Pitting: myself against the system

Today at work I sweat so profusely that the sodden cotton of my work shirt started chaffing against my armpits.

Usually I arrive to work sweaty (from the bike ride). With only five minutes to change before clock in, I peel off my street clothes with a relief I'll quickly smother under my "uniform". I'd like to say that putting fresh clothes onto my sweaty body is my least favorite part of the workday. But I'd be lying. There's something about being paid poorly to work that makes each slightly unpleasant task seem like it's the worst thing you do. It's a negative meditation technique I think. Keeps my body sharp and my mind off the numbing crawl of time spent on the clock.

I'm a sweaty person by nature. And I swear that I am just getting sweatier and sweatier as the years go by. But usually once I've been working for a half hour most of my bikesweat has dried. And I just sweat a bit throughout the day from doing my customer service work. That sweat accumulates throughout an 8 hr shift and by the time I clock out I'm grateful to change into my still slightly moist-pitted street clothes. Which I proceed to make even sweatier with a quick-as-I-can-make-it ride home.

This morning a customer and I went through an extremely stressful transaction before I was even able to hit the 30 minute mark (a cascade of system/equipment errors were mostly at fault) and my sweat glands got kicked into high gear. Which is where they stayed for the rest of the day. Today was an anomaly. But I pretty much sweat my way through two shirts on a workday anyhow.

Now I know I could probably avoid so thoroughly dirtying as many garments as I do on a workday by riding more slowly. But riding slower goes counter to my style. And its means spending 10 more (unpaid) minutes doing stuff related to work. And at just a scrape above minimum wage, they ain't paying me enough to smell like roses or do work off the clock. It's pretty fucking lazy, but I see my pitting as a quiet, revolting yet beautiful sort of resistance.

On Apologies & Boundaries

Dear Internet: 

I'm writing to tell you I got a job last month. It's part time, so I'll still be making time to blow things up with my words, but I am, at the moment, still trying to balance my life now that it has some paid work in it. I am happy to have to job and love going in to it every day (even if it means waking up @ 5:30 sometimes). It's been great, but the frequency of my writing has declined :(


While I figure all this adult life stuff out I'll leave y'all with an old hunk of writing to chew on. Hope it satisfies!

                                                    -Wendy R.M.


I vow that the space surrounding my body will no longer be an apology. I will no longer take responsibility for your discomfort. The way your face rumples when I say the word queer is not my fault.

By most of my friends and myself I am known as a "tough" girl. The kind of girl who bites back at assholes and jerks when they try to step on my agency. I wasn't born this way.

I was lucky. I learned it. I was well taught by my loving old fashioned father how to find a strength of stance and confidence rarely privileged to those who share my gender. He warned me about other men who would not care about my strength or my confidence. I readied and honed my “fuck you”s for just such men. I wrote myself so many templates for fighting against male aggression and oppression. 

But no one told me how to say no to women, and that it's not okay for anyone, not just men, to touch me when I don’t want it. When they banned hugs and hand holding in the hallways of my high school nobody stopped my best friend from touching my breasts. Especially not me. 

Anti-consent rape culture is alive in the actions of more than one gender. It is alive in the actions as innocuous as the "guess who" game. You know when you sneak up behind someone and cover over their eyes? We glorify, normalize and often erotocize the unasked for aggressions on the physical boundaries of others. We call it "romantic", "spontaneous" and so often for women it’s deemed "adorable" or even "confident". It's not confident it is creepy, it is disrespectful. I might even be assault. And I will not stand for it anymore. The space around my body will no longer be an apology.

When/if you ignore my boundaries or assume that my boundaries are the same as other women or other queers that you've met, you lose my respect & I will become less comfortable around you. I'm not sorry for this. I won't banish you forever. I know that our culture has taught you that surprises, spontaneity, & teasing are romantic, but what you are playing with is somebody's boundaries for feeling okay in the world. Next time, just ask.