Including but Not Limited To
Hi, so, welcome to Lonely Britches. This is an introductory post where I try to answer what I assume will be two frequently asked questions and do one other thing.
FAQ One: “Why Lonely Britches?”
Because I really wanted to call it Tearful Sluts, but I felt like that was doing too much right out the gate. I went with Lonely Britches because it’s basically the same thing (“britches” being what my phone autocorrects “bitches” to) and I was also inspired by the poem Lonely Women by Seungja Choi, trans. by Won-Chung Kim and Cathy Park Hong. But I’m going to be using that phrase, tearful slut, a lot. It’s essential to my daily lexicon.
FAQ One point A: “Sade, what is a tearful slut, whatchu talmbout gurl?”
Lemme tell you. I’m a tearful slut. You might be one too. Imagine someone whose nervous system is made entirely of emotional impulses. A tearful slut is a person, usually a poet or artist, who might shed a tear over absolutely anything. And I mean anything. You might be at home, masturbating on the rare occasion that you’re alone and reach an orgasm so intense that you have to cry. You might be a total otaku (maybe even a Fujoshi) rewatching an anime you love for the nth time and you catch all the feels and you lean back in your chair and cry for five minutes. Crying might be your primary form of protest. If you live in the Midwest and have SAD, the month of February is a weep-athon. Or you’re out with your closest friends laughing so hard you don’t even remember the origin point of your laughter and it’s either cry or pee a little so you cry and howl for breath. Pictures or videos of chubby pug puppies or fluffy kittens on your Tumblr dash when you’re having a shitty day. Maybe you come across something that triggers memories of your abuser and you know you’ll never be satisfied until you can shit on his grave and you get so angry that you want to trash your entire apartment but instead you just cry and dissociate until it’s safe to be in your body again. You turn off the alarm on your phone, check Facebook, another black person has been carelessly annihilated from this shitty fucking world and you feel faint so you crawl back under the covers; tears slide down the sides of your face and into your hair. Or you’re porch sitting one night and see the first fireflies of the summer. Your phone dings with a Facebook message from someone who read your poems and loved them. Tears sting your eyes because you start to feel like maybe you’re not such an unredeemable fuck up.
FAQ Two: “Okay, but I still don’t know what this beat is about?”
Short answer: Everything. I’m going to write about the things I’m obsessed with. I’m going to write about the direction my mind maze takes when I’m really faded and thinking about capitalism and racism and pleasure and creativity and what and who has value. The things I write here are an endless love song to all the friends I’ve made all the beautiful things I’ve discovered that I sorely needed as a teenager. When the only thing I knew about myself was that I was not and could not be acceptable. I want to write about my experiences as an emerging queer black poet and figuring out my place. I want to write about self. Tribe. Death. The ocean. Beyoncé. How much I can’t stand my alma mater. The motherfucking stars. Intersectional feminism. Queerness and gender. My plans to haunt people when I die. Things I’ve only talked about with close friends. My theory on why food tastes good. What I think happens when you die. A short story about killing a chicken. Poetry so horrifically good that it has found a way to live in my body. All my schemes for an adventurous and joyful life. All the feels. This beat, essentially is about vulnerability. For the first time ever… people seem to be interested in what I have to say. So I’m just going to keep talking until someone tells me to stop. (And even then I probably won’t shut up.)
FAQ Three: “… so is there anything else we should know?”
Yes. At the end of every post there will be a Lonely Britchlist including but not limited to: things that I really enjoyed over the past week and might talk about later or not, articles I read or have been wanting to read for a while, poems… stuff I do with my friends that make me really happy. Consider it Montessori homework, you don’t have to do it but if you do you’ll be able to have more interesting conversations and interactions with this beat as a whole.
This week’s Lonely Britchlist
- Rick and Morty, Season One.
- “illuminabysses” by Jace Brittain.
- “White Men” by Ginger Ko.
- This piece by the Mongrels.
- Seeing my friend’s band play at my least favorite bar on a Thursday and eating ice cream bars and smoking cigarettes from the top of the parking garage afterwards.
- Movies: Welcome to Me, The Holy Mountain, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Blue Velvet (all seen over the last four days).
- Conversations with Paul Cunningham.
- I keep coming back to the current issue of The Journal Petra.
- The soundtrack to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
Tata, my lonely britches. Lucas, this is for you.
Sade Murphy was born and raised in Houston, TX. She is the author of "Dream Machine," a poetry collection.
Latest posts by Sade Murphy (see all)
- Never Can Say Goodbye - August 19, 2015
- I Feel Precarious - August 5, 2015
- Upside Down and Inside Out - July 22, 2015
