Queer The Deal

I know, and I know this for it has happened to me, that it is possible for one statement from me can queer the deal.

I have a queer mouth and a sharp tongue, the extensions of my heart and mind. I am a scalpel, a porcupine, a drug, a chainsaw and all the other metaphors I have used for my own brilliant & insightful queerness over the years.

It is the reverse Midas. I turn relationships into shit with one word, one touch of my tongue.

I don’t know how to be anyone else. I don’t know how to be less smart, less intense, less visceral, less emotional, less whatever.

I have tried to learn to modulate myself over the years. You can see in this blog some examples of where I have made my inner statement visible, followed by a crafted reply designed to carry that same truth with grace, with acknowledgment & assent to others, with self deprecation, with gentled phrase. I know how to do it.

But damnit, I hate the fact that everything has to go out filtered, that no one comes to meet me, that I have to mitigate myself to try to minimize the fear I inspire in others.

I know that I’m not the only person like this. I watch the yada-yada talking heads my father fills this room with blabber about Hillary as if she is only a manipulator, or only a bitch. I know she is both of those things and much, much more, a very real woman who was always a bit too damn smart for her own good. “Who the hell would want to be married to someone like her?” they blabber. Luckily for the country, Bill did.

I hate it when I feel someone shrink back when sliced by me. It’s never intentional anymore, never. I just don’t do that, and haven’t done it for years. But it does happen, and then I get sliced back’ “You will push away everyone who tries to help.”

Kids need love the most when they are the least loveable. That’s true of everyone, really. When we hurt, when we bleed, when we are in our own filth, when we have been beaten, when we are raging, well, that is when we need, need, need, need someone to enter our world and touch our heart. If the demand is that we clean up, act well and meet expectations to get affection & support, how will we ever feel loved for who we are and not how we have to act?

I learned to say everything fast because I don’t believe anyone will stick around to hear more. I know that just makes people crazier, but in the line between getting them to fall for you first or being upfront to clear out the deadwood fast, well, I don’t really have much of a choice.

I queer the deal. I know that. And it happens not out of any malice, but rather when I slip up and forget to hide, forget to keep my intensity and smarts and let my feelings and knowledge out.

And since I see no way not to be, well, queer, I also see no way to change this.

Maybe, just maybe, there is magic in being more out, so I am more centered and who I am is more visible. People will see and understand me in context, and I won’t seem so, so, whatever. That is a tiny shard of hope that I cling to, but truth be told, I don’t hold much faith in the idea.

I tell TBB that I have to remember to smile, and she says “You have to remember?”  Would that change?

So I leave myself here, dried up upon some altered electrons, and fear that if they see what I say, well, it won’t make me more endearing, more fascinating, more intriguing, more loveable, that instead, it will just queer the deal.

And that, well, keeps me even more queer.