To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve been thinking about these bathroom incidents quite a lot, since, even before I understood what my undergrad Spanish professor meant when she asked me what sex I was.  I began thinking about it long before her awkard imposition.  I thought about it, not in the bathroom, but while I was filling out an awkward form, and I stumbled upon what box I should put an X against.   I was fourteen.

But lately, I’ve been thinking about how I could lessen the awkward introductions in the bathroom.  Awkward and jolting, a problem if only I would decide where my queer life could possibly project towards: should I finally decide to be feminine and wear some makeup, some accessories, should I become a man and have a sex change?  A direction, we’re all certain of.  Certainly, I won’t have people questioning my gender or insisting on where I should or shouldn’t be.  It would be clear cut, defined, no gray area to fear.  Especially in the bathroom, I can puke all this up in peace.  Because that’s all anyone wants when they take a piss, peace.

I am black, I am a black woman.  I am a black woman from the Caribbean, I am a black woman from the Caribbean, I am a black, Caribbean, gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, transgendered…  My rights as a human being; a consenting, existing human being has nothing to do with your bible, or what you foresee as your economic growth.  Your imagined entitlement!

And if yours and mine, Republican or Democrat, our leaders, that are so afraid of speaking the truth, so afraid of what it would cost their utopian display of a plastic image, a glass life that easily shatters after the first year that either one of them are in office, they don’t have to imagine for me: I am not afraid.  I’m not afraid of votes, battalions, or guns!