations, in 8-point type.
As if that weren’t enough, a fat packet of documents awaits—hard copy, no less.
Replies, at last, from Allied Consumer Industries regarding his queries.
Approaching perhaps his first break of the day, Budge flops his bulky frame farther back into his squeaky chair and reads the first one.
Dear Lt. Budge:
In response to your department’s request for persons who fit the demographic profile of conflicting consumer patterns, I have the following match:
Onscreen name: Noh
Online service: CompuServe
Income: $35,000/yearly
This person is a white male, 25 years old, frequents Young Christians, Married but Restless, and Trivia II approximately four times a week.
Mr. Noh has requested information regarding retirement funds, hemorrhoid medication, subscriptions to TV Guide, PC Computer , and The Saturday Evening Post .
A number of adjacent advertising products have been requested relating to consumer products targeted to elder Black females, which we can forward to you if you are interested, but each seems to fall outside the parameters of your search.
We are having our database checked for a programming error, as this is clearly impossible.
Our apologies. Within the narrow bands of your department’s request, we have come up with this name and one other.
The other person’s income was below $10,000 and unfortunately, we discard such persons after 3 months.
One cigarette smoking away in the ashtray, another wedged between tight lips, Budge is not pleased. Noh? Never heard of him. He scans the next memo:
Onscreen name: Deafkid
Online service: America Online
Income: unknown
Subject is 17, orders a wide range of home security products, frequents the deaf-disability forums only, and is a frequent user. We are certain this is the candidate you were seeking in regards to the profile you requested. We can release more information, if you like.
I have to ask you, will you be staging a sting operation to apprehend him?
“Someone’s been reading too many action adventure novels,” he mutters out loud. Deafkid, huh? Well, at least that’s something. He shuffles a few memos, and plucks out another at random.
Onscreen name: Miss Thing
Online service: Renaissance Technical Institute
Income: $55,000/yearly
Miss Thing buys a wide range of products not consistent with her profile.
In addition to the usual feminine hygiene products, she also requests information about tools, lawn products, and geriatric goods, rarely buying anything at all to date, but we feel confident that the target advertising will result in increased consumption shortly.
Miss Thing came to our attention for the inconsistent profile you are looking for.
We find it hard to believe that she is who she says she is.
In addition, she has listed her occupation as welder, which is highly unlikely.
Unlikely, but consistent , Budge thinks ruefully. As he has begun to suspect, his perp is Black, female, disabled, young, old, Asian, male, gay, straight, a cross-dresser, a child, an old woman.
“How the hell am I supposed to find someone like that? How am I supposed to find someone who thinks like that?”
He slams down the sheaf of useless paper. “Oh, we’re hot on that old trail now.”
Idly, he flicks a dead cockroach off the edge of his desk. Shelly’s poison is working.
Disgusted, he glances at his screen, hoping to find word from Typhoid Mary.
Nope.
END JABBA NARRATIVE ENTRY
SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
Scratch: Different people pull different things out in me. ::quietly:: I usually don’t like when the woman in me is pulled out… by someone else I mean. I did it once when I dressed up in drag. I mean stockings and heels. But, I hate it being yanked out by aggressive women or stupid men…
Winc: ::not breathing… listening::
Scratch: I just don’t feel it! Whatever it is I’m supposed to, I don’t feel it! But if there’s a give and take, even if I’m being very “girl,” it’s quite wonderful.
Winc: ::gently:: maybe the chief thing going on with you is that you’re a dominant type, no matter what gender.
Scratch: Dominant type?