All the things I did as a teenager I remember so well and they are all the things that have seemed to stick to me as I get older. My favourite band in high school is still my favourite band now. My favourite writers are still my favourite. The movies that affected me most, still affect me. Teenage years are like this strange time-trap where emotions and personal preferences are formed and harden, somewhere in our minds and our souls, to remain forever unchanged throughout the rest of our lives. It is both terrifying and hilarious to realize this. But also soothing to be able to put on Disintegration and feel the way I felt when I was 17: untouchable and limitless.

I think it’s because when we are young, everything is infinite, and we are invincible. Time goes by slow; summers last forever as we experience a myriad of firsts—first broken bone, first crush, first album purchase, first kiss, first job, first concert, first love. We think time moves slow because it moves for us, when we let it. But then more time passes and we realize time is moving now without our permission. We’re doing the things we’ve always done, experiencing everything for the hundredth time. And it turns out we’re not invincible. In realizing this there is a great fear, and a great comfort. We are no longer the first of anything, but we will also never be alone. The amount of things we can experience for the first time dwindles, but we can also share more with others. I am afraid of not being first, but I am relieved that no one needs me to be.

All the things I do now. seem less important and more crammed together. One thing after another to get done, or accomplish, or just get through. There are new bands, writers, and movies, but I tend to move around them instead of through them. The way I’m describing it makes it seem as though there are fewer emotions involved in how my adult years are progressing, but I think it’s more a matter of how those same emotions are processed: quietly and with restraint.

I am both happier and sadder now than I was when I was first discovering The Cure and Joyce Carol Oates. I am more comfortable with forgiving myself for the choices I’ve made, but much more uncomfortable with the general shittiness of the whole world. I find it easier to genuinely enjoy things and certain people, while finding it difficult to hope for a successful future (for both myself and this shitty world). I am happy that I have become better at expressing myself and communicating, but sad that I’ve become more afraid of doing it.

Going forward to a future version of myself and asking her if she is still both happy and sad, if she is still afraid of not being first, or if she still loves listening to Disintegration; or alternatively, going back to my teenage self and assuring her she will always value these firsts, strengthen her against future fears, or warn her about the impending magnification of world shittiness would require me believing that either the past can be changed or the future can be predicted and neither of these things can happen.

I’ve been thinking recently of switching to the funeral services industry and as a result, I’ve been reading about/learning about/thinking about death more than I usually do and I keep playing this scene over in my head. I’m in a hypothetical interview for a position with a funeral home and I’m asked the question, “What do you believe happens to you when you die?” And I reply, without hesitation, “Nothing happens when you die. You’re just dead.”

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I am not just one thing. I cannot simply be a wife. Or a teacher. Or a photographer. Or a student. I am all of these things and when people expect me to only be one of those things, they are expecting me to stop being a whole person.

Remember when you were in middle school and you thought your teachers lived at the school and whenever you saw them anywhere that was decidedly not at school, you were shocked and kind of couldn’t fathom that your teachers were actually whole people? Who did stuff? That wasn’t teaching? What a disservice we did our teachers. Or how about remember when we were extremely rude to the McDonald’s cashier because they were the McDonald’s cashier and there were pickles on our burger when we specifically asked for no pickles and we forgot that that McDonald’s cashier was also a son, and a writer, and a student, and a boyfriend, and a hero to his younger sister?

It seems like such a simple thing to not expect people to only be one thing. And it’s strange because people simultaneously tell us to have varied interests and facets of ourselves while expecting us to be just one thing. If we are just a teacher, then we are easier to ignore. If we are just a McDonald’s cashier, then we are easier to treat badly. If we are just a woman, then we are easier to pass over. For example.

If your students see you working at The Keg, laugh because lord knows (and now they do too) that you can’t afford your mortgage on a teacher’s salary. If that jerk is rude to you because pickles were mistakenly placed on her burger, laugh because you know your sister made you a cape last weekend and it’s likely no one ever made this jerk a cape. If your boss is surprised that you are a painter, or your grandma thinks you shouldn’t vacation without your wife, or your teammates scoff when you tell them you write comics, or your boyfriend doesn’t like that you model for erotic photographers, laugh because you know you can’t be only one thing and it is RIDICULOUS for anyone to ever believe that you could be.

Sure, life might be easier if we hid most parts of ourselves to give the impression that we were only one thing, but fuck that. I would much rather be a whole person and have a life with potentially more difficulties, than pretend I am only one thing so I can be miserable in a slightly easier life. And hopefully the more people who see that we are whole people—that it is totally possible for us to be both musicians and bankers, artists and baseball players, sound engineers and baristas, tattoo artists and secretaries, data analysts and sci-fi writers, teachers and naked on the internet, photographers and taxi drivers, parole officers and inventors, vet technicians and fetish models—the more people who realize this possibility because more people are refusing to be simply one thing, the goddamn better.

Don’t ever let someone make you feel like you can only be one thing. Fuck that. Be everything.

I’ve been taking self-portraits of myself since I was 16. I’ve been posting those self-portraits on the internet since I was 18. That means it’s been ten years that I’ve been posting photos and other exciting things on the internet. TEN YEARS.

I think a lot of the people I know are experiencing similar things right about now. But there’s just as many people I know who can’t say that. A lot of people stopped sharing things they made online for various reasons, the saddest of which is that they stopped making things to share. I mean, I get it, sometimes life just doesn’t work out the way you thought it would when you were 18. You were really into photography and wanted to make pictures for the rest of your life, but then got disillusioned by the whole scene, or got a really good job that demanded a lot of your time, or your interests just shifted.

Continuing to make things while busy going to school, working, raising a family, or just living in general can be hard. It’s often easier to come home after a 12-hour day at school or work, microwave a dinner, watch an hour of TV and go to bed. It’s often easier to ignore that nudging in your brain that’s saying, “Hey, you should make something.”

So ten years of sharing online is pretty amazing. And not just because it’s a kind of victory, but also because you now have a massive body of work. You also know a ton of people you would not have known otherwise. I keep saying you, but I guess I mean me. I have hundreds of pictures from each of the last ten years of my life. I have friends all over the world who found me because of my photography (and also probably Warren Ellis, Star Trek, cats, and boobs.) I am so grateful for all of that.

Ten years is a long time. We should celebrate this, don’t you think?

I AM DONE SCHOOL!

and therefore unemployed.

Can we just talk about how much of adolescence is devoted to the heart? Adolescence is so hard because we’re trying to do all these grown-up things while working madly to fall in love and get our hearts broken. Our entire lives revolve around trying to have first kisses and find loves like the movies and then trying to have the greatest orgasms while finding the person who makes us the happiest all the while attempting to apply to college, and study for finals, and get a good job, and find the perfect apartment in a great location with rent that includes utilities and has laundry on the premise. Fuck, dude. No one should make this time any harder for us by turning our friends against each other and making us sleepless at night by encouraging people to ruin our reputations and making us think we have to be “good kids” when we already are good kids. Good kids who like to get fucked and fucked up. We still turn out okay. We turn out great.

I heard recently that researchers and professionals who determine this sort of thing have decided that adolescence has changed and now lasts until a person is into their 30s. I heard that and felt a sense of relief. As if it was giving me permission to not have it all figured out yet. An expert, somewhere, has decreed that it’s okay for me to still be fucking and fucking up, which I appreciate. I just hope that by the time I turn 30, some other expert has moved that age of acceptable adolescence up to, I don’t know, 63? I’ll still be good: a good woman who fucks up and is madly devoted to the heart.

If it be any man,
let it be him.

He may leer, he may grab, he may smile with his eyes and look
with his mouth,
agape and astutely pointed along the curves
of my body. He may keep me
late at his office to water his ego
and watch the stars come out across his bookshelves.

He may boast to his high-browed, oft-published, similarly-reprehensible colleagues
about the perk of my tits. He may laugh from deep
in his groin when I start against the sound
of his rough-cut voice. He may brush
yellowed fingers against rosied cheeks and stall
out before ever getting anywhere but there. He may be accused
of chasing me down hallways, cornering me against
lecterns, catching me between tigers and clouds.

He may maneuver his name between
the pages of my textbooks, his palm between
where my shirt ends and my jeans begin.
He may surprise me on cold days by pressing his wilted
body against mine with the excuse of the transfer of heat;
his arms act a blanket, his hands, a locket lying
twitchy on my chest. He may press in harder
and my lower back catches fire.

He may be lewd, inappropriate, crass, raw, slippery, senile, accusatory, handsy, vulgar, boorish, rude, and uncouth. But let it be him
above all others
for only he has the decency to write me into poetry.

[“I started writing poetry about sexuality way back in 1942 when you weren’t supposed to mention things like thighs and breasts, you know, or that people went to the bathroom. You were not supposed to use four letter words like ‘tuck’ and ‘suck’ you know. And I was the first one to do it and because of that and the image of me as some kind of rampaging, raging, lecher going down the corridors, pouncing on all the helpless co-eds, you know, with my unzippered fly, is the image, which has, you know, gained popularity in this country.”—Irving Layton on CBC in 1978 talking about his image as a ‘sex-crazed lecher’]

For the past six days I’ve been sick. Started with laryngitis and then an upper respiratory infection and it’s taking me forever to get over it.

I’ve been watching movies on Netflix, but it’s starting to bum me out. Movies are all so something that what I’m living right now isn’t. The internet is that way too, right now.

So I’m doing what any person would do to quell the inanity of many days sick in bed: fangirling.

Sometimes I worry because I don’t intensely love a lot of things. I’m constantly distracted by the lack of passion in my life. I find myself doing shit because I don’t really know what I’d rather do more. I think about it too much. I want to find things that I really love, but I get too caught up in my own brain. I start to feel weird if I want to buy only clothes that would be practical in a post-zombie-apocalyptic world. Or I start having second thoughts about wanting mermaid hair. I start worrying about what the consequences of being really excited about something can be. I start worrying about what happens when it all ends? Or nothing fantastical happens in my life? Is it all worth the disappointment? I start getting afraid of being really passionate about something.

And that’s just ridiculously stupid, because everywhere around me are people proving this fear wrong. People I know and love are embracing passions and obsessions and getting away with it; owning it and making really amazing things happen in their lives and the lives of others.

I think that’s why I love nerds so much: no one is more unabashedly passionate than a nerd. Dr. Who cosplay, Firefly tattoos, a different Star Wars shirt for every day of the week, the drive to collect every edition of Interview with the Vampire ever released, the willingness to travel across the country just for the privilege of being around a thousand other nerds. I love all that shit. And my internet is full of nerds and geeks and fangirls that remind me that I actually love getting really excited about things.

I’m so glad that the internet exists because otherwise I’d have no one to share all of my excitement with. Sometimes I will forget how wonderful it feels to watch 10 episodes of TNG in a row and then someone will send me an email with a picture of Patrick Stewart with the words, “Saw this, thought of you,” and I’ll remember how good it is to be obsessed with something in a community so encouraging. And I think encouraging obsession can be a really good thing.

A lot of people are like, “Oh! Everything in moderation, dearie!” But I doubt the potential for anything to be accomplished without obsession. I wouldn’t have gone to Korea and learned about how the Korean pop industry works and conversational Korean if it weren’t for my obsession with kpop. I wouldn’t have ever understood the mechanics of the space-time continuum if I wasn’t obsessed with Star Trek. I wouldn’t have spent hours reading about string theory if it weren’t for Fringe. I wouldn’t know about half the fantastical and magical stuff I know if it wasn’t for Supernatural inspiring me to look it up. I probably wouldn’t be married to Matt if it wasn’t for my obsession with Lestat that made me attracted to the strong, dark, and mysterious types. I wouldn’t be able to understand humanity without my obsession for YA fiction!

I don’t know, dude, maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe there are consequences for being too obsessed with certain things. All I know is I’ve been watching Big Bang videos for the last hour and I feel a lot better about life.

i want to lean in close to my little baby niece and tell her she can be anyone she wants to be. she doesn’t even have to be anybody, if she thinks that’s what’s best for her.

i want to tell her that she can wear anything she wants and say anything she wants and i’ll hold the boys at bay for her. i’ll teach the boys not to take what isn’t theirs. she doesn’t ever have to worry.

when she grows up, i’ll tell her not to be ashamed for kissing her best friend that one night as they both giggled under the covers, making stars with their hands against the darkness.

when she wears barely-there skirts and low-cut shirts i’ll tell her how good her brain looks from here. and i’ll encourage her to read more books. in public. in her short skirts and tight shirts. i’ll punch the boys who whistle at her, and kick the boys who holler at her. my niece can worry about something else.

when she shaves her head, i’ll cry with her until she’s tough again. when her girlfriend leaves her for a man, i’ll cry with her until she’s sure again. when her boyfriend leaves her for India, i’ll cry with her until she’s over it.

when she’s the smartest woman I’ve ever known and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, i’ll make sure she knows it. the men will come with a will to get it done, but she will give no fucks. and I’ll make sure the men do not take what isn’t theirs.

i will teach the sons not to touch, what the meaning of consent is. i will teach what she means when she says no. (she means no.) they will understand that my baby niece is not an object, here for their enjoyment. i will show the sons how to appreciate my niece, and respect her, and love her. i will show them exactly what will happen to wandering hands, and pushy tongues.

my little baby niece will never have to worry.

If you think seeing a naked woman
is a disappointment
because what you had imagined was so much
better than what was there, may I suggest looking at it in a new way.

Maybe instead of pondering
the tentacles and mouths beneath
her clothes,
you could ponder the bright things
that lurk beneath her skin. You can look
at her glistening pussy lips and wonder,
my god,
             what rivers
must run through her body to create
that overflow of wetness. You can look at her breasts,
dark and sensitive and soft, feeling
in your hands like the greatest of treasures, and come
up with multiple theories as to what lies
beneath them that could possibly make them mould
so perfectly
to your touch and respond so enthusiastically
to your tongue.

Her body is so much more
miraculous and dream-worthy and mysterious
when naked than when she wears clothes.

The mystery has never been what might be
found under her clothes; that is just something of hers
she lets
            you enjoy
because she thinks you to be clever. The mystery
is in imagining what writhes under her skin that makes her body move the way it does;
what worlds are inside her that create a gravitational pull so unyielding;
what makes her body a fertile ground, enough to grow the tenderness
of her gaze, the audacity of her courage, and the ferocity of her tongue.

The mystery has always been
how you plan on maintaining your cleverness
for just long enough
to convince her to let you stay
with her, there,
                        and naked, too, beside her.

(This is a response to a (much better) poem by Neil Gaiman about nudity. The poem is a collaboration with artist Olivia De Berardinis and you can buy a poster of it here. The art is beautiful, and so is the poem, especially if you read it out loud, which I suggest you do. It’s just that, I have never in my life been disappointed when a woman has taken off her clothes for me. I could never be disappointed by nakedness because I know the basics of what to expect, but I will never know what’s underneath the nakedness that makes the person suddenly more mysterious, more miraculous, more dream-worthy, more interesting, more perfect as soon as they’re standing naked in front of me.)