The Journal Of The InnKeeper

Them: Women are so hard to read.

Me: Actually, if you just get to know us individually, you can learn...

Them: Relationshipping is so complex!

Me: Well, I have a User Manual...

Them: I mean how does anyone even know the right thing to do?

Me: I teach a workshop in...

Them: There's just no good or simple solutions to relationships!

Me: Here's my bulleted list organized by category...

Them: I just don't know what to say or do right now.

Me: I TOLD you what to do a year ago when I first noticed this was becoming...

Them: So mysterious!

#IAmSeriouslyNotThatHardToFigureOut #IWillLiterallyGiveYouAllTheAnswersUpFront #NoReallyIComeWithCheatSheets #IJustDoNotKnowIsNeverTheRightResponseWithMe

I had an abortion several years ago.  When I was a teenager, Plan B wasn't a thing, so even though I had heard of it before I got pregnant, it just wasn't in my memory and I somehow managed to forget all about it the one time I needed it.

I was dating someone who was planning on getting a vasectomy, but hadn't yet scheduled it (ironically, he did schedule it after I got pregnant but before we knew).  I had been very reliably using the Mucous Method up until that point.  One day, we started out having sex, and before there was penetration, I told him that I was too close to my ovulation cycle, so he would need to either wear a condom or pull out.

I guess he forgot.

So I got pregnant and I didn't remember that Plan B was a thing, and a month later I started having the worst morning sickness ever.  As I missed my period, I took a pregnancy test, and my fears were confirmed.

Neither of us wanted to ever have kids.  I had been thinking about this since I was a teenager.  I had decided when I was 14 that if I ever got pregnant when I was not in a position to raise a child, I would abort.  I revisited that decision many times over the years and always reached the same decision.

Now I had taken on the identity label "childfree-by-choice" and was dating a man who felt the same.  So I looked at that decision one more time and, yep, still no change.

So I had an abortion.  He helped pay for it and he took care of me while I recovered.  Some things that they don't always tell you about abortion is that it may have a very long recovery period.  I had to be put on light duty for weeks afterwards - no heavy lifting (and remember, I do manual labor, so that put a crimp in my income).

I told my employers that I had just had surgery, so please put me on operator gigs only.  2 days after my abortion, I could barely stand upright.  But I had a camera gig, which they swore up and down that I would only have to operate, and not do any labor.  After the hefty price tag for the "surgery", I needed the work.

When I got there, they put me on the hand-held camera.  After I reminded them of my light duty restriction and asked to be put on the long lens, they said that I was the only one qualified to run a hand-held, plus it was corporate hand-held, which means I should be able to run it on sticks (on a mobile tripod) for the whole show, and not actually do for-real-hand-held.  So I agreed to stay where I was.

And then the director insisted I go handheld.

I nearly passed out from the pain of lifting a 30 lb camera on my shoulder and physically running around the stage.  I definitely had to run to the bathroom at least once to vomit from the pain.  I was dizzy and light-headed and felt like my insides were trying to spill outside, and this went on for 3 days.

My abortion was not a decision that I made lightly.  I spent many years considering the question to reach my conclusion.  My abortion was also not something without consequences.  It was a miserable experience and one that I hope never to have to go through again.  But I don't regret it even a single bit and I am horrified (and I use that term deliberately, to the full extent of its definition and context) at the thought that I may not have the option in my future.

Of all the bad situations I've gotten myself into, of all the choices I've had to make where no option was really a "good" option and some of them were merely less-bad than the others, that's the one decision I have absolutely no regrets for, that I still, to this day, feel nothing but relief and gratitude for.

That man and I broke up not too much longer afterwards.  Not because of the abortion, but because we were really just not compatible.  It was a breakup in my top 3 Worst Breakups Of All Time.  It is one of the few relationships I have actual regrets for getting into and I might actually choose to erase from history if I had a time machine and I could go back in time and stop myself from dating him.

Not only were we not compatible in the long run, but over the years I've kept a sort of passive eye on him, just to see how things have turned out for him, and boy have we diverged!  I got more and more liberal and progressive and feminist and he got more and more ... let's just say he went in the other direction.

Each time something comes up to remind me of his existence, I am more grateful than the last time that we did not have to become co-parents.  I am hard pressed to think of other exes who I would have hated having to make parenting decisions with as much as him.

Not to mention the fact that my income has remained the same over the years while my cost of living has increased.  So I am, if it's at all possible, even poorer now than I was when we were dating (although he has plenty of money, so I suppose at least the kid would have been cared for).

I can't even express the full extent of my relief at not having had children, at never having been pregnant, and at having had that abortion all those years ago.  I was at the time fully cognizant of just how privileged I was for the opportunity.

So that relief is in direct proportion to the amount of horror I feel now, contemplating the very likeliness of losing Roe vs. Wade.

All the terror and disgust and fear that I felt when I realized I was hosting a parasitic life that would tie me to that man for 2 decades is magnified and amplified by the number of souls from the future, crying out for their lost choice, the number of women dying in living rooms and hospital emergency rooms from illicit attempts to save themselves from the chains of their pregnancies.

For all the problems that are legitimate concerns of abortive procedures (not the least of which is lack of proper counseling to help people who are less resolute than I was), losing these procedures will only make things worse.

It's only by having affordable, accessible, and culturally acceptable medical treatment for people who do not want to conceive or who are unwilling or unable to carry to term that we can even hope to fix the problems with the system and create those processes that would solve the legitimate problems.

I had an abortion.  I do not regret it even a minuscule, subconscious bit.  My relief and gratitude for the option only increases as time passes.  It was a terrible experience that I hope to never experience again, but I am so happy that I had the option when I needed it.

I do not have "mixed feelings".  It was not a difficult decision for me to make (although I did put a lot of effort into making that decision and making sure it was the right one).  I do not mourn some lost baby that could have been.  I am not suffering from any long-term medical side-effects from the procedure.  I am not afraid of "missing my chance".  I am not saddened at never having had children and quickly approaching an age where I can't "fix" that decision.

While I would have preferred to have made better decisions that would have prevented me from needing an abortion in the first place (*hint hint* - better education and access to Plan B would have solved that problem), and the procedure itself was deeply uncomfortable, the choice that I made that day was probably the single best decision I have ever made in my life, given my circumstances.

And I can't even imagine the shitshow that my life would have turned into had that choice been taken from me.

#StockUpOnPlanBNow #SaveEnoughForYouAndForOthersWhoCouldNotAffordToStockUp

In the first panel, either what looks like a slave auction or a sad animal shelter, with unicorns up for sale and human couples wandering around, looking at the offerings, all holding really long checklists and mostly shaking their heads at the unicorns who don't meet their criteria while the cute little unicorn foals bounce in their cages, hoping to be chosen.  Outside, there is a line of couples trailing off into infinity, and only a handful of unicorns available for sale.

BTW, the couples should all look like clones of each other, with older men, very young women, piercings, tattoos, and probably some kind of pot symbol somewhere on them like in jewelry or on a t-shirt or something.  He should be hipster, she should be borderline goth.  And of course they should be cishet.

Next panel, we should see some of the same unicorns (all unique and identifiable, like My Little Ponys) getting dropped back off at the auction / shelter with angry or disgusted looks on the couples faces.  Maybe in a long Returns line or something.

Then we see those same unicorns, now a little more battered and disheveled, up for sale again and getting purchased.

And returned again.

And repeat for a 3rd time.  Each panel showing the unicorns looking more and more bedraggled and less and less excited about being chosen.

Finally, in the last panel, a handler drags one of the unicorns out to show, and she is resisting as hard as she can, angry, rearing up, digging in her hooves, baring her teeth, ears laid back, she clearly doesn't want to go.  She has battle scars.  Another unicorn is being dragged off the show floor or stage by her couple, in a similarly angry and scarred state.

The other veteran unicorns are all huddling together in their pen, while the new, young unicorns who don't know any better are jumping around in their own cages, hoping to be adopted.

From the audience appraising the one being brought out to show, one of the couples calls out "what's your problem? We're just looking for someone to love us! why you gotta be so defensive?! We haven't done anything to you!"

While, maybe outside, a trio of humans all holding hands walks past, looking in the window, and musing "look how they treat those poor creatures! It's so sad! I wish we could get these places shut down!"

#ItIsNotAboutTheTriad #TheyAreNotPetsTheyAreFuckingAutonomousHumanBeings #ItIsNotTheStructureItIsTheMethod #IfYouAreNotHuntingThenWeAreNotComplainingAboutYouSoWhyYOUgottaBeSoDefensive? #UnicornHunterBingo #SeriouslyTheyAllSoundLikeTheHipsterVersionOfStepfordCouples #Yall40SomethingMenDating20SomethingSubmissiveWomenWantingAnotherSubbyAreReallyFuckingCreepy #ScarfbeardManbun #SeptumpierceUndercut #QueeringHeterosexuality #JointTinderAccountForThreeways

*sigh*  There's a meme going around that like everyone on my family-and-coworker feed are passing around, complaining how much they pay in taxes and declaring themselves to be slaves to the government tax machine or something.

And I'm just over here like "I just called 911 on a gunshot going off outside my window last night, and I live down the street from the fire station, a street, btw, that my taxes paid for, and I grew up in the library which is why I have such a high vocabulary and know as much as I know and my current library provides me with a high tech recording booth for my podcast that I can use for free..."

I mean, we can argue over the specific places that our taxes go, and how much of the tax they collect goes to what, but it's not like the government is just taking our money.  We are *paying* for things in exchange.  Y'all want to live in a capitalistic society, shit costs money.  We get stuff BACK for what we pay.

Now, I, personally, didn't particularly want to get a bloated military and way overpaid politicians who keep taking away my rights.  So I'm going to complain about stuff like that.  But not about the concept of taxes in general.  Those taxes pay for things we get in return.  Just like everything else in capitalism.  Taxes are an exchange for actual things we get that only something as big as a government can provide.

If you don't like some of the things that they provide, fine, you can take that up with them (go vote!).  But I better as fuck not ever see you driving your cars on paved roads again, or calling the cops for fucking anything (especially black people just living).

So, in a capitalist, bootstrap worldview, the goal is to work really hard so that we produce enough to one day retire so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labor without working anymore and our children have things easier.  And yet, the idea of a *society* working really hard to produce things like automation so that the *society* can enjoy the fruits of its labor without working anymore and our children can have things easier us somehow wrong and evil.  Because then people wouldn't be *working* and that, alone, is bad.

If we as individuals can be proud of having amassed enough that we can retire (and the younger we retire, the more we are deserving of pride and congratulations), then we as a society should be proud of having amassed enough that our people can also "retire" from the drudgery of production and spend their lives in the pursuit of happiness.

Being able to care for a population that does not produce or "contribute" ought to be seen as a mark of our success and wealth as a nation, just as retirement is seen as a mark of success for the individual.  Being able to say that we are so wealthy that we have enough to just give away and so successful at efficiency and automation that we can produce without needing to lift a finger ought to be a huge source of pride to capitalists.

I try not to do the "kids today" thing unironically very often, because, honestly, the next couple of generations are pretty amazing. But youth does mean that they've not had a lot of time to acquire as much knowledge as older folk have (whether older folk *do* or not is another story).

Lindy hop tends to be a "young folk" scene. I'm often surprised by how many 1940s jazz songs and artists they know, but that's the music that gets played for lindy hop, so they have exposure to it.

Then, I get accustomed to them knowing some of these classic songs, and I forget that they haven't had as much time to learn like all the rest of music history. They know 1940s jazz because that's what gets played every week at their dances, but most of them did not spend the last 30 years taking music lessons and music theory and playing instruments and studying the intersection of music and fashion throughout history. Mainly because many of them haven't even *seen* 30 years yet.

So I was talking with some 20-something lindy hoppers about hosting themed dance events. Some of them turned their noses up at '50s Rock N Roll, saying they didn't like "rockabilly" and it's too hard to swing dance to it.

...

::blinkblink::

0.o

Oh sweet summer child.

I don't even know where to start. Do I explain the difference between Rock N Roll and rockabilly, or do I talk about the evolution of jazz to R&B to Rock N Roll, or do I start right out with the cultural appropriation and how you can draw a direct line from the origins of lindy hop in Harlem to the creation of Rock N Roll a generation later, or or do I pull out my rant on how interrelated musical genres are so that it's not even that easy to see a delineation between jazz and Rock N Roll, or perhaps I can talk about the ground-breaking socoipolitical impact of Rock N Roll that, again, is on a direct line from the sociopolitical impact of jazz, or maybe I should just bombard them with video clips of lindy hoppers dancing to Rock N Roll to show them how that genre was literally created for swing dancing without even needing a verbal lecture on all the intersections of the subject?

#SuchABigTopic #SoManyConnectingLines #ItRemindsMeOfTryingToExplainToAnAuthorOfAltHistoryFictionTheImportanceOfFashionOnPoliticsAndWhyItIsRelevantToTheirStory