drafting wishes

for those who gathered the stories that seep out of the split palms of their grandparents and their grandparents before them: may you wear those open wounds and fading scars visibly so that they may remain as testaments of your and our resilience for our grandkids and their grandkids after them.

for those who stumbled up the stairs over bodies verging on overdose, while learning not to stumble over our own feet when taking first steps: may we find the strength to hold our hands out to help our siblings stand up from that same cold stone when we try to pick ourselves up.

for those who fell face first after tripping over the unacknowledged grandeur of our perceptions of ourselves; may we learn and remember humility when our lips kiss the ground.

for those who disappeared into their heads: may you find solitude, but not isolation.

and to those of us who wake up burrowed in each other's chests from nightmares of realities and memories that cannot be denied, may we wake up wrapped in the first taste of morning sun and the safety of our own bodies, embracing because we can acknowledge that no one is fearless, but we have been brave. and we are still here.

pigs and people

we have been here for thirty years. i mean in this apartment. thirty years. that means now my mom has been in the bronx longer than she lived in ecuador. in the past thirty years the green textured walls and giant checkerboard floors and muggy hallways have witnessed so many violent deaths that sometimes i think it's desensitized. or maybe i just feel desensitized. or i pretend. last week i came home for dinner with my folks and the block was surrounded by cop TRUCKS. hundreds of pigs in riot gear up and down the street and avenue. riot gear, huge automatic guns. mothers waiting to find out whether or not their kids had been shot or would come out in cuffs. rage.

sometimes all i have is rage and panic. i got fucked with. seems the police like to mess with tiny little brown slightly andro fags. have you ever had a gun held to your chest? this was not my first time, and it was enraging. i play real mellow. really collected. i want to bust out, i want to scream and scream and make some silence and stillness happen. it doesn't. i leave alive. i leave.

it's hard to move on because we are so highly patrolled and militarized here. i think twice about talking. about anything. about working. about going outside. i force myself out of it. i have a giant panic episode. then i go about my business. as usual? i realized i can't let fear stop me from living and surviving. i'm not all about talking about this need for change ideologically anymore. it's too real for me. it's too real for my communities. so many poor folks of color in this city/country/world.

on that note- i've been really jealous lately. jealous of the movement. i cannot afford to be part of the movement. that pisses me off to no end. can you believe it?! i am brown, poor, queer, i need to/ want to be at the forefront. i can't. i am child of immigrants/can't go home 'cause i won't be able to afford that for another couple of years. it's been a lot more than a couple of years. i am not considered part of solidarity building because i can't make months-long pilgrimages to learn about struggles in latin-america. raw. that's raw because what that really means is that i can't see my family. it means i know what's going on, i know about imperialism, i experience it in the rifting of my family, the struggles in my communities here, in immigration patterns, in starving aunts and uncles, in the way i learn to measure success, in the ways we build solidarity here [i.e. how i love you/you love me, i hate you/you hate me], how we acknowledge it. this is not considered part of the movement. maybe if i got some more credentials? or stopped making art and trying to make ends meet? maybe....

love and recovery

some days are easier than others. the realization that new york is still new york and that these cycles are repeating hurts and stings closer to home each day. also feeds the idea that there is still shit to hope for, an ability to move forward- this fucked up bronx living is still just a test.

i need some thoughts on this... so let me know:

when i was little i had recurring nightmares that involved syringes and the arms of people crying and melting back into the earth. finding peace through transcending the broken poisoned bodies they were forced into and trapped in. while i slept, these nightmares threatened coming closer and closer until i was almost positive that i was the only one who hadn't been pierced- but the clock ticked closer and i was scared to grow a second older for fear that it would then be my time.

when i was awake, i looked out the peephole to images that seemed straight out of my imagination. beautiful young brown women and men in the building who grew up and raised kids and ended up on the stairwell with a needle in their arm, sunken eyes, chipped teethed, and the bitter aftertaste of apologizing to all the passers-by for disrespecting our homes and kids. sometimes when i walk in here to visit mom i have that bitter aftertaste forced in MY mouth because i am embarassed by exactly how queer and out of place i have evolved to be. and then i breathe and remember that my queerness is beauty and i try to swallow the taste down, make it disappear.

yesterday i had the dream again.

a lot of the time i realize that the way drugs have taken over our lives, economies, genocide, moves closer and closer to me every day. yesterday i sat silent trying to learn how to pray again. the most beautiful and important boy in my life. i don't ever want to find him laying in the stairwell with that needle in his arm for the last time.

take a long nap. we're gonna need every ounce of strength we can gather in order to move even one step further. my bones feel hollow without you.

on my masculinity, etc.

i will grapple with masculinity and what it means to ID as male for the rest of my life. and i will continue to challenge my socialization thru and by misogyny every day of my life. there are so many stories that need not be recreated, cycles to disrupt. how do i inhabit space? what types of relationships am i building? what do i expect from people? who do i sexualize? who do i desire? why? what do i allow myself to feel? what truths about myself do i silence?

in coming out as trans, and then in deciding to start T, i looked for answers from other transguys around me, writings from the academy, the lives of non-trans men i've lived with and in the same communities as my whole life. i don't think anything could have prepared me. and i wonder what more i'll discover as days/years pass and i am read as male, Brown, faggot, femmy in more and more spaces.

i grapple with violence. the more i pass as male, the more i see how my interactions with women change. i understand the need for me to challenge bullshit in myself, be willing to be called out, be willing to be quiet and listen. i am afraid of transmasculine spaces. spaces that sometimes make me wonder if i've become part of some secret society that believes femininity and femaleness are concepts and realities to fear and be protected from. i crave trans community, but i also need communities that are accountable to all members and i can't really wrap my head around the concept of a community that challenges gender-oppression, but excludes women. that doesn't make sense to me.

when i am on the street i am a Brown man. regardless of whether or not i identify as a man, that is how i am perceived. and that is how people interact with me. one of the most difficult things for me is being treated with caution. it's this fear that i am going to hurt someone, or that i am a sexual predator, or that i will react violently. violence. this is what i don't want to internalize. i know i have to challenge the violence that is supported in me, but also not internalize violence that is EXPECTED from me as a male-identified Latino. i have experienced violence on so many levels and have worked persitently to resist violence around me and to not be a perpretator. racist definitions of my perceived gender permeate my interactions with white people. i feel like i need to leave. i wonder why they are afraid. why they cross the street, speed up, turn corners suddenly.

i have never been afraid to display femininity. i am femmy. and i am queer. a queer boy. i am a big flaming faggot. the other night i was walking home after work and some young guys followed me down the street for a while talking about how much of a faggot i am and how they wanted to beat my ass and see how much i really like getting it in the ass. people have always said fucked up shit to me because of being queer regardless of what they perceive my gender to be, but this time i was particularly afraid. i was afraid of the ways in which boys are socialized to hate femininity and queerness in other boys. the entitlement we have to hurt each other, the knowledge that i could and would not call the police, that there are no systems of accountability here that challenge us to stop hurting each other. that we are socialized to hate each other on so many different levels. fear that i would be hurt, killed. fear that my body would be exposed, that i would be recognized as something other than male, that i would be humiliated, subjected to other kinds of hate, more violence. prayers and affirmations replaying in my head. i will not be afraid of my people. legacies of survival. too many close calls too often.

everyday will bring new lessons, and i hope i can see them all. there is so much for me to learn. i don't want my understanding of my gender to change because of the ways in which my body is changing, but i do want to continue to challenge how my body survives and builds with people around me.

springtime and my new york

i was writing a bit the other night... and i am not ashamed to admit that i was writing for someone who i have a huge crush on who will be visiting new york very very soon. the premise of my writing was to [briefly] create a portrait of what new york has been like for me for the past 24 years to give to him when he takes off, hopefully to bring perspective to his visit.

while doing my writing, i realized that the more i piece together my memories, the more i remember, the more i realize i am figuring out a lot about myself, my past and my identity; the little details that put together the way i talk, the way i see myself, my relationships, the framework for my solitude.

********

this morning i woke up and it finally sounded like spring. i beat the alarm to a beam of sunshine and the first set of bird chirps of the season. i may have imagined rustling leaves like i often imagine the warmth of embraces or visions of myself as a gentle old fag. i watered the plants, walked around the apartment picking up straggling clutter, and sat on the couch while the water boiled, waiting for the forecast on channel one. this thursday will be incredibly sunny and warm. as my only day off, i plan to spend it at the park with a stack of books and ideas for lessons to plan. after a few hours of reading and working, i will take the hour and a half subway ride to my mom's house where i will leave my brain and enter my body again, to remember and give care and attention.

*****

it seems, sometimes, that i have made a small nest for myself, where during my off hours i can retreat, relax, and reflect. isolate myself to quiet and stillness and produce something verbal to put in the archives in case i should forget.

when i left my house this morning, it all became relevant again. a bit of flirtation from a shop owner a few blocks from my apartment who a few months ago threw my groceries in my face because he couldn't figure out if i was a dyke or a fag. i had stopped going to that store, but this morning i walked in because it was open that early and i needed to replenish electrolytes after a weekend of puking my guts out every few hours.

as i walked to work a few blocks from my house, i walked past an older white couple pushing a stroller with a small blonde child in it. i rarely see white families in bed-stuy, and i definitely never see older white families here. when i walked past, they slowed down to create distance. it often amazes me how obvious it can be. i shook my head, disappointed, and i think it shook me. i dropped my bottle, it spilled, the white baby started to cry. i blushed at the attention i'd brought to myself. heard the parents debate about my gender as they told their baby that it was just an accident and no one was hurt. it was awkward. i was awkward. they were awkward. i thought about what it means to be here for me. i am brown, still working class, still living in the hood. but there is privilege i access, violence my presence here keeps going. but i am still too brown and too poor to actually be one of them. and i feel good about that. in some ways it legitimizes me, their fear, and that is some complicated and fucked up shit to reconcile.

******

when i was growing up, there were no white people in my community except for cops. all of my neighbors were people of color and i believe the first white people i met were cops and case managers at the welfare office.

*****

my new york has been segregated, gentrified, violent, gentle, comforting, abraisive, repellant, attractive, insular, exclusive, glamorous, gritty.

some mornings i wake up to sirens. other mornings i wake up to bird chirps. i mostly wake up on time. and the day takes off from there.

Papi

my daddy is a rock. the kind of rock that held up the old apartment with leaking ceilings and cracked walls. who taught me to take some breaths before reacting, who gave up his fists and the bottle so he could be here to father this daughter-turned-son a little longer. he always reminded me that no matter what it took, he would get some rice and beans on the table and we would be alright.

a white teacher once told me that he'd learned that rice and beans were peasant food in latin america and i cried such huge tears while i ate my dinner that night i made myself ill. i had a second helping to make up for letting the food my dad worked so hard for escape my body and felt nourished with the knowledge that each meal i'd ingested to that point in my life was a meal my mom and dad, not peasants, but surivivors, had cried and sweated over.

my daddy is the handsomest man i'd met until my brother grew to be just as handsome as him. he's got a pretty Brown face, with big eyes that hide behind his glasses like mine do, a full head of thick, dark, straight, cholo/chino hair, perfect teeth, high-cheekbones and chiseled jaw, and a rare but sincere smile. i often say i hope i age as well as he has, so that i can be a fine Brown old man one day too.

one time, when we were real little, james told dad he didn't want him to drop him off at school cause he was too dark. me and dad are the same color, especially in the summers when i can catch my Brownness up to his by sitting in the sun for hours on end. james and Ma have really light skin, but you can still ID them as Brown people at first glance. but that was real for us growing up, Ma always regretted having a son that was light skinned and had pretty wavy hair and having a then-daughter who was Brown-skinned with thick ass stubborn hair we don't know whether to attribute to the indigena ancestors or the chinese ones.

i've always had body-image issues that relate to my size or gender presentation, but i thank the ancestors every day for my brown skin and dark eyes and the legacies and histories that grow in my hair; and this was something i learned from my daddy, from the time i was born to the moment i looked in the mirror this morning after washing my face and saw those worry lines above my eyes and realized that the older i get, and the more my body transitions, the more i look like this man who taught me to love and taught me to keep fighting.

i never saw daddy cry until lauren passed away. he didn't even cry when his Ma died. i doubt he cried when his daddy died when he was seven. when lauren passed, i called my daddy at work. i was three states away. i was crying from the gut and my nose was already at that point in the crying cycle where you can no longer inhale. i called him because i needed my rock. my best childhood friend, chosen sister, potentially first love, dead at age twenty and i was devastated. daddy tried to be that rock, but i heard his voice break, and i broke a little more. i knew for the first time that neither i nor daddy could do anything about it.

the second time i saw my Papi cry was when james was in rikers. i had been going to visit my bro every visit, and so the hours of waiting in line and then getting inside and looking at his tired face and big beard had become something i looked forward to. when james and i got to spend that time, i would turn on that part of me daddy always showed me; the part that takes it in stride, that understands that this too shall pass, that doesn't cry or get hung up on things. i would tell james stories and reminisce with him, and hold his hand when the guards weren't looking, and i never told him about how much i was crying at home or how many times his daughter asked for him that day, or how every time i listened to the radio i would remember him and wish he was there to talk about music and be hard with. i took daddy one time. i looked at the three of us. we look real similar in the face, and we all swallow our tears and grin almost in synch. it was the most silent visit i ever had with james and i told him i loved him and my eyes got red, but i didn't cry.

when we got off the bus, my daddy held my hand and we let go of tears at the same time and we never talked about it, but he's like me, or i'm like him, and i knew exactly what he was feeling.

a couple of weekends ago, while i was really sick, my mom and dad showed up at my house. i was walking with them to the subway, and i looked at my dad's face. he looked worried in the eyes, but i knew that seeing me for the first time in a couple of months had been sufficient for him to feel okay and realize that i was going to be alright. he hugged me goodbye. it was the first time we've touched since lauren's funeral. that was almost five years ago.

when i was little, i would sleep stuffed in his right underam, hold his hand when we walked down the street, sit on his lap on the bus, eat next to him at the dinner table, and fall asleep next to the chair where he would fall asleep after twelve hour work days.