Healing; circa 2007 but gotta keep it REAL-evant

I look at my wound

A fleshy calaca

Speckled with pink and red dots where hair follicles

Once existed.

It is my cortada with its rosada edges

an umbra of swollenness.

I look at my wound

Slimy como un gargajo

Me llena de asco

But why does my mouth water when I look at it?

I focus on the pain

Feel it throb up and down my arm

Makes my nails tingle

I feel the throb until my clit tingles.

I ignore my cut for days

Leave it exposed, victim to the elements

Vulnerable to infection.

“Huh I should put something on it. Some ointment or something.”

I research the web under branding and in the process

Learn about the highly infectious nature of burns.

One degree more and I could’ve damaged the nerve endings.

I cover my wound with a Band Aid

To silence the pain.

My thoughts get the best of me

I get chilled with loneliness, paralyzed with irrational fears

My thoughts run wild

ever present

bare

like bones

I reach for the Band Aid

And as I pull it off the stinging mixes in with another type of pain

The pulling of tiny hairs from their root “sssss, uh.”

Pain.

Pains

make me who I am, makes us who we are

Our bodies are screaming with pain

Physical, mental and emotional

Pain brings us together

It repels us

“Get away! You pained me.”

“get away you’re damaged goods.

Look at my wounds.

“Cover that shit up.”

I struggle not to be hostage to my pain

But it is my pain

Fuck you for giving it to me

Fuck you for not knowing it.

“Can you see my wound, it’s only residue?”

Abandon: HIT ME BACK TO HEAVEN

(sound of voices praying)

I stopped being a Catholic when I was thirteen, but I still can’t stop confessing, professing my shit, yeah exhibitionist to the core, the showing must go on. I was borne to be an artist. I like pain. I do. It’s always lived in me, so I learned how to like it. I learned how inflict it on myself, cutting, pulling the scabs, branding. I’ve always done it alone, to myself the technique growing with time. Why? Uhhhh it feels so fucken good you just don’t know. The next day any movement reminds you of the soreness, breathing alone can cause it to sting. Maybe I’m really a submissive. Submissive. It’s an exercise in letting go. I’m not gonna try to control my life. I have to let it go, like I once did. I’d close my eyes believing in the feeling, the safety I felt in those prayers those fears laid down to rest in between those pages. But that type of faith seems so long ago and the memories turned bible page thin. I didn’t want to stop believing that things would change, that:

(in Prayer tone)

I would not lust otras como yo.

Not be broken down by rejection

Not be so fucken horny

Those prayers ceased, as did the weekly rituals.

(Sound of hand slapping face)

Te va castigar dios. If he was going to do it why can’t I do it to myself? Take my faith into my own hands. I searched for a replacement, not sure how many miles my pedometer has tracked of my strolls up and down the beach, como la pinche llorona trying to figure how I let things get to here. And still I don’t learn that like the waves you have to ride it out. Found a way to some other commandments. S/M felt like a way to command who and what would hurt me. Did I say controlling pain? But if pain is my pleasure then…oh what a tautological bind. The welts, rakes and burns, are they not strong enough to exorcise my demons.

Let me believe in myself.

If I can’t believe in my ability to love and be loved, the most basic of things then how can I succeed, how can I stop being a FUCKEN TOOL! Yeah, I am a fucken tool, look at what I build, you tripping over it right now. Just call me craftsman…I build what I can but sometimes it was hard to build me. Couldn’t jack up myself so I jacked myself up, physically. A tool, beating myself against that hard surface that would never change, never chip and sculpt to my heart’s desire, one so muddled in self-doubt.

Submissive

I feel crazy like I need to go off, fireworks, like the motha’ fucken Drake of theater, only prettier. Bet you no rapper knows this definition of busting on stage,

A black box MC, mistress of cock-inesssss, of cocks and circumstancesssss that keep bringing me back to this place.

Cual de los dos amantes sufre mas pena, la que se va o la que se queda

The one that stays, in that moment, in those feelings, suffers cause when they leave it feels like they’re yanking me from my roots. I struggle to recover and get caught up in the

(in singing tone)

anything you can do I can do better, anything you can say I can be meaner, I can be colder…I can do better, I can do better, better, better. For myself each and every day. My hands are bound and I pray, bound in prayer, bound in play-

Some people measure growth spurts with markings against the wall

Scribbles

The 3rd year, the 4^th year, 5^th year, 5^th scar on my arm. Growth entails making better decisions, they say but all I’m doing is trusting love (huh) seeing where it takes me. And it has taken me to a lot of beautiful places, people have touched lots of special places.

People leave traces

on my soul

And when it’s time to grow you have to, like the roots you have to yank and re-pot. Pick a bigger pot, more soil, water and it will grow.

Blessed is this blood that I shed for my art

Blessed is this blood (chuckles) that pumps from my heart

Blessed is this blood that I shed here today hoping to grow in an amazing way.

No catechism, no communion, just confession, cutting, cicatrizando, caressing, I’m the worst communicator in the world, a writer, a story teller, the worst in expressing my needs. So I write pieces and then I master pieces to make sense out of my life…(chuckles) My life, my life, my life a constant conversation with myself

(sound of voices praying)

pushing me to go and to go and I don’t know where that is. And damn these headaches! a constant halo of heat squished in between my brain and top of my dome. Tension, caused by my apprehension, cause I don’t speak, I don’t speak my mind but my mind speaks to me all the time and won’t fucken shut up and I have no choice but to listen.

Submissive

Clear, honest consensual the basic rules of play, but when it’s for reals, you can’t hear, what I say…I say I’m not topping enough, not good enough, not good enough, not enough.

Submissive

Give up control. I am not even gonna try anymore…acts of kindness fade like cicatrices- it’s only when it’s hot, warm and sore that you pay attention to the wound, then it, I fade into the rest of your skin, the rest of you. And too bad that we only see ourselves from the inside out, not outside in, except maybe on Facebook, seen, seen, oh to be seen.

I am not even gonna try anymore gestures are always left to be misinterpreted and my questions kill more than just the mood. I am not even gonna try anymore, no more of this topping from the bottom, topping with a soft caring hand mistaken for weak but quick bitch feel my grip- as I grab at…nothing, still coming up empty handed.

Submissive

I surrender so that you

MY You

You hear me…

Will one day too

I surrender, I surrender

I submissive

I a tool…. Come- play- with- me

Involve our entire being

Abandon what’s been played

Hit me, hit me, hit me back to heaven

Through ceremonial play

Baptize and purify me

Pressed that hotness onto my skin

Forever and ever not even death will do us part

With this brand

I me

wed

to this life of abandonment

on my journey

doing it for love

doing it with faith.

(photo credit: Raquel Gutierrez)

BdSM

(Soft yellow light center stage shining over bench. Bench is draped with a soft throw)

Claudia enters stage right. She is wearing a black tank top, white tight shorts (aka booty shorts) lays down on the bench. BdSM audio and video footage begin playing at the same time.

(Audio is playing and video footage of Nadine is projected on screen. Claudia begins simulating masturbation or actually doing it depending on how she is feeling that day. She occasionally looks up at the image of Nadine projected on the screen who also looks down on Claudia).

To my butch scholar

what is Butch aesthetic?

Is it when you reflect what you see before you into words?

If so then you have to talk about my big boobs.

If so then you have to talk about my tight ass

and how you salivate at the thought

of your fingers

sliding up and down your keyboard

as you recreate me, separate me, turn me upside down

and label me.

ME-your idea!

For you to relive every time you, she, I read.

Butch aesthetic?

that captured by your eyes

digested by your mind

and ends up on everyone's tongue.

If you reflect what you see before you into words,

please include the smells.

Is that hot wax or the smell of hot skin?

Shhh listen.

It’s your heart beating in MHz at the sound

of the whip against my back,

Um, my moans.

Butch mystique?

that surrounding my butch Papi

who stirs fag/boi/tranny fantasies

like you fucking me in your mind

as you witness

gender fucker

fucking

gender fucker

performing Butch identity against what is Queer/Butch.

Gender fuckers gender fucking,

performing Butch identity against what it means to be a chicana/butch

butch violating butch…

This is butch to me…

I feel the marks of my identity

I've been the butch top in this femme-butch matrix

where my desire IS draped in femme fatigues

where my identity manipulates my desires

where I’ve been somebody's bitch

Really, I just want to be ok with wanting to be manipulated by you.

Feeling your cock-hard Domness

makes my cock hard

femme or butch both can top me the same

as long as I get spanked the way I want to be spanked.

The personal is political

but the political is not always written on the skin

I know you see me as a cabron ladies…don't deny it

can you tell I like to fuck boys/bois?

Yes

I am

one of those butches that flew over the coo-coo's nest

the kind that fucks other butchas.

Go ahead and say it "where are all the real butches."

Act surprised that I'm really down with getting down butch on butch?

(Claudia lifts herself from the bench and straddles it, begins gyrating on it (i.e. she is riding the fuck outta that bench, sensually of course))

Hola Papi,

I was thinking about you, how the other day you stretched yourself out before me, slid your hand under your boxers and touched yourself. You scooped some of your juice up! I know cause I saw as you first smelled your scent then ate it.

As if nothing you slid your hand down there again. You face twisted this way and that with pleasure and lips parted with your moans. You got the legs twitching, chest heaving types of motions. I watched until your eyes rolled to the back of your head with satisfaction and closed with bliss.

Here I go again

Talking all that little boy fetish

I like short hair,

peach fuzzed, tittie tottin' cara de niño

The prettier the better

I'll say it

Son mi cochinita pibil

Carne tierna y picosa.

Won't I ever quit

Shed this skin

(Here Claudia thrusts harder)

Step into the post pony-tail dyke

Post-drag king

Post-andro

Post-trans

Post post

Post Pomo (Claudia simulates reaching orgasm, ass tremors she and leans forward onto the bench, breathless)

all I want is to step into my post-heroic masculinity

Stop suppressing mine to uphold others'

Does it make you feel good?

Does it heave your imaginary man pecks

to put me down? To walk around me like everything is cool

even though you didn't play by the rules,

Then I'm down to let you

If you think you're Top enough to top this.

Reflect what you see before you into words….

(BdSM audio stops but video footage is still playing and then fads out. Red light shines on center stage)

(Play track 9 off CD Song: “Only When I Loose Myself” by Depeche Mode )

Nadine enters stage left. She is dressed in a dark button up shirt and tie. She circles around Claudia inspecting her. Claudia is still leaning forward on the bench, breathless, senses Nadine’s presence but does not lift her head. Nadine pulls off her belt, and snaps it once- that’s when Claudia lifts her head and attempts to get up but Nadine pushes her back down. Then the BdSM scene follows, Nadine teases Claudia, with belt, hits her ass a few times, hits her across the back HARD. The scene goes on, more teasing, taunting and slapping.

Nadine ( goes over to Claudia, yanks her by the hair)

Who’s the bad Boi?

Claudia (with a painful look, but also pleased)

You are !

Gang-boys

A tree marked
with a giant 7
and a giant 0
The 70’s came through here.
A stop sign tagged with T-Flats
no longer stops traffic
but serves to warn you
intruder
that you’re entering
Tortilla Flat territory.
Better yield.

I lived in the middle of gangs
sandwiched between
deadly loyalties
to the red, blue, the brown.
My childhood riddled
with gang-boys
who think, believe they are men
but each one
really a man-child.
Sagging pants
weighed down
by the gats they tote.
Glock, revolver in one pocket
bandana representing in the other.
Sporting perfectly pressed
blinding bright white t’s
cut-off dark work pants
with creases cutting the air,
hair shiny, sleek
classic like the filero,
thick white sport socks pulled knee-high
and dark knit gloves in the summer!
I knew some of them
talked and laughed with them
I wasn’t
allowed to befriend them
not allowed to cross
their path to nowhere good.

Willie, aka Will or Big Slim
with his pet iguana
and his magnetic smile
couldn’t help but want to talk to him
or have him talk to you.
Always very friendly and funny
but fled to the ‘burbs
to get away from the life-
to save his life.

Either on foot,
covered in thick Nike Cortez,
or on bikes
these lost boys
left their trail
of graffiti, fear and loathing.
To see them was to know
they’d lose their life
they’d lose the street battle
leaving loved ones
the community
the city
to continue
living the war.
A war they can’t see from their graves
or the luckier ones, from their cells.
A war
fueled by the push and pull
of la pandilla, la clica, the “set”
with its utter freedom
to roam the streets, incite fear
break the rules,
break faces,
break the bank with their street hustle
gives a young boy
a dose of “manhood” to the head.
To be manly and supported in that
to be protected by your brothers in that.
How cool to be “cool” for all the girls.
Cause, who doesn’t love a bad boy (even secretly)?

Those gang-boys
who think, believe they are men
but each one
really a man-child
pushed by tradition,
cause Smiley
has Baby Smiley and Lil Smiley
looking up to big tough tatted dad.
Pushed by threats,
pushed into throwing down,
blow by blow
dying block by block.
Sacrificing their lives
disrespecting that of their enemy’s
representing their hood hard
just to be worthy of respect.
In the end
after all the fundraising:
car washes
knocking on my door collecting funds
to bury her fallen son
“Here, here is a $5, I don’t want
to see anymore pictures of him,”
can’t look at her bloodshot eyes
After all the R.I.Ps have been sewn
sprayed on, etched on
to car windows, t-shirts, caps
sweatshirts and tattooed on
brown and black skin
After all this
who thinks about
respect?
Who thinks of the boy’s set?
Just a lonely painful
memory, relived
of how a gang-boy
who thought, believed he was a man
was really a child.

Compton

I read somewhere…oh yeah on myspace that you know it’s true love when “it’s complicated”. Compton IS a complicated city.  I’m sure you’ve heard of it?

Various stories, news reports flashed on television, interwoven with the lyrics of gansta rappers like EZ-E, Dr. Dre and The Game. Surely you’ve bobbed your head to their beats? The tales these rappers and news reports tell are not make-believe stories but they make folks  believe what’s only half true and the other half  folks fabricate on their own  cause folks just don’t know no betta'.

COMPTON!

Did your mind conjure up something all tingly and California-sun warm? There are tales that people tell tales I have to hear whether I’m checking in at a small inn in Santa Fe, New Mexico or taking a tour through the Polynesian Cultural Center in Oahu, Hawaii. I hear the tales of my city.   “Is it as bad as they say,” asks the Miami transplant now residing in a slower paced Santa Fe and working in Guest Services at the small inn.  He hands me the key to my room I give him a blank stare.  “Compton?”  He says as he points at the address on my driver’s license when I don’t answer his question. I didn’t know what to say.  I was dumbstruck and got doubly-dumbstruck cause I can’t believe this question still dumbstruck me.  I hear it all the time. 

Cut.

Flash forward a few months after New Mexico. 

Scene: the beautiful island of Ohau:

  “Hello, my name is Lemeki and I’m from Compton,” the Fijian tour guide cracks a joke before he started his lecture on Polynesian culture to the attentive all-tourist-filled audience.

Compton.  It’s the place where drive-bys occur, where every one of my middle school years is marked with memories of racial riots among Black and Latino Compton High youth trying to annihilate each other. Black on brown violence, no title on the line, no million dollar award- shit not even the pride of bragging rights.  Just plain ignorance-laden poverty-driven violence. I never understood why they did it nor how my sisters, all three of them, managed to study in those conditions. I knew I didn’t want to go through it and I fled, found a different rout towards my high school dimploma.  On a big bumble bee of a bus that chauffeured my ass to C.A.M.S (the California Academy of Mathematics and Science).

Cut. 

Flash back to my 9^th grade year. English class, students are seated in a circle cause it’s group work time.  Not sure what the assignment was cause we we’re talking and not necessarily working.   “So do you have to wear a bullet proof vest?” asked the curly-top Jewish boy in my group. My homie, Mike who also got picked up  in Compton, turned to look at me and busted out laughing. Mike saw the “beat down coming on” expression on my face, turned to Jewish boy and proceeded to bust out laughing in his face.

“What do you mean?” I asked in my most mean-mugging face. 

“Well, you know, you live in Compton and, you know, there’s a lot of gang ware fare there.”

“Oh, I said. Yeah I hear you but my vest is in the cleaners today and my glock is in the shop.” I’ll spare you the details of how the rest of the conversation went down, just know that no, he didn’t get a beat down just an angry lecture. Compton = gangs?  I’ll admit to that but there’s so much more.  There is also poverty and underserved communities. As I mentioned before I attended high school at C.A.M.S, which by the way, Los Angeles Magazine ranked as the 4^th best high school in Los Angeles this year. I would say 95% of the students who attended got bused in from their respective districts and all the students were at the top of their class in their respective middle school.  I rode on the Compton and South L.A. bus. Just to tell you, in order to remain a student at C.A.M.S you had to maintain a certain GPA which I don’t recall at the moment nor could I find said information on their website. If you didn’t maintain that GPA then you were placed on academic probation.  My first semester, which also happened to be the first semester ever at C.A.M.S, was the school's first semester and practically everyone from the Compton/ South LA bus was placed on academic probation and required to take a tutoring class, which we all affectionately called the “dummy class”. I think the administration was surprised but obviously ready and willing to address the problem. This was my first experience seeing the inequality in the quality of education I received in Compton and what other students in other districts like Palos Verdes, Long Beach, Torrance etc. had received. I was one of the lucky ones though because I had been tracked as a gifted and talented student, which meant I got the opportunity to learn from the best teachers at my Compton schools.

Compton.  The Williams sisters first learned their game here, at the imperial tennis courts to be exact.  But not even their fame and winnings would spare them from later learning that their sister, Yutende Price, got shot down in a drive by.  Compton. It’s quite a distance from here to Beijing, China the destination of the 2008 Olympics where Tayshaun Prince and Lisa Leslie got their necks looped with gold medals for being the best basketball team in the world. For Lisa this would be her fourth, Mr. Prince is also a member of the 2004-05 NBA championship team the Detroit Pistons.

Compton home to 100,000 inhabitants 51% of those are Latinos, no longer a chocolate city. But the change in racial composition is not the only change that Compton has undergone. After receiving a State Enterprise Zone program, Compton has experienced a lot of business and industrial expansion (we got our own Best Buy and a Magic Johnson 24hr Fitness, ya’ll!) new houses have been built AND a new senior center is in the works.  My city even has it’s own district comprised of 24 elementary schools, eight middle schools, three high schools, and one adult school, which also serves as an alternative school.  The district maintains five alternative learning schools unfortunately our schools have not yet reaped the benefits of the State Enterprise Zone program at least not from what I’ve seen and read in the papers. The sad thing, I would say downright heartbreaking thing, is that across the nation, the world, things are so financially hurting that a few shops at Compton’s new shopping plaza have already closed down. We’ll see if Best Buy is a best bet in this city at this time.

As far as I can remember the educational system in Compton has always left one wanting more. Sadly enough in 1993, my junior year of high school, Compton Unified got taken over by the California Department of Education due to gross, funky ass mismanagement of the dirty presidents.  In 2004 Compton Community College lost it’s accreditation again for mismanagement and fraud.  FUCK people, when can we stop fucking ourselves over?  

I want to say that I am leaving but I’m already gone.  Writing from my new place, new home full of pine smell and homie feel. But still want to share what I felt as I arrived to here. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part of me is afraid to leave mostly because I have to change my route to achieving my dream, changes and very unexpected surprises and leaps in personality.  Just another way of saying that I feel like I’ve grown.  It’s not so much just the moving part, the literal move from one space to the other, I feel that I’m trying to be present and aware of her…my love.  Give a relationship 5 years, that’s sort of like the rule of thumb, huh? I didn’t really believe it until that day when I heard it twice in one day.  It was one of many things that I experienced in 1 day- it was a deja vou day, I suppose.

 I heard that twice in one day and once from my own mouth.  So I can’t stay in one place, marry my dreams to a site.  They come with me- they are my part; a part of me.  I say this as I’ve packed up most of my shit in preparation to bounce from the CPT. I want to work with the youth here, in this city, I want to have the talented ones, the expressive ones, the accomplished to the 10^th degree, the motivated one.  Yes it sounds elitist but the truth is that they can all be…

Accomplished, expressive, talented, motivated

I just want to say that it’s about over coming challenges.  Hopefully the students

Will see it too

 

It must be true.  I have a riddle for you…

“Cual de los dos amantes sufre mas pena? El que se va o el que se queda

Answer: El que se queda, se queda llorando

Y el que se va, se va suspirando.”

Manifesto?

 I.

Carpe diem!  Seize the day! Seizing it our way!  What the fuck do we have to lose? Balls out we bring it to the stage.  All the shit we think about, are close to, have been touched and troubled by gets dickwhipped in our process circles. That’s where we create what you see before you- that’s how we make sense of the world. Art- our life. We seize the day ‘cause tomorrow we’ll be gone like the homeless elbowed out of skid row (of all places!)  by expansionism, gentrification and the mantra: “if we build on top of that mess then no one will ever know it was there”. Dolla! Dolla! Bills ya’ll! Gone! Like yesterday’s hood-fame act. Gone!  Like a dead-beat dad. Gone! Like the fourth member? And who will remember?

II.

We remember. What once existed and what scarred us with its absence.  The lack of female masculine role models is my phantom limb. The craving for connection – constant need for validation lands one in painful positions, huh? It distorts you, turns you into a crazy curious character navigating through queerness (or what eva’) in bars diluting fears and insecurities with dollar specials, fading memories with lung swelling hits to the head. Throwing chingazos at each other and oneself, getting into debt but still not enough to buy enough time to make everything right.  I won’t go quietly and fill another role. The only Ugly Tia role I’ll play is one I write! Ya Basta to awful hair! And incase no one's ever said this to you...just worry about being you.  I had to find reasons to feel good about myself. I came together with the BdP- pulled myself together to gender fuck, not give a fuck and make sense of the mess that held my spirit down tight, tighter than electrical tape on tender-boi-tits.

III.

Seize and discard! Those masks used to conceal true selves; it’s not worth living with your back against the wall. Take control; make the calls in your life. No one should cash their dreams out on you. Search for something completely different. We’ve stepped into our post heroic masculinities. Ditched the pedestal pimping mentality and got hooked on the process of processing and transgressing our layered-self’s to reach self love. Can’t be what I’m not and won’t try to be who you think I should be. I gotta speak the pain not wallow in it. There’s no time! We aint got time and don’t want to wait for the moment. So we make every life/performance/life a moment. This is a moment. There I go again dishing out these crazy-mixed-up metaphors who knows we may create a masterpiece or just a feeling that haunts you. So, see us for what we are. Can you? Oh, you think you can?

IV.

This trio was once a quartet. Circumstances brought the four together but sometimes it’s the break ups that help you see the real shit before your eyes. Remember the past for what it was but always keep your eyes on to be. Yup, this trio goes back to last century, sometime  before our first exhibitionist  act on stage. Mmm. Mmm. Ahhh. Ahh. But we've got more shit than years between us. This thing is personal. The way writing collaborating and performing together is personal. You can’t do it with just anybody! We got more shit than years between us. We are poets, storytellers to whom much has been given and we know much is required. I’m not just quoting scripture here- this is our attitude.  We feel gifted so we gift you our art.  

p.s. Isn't this an awesome poster? The pic was taken by Mr. Hector Silva and the design- a Tricky Troll (Raquel Gutierrez) creation of course.