I wanna do something nice.. say something you appreciate about the person you reblogged this from!! even if it’s smth as small as their profile photo :)
Yall wanna hear a kinda funny, kinda sad story about my grandmother and hetero-normativity?
Ok, so… when my grandmother was in her 50s (I was an infant), she met a woman at the Unitarian Church. And, as can happen when you meet your soul mate, this event made it impossible for her to deny parts of herself that she had fiercely hidden her whole life.
All the drama- their affair being found out, the divorce with my grandfather, the court battle over who got the house, happened while I was a baby. Even in my earliest memories, it’s just Mama Jo and Oma, and my grandfather lived elsewhere (first his own apartment, then a nursing home, then with us.)
But here’s the thing- no one ever explained any of this to me. No one ever sat down and was like “hey, Rosie, so do you know what a lesbian is?” It was the 90s. It was Texas. I think my mom was still kinda processing all this, and just assumed that like… I was gonna figure it out. Don’t mention it, let it just be normal. Like I think my mom thought that if she explained the situation, she would be making it weird? I dunno.
But like. In the 90s, in all the movies I had seen and books I had read, do you know how many same sex couples I had seen? Like. 0. Do you know how many “platonic best friend/roommates” I had seen? A lot. I had no context, is what I’m saying.
I literally thought this was a Golden Girls, roommates, besties situation until I was like…I dunno, 11? 12?
It was actually their parrot, an African Grey named Spike, imitating my grandmothers voice saying “Johanna, honey, it’s getting late”, that triggered the MIND BLOWN moment as I realized that *there’s only one master bedroom and it only has 1 waterbed* when all the pieces finally clicked.
Anyway. I think it’s a real important thing for kids to know queer people exist, for a lot of reasons, but also because kids can be clueless and it’s embarrassing to have your grandmother be outted by a parrot because everyone just thought you’d figure it out on your own.
Anyway, here is my grandma and her wife, Oma, after they moved to Albuquerque to be artsy gay cowboys and live their best life. They helped run a “Lesbian Dude Ranch” out there (basically just with funding and financial support. As Oma has explained “traditionally, most lesbians don’t have a lot of money” so they wrote the checks and let the younger ladies actually run the ranch.)
i work at an infant daycare and one of our babies right now is notorious for attacking the others. like she’ll lock onto a target from the other side of the classroom and speed crawl over to them while breathing really heavily and then when she gets near them she’ll either pull them over by their onesies, pull their hair, smack them, or hit them with toys. if you move her away from her victim she’ll just chase them down again so we’ve started implementing “baby jail” where we stick her in a jumper whenever she attacks her classmates. we have a couple of babies now that will straight up start wailing if she gets near them because she’s smacked them around so many times. also this isn’t entirely relevant to the original post but we call her typhoid mary because her mom keeps bringing her in when she’s sick, hence this message i sent to my coworkers a while back
it actually makes me so sad there are some people who havent seen fireflies irl like. come with me. let me show you. lets go out in the yard at 8 in the evening and catch fireflies together
So a woman comes in to my work and asks to use the bathroom. Okay, normal. She happens to be a beautiful woman—not my type, but, you know, classically beautiful in the way that makes you a little bashful to talk to anyway.
She comes out a little bit later to say that the soap dispenser is empty. She’s holding her hands up—purple nail polish—clearly distressed by her exposure to filth and unwilling to touch anything until that can be fixed. I am nothing if not eager to help (knight complex) (beautiful) (purple nail polish) so I leap up and run to the supply room for the refill bottle.
I wedge the bathroom door open, you know, for her comfort, she’s standing there (beautiful) watching me, I’m silently pretending that she must be secretly impressed by my ring of keys (like the song), I’ve got a bit of a swagger on maybe (purple nail polish). I open the soap dispenser expecting an empty canister. It doesn’t look empty. I stick my fingers in (looks can be deceiving) and it’s completely full, freshly refilled, now I’m suddenly aware that she’s still watching me over my shoulder and I’m sticking my fingers into a hole (purple nail polish) and ha-ha-ha, it’s only a little suggestive with the soap, forget about it.
I struggle with the soap dispenser, she’s still watching me, I realize that whoever filled it last didn’t prime it. “I have to prime it,” I say, for some reason I have to explain out loud (beautiful).
I reach for the, uh, tube at the bottom. It hangs down about four inches. It’s rubbery. Yielding. But, uh, firm. I have to. Squeeze it. Repeatedly. She’s watching me still. Soap is leaking out of the release valve on the cap and onto my hands. Still no soap is coming out.
There’s probably congealed soap near the tip blocking the opening, I realize, and try to covertly squeeze it to check. Like. An udder. I’m massaging it (purple nail polish) and she’s still watching me. I glance up in the mirror. Her expression behind me is unreadable. Her eyes are fixed on the little rubber phallus I am stroking. I’m sweating.
“I have to…” I begin. I panic. I don’t know how to finish my sentence. I can’t say anything that can be construed as sexual. “…Milk it,” I say. A mistake. Now it somehow sounds more sexual than if I had said “jack it off”. I could have played that as a roguish joke. Milk it doesn’t sound roguish, it sounds creepy. The clogged soap comes free. White translucent liquid soap spurts all over my hands. There is a terrible sound accompanying it. She says “eugh!” over my shoulder. I try to rinse my hands and the soap container off with water before putting it away but soap just keeps leaking out, it’s everywhere. Why does it have to be white? Why does it have to be this consistency? Why is the suspensor tube shaped… like that (couldn’t it be just a little bit bigger if it had to be shaped Like That?) Why did she have to stand there watching me?
From here on out I’m just buying fucking pump bottles for the bathroom. Jesus fucking Christ.
I just.
You know.
I mean really look at it. I had it braced against my body because it was so slippery so like. Experience this horror with me in my shoes.
