the good:

-i live in a beautiful apartment with a huge porch, which we pay a very small sum of money for, and which is fantastic.
-i love my cat. she is sweet and looking more and more grown up and likes me better than other people and is starting to like cuddling.
-the song “common reaction” by uh huh her is great.
-i cut my hair off. dyke style, sitting in my kitchen, with caitlyn & cristina.
-i love my almost wife.
-i’ve been spending more time with some old friends, which is always so positive for me, and i don’t know why we all suck at making the effort sometimes, but inevitably my friends from high school make me feel the most comfortable. even though i remember very little of high school and was sad for most of it. maybe because of that.

the bad:
-my mother and i are more involved than i would like, for a variety of reasons which i like even less…
-the number one reason being my parents house is now in foreclosure. and my father’s company may go out of business. and i only make 35K a year and can’t really help, at all. except by speaking to my mother, which supposedly makes things less stressful for the pops. ugh.
-so like, what happens now? he is almost 65 years old, how will he find a new job? why is life is so hard on those who don’t deserve it? why do bad people get good things and the best people i know struggle so hard?
-i miss people, but my memories of them, not them now. gabe and i haven’t spoken in awhile, and it probably won’t change. i feel old in a not so positive way.

it is fall in new york. i am turning twenty-three years old in three weeks.

over twenty years ago now, my father and i would go for drives in his white sports car. i would look up through the sunroof at the sky and the clouds. we would drive past the marina and look at the boats. my father always wanted a boat, but he never got to have one. i had a stuffed seal i would hold while he layed me down in the trunk to change my diapers. he was god to me, a king, young and handsome in his brown leather jacket. i have never and probably never will feel that safe again, but i hope someday my children will have that feeling, and that i can sustain it for them longer than i had it for.

(i even have a similar brown leather jacket. but i will not make the same mistakes he did, because i can’t pay him back money, but i can at least do what is owed of me.)

we are upstate on our first vacation together, and cristina is driving us down a long, windy, picture-from-a-postcard road, when it actually hits me. i am staring at the window and i look down at my hand where her ring is on my finger.

i’m marrying her. i am marrying my first love, cristina, the one, my soulmate, my best friend. we are spending the rest of our lives together. we are creating a family, the two of us and our little cat and our little apartment. our purple car and our dinners and our bed and our long weekend drives. the flowers we buy one another, the “i love you” texts and emails all day at work. us.

we will stand in front of a rabbi and all our friends, and make the commitment we’ve both made already to one another legal, making all of the hard work so many of us have done for equality a bit more appreciable to me. it will be a day of laughter and fun and happy happy tears.

but more than that day, it’s about the rest of the days. the days to come. the days i know i will spend beside her.

that night we end up in a starry wide sky field, gazing. we start crying, hugging, blown away by this thing we have together, our crazy history, the inevitability of it all.

“i wish i had proposed right now,” she says.

so i hand her back the ring. “so propose.”

she tells me she loves me and wants to spend the rest of her life with me. i concur. she asks, i say yes, and she slips the ring back on my finger.

we walk away, holding hands, weak kneed and smiling.

i don’t talk to my mom anymore, but she sent me an email (through my dad, she does not know how to use computers) about her belief that my entire life is about being gay, because i work for a gay organization, have gay friends, live with cristina, etc. i wrote her this to try to explain, and i’m kind of proud of it, so i thought i’d share:



Dear Mom,

I understand that you have conflicted feelings about people being gay, and may find it 'gross' or 'unnatural'. I am sorry you felt you could not share this feeling with me earlier, and understand that you kept it back out of respect for my identity. Thank you for that.

I did not ask to be gay, and I did not choose to be gay. I believe very strongly that god made me this way. I have known that I am attracted much more to women than to men, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, since I was about 12 years old. While I did not choose it, I do not wish it were another way; to me, being gay seems like any other genetic thing about ourselves, like eye color, race, height, hair color, etc.

I think that possibly you are confused about the role my sexuality, as you would say, plays in my life. You say that homosexuality is my "passion." That is simply not so. My passion is, and always has been, in creating a world that is safe, accepting, and ensures equal rights to all people, regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. This struggle is referred to collectively as the social justice movement. Over the past 8 years of high school and college, I have been active in many different areas of this movement; for example, while at NYU i did coursework and internships that pertained to voting rights, housing rights, ending racial discrimination, and ensuring reproductive rights for all women.

As a gay woman, the issue of discrimination against gay people is one that affects me very personally. You may not know this, but every year thousands of gay people are murdered simply for being, or, in some cases, just for being perceived to be gay. I personally have been harassed before while walking down the street. I am not legally allowed to marry the person I wish to spend my life with. In many states, I could be fired for being gay. In many countries around the world, gay people are routinely put to death.

I find these injustices unnacceptable. There is nothing wrong with being gay, just like there is nothing wrong with being Jewish. Perhaps you can identify, as a member of a religious minority, with some of the struggles minorities face on a daily basis.

The non profit I work at works with the media to ensure that accurate coverage of gay issues is given. I do serious work all day long. I am paid to write, research, and edit. I am paid a very good salary for a first year graduate, and was selected from an applicant pool of over 100 for my job. Perhaps Dad would be willing to share with you some of the newsletters and press releases I have already written here.

I am not sure where my life will take me; I know I do want an advanced degree of some kind. Perhaps social work, perhaps law, who knows, maybe I'll even go to med school some day. The world is open to me, because I am a bright, passionate, kind young woman.

Being gay is not my passion, fighting for the rights of everyone is. Because you live with Daddy and have had sex with men, and watch movies about straight people and read books by straight people, and go to establishments run by straight people, does that make being straight your passion?

In my free time, I do a lot of reading. Lately I've been reading a lot about Jewish history, as well as the history of the women's rights movement. I enjoy going to the movies, bowling, and taking trips upstate to take in the scenery. I have wonderful friends, who identify as all sorts of things; black, white, christian, jewish, gay, straight, male, female, etc.

I am happy and I hope you are too.

Love,
Joanna

starting the 21st i am the national news media associate at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

as in, i have my first grown up job in the field i want. aah! when did i grow up?!

i'm excited!

in dallas i almost died in a car wreck, which involved the car gabe and i were in flipping over into a ditch. the car was completely totalled. i hurt my ankle and back, but other than that, i am ok.

i have not found a job. or someone to take over my old apartment. i am in a financially perilous place.

my plans to drive to long island fell through yesterday, so i met up with dom after bartending school. i told him about my car crash. he was glad i am okay. that has tended to be the consensus amongst those i have told.

my hair looks good. my mom and i are not speaking this. this time, she claims its cuz i'm gay. her doctor wants to up her medication. good luck, i say.

things i am doing:

sitting in cristina's (/sort of almost maybe soon my) apartment, watching svu, wishing she were here, drinking cola

things i am not doing:

any sort of significant work on my paper that is due tomorrow at 2pm. arghhhhhhhhh.

things i want:
a puppy. to move to northampton. to get married. to graduate college. to find a job.

things that were fun:

-we drove to northampton on saturday to go to their pride festivities. they are not kidding about it being a dykey town. it was awesome. we had fun, and walked around smith, and i want to go to their grad program in social work.

in other news, we are very seriously talking about moving out that way next winter. cheaper living! grad school! trees! lesbians! new england! not nyc! maybe a backyard for cat/future puppy to frolic in!

i think a few of you guys are from there/live there. thoughts, etc?

-amazing sex. always a plus.

-making a drunken fool of myself at metro last week, causing internet controversy.

things that are not fun:
-skool. papers. etc.

-upcoming colposcopy. i hate my cervix. my pap smear came back with some cell changes again, so i'm in for a biopsy on thursday, which last time hurt a bunch. hopefully the discomfort will be motivation to actually quit smoking. also hopefully i do not get cervical cancer and die. etc.

-ankle still not being all the way better. blah.

-missing so many people.

-debt.

i will write 10 pages about queer hip hop, and i will like it. yes.

john's craigslist ad to find us a roommate:

Large living area. Awesome lighting and great big kitchen. Furnished 1 bedroom (furniture is optional, we can move it or you can keep it). May1st-September1st with option to renew on lease for longer (we plan on staying another year).

About your possibly new roommates:3 queer, fun-loving, 20-somethings. John:Baruch College student/Barista/Relocated West Coast-Stoner. I enjoy drugs, the smiths, whining about how much i miss the west coast, henry miller books, and pizza. Joanna:*almost* NYU gallatin graduate, originally from northport, L.I. She enjoys drugs, poetry, gin, talking in fake french accents, and santa fe. Eric: 22 year old cater waiter from Seattle. Enjoys celebrity gossip, any form of hard liquor, cooking tasty meals, and working out.

We're not the cleanest roommates, and we're all smokers, but we are all super cute and super fun. We spend our days/nights/days/nights/ect. smoking, chatting about social politics, re-watching every episode of sex in the city via dvd, and of course partaking in our favorite past-time:indulging in positive drug use (but not negative addictive drug use). We all love O'Bama, and like to make fun of Hillary. Occasionally one or all of us is a bit late on rent, but we always manage to pay somehow.

Anyways if you seem like a good fit to the above send us an email. Please include a picture or two for fun, and a little about yourself (maybe a cool story involving your drug of choice). Swing by soon and have a beer with us, smoke a bowl, get to know each other. See how ya like the place. Thanks!

i love my girlfriend.

i have a headache.

tonight john and i are going to get high and try and lure people to live with us. who are not sketchy. i mean, who are as sketchy as we are.

my attempt to quit smoking totally failed.

i love my girlfriend.

yesterday, all i wanted, all day long, was to be with her.

and then finally the day was over, and we were driving in her car, holding hands across the console. falling asleep, my head on her shoulder, i felt like magic, like every perfect rainy day you spend in bed, or the sum total of everyone in the world blowing out their birthday candles and wishing at the exact same time.

i'm just saying, it's pretty amazing to be with someone who, as far as you are concerned, is wonderful as wonderful can be.

and so our heroine finds that no, her heart was never made of stone, she just couldn't let down the walls for just any ole someone, but somehow, somehow, they have just crumbled away, dust at her feet, and her heart beats fierce, pumping so much blood and so much hope, around and around and around.

rainy days like today that feel like london. clean laundry, and all my button ups hanging in my closet. falling asleep next to cat. my friends from high school. chocolate ice cream. having three packs of cigarettes in my bag. pulling the lever in the voting booth. writing poems. growing my armpit hair and parading around in tank tops. growing my head hair and feeling softer, letting it be that way. text message invites to birthday parties. our party coming up. all things queer. orgasms. johnathan wilhelmi. my bedroom's constant state of mess. staying under the covers an extra ten minutes. nervous butterflies about a girl. the brooklyn bridge. the atlantic ocean. the knowledge that isles in the medittaranean still exist, even if i am not there. my father's voice. this journal. new york city.