YOU KNOW WHAT I DO WHEN I’M ALONE?
YOU KNOW HOW I DANCE
AND I COPE WHEN THINGS GO WRONG?
YOU KNOW HOW I GOT TO WHERE I’M AT?

Took 37 seconds. Went from shock. To sad neurons stripping off their skivvies and shouting at the sky. To Lil Kim’s immortal words licking my sullenness into a grim smile. You can’t hold us down. Six seconds later I spoke without shaking. I saw two feet move in front of the other. Saw my hand reach to the mouse. Got on youtube. Soak in Venezuelan artist Lao Ra. Used her music to restart the arrested pounding of the drum machine in my chest. The one that was tied up with ventricles, headphones, veins, and a knotted mess of speaker wires. 177 seconds passed. Saw my head rise, eyes shine in the sparkle of my 7 year old computer screen. Saw myself scheming for survival. See, that’s how a minority copes, begins to dance again–when it all goes spectacularly wrong. When 63% of white straight men/53% straight white women try to slap us, smack us down.

I DRUM TO THE BEAT OF MY OWN MACHINE

We get it. You don’t have your own drum machines. You’ve not had to make one. You have all of society pounding your drum for you. Society’s always made beats that beatify you, on the backs of us. We get it. Er. Gosh. Sorry we got uppity. Sorry we asked you to change the tempo of that drum machine. Maybe not have it say racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic/misogynistic shit anymore. No, not silence you. Not cement your shins to the dancefloor and keep you from getting nasty with all of the music made by people like us. We never said shut up. Never said never speak. Never said don’t dance. Just, maybe, if you’re gonna dance, it doesn’t come at the expense of you stomping on my fucking face. Watch yourself on the rainbow dancefloor, darling. That’s all. We’re all trying to be present here. Everyone wants some sex, save the asexuals. And they’re cool too. But no. That was too much to ask. And for the second time in my adult life an American election has hinged on white straight people telling me how they can’t stand that I spoke, I speak, and that I’ll speak. Fuck You.

I STILL REMEMBER WHO I WAS
A LITTLE GIRL WITHOUT A CHANCE

You can’t hold use down. We’ve got our own drum machines. We remember when, as Lao Ra put its, ‘we were a little girl without a chance’. We know who we are because we’ve had to wake up every day and see, and read, and hear on the radio how we’re criminals, rapists, child molesters, unwantables, soon to be conversion therapied. I mean, the list goes on. Sure its in the ballpark of 670k pages as of Saturday. And these drum machines, they are powerful as fuck. See, as white straight people wail and cry and moan about someone one time asking them to stop and think about what they’re saying, to share space/power; we’re already six kilometres ahead of where we were six hours ago. We can stand. We can sprint. We can shake it off. When the worst words are ascribed to us every second we breathe. And you all can’t even sit well with someone shaking their head and saying ‘yo, say something else’. That’s the real sadness of this election, of you. It took me only 6 minutes to sing in solidarity with Lao Ra. To sing my song again. To shake my ass to my own drum machine.

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