.
I am a dissatisfied clown
among the world's best
in a circus

I never intended on joining.
I didn't even notice
my presence here
until I was flung back,
broken arm,
as workers popped the big
blue tent bidding
come one, come all,
experience the greatest show
this side of the Mississippi.

It was the pain.
I noticed, only then,
my big red nose,
my well worn suit,
the smile on my face,
even though the corners of my lips
fell closer to my chin
than my sad, wet eyes.

This show is special,
The comedienne's are the hit!
The Ringmaster, before,
only saw us as necessary fluff,
not human, but less,
only here to fill what
space wasn't taken by
the trapeze and their safety net,
their crew, their families.

Today we are the prize,
finally human,
entertainingly human,
tremendously human.

The celebrated last night,
patting their backs,
clasping their hands
speaking of future plans,

And I was happy too,
despite their fearful eyes
as they caught glimpses of me
in the dark room beside them
filled with me, and those like me.
Creatures who take up the space outside
the trapeze,
and the lion tamers,
and the comediennes.

But they need not worry,
this is all I know.
.

I was told years ago about this little trick, except I was told the mirror of it. "You know you're a lesbian if your ring finger is longer than your pointer finger." Of course, immediately, I slapped my fingers together and looked for some kind of biological proof that what I knew was true was, well, true. It's as if I didn't actually believe that what I felt was natural, but was some twisted way my subconscious mind was trying to get some attention, like those people who dance at street intersections dressed as a chicken with an iPod. Biologically, according to what I've learned, all this means is that the child was blasted with more testosterone than usual in the womb.

I have a confession...
I hope many of you understand now that human sexuality, gender, and civil rights are all passions of mine. Taking into consideration the time this episode aired originally, this episode was groundbreaking. It took the issue of human sexuality and gender by the horns and grappled it to the ground so that all of us ignorant bystanders could see every inch of the major issue: there is no excuse for the denial of a human being's right to live and to love.

Sometimes metaphors work backwards. I may uncover one, innocently plucking it for specific use from the writer's ethereal universe, and come to find that the metaphor teaches me. Metaphors unlock such depth, Donne's compass, for example, or Keats' grapes bursting on the roof of your mouth. I've been writing a particularly important piece recently, something horribly autobiographical and whiny I'm sure, and I came across one of these metaphors, though it hardly comes close to the exceptional nature of grapes or mathematical instruments. It helped me to understand, however, and that's all I can ever ask of my writing.

In my journal, I wrote in a letter that will never be sent: "I just want to make absolutely sure that you want me, even now when all I am , really, is mush? Rubble? Nothing? A blank slate? Something like that. I don't quite know how to put it. You know. I've told you. ... Ah, that's it. I'm raw. Not as in new, but like a fresh deep burn. I'm fragile, I require endless attention, but I hurt when it's given to me. I hurt constantly, though I'll deny it. No matter how obvious it is, I'll deny it. Most of all, no matter how hard we may try, no matter how attentive you are, I'm gonna scar. If the pain I feel were physical-... I don't want to think about it."

I have been thinking about that metaphor on and off for a few days now. I think I may make it the basis of what I'm writing, though maybe not an obvious basis. This metaphor doesn't have to do with fire, but it has to do with raw skin, either burned, rubbed raw, seared, torn, it doesn't matter. I suppose I still feel quite a bit of fear about letting go of my past, largely because I know how much that chloreseptic will hurt. I never knew that it obvious to my friends and my family. I always thought I had it under control... but how can a wound heal if keep digging the knife across it?

I've been so angry, incensed for no reason. I know good enough not to let it out randomly, only in privacy. It's as if the wound has been inflamed. Any small thing done by someone I trust, someone I'm learning to trust again, sets me off. My mother recently shrugged me off, not knowing that she hurt me. I was going to tell her something of great importance, and she interrupted me to talk about work... That pissed me off. That made me so angry that I was a little scared about what I was capable of doing. Never become violent, never. But leave, or close off again from her. Instead, thankfully, I was quiet for a couple hours, and told outright that I was angry with her. Not frustrated or irritated, but angry. Mad. And she knew it. Later she thanked me for talking to her, and she apologized. In her defense, she doesn't know me, never has, and can't read me like a mother should be able to. In my defense, She should know. She's my mother, she should know. But I told her my important news anyway, and she was delighted, like I knew she would be.

I grew thick skin as I became older. At some point, I gave up reaching out and began stacking the mortar and brick. But that brick wasn't only to block out the world and everyone who loved me, but it also blocked my own way in. I shed whatever person I was born into, and forged myself into somebody who would keep the balance weighing slightly to the side of good. But then I came to realize that there was no balance... that people are neither good nor bad; they are just people. But by then, I had broken down the wall and found that I was completely naked and exposed and ignorant of so many things. stripped of so much. See, I had built every part of my around the facade I was giving everyone else. When all that was stripped away, it's as if I was brand new, and this time, I was really myself. But I had wounds all over me, old wounds that even now have yet to heal, but at least I can see them. At least I'm aware of that old pain now, so that I can heal.