Elizabeth Hassler on queer, here, and what we are building

on queer, here, and what we are building

Here is a poem about queer space,

which I am writing instead of

going to tonight's Queer Student

Union meeting because I am sick.

In three-dimensional space I lost my voice

(my voice is ordinarily

my defining feature---more about speaking privilege,

and the terrors of Day of Silence,

in later poems),

so I will stay home and write myself a space

(in the context of a space

other people have written for me to write in)

instead.

This verse begins in a confession:

most of my friends

are queer. Most of

my friends are feminists; some of

the ones who aren't have very

purposely Quit the Movement

citing racism and other

complex intersections.

A lot of my friends

are disabled; a lot

of the ones who aren't

or who don't use that language for their experience

struggle in different ways

with projects of living

in their bodies and their minds.

A lot of my friends are white,

and I think that's a problem.

A lot of my friends are nerds

or geeks

or awkward.  Shit, none

of my friends are Republicans.

People who

are sure that makes me terribly closed-minded

and mean or man-hating or whatever

should go hang out on the opposite side of the couch

from the woman who

concern-trolled me about my “serious lesbian denial”

and hating my cripped-up body(???)

after my last n-q post.

Y'all, I am even nice to people who hurt me on purpose.

I just also

construct spaces very intentionally,

because it is hard

to do anything else. Like,

if people have meetings in their houses

with stairs,

my wheelchair-using body can't go.

And not just because

my sense of direction is . . . where?

I have gotten lost

in a house I lived in,

so obviously

I negotiate space

with careful planning only.

We talk about built environment

for the ADA, but not

for building communities.

Built environments:

at Crippled Children's Services

(which is not actually called that anymore),

therapy hurt.

I have been taught

not to value the knowledge

of my own discomfort,

bodily or otherwise.

I have sat in meetings and classes and spaces

that made me jump out of my skin

[her body does her feelings]

without saying anything

(you will remember that

my voice is ordinarily

my defining feature)

because

I have been taught

not to refuse.

This is the house compliance built (or

its opposite): well,

fuck.

Rebuilding houses

with unmastered tools:  queer space,

for me,

is because even crippled girls

should probably be allowed boundaries.

Queer space

doesn't always have boundaries

(like with the ex

whom the “serious lesbian” hurting antagonist

insists was my girlfriend),

but it feels safe for my body

except when it is loud

or condescending. It is the house

and the home from which I might start my revolution.

Queer space is where

I can hold all of my acts

and collage my life a self:

come home. Neuro-queer

space is because home is my desire and my body,

and because that shi(f)t doesn't separate.

I have fumbled over this naming

lately, over this need

to have neuro-queer and the original NeuroQueer

and all subsequent iterations too

mean, you know, queer space. To have

queer, here, mean things about the lives of our bodies

and our patterns of relation,

not (just) about making the world strange.

It is because I don't want

my inconvenient body displaced

for other kinds of truth

(and maybe I shouldn't worry,

but I have been taught

otherwise).

I want to tell the world I love it;

I don't keep keys to the queerness gate

in my mouth

or police our gardens for unidentified plants,

but I like

the idea that there are borders

to our fertile places.

No, disability space is not enough

to keep my body mine.

There are complex lattices

and supported trellises

and queer flowerings of crippled desire involved

in making this here, hear, hirstory

[“hirstory” is a collaborative project

like history, but unfinished]

of a body known.