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Stouthearted Bitch

by Julia Gaskill

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1.
My greatest aspiration when I was five was to grow up and be a dog. Your faithfulest companion. I walked everywhere on all fours, no matter the location. Ballet practice, kindergarten, grocery stores, Sunday school, the pumpkin patch, Goodwill. I made my parents call me Lady, Wishbone, Lassie, Porkchop. The life of a dog is easy, after all, so why not? I was nineteen the first time I was ever called a bitch. It was said to me at 2am over Facebook messenger when I told a guy that I did not return his desperate sentiment. His vocabulary was the cliché rhetoric of those who believe in the mythical friend zone: How dare you not like me back? You are a tease. You are a lead on. You are a bitch. But all I could hear was: You are a dog. You are a very bad dog. You have forgotten your training. Learn to take commands. Stay. Obey. Lay yourself down. Do whatever it is that I say. Now you think that all I should be capable of is to be told when to roll over? You think you can command me to come? Tell me that I’m your “good girl.” Look, you Robin Thicke glorifier, let me make this crystal clear: I would rather be a bitch than your lovesick puppy. I am a Greyhound outrunning every man who has ever made me feel small. I am a Saint Bernard barreling across the frozen tundra of men’s teeth. I am a Black Lab guiding us towards a safer world for femmes. I am a Blue Heeler pissing inside of your favorite fedora. I am a Dalmatian bearing my fangs at unwanted creeps in my life. I am a Doberman mauling anyone who lays a nonconsensual finger on me or my friends. I am a Chihuahua readying to rip out your throat. I am a Pit bull receiving stereotyped judgment when all I want to do is shake. I am a Great Dane, giant but gentle. I am a Yorkie, little but fierce. I am a Corgi frolicking through life in the pursuit of happiness. I am a German Shepherd, loyal to a fault. I was wrong when I was five. A dog’s life is not easy, yet I know a destiny when I see one. I know what my life has and will become, and you cannot put me to sleep just because I do not please. Like a dog, once I am kicked, I do not forget.
2.
I was taught at a young age that my opinion would never be important so long as men occupied my space. I never had a say in my own household, testosterone a force I could never win against. My father - more often than not - made me cry on the way to school with chastising remarks, and my brother would sneak out at night to teepee houses and underage drink, yet I was the black sheep of the family, always met with disapproving eyes for being too weird, for being too loud, for being too me. So I learned to hold my breath. I discovered that “I don’t know”s and static silence would not condemn me. I choked down anger, threw away sadness, shook off irritability in the presence of others, and suddenly everyone wanted a piece of me. People found me more interesting when my mouth stopped moving. I became pleasantry. Who doesn’t like a nice, temperate, quiet thing? So when you ask me where my voice has gone or why my birchwood tongue has forgotten gravity, please understand I am trying to unlearn the only way I’ve ever known how to survive. It has been eons since my emotions last cracked the surface. Not the pretty ones - the guttural, the damned, the raw, the feelings I believed best left buried deep in my gut, in my throat, but I will dig them out of my anatomy with trowel and scythe. I will cleave myself open until every emotion is on beautiful display. I will come to you, gaping and unhidden, just as I have always dreamed. It may not look like I am trying most days, but believe me, I am cracking bones with every aching thought. Slowly I will peel away the muscles and skin, until we find enlightenment. I will unlearn the silence for you, just give me time to remember how sweet sound can taste.
3.
Thumbtacks. Baby teeth. Lady bugs. Cherry tomatoes. Retrieved bobby pins. My hedgehog’s tolerance towards humans. A squeezed hand in passing. Chihuahua puppies. Backs of earrings. A hummed tune in an empty kitchen. Toothbrush bristles. My boyfriend’s voice when he cries. A held elevator. A shared sandwich. Moss. Tear drops. The earth. The smell of fresh pine. Sleeping in. Forehead kisses. Root beer floats. Cartwheels. Goosebumps. My father’s understanding of mental illness. My deceased mother’s turtle necklace. Sitting graveside deep in conversation with a ghost. Knowing I have her hands, her eyes. The way my smile keeps some small part of her alive. The last heaves of sobbing. Wishbones. Forget-me-nots. Time.
4.
I am seventeen years old and in love with my best friend. This girl in the grade below mine who is obsessed with pirates, who will running-tackle me between classes, who has a laugh that can encompass a high school alcove, drown my father's minivan, embrace every limb of me. When we sit side-by-side at play rehearsals I always rest my hand close to hers, hoping one day she will wrap her tiny fingers ‘round my desperate ones. She never does. I never ask her to, and suddenly I am twenty and kissing college girls is not a problem, though they will only kiss me when I am drunk and only when they too are drunk. After the meeting of our lips they always pull away laughing like my mouth is their favorite joke, like kissing me is such a silly game we play. Now I am twenty-nine, and I do not attend pride parades. Do not read at queer open mics. I know how it looks - to be the girl who’s only ever dated men, who’s loved women silently her whole life, who wants to someday marry her boyfriend. Doesn't matter how I scribbled love poems for Lindsey and Sarah in the margins of my pre-calc notes. How I never wanted Robyn’s mouth to leave mine. Doesn't matter that I have known who I am, what I am since I was twelve, a Catholic upbringing so heavy on my shoulders. Doesn't matter. My voice has never felt like it mattered in this space. I tell myself this is fine - most days I believe it. I am a PSA for bi erasure. Standing right in front of you, but not proof enough, not yell enough. Forgot to open my mouth again, after all, I am so good at erasing my own voice. But here, here is the proof: In the laughter of each college girl, I always pretended that I was kissing her - the pirate with the boisterous laugh, and it never worked. The laughter of these girls was always too drunken, too high pitched, not loud enough, not shameless enough, not beautiful, never as beautiful as hers.
5.
I tac a sheet of loose leaf graph paper on top the corkboard in my bedroom. It reads ‘GOALS OF 2018’, and I know that all my aspirations will be achieved, like I read the future from the murky tea leaves at the bottom of my mug. It is not because “THIS IS MY YEAR” or that I am a self-motivated person. It is because there is a list. I put pen to paper, make a to do list for the day, a to do list for the week, the month, the summer, the year, and the full moon blooms in the violet sky as I turn werewolf, hungry for the blood of productivity, a beast who cannot rest until she’s dealt with all the unfinished business left in her life, and my unfinished business is my entire life. There is nothing so gratifying as my pen rending an X at the completion of each task. The monster in my gut howls with delight; another victim for the slaughter. I feed off of lists. It reads like a horror movie. The monster in me goes to Jiffy Lube and feeds, sweeps the house and feeds, takes her birth control and feeds, makes her bed with blood dripping down her feral face. With a list I werewolf myself through each day, going from task to task to task to task never pausing to take a breath, never knowing how to relax, always taut with fear that the pack might function fine without me. These lists grow faster than I dare dream, each one a feral beast of my own creation. Don’t I already know the ending to this film? The twist occurs: how the lists are the real monsters of this movie, these lists who I thought were on my side. My lists maul me, suck the marrow from my bones. Anxiety is the monster from which I can never escape, always keeping me on the edge of my seat. To be so dependent on a thing as simple as list-making turns me human, hoping for the meat of success. Nothing else matters. I have already been bitten by the virus of poor mental health. I can never stop, anxiety’s infection making me do every single task. Can’t go out with friends, unless it’s on the list. Can’t call my dentist back, unless it’s on the list. Can’t masturbate, unless it’s on the list. Can’t do anything I want to do unless I put it on a fucking list. What a horrifying reveal. To find there is no cure. That no hero is bursting through the door to save me, that the monster is just playing with its food. I pull out the pen, my inciting incident. I write “To Do List For The Week” on paper, and for a moment I feel so comforted, like seeing my life laid out before me won’t kill me in the end.
6.
Hello! It is I! Your friendly neighborhood man riding a bicycle! I know what I’m doing! I’m clearly in control! Because, after all, I am a Man! On a bicycle! And as a man on a bicycle, I feel it is my duty to yell at you, girl walking two dogs, for staring at your phone while you cross the street! The nerve of it all! You are endangering yourself! And those dogs! Clearly, as a woman and a millennial, you do not know what you are doing! You are not in control of your life! Unlike me! A Man! On a bicycle! This is why I felt the urge to yell, “Don’t look at your phone! What are you doing!?” I am so good at using words - clearly!! And yes, I did notice that it was eleven o’clock at night and there were zero cars on the road when you clearly looked both ways before crossing the street, and hey, maybe you just wanted to enjoy some Pokemon Go at the end of your week… But no! As a Man! On a bicycle! Your safety must come first! And I must use my words to tell you so! Clearly you do not know the first thing about safety! You are not wearing a helmet! Like me! You are not sporting a flashing light in the dark! Like me! You are not a man! Like me! So it is my duty to impose, because if I do not impose then how will you ever learn? If I do not scream at you (Me! A strange Man! In the dark! On a bicycle!), how are you ever going to survive? Can’t you see I’m only doing this to help you?! So be thankful that I yelled at you! Learn your lesson, ya stupid lady! Learn to take control! Aren’t you so glad that I, a Man! On a bicycle!, was here to tell you what to do? What would you ever do without me?
7.
most days i try to find the perfect metaphor to describe my body like it is that simple paint it in poetic subtext so it must be true all these words claiming my body is a china plate is a dumbbell is a sinking ship is a meteor shower is a wishing well but last i checked my body is a body all bone rubble and crying muscles the arteries routing through flesh dotted freckles kissing wrists and hips my body is just as complex as the body it shares a bed with the body it speaks to in the office the body it does not smile at on the street the body it downs a beer with at day’s end there is nothing and everything poetic about trying to survive in these bodies we do not understand most days my body is a body but therein lies the problem some days my body wishes it could just be anything else
8.
I. you sucker punched caverns inching colossal purple trail blazers all monumental and zombie mouthed violent violet bursts firecrackling sainthood you unrelenting earthquake you ring around the rosies bubonic plague never looked so good II. insomnia made bedfellow of me at too young an age the moon kissed supple skin leaving these thick prints always constant never pretty no matter how i muse them to help on sleepless nights my mother kissed each eyelid gifted me a double prayer as the hands reached two in the morn as her hands massaged through my hair i softly found sleep in the dead of night III. the purple darkened with age but not for lack of sleep but for fear of it before we buried my mother i kissed her eyelids played mirror to her and the moon all at once i did not sleep for years she only visited in my nightmares only came back to life as a drone or a monster or not mother or everything wrong stuffed into a corpse or a lie the circles under my preteen eyes harden as the hour hand finds 4am deepen as my bed goes unslept widen as the moon kisses me and kisses me and kisses me and kisses me just like she used to kiss me IV. i really did want to write an ode to these rings under my eyes to love all of the unloveable parts of me but isn't it so like me to strike out with such good intentions only to decide that they are not worth the effort only to make it all about my mother but isn't every poem i write about my mother isn't she the echo in all my verses has she not kissed each syllable isn't she my mouth and voice don’t i already spend every day sounding like a ghost or a prayer V. i sleep soundly now wake up feeling as big as the moon pretend she doesn’t still frequent my nightmares smear makeup under my eyes cover up the unlovable parts of me you wouldn’t even know of the lilac bruises that will never fade shrouded and feared and mourned like a mother’s kiss
9.
I love sunflower metaphors. I love impersonating Kristin Chenoweth in the solidarity of my Subaru. I love watching magic tricks while drunk. I love everything about New Zealand - except for the price of the food. I love the Oregon coast on overcast afternoons. I love that I will never have to fill out another fucking FAFSA application for as long as I goddamn live. I love argyle on men. I love waistcoats on women. I love Miyazaki heroines. I love shoving entire hamburgers into my face. I love Jim Henson and everything that he did. I love John Oliver and everything that he’s doing. I love Sophie Turner, Samira Wiley, and Emma Stone unapologetically. I love the sight of the Portland cityscape as I drive across the Hawthorne bridge at dusk. I love philosophizing Muppets and Jurassic Park. I love creme brulee flavored coffee creamer. I love clawfooted bathtubs. I love tattoos that tell stories. I love Christmas time and how romantic it makes me feel. And I love... puppies. Okay, wait, wait, I do. I love dogs dogs dogs so incredibly much. I love videos of baby sloths squeaking and porcupines eating pumpkins. I love red pandas being spooked and teacup pigs leaping into oceans of oatmeal. I love that little loris clutching that umbrella. It is so momentous in my life. And I love hands in my hair. I love made up words to make me smile. I love bedtime stories about swans or ballroom dancing or Sonic the Hedgehog. I love the gravitational pull of a palm to another. I love this sense of certainty. And. And. I love you … nicorns. I love you … letide festivities. I love you … wes, as in sheep. I love you … of O for bringing my parents together. I love you … FO movies but only if Will Smith is present. I love you … niversity football. (That one’s not even true.) I love you … gandan men. I love you … goslavian women. I love you … l Brynner. I love you … -Gi-Oh playing card Dark Magician Girl. I love you … ’re a Good Man Charlie Brown the musical. I love you … Were Cool” my second favorite song by The Mountain Goats. I love. I love. I love endlessly. I say “I love” countless times throughout each day. I say it of animals, fandoms, friends, food, weather, technology, dogs especially. I say “I love” so often that it might as well have lost all meaning, so why are the words suddenly clawing their way back down my throat? Maybe because it’s taken twenty-four years to rip the seams. A quarter of my life of mediocre dates, detached partners, half-hearted lovers. Two and a half decades of unreturned sunflower metaphors. Now context is key, but you cannot deny how there is something so romantic about this absurd amount of bravery, and you can't help but quiver in wonder: "Well, what if it’s all a smoke screen?" "What if we're sitting on a loaded gun?" “What if this avalanche destroys?” "What if you … don't say it back?" You… I love… so much so often, but you are at the top of every single one of my lists.
10.
It is mother’s day again, and I am thinking of her again. Not that there is ever a day I don’t think about my mom. I write on Facebook: “If Mother’s Day is hard for you, you’re not alone. Take care of yourself today.” It is my mantra when this holiday rolls around, and my cousin responds: “Go do something that she would want to do.” So. I take myself to Safeway, buy peaches and butter, return home to bake a cobbler. This is not because my mother loved to bake (which she didn’t) or that she was incredible in the kitchen (cause she definitely was not), but I know that my mom … … would have eaten the shit out of a peach cobbler. She had a love of food that went unrivaled, as was her love of everything in life. What’s more, I bake this cobbler knowing that she would be proud of me for making something out of nothing. I have written dozens of poems about my mom. The good ones only started showing up in the last five years. My poems about her are always laced with sadness, heavy with mourning. I think to myself how this is a sin, because my mother was the happiest person. Always a huge grin on her face; a laugh that could rival a firework display. She was the person at the party everyone wanted to talk to; the English teacher in all those cliche inspirational films. She loved my dad relentless and would have left him in a heartbeat for Tom Hanks. She enjoyed Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, John Irving, and thought that Shrek was the funniest film she had ever seen. She was the sun, or rather, a galaxy, and since her death I am still trying to navigate my way back to her solar system. It is difficult to mourn someone who was buried over half a lifetime ago. So easy to put a parent on a pedestal when you never knew them as an adult. I mourn fragments of a human, all the what ifs, all the it could have beens. I visit my mother’s grave today for the first time in a year. I sit on the ground and tell her of my boyfriend, of poetry, of dogs. Giving up on the concept of god means giving up on the concept of life after death, but damn, it still feels so nice to talk. I leave her grave and do not cry, and I wonder if this is what healing feels like. To finally tuck her memory where it does not hurt. To not spend the day in bleak mourning. I know it’s what she’d want. When I do not cry I do not think “bad” daughter, “not sad enough” daughter, I just think “daughter.” So. I watch a Tom Hanks movie. I kiss a dog and smile. I bake the shit out of a peach cobbler, the aroma filling my house with the sweetest scent, something almost resembling her.
11.
The sky apologizes to Monica Lewinsky for not catching her fast enough; for not forming a comfort cloud cushion for her to land upon. Left her shrieking. Left her wailing. Left her plummeting and plummeting and plummeting. I am ten years old in Jenna Saadeh's basement tucked into sleeping bag, pressed between two giggling bodies, eyes glued to television where Saturday Night Live parades around a twenty-two year old girl in a spotlight she did not wish conjured, laughter littering the backdrop. Twenty years later, Monica Lewinsky’s name is still the butt of the joke. While Bill Clinton swaggers into camera's view, is applauded just for being there, for having some good sense about him. What a supportive husband. What a good man. The ocean apologizes to Monica Lewinsky for mounting a living funeral for yet another young woman tricked into trusting a trickster, into falling for the wolf, all snarl and chew. What a reminder. That a man can thirst for infidelity, crave bread from other tables, hunger his family away and still be welcomed by the world with loving arms. All while the world calls his wife crazy shrew. All while calling his ex-intern deserved slut. … But …. Did you know Monica Lewinsky is now an advisor for an anti-bullying organization? Has a masters in social psychology? Speaks out against cyberbullying? Speaks out about her PTSD? Speaks out of how, though consensual, there is something to be said of a man twenty-seven years her senior who was also the fucking president making a move on his employee and how that is the utmost definition of “abuse of power.” Did you know that Monica Lewinsky could not give a fuck about what you think of her? In a 2004 interview she stated, “I was the buffet, and he just couldn't resist the dessert.” I think what she also meant was: Women are nothing if not the sky, the oceans, the mountains. Something so magnificent men are desperate to claim. Unconquerable miracles men must plant a flagpole in. Give us new names. Say they are the first to touch our soil. Say it’s not their fault as they slowly ruin us, raking their hands over every inch of our landscapes. The earth apologizes to Monica Lewinsky. The earth apologizes to Anita Hill. To Ashley Judd. To Zoe Quinn. To Janet Jackson. To Jessica Stoyadinovic. To Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. To every woman made mockery. To every girl who did not crumble as the world crafted her into a lie, a threat, a punchline.
12.
I resisted the eyeliner for so long. It always seemed too ... bold? Too loudmouth? Too slammed door? Too forest fire? Too look at me? Mascara was my first vanity, made my face into a thousand butterfly kisses. Next, the lipstick, a crimson dictionary. Then came the blush - a fluster. Then came the cover up - a flawless fib. I made myself into the women I always saw in the movies; so put together, so mature. My parents let me know before I was even allowed to wear makeup that too much of it made you unsavory, or desperate, or both. Just like the women who cut off all of their hair, covered themselves in tattoos, wore clothes to show off their sun-kissed skin. I was taught to not be like them. But one day the pencil found its way into my curious palm. The first time I applied eyeliner, I swear, a hallelujah chorus burst through my bathroom ceiling. A volcano erupted inside my lungs. Engulfed in flames, I grasped this new magic to my chest, like an ex-Catholic once grasped the Bible. Now instead of the Bible, I swear my life on NYX’s Epic Eyeliner, and the truth of it is how my eyes have always been the loudest thing about me. Open the book of me and see every drunk man in a bar or every drunk boy at a house party who thought the following a compliment: “Has anyone ever told you how big your eyes are?” What am I even supposed to say to that? “Congratulations, motherfucker! You’re the first person ever to notice that my eyes are scary big!” The skill of pointing out the obvious has never much impressed me. My body is more than a conversation starter; it is its own station, its own cathedral. I built it brick-by-brick with these two good hands. Muddied my skin laying down the foundation, muscled the weight of becoming, guarded the finale from violators with a shotgun - I dare you to tempt me to use it, and eyeliner is nothing if not another brick to sanction this home. Just like all the hair I chop, all the tattoos I gather, all the skin I expose. My eyeliner turns me into something solid, something so much myself. If my eyes are the loudest thing about me, then turn the volume up, let my eyes grown even larger, let them bloom to the size of skyscrapers. Nowadays I refuse to go out into the world without wings, without daggers. Bleed yourself senseless if your gaze lingers too long. Look at how sharp these eyes sculpt themselves. A pinprick sucker punch. A refusal to apologize for all of this femme. Look at how proud, look at how loudmouth, look at how epic I have become.

about

Stouthearted Bitch, a debut spoken word album by Julia Gaskill, examines the tightrope we all must walk between feeling our voices censored and being unabashedly ourselves. Her poems touch on everyday misogyny, parental loss, praise of femininity, mental unrest, and found healing. Julia’s playful, heart-rendering poetry examines the role of Female in this day-and-age, all while cracking a grin and holding your hand.

credits

released October 19, 2019

Recorded by Brian Bauer at Shady Pines Media in Portland, OR.
www.shadypinesmedia.com

Released by Lightship Press in Portland, OR.
www.lightshippress.com

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about

Julia Gaskill Portland, Oregon

Julia Gaskill (she/her) is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured on FreezeRay Poetry, Ink&Nebula, SlamFind, Knight's Library Magazine, Write About Now, and more. Julia is the author of four chapbooks, has competed nationally with her poems, runs the mic Slamlandia, and co-founded the Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam in 2019. ... more

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