As an artist,
I will not be married off. I can choose. Whether I get hitched, join a union. Or not. I could otherwise devote myself to the church, my work, or remain just a girl until I awake one day a spinster.
It is unclear when I will undergo this transformation, but something in the wind feels imminent. An “irrelevance,” which creeps in, which neglects its own intersections. As I have neglected to have children. Like an endangered species. Amidst a plummeting population. Fucking as only a dying breed does.
I am “in my thirties.” Which I am supposed to fear, but I am alive. Standing on the tarmac of a new country.
.
Which is to say: I can write this without using a pen name.
.
Before: I worked as a mail clerk. There was a copy of But I’m a Cheerleader circulating at my college. Invisibly moving from one post box to another.
Whether or not there is censorship, there will always be lesbians. Always be pirates. Clicking, like, “My mother raised me to share.”
.
How do you build a picture of the past? How do you show what isn’t there?
Like, prove you’re magic without using a rabbit. Pull something out of the nothing. Make me believe.
.
Where are the lesbians?
For centuries. Kissing while the men are at work or at war. They find time for everything. They are authors, murderers, mothers, nobles.
.
There is a great costume change between being a lady of society and her lover.
To go from wearing seventeen things to nothing.
.
Let the record reflect that within:
A Quiet Passion, Tell It to the Bees, Colette, Vita & Virginia, The Favourite, Lizzie, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Wild Nights with Emily, Summerland, Ammonite, The World to Come, Benedetta
there are a lot of layers.
.
Layers. Like winter with long johns and two pairs of socks. Coats and cold noses. Warming your fingers with your breath. Button-ups and zippers. Better with comforters and fleeces and throws. When you tuck in your very toes and suffocate under blankets.
When there is nothing that cannot be laid across the radiator and dripped dry.
.
Which is to say, god forbid you’d have to take someone’s clothes off.
.
Recalling: Noémie Merlant as Marianne, as a painter, smoking her pipe in front of atelier fire.
Do I have nothing in common with that distant island? That feeling?
Have I sat looking at her, knowing she does not see me. But, she is there because she remembers?
.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire which must begin and end on the cusp of the Revolution. But this placement is not the story’s momentum.
.
Often, the Lesbian Period Piece is a story told in relative isolation. In the gullies. The silences between scenes. Stitched into the seams. Away from contextualizing conversations.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire has been siloed into its setting.
.
When, really, the Lesbian Period Drama is Céline Sciamma and Adèle Haenel dated.
The Lesbian Period Drama is Adèle Haenel, Céline Sciamma, and Noémie Merlant walked out of the César Awards. With their purses and a packet of cigarettes.
The Lesbian Period Drama is Adèle Haenel retired from cinema. The Lesbian Period Drama is Portrait of a Lady was Adèle Haenel’s last film.
Lesbian Period Drama is learning how to read tragedy.
Understanding the cohabitation of wanting. The “and yet” of it all.
.
But also.
Not everything is a 1-to-1 comparison. Learn how to read fiction.
.
What is fiction? Rebecca. The alleged relationships of Daphne du Maurier.
.
Well, what do two girls do anyway? Whisper, “for $1, name a woman” to each other until morning.
.
Is it obnoxious to have lesbian sex filtered through a network of corsets? Of course.
Had I the time, software, and embouchure to write proper, Oscar-ignoring cinema, I would personally offer at least running water.
But what, by comparison, would a film of the aughts depict? What will I demand “was so romantic” when that past comes within earshot of this present?
A slow burn in skinny jeans and rompers.
.
The Lesbian Period Drama behaves in that it keeps its clothes on. The apparent chastity of so much stitching.
Is there nothing radical in removing that cover?
.
Which costume of queerness will we pull from the closets next? A retelling of Sappho's “Ode to Aphrodite.” or Sally Ride in Atlanta, Audre Lord in Berlin. An homage to the fifth century AD and The Paired Dance of the Female Blue Phoenixes.
.
If there is going to be this insistence on "responsible homosexuals," then: Kathleen Lynn, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, Margaret Skinnider, Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grenan.
.
What of gentleness?
Nowhere is it written that fingertips lack conviction or passion. Bodies do more than smack together, like Barbie dolls.
OR
Maybe they barely touch because they are such an impossibility?
Maybe no one was gay in previous centuries?
.
But there was: Vice Versa and the If Club.
The line, "Perhaps you do not know it, but there are women who fall in love with each other," in the 1873 essay, "Women Lovers," published in the Women's Exponent.
Vin Packer and Spring Fire. Claire Morgan. The Well of Loneliness.
Diana: A Strange Autobiography, printed with the note, "The publishers wish it expressly understood that this is a true story, the first of its kind ever offered to the general reading public."
In 1939.
.
Will there always be a cut to black? Has there always been?
A bit of backing into dark apartments kissing. A confusion about who’s paying.
.
France legalized “same-sex marriage” on May 18, 2013.
This is the awkwardness of intolerance. The strange business of being handed a civil right on a Saturday morning.
.
What is the difference between my textbook walking briskly past Eleanor Roosevelt's personal life and a car on Kimball Ave yelling “dyke” as they drive by?
.
Opposite, two brides held hands, leading each other through the trawl at the mouth of the bridge toward City Hall.
.
There are moments that will not make the biopics, the obits, the Wikipedia entry.
.
We all tell stories.
To keep the record straight.
.
But there will always be decoder rings. And roommates.
As an artist,
I will not be married off. I can choose. Whether I get hitched, join a union. Or not. I could otherwise devote myself to the church, my work, or remain just a girl until I awake one day a spinster.
It is unclear when I will undergo this transformation, but something in the wind feels imminent. An “irrelevance,” which creeps in, which neglects its own intersections. As I have neglected to have children. Like an endangered species. Amidst a plummeting population. Fucking as only a dying breed does.
I am “in my thirties.” Which I am supposed to fear, but I am alive. Standing on the tarmac of a new country.
.
Which is to say: I can write this without using a pen name.
.
Before: I worked as a mail clerk. There was a copy of But I’m a Cheerleader circulating at my college. Invisibly moving from one post box to another.
Whether or not there is censorship, there will always be lesbians. Always be pirates. Clicking, like, “My mother raised me to share.”
.
How do you build a picture of the past? How do you show what isn’t there?
Like, prove you’re magic without using a rabbit. Pull something out of the nothing. Make me believe.
.
Where are the lesbians?
For centuries. Kissing while the men are at work or at war. They find time for everything. They are authors, murderers, mothers, nobles.
.
There is a great costume change between being a lady of society and her lover.
To go from wearing seventeen things to nothing.
.
Let the record reflect that within:
A Quiet Passion, Tell It to the Bees, Colette, Vita & Virginia, The Favourite, Lizzie, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Wild Nights with Emily, Summerland, Ammonite, The World to Come, Benedetta
there are a lot of layers.
.
Layers. Like winter with long johns and two pairs of socks. Coats and cold noses. Warming your fingers with your breath. Button-ups and zippers. Better with comforters and fleeces and throws. When you tuck in your very toes and suffocate under blankets.
When there is nothing that cannot be laid across the radiator and dripped dry.
.
Which is to say, god forbid you’d have to take someone’s clothes off.
.
Recalling: Noémie Merlant as Marianne, as a painter, smoking her pipe in front of atelier fire.
Do I have nothing in common with that distant island? That feeling?
Have I sat looking at her, knowing she does not see me. But, she is there because she remembers?
.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire which must begin and end on the cusp of the Revolution. But this placement is not the story’s momentum.
.
Often, the Lesbian Period Piece is a story told in relative isolation. In the gullies. The silences between scenes. Stitched into the seams. Away from contextualizing conversations.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire has been siloed into its setting.
.
When, really, the Lesbian Period Drama is Céline Sciamma and Adèle Haenel dated.
The Lesbian Period Drama is Adèle Haenel, Céline Sciamma, and Noémie Merlant walked out of the César Awards. With their purses and a packet of cigarettes.
The Lesbian Period Drama is Adèle Haenel retired from cinema. The Lesbian Period Drama is Portrait of a Lady was Adèle Haenel’s last film.
Lesbian Period Drama is learning how to read tragedy.
Understanding the cohabitation of wanting. The “and yet” of it all.
.
But also.
Not everything is a 1-to-1 comparison. Learn how to read fiction.
.
What is fiction? Rebecca. The alleged relationships of Daphne du Maurier.
.
Well, what do two girls do anyway? Whisper, “for $1, name a woman” to each other until morning.
.
Is it obnoxious to have lesbian sex filtered through a network of corsets? Of course.
Had I the time, software, and embouchure to write proper, Oscar-ignoring cinema, I would personally offer at least running water.
But what, by comparison, would a film of the aughts depict? What will I demand “was so romantic” when that past comes within earshot of this present?
A slow burn in skinny jeans and rompers.
.
The Lesbian Period Drama behaves in that it keeps its clothes on. The apparent chastity of so much stitching.
Is there nothing radical in removing that cover?
.
Which costume of queerness will we pull from the closets next? A retelling of Sappho's “Ode to Aphrodite.” or Sally Ride in Atlanta, Audre Lord in Berlin. An homage to the fifth century AD and The Paired Dance of the Female Blue Phoenixes.
.
If there is going to be this insistence on "responsible homosexuals," then: Kathleen Lynn, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, Margaret Skinnider, Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grenan.
.
What of gentleness?
Nowhere is it written that fingertips lack conviction or passion. Bodies do more than smack together, like Barbie dolls.
OR
Maybe they barely touch because they are such an impossibility?
Maybe no one was gay in previous centuries?
.
But there was: Vice Versa and the If Club.
The line, "Perhaps you do not know it, but there are women who fall in love with each other," in the 1873 essay, "Women Lovers," published in the Women's Exponent.
Vin Packer and Spring Fire. Claire Morgan. The Well of Loneliness.
Diana: A Strange Autobiography, printed with the note, "The publishers wish it expressly understood that this is a true story, the first of its kind ever offered to the general reading public."
In 1939.
.
Will there always be a cut to black? Has there always been?
A bit of backing into dark apartments kissing. A confusion about who’s paying.
.
France legalized “same-sex marriage” on May 18, 2013.
This is the awkwardness of intolerance. The strange business of being handed a civil right on a Saturday morning.
.
What is the difference between my textbook walking briskly past Eleanor Roosevelt's personal life and a car on Kimball Ave yelling “dyke” as they drive by?
.
Opposite, two brides held hands, leading each other through the trawl at the mouth of the bridge toward City Hall.
.
There are moments that will not make the biopics, the obits, the Wikipedia entry.
.
We all tell stories.
To keep the record straight.
.
But there will always be decoder rings. And roommates.