I realise now this would’ve been a fun opportunity to put together some Halloween themed adoptables, whoops! I’ve gotten into fish recently, which brought these odd cuties to be.
it is tiring, being endless political just as someone existing. my teacher asks me if i’m writing more of that “feminist poetry.” a lot of it is just talking about me, being a woman, being afraid in the city. i write about walking a line, about how i am expected to choose between home and work, how each comes with a slew of its own insults; how it feels when i am wearing shorts and there are too many men outside. these are just facts of my life. someone in the comments says, “where are woman even coming up with these crazy generalizations in their feminism?”
i hold hands with the prettiest girl i’ve ever seen and someone sighs when they see me. “do they have to make everything gay?” she asks her friend, loudly, “like, do you have to force those views in my face all the time?” i can’t stop blushing. my girlfriend holds my fingers tighter, tighter, tighter, until my knuckles are white, and i let her. somehow, this is us, protesting.
my father’s cuban blood stains my skin, i think. when i am honored with a position in the dean’s private council, a boy sneers, “you only got in because you’re hispanic.” did i? i spend the rest of our meetings wondering if i was selected for my stellar academic record, for the multiple recommendations, for the clubs i lead – or if i was just a move the dean made, to make use of me. when we all take a picture, the dean brings me in the front. in the first three we take, i am not smiling.
it is odd. “i exist.” i say, “i deserve to exist.”
“oh my god,” he groans, “we get it, you’re a feminist.”
So, I am furious and sad and furious again about the Tree of Life shooting and basically everything around it. But it has been some relief to see so many people, both Jewish and gentile, posting about fundraisers and looking for ways to help in the aftermath.
Unfortunately, the notes of those posts are often full of anti-Semitism, whether from the overt hatefulness of alt-right neo-Nazi shitheads, or the concern-trolling of self-proclaimed leftists who think this is a great time to start up the I/P debate.
(Hint: It is not.)
(I just saw, with my own actual eyeballs, a post in which someone asked whether the shul and the victims were Zionists or not, because they didn’t want to support or mourn for them if they were.)
After a while, it’s hard to see the point of trying to refute the shitty arguments of shitty people, and you can only say “fuck you” so many times before it starts to lose all meaning.
Fortunately, there is something to fall back on. Gentile allies, may I introduce you to the wonderful world of
Yiddish curses
Some of my favorites:
May you turn into a blintz and be snatched by a cat.
May you either have to use the toilet every three minutes or every three months.
May I have the pleasure of sewing your funeral shroud.
May all your teeth fall out but one and may that one give you a toothache.
May you have thunder in your belly and lightning in your pants.
May he have a hundred houses, each house with a hundred rooms, each room with twenty beds, and may a delirious fever toss him from bed to bed.
May you eat chopped liver with onions, shmaltz herring, chicken soup with dumplings, baked carp with horseradish, braised meat with vegetable stew, latkes, tea with lemon, every day – and may you choke on every bite!
Yiddish curses: For when “fuck you, you fucking fuck” lacks sufficient flair.
