Meeting mechanic!Vi when she changes your flat tire for you in a grocery store parking lot at midnight, she rolls up beside you on her bike decked out in leather.
꩜mechanic!Vi who teases you for not learning / knowing how to do this
꩜mechanic!Vi she knows she looks good and is most definitely flexing just for you
꩜mechanic!Vi flirts shamelessly with you hyper-aware that you are watching her
꩜mechanic!Vi who takes off her leather jacket and hands it to you despite the chill in the night air
꩜mechanic!Vi who is wearing a white vest top underneath that hugs her perfectly leaving nothing to the imagination, her pierced nipples visible through the thin fabric
꩜mechanic!Vi who wipes the dirt on her hands of on her shirt as she works
꩜mechanic!Vi who offers to teach you about cars at a more appropriate time
꩜mechanic!Vi who refuses to be payed, but asks you out instead, writing her number in sharpie on your hand like a cheesy rom-com
꩜mechanic!Vi who gets close enough to tell that smells like an intoxicating mixture sweat, whiskey and cherries
꩜mechanic!Vi who winks as she leaves, forgetting her jacket with you
꩜mechanic!Vi who’s thighs stretch her pants obscenely as she straddles her bike and dons her helmet
꩜mechanic!Vi who mimes at you to call her as she speeds off into the night
꩜mechanic!Vi who thinks about you all the way home
꩜mechanic!Vi is reminded the next morning that she left her jacket with you
꩜mechanic!Vi who waits all day for a text or call, heart swooping every time she gets a notification
꩜mechanic!Vi who gets teased all day by Jayce because of how distracted she is
thinking about how as a queer Christian I often forget to pray, because I'd be satisfied just to know God even tolerates me. I'm afraid to ask for more. guilty, even, as if every time I catch God's notice is an imposition, a poke at a fragile bubble that must eventually pop. I shouldn't touch it. I should just be grateful he hasn't struck me down yet.
but that's not the God I profess to believe in. that's not love.
so to any other queer religious folks out there, remember to pray. you are still allowed an audience. you are allowed to ask, seek, and knock. I know many if not most of us have had to come to terms with being hated or shunned by our earthly creators, but the eternal Creator is not like this. he still wants you. he's still happy to hear from you.
excerpt from an essay by j. logan smilges that ripped my heart open this weekend:
“Not all neuroqueer intimacies are performances, such as the ones I discuss, but performance is a useful analogy for the bodyminds of marginalized people who are always on display. For many queer people, being on display is to be simultaneously seen and unseen, to be dripping with rhetorical energy that marks our nonnormativity and simultaneously overdetermines our personhood. We become the sum total of our perceived deficits. We are in excess of lack, overflowing with all that we are not, all that we can't do, all that we can't be, all that we can't become. To push back against these assumptions, discourses, and energies is hard work. It's labor and laborious. It's exhausting to justify our own existence. So neuroqueer intimacies offer a reprieve, a chance to stop pushing back and to take a break, together.
This is not the same as giving up. This is about realizing our collective limits. This is about acknowledging that playing the long game doesn't mean we have to postpone our joy until the final buzzer. To craft intimacies is to love on one another. It's to grab somebody else's hand—somebody else who is hurting too, even if it's a different hurt than your own—and cry at the bus stop. It's to put on silly hats. It's to eat a meal of snacks you all found at the gas station. It's to take a shower together, partly because one of you needs some help getting in and out and partly because why not, it's sexy. It's to see that same tiredness in a stranger's eyes that you've been feeling for longer than you can remember and just giving a nod. Because you both get it. It's to remind yourself that you're not alone, even when you're lonely. It's to stop performing in the middle of this performance we call a life and just fucking scream.
Screaming doesn't save the world, at least not usually. Neither does nodding or showering or snacking or crying. Neuroqueer intimacies don't try to fix the stage we're performing on; they just try to change the script of the play a little bit, drawing their inspiration from the liberation we'll all get back to tomorrow. Right now it's about being with, being here, and being alive.
A part of me feels like I'm hedging, as if I'm making excuses for what queer silence can't do. I don't mean to sketch the limits of intimacy too definitively. I don't want to foreclose the radical potentialities laden in neuroqueer desiring-together. I mean only to dwell in the potentialities that don't pass radical muster. I want to see, honor, and celebrate all of the ways that we are collectively surviving. This is a nonhierarchical approach to activism and organizing, informed by a queercrip commitment to each person's boundaries, needs, and limitations. Neuroqueer intimacies and queer silence more broadly understand that world-building is sometimes a matter of world-living, of living and staying alive in this world. There is so much power in the commitment to keep going, even when that going feels like stillness, like stagnation.
Liberation work doesn't always feel liberating. Sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, it feels like you're coming up against a wall, like you're going in circles, like you're actually moving backward. After a while, these feelings can wear a person down to a point when they no longer feel like doing the work at all. It can be hard to keep going when it doesn't feel like you've been going anywhere. It's in these moments that neuroqueer intimacies are so important because they invite us to pause our work and return to our dreams, get back to our longings, invest in our desires. They ask us to catch one another's glance, to flirt, to hold hands, to dance. And here, in the space between the world we want and the world we have, is a little joy and a little love. It's not much, but it's enough for now.”
— from “neuroqueer intimacies” in queer silence (p. 208-209) by j. logan smilges
