




Monty's gonna make recipe book! I'm going to make a recipe book! AND IT IS GOING TO BE AMAZING!
You can all now call me momma chow.
Or Montgomery still, if you want to. Or just super awesome.
Last year I had a baking fit that spanned fifteen days of me trying new recipes and perfecting old ones. It was supposed to last 25 or 30, but alcohol is very distracting.
Very very distracting. So is having a social life, and when you're young, queer, and me, those things have this awkward tendency to go hand in hand.
It was my advent calender. Only better.
So, this year, I'm doing it all over again. Baked goods for the holidays everyone. Baked goods for life. I'm going to stuff my boifriend full of yummy treats and pull out my classic "love me dammit coffee-cake".
Okay, yes, I bake people into loving me. Its manipulative and sneaky, but... but... everyone has secret skills they use to trick others into liking them! Mine just happens to be in the form of delicious sweets.
Think about it!
Musicians make people swoon, artists give people twinkles in their eyes, dancers make people go ga-ga. Fashionistas, nerds, computer programmers, movie stars, the extra sweet waitresses, and on and on and on.
So what if my skill happens to be love muffins?
I also am trying to get a group together for friday night dinners or sunday brunches. I miss cooking with people. I miss cooking for people. I miss filling kitchens with love and laughter and stories.
I miss it.
Can we cook together?
We where wandering around the tide pools I went to when I was young. It was the last place I ever remembering finding peace, and feeling carefree. The rocks were hard to walk on, and I kept falling. Every time I stumbled, you rushed over to catch me. Everything looked like a picture taken with the flash to close, it was so bright and white, with bold saturated colors that bleed together.
I was wearing your coat that definitely didn't fit me. Big nerd glasses, and a ridiculous smile. I was standing over a tide pool with my feet pigeon toed and a cigarette in my hand. You were across from me, with wide loving eyes, warning me not to slip.
It took us all day to drive there, and on the road we never saw another pair of headlights. We were the only two people in the world, and we were invincible. The radio went in and out, until eventually we turned it off and just started singing. My car was filled with laughter and warmth. There were pillows and blankets in the backseat and it looked as through we had been adventuring for weeks.
You had something to show me. You led me to the coast and sat down on a rock. There were lowers floating in the water, these exotic beautiful flowers I had never seen before, and you picked one up for me.
There was a little stachel attached to the bottom of it and you began telling me a story. The story danced before me as you spoke, I could see it happening.
"They used to hid things in the beds of rivers," you said. "Everyone was terrified of the water, but it was the only place they could keep their secrets safe. The only place they could keep their treasures,"
In my outstretched hands, you opened the bag and poured out these little dolls. These little dolls my mother used to keep underneath her pillow, to ward off worry and pain. Dolls that used to carry the weight of my family. But these, these were weightless. Like feathers in my hands. "They'll keep the pain for you".
The ocean was crashing on the rocks, and suddenly we were running. Branches kept snapping under your boots, and thats the only way I knew you were still with me. I could only catch glimpses of you through the trees. There were so many evergreens, and birds and flowers. I was out of breath when you caught me and through your arms around me, proclaiming to the sun and earth that I was yours.
I covered your eyes, and led you to a clearing. When you opened them we where standing on a bluff above the ocean. The waves had settled but the wind kept brushing past us. Gently. You laced your fingers into mine and we were infinite against the sky.
Dropping my hand, you shoved yours into your pockets. I looked at you staring into the distance and told you, "I dare you to stay".
You half smiled back at me, and I woke up.
I dare you to stay. I dare you to love me. I know that I'm messy, and strange. I know that I get intense sometimes, and I have a tendency to miscommunicate. Yes, I am hard to hold onto, but please don't let me go. I'll never push you away again.
You,
You are a promise I am going to keep.
I dare you to stay. I promise to do the same.
So, I know you kids really like reading about sex. I was going to tell you about my first sexual encounter! Then, I found this book. This book which has become my bible. 
So, I know only super cool people can make you suffer through their writing. But, I am a wordsmith of sorts, and a spoken word amateur, so I want to share this, and get feedback.
I performed this piece for the first time last night, at an open mic, and it was really well received.
It was only my second time ever performing poetry.
Safe to say i spent the entire night blushing.
It sounds better in person.
LINEAGE
My great grandmother was indigenous to this soil,
a native american with a face not made for pictures, or a story made to be written down,
Or so I am lead to believe.
The only proof I have of this is in my grandfathers sad face.
her son is ashamed of history, but the lines in his face tell the tales of her story so beautifully.
My grandmother was a jew turned catholic,
But I only know of her as a german speaking
knitting, woman with a strict sense of discipline and a bad taste n music.
They raise my father in a castle.
Literally,
With thick stone walls that echoed his secrets back at him.
As the war raged on in berlin, they hid.
My great aunt and her female lover, were slaughter by her husband,
I imagined she died in the arms of her lover
and they drew their last breath together.
He, then, shot himself.
My great uncle died more bewildered by dementia than he came in, bloody and screaming.
And his brother, my grandfather, was taken before him, before I was even born.
Cancer.
But everyone thought his liver would’ve killed him before his skin did.
My mother’s mother smashed his beatles record,
and in the wreckage I found his hat, his hat I will always keep even though it’ll never fit me.
My aunt, however, inherited his disease,
And my family keeps sending her money, as if
another dollar could come between her and the bottle.
Therapy taught my sister to create things, but in some miscommunication
she developed an insanity.
Breaking everything to try and chase out the monsteres manifested by her stress.
My brother used to beat me. Hitting, and cornered me in the bottom of the stairs. He wailed until I lay limp. Until I lay motionless and he felt a little bit better.
Now, he just sees things. THings he tires to write off as spirituality. When he can’t sleep, or distinguish fiction from reality, and we all sit at the dinner table, choking down the word:
Schizophrenia.
My family tree can only grow rotten apples. I was bruised to my core before I even fell.
My genes are composed of more mental diseases than most people even know exist.
The hand I was dealt, was never a good one. But I wasn’t allowed to fold, no I had to keep hold even when everyone kept raising their bets. Check, call, check.
I couldn’t bluff my way into a better life, no matter how many times I lied.
The first time I tried to kill myself, I was seven. I started cutting myself when I was eleven. I needed therapy, but there was no money left for me. No money left to get help for me. No money left for me to even be seen as any sort of diseased.
So, when I was 16, I was hospitalized with PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder, depression, attention deficit, anxiety. There was a sort of freedom in finally being able to say what was wrong with me. A sense of ownership and liberation came with the visibility. But that didn’t fix me.
I am still struggling.
Even though I’ve been growing up sideways, my tree will stand tall, crooked, and strong. If I’m still sick when I’m sixty, which I very well may be, at least I know I have dug my roots deep. Deep into a soil that can actually feed me. I will become intertwined with the earth, the foundation my for-fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, have laid out for me. Because then, at least I know I am built on something. On a history I can grow beyond, and still keep at the base of me. I will have tattooed, from my roots, up my trunk, and on to every twig and branch, the truth my ancestors were too ashamed to even believe.
And when the apples start to drop from me, I will make sure they are ready.
...a different sort of essay
What personal experience have I learned the most from or gotten the most out of? I couldn’t tell you. My entire life has been one learning experience, one growing moment, one instance of overcoming adversity, one greatly impacting instance after another. Pride is not something I am accustomed to feeling when looking back on my life. Not something I generally express about my history. The largest contributing event in my life is my life, its everything. I am a sponge of sorts, I take in everything.: conversations with loved ones, with strangers, the view from the backseat on road trips, the laughter and tragedy, it has all changed and shaped me. Maybe this isn’t what you were asking to hear, but I don’t mind failing this assessment for not picking one encounter. I can’t force myself to be less raw and honest for the sake of a grade or even a diploma. Perhaps the fact I won’t lie to pass as successful in society is what I am most proud of. I am nothing if not honest.
This honesty I share so readily was a long time coming. The truth happened to me unexpectedly. It was a drunken summer of constantly lying about where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing. The summer I joined a support group intended for survivors of sexual assault. The kind of group meant to bring about kinship, and healing, but left me feeling more alone and broken than before.
Honesty found me in a hospital. In an off-white room with no direct corners and a bed attached to the floor. It found me sitting in a hospital grown next to restraints used for less even-tempered crazies. It spilled out of me and into a man on a folding chair with a yellow writing pad and scratchy cursive. And again into a man over the phone in the hallway that I never got to meet but still needed me to prove that I wasn’t safe. Sobbing in a plastic chair, the truth found me and I haven’t looked back since.
My lies were the blanket I hid under at night, with the childish belief that if I covered my entire body I couldn’t be seen or heard or hurt. But with the covers over my head, the air was hot and hard to breath. I had no way of knowing if the danger had passed or not. My lies were the kind you find slipping on old almost forgotten jeans. They still don’t fit right, but you can’t bring yourself to throw them out. Plus, the little incentives left from last time you find in the pockets will keeping you coming back for days. A lover you forgot why you broke up with, but remember the second you get back together. When its too late. I lied as if I was addicted. As if it was my job.
Anyone who claims the truth will set you free, is mistaken. The honesty that found me didn’t make my life easier, or better, or help me feel liberated. The truth didn’t set me free, but it allowed me an opportunity to live. With honesty I could have self discovery, and exploration. Honesty gave me the tools to know who I was, how I was, and to become someone I actually felt I was, instead a culmination of falsities. Yeah, its hard. I find myself losing honesty constantly, and avoiding it like the plague. Once found, though, hiding is not an option. It all comes out eventually, now I just try to beat honesty to the punch.

