Irina of the Romany. 1.

And so she emerged from the damp dust of Night Town: Irina of the Romany. Christian name to pass, forgotten tribe. She was not dark like the rest of them because her first tribe had abandoned her. Though some suspected she was a spy from the Kalderasha and as a toddler told to act a fool. Sometimes old women who forgot called her Yana because there was always a cousin by that name. She did not remember her secret name from the other tribe, and they would not bestow her one. "You clean the garbage-pile when you are not dancing or telling fortunes. It is ok if you dance. You are more rakli than not. Stupid woman. We cannot marry you and you are too old to bear children. You are dumb like an unmarried girl but in a woman's body. Useless. Why did we help you? Based on a lie. Keep dancing for the gadjo men. You will sleep alone and we will kill you if you touch our husbands."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gender rant: I'm not here to give you a boner and neither is anyone else.

I'm going to work this kind of like a list of extended bullet points. Hey, kids. So let's talk about a little something called gender expression. Gender expression comes in many different varieties, and has taken on different sub-labels in popular or regional culture. Some of these labels that you might know are concepts like "dyke" "femme" "twink" "tranny" and other terms. Though there doesn't seem to be an overarching consensus on whether or not certain terms are considered offensive, partially due to the culture of term reappropriation in recent years (for instance, affectionately or cattily using the term "fag" within the gay male community), mainstream culture has adopted some terms and concepts as shorthand for certain gendered lifestyles. I argue this- No one should be unfairly reduced to their gender expression by anyone else. I believe that it is unfair to assume that someone considered to adopt a more convent...
Read more

Pop Culture Nation-A Recovered Memory of Cherished Treasures

Sometime between 2004 and Spring of 2006, I forcefully slammed a very large shoebox full of cassette tapes into the garbage can at my mother's house. You don't understand. Not just original cassette tapes. Mix tapes. During the peak hipster era of High Fidelity and Say Anything (much older, because yes we were already rehashing nostalgia), I committed a high crime against art and Xennial self-determination. I remember neither the context of the conflict, nor why I desired so strongly to sabotage myself. Was it later than then? Had I moved out again? Was it closer to 2008? I couldn't tell you. But I knew I was on one of my decluttering kicks. Inasmuch as I am messy and allow things to pile up (hopefully not to a hoarderly level) I have also gotten on occasionally forceful kicks of throwing my possessions away. Mostly because they reminded me of a part of myself that was over. Around this same time I think I dumped all the handwritten letters between me and beloved friends be...
Read more

Dream Brother

Twin seeds, planted in one long planter. Soon, a large landmass would stand between us. I wish I hadn't absorbed, from somewhere, that only the coasts mattered. And here we are. So much between us, including life & water under the bridge. I miss New York but I'm not built to root there. Just to visit. I think there was a time in my life when going there could've propelled me. They would've "gotten" what I was doing. But that was a small window of time. Now it's over. So much similar between us but so many parts of us different. And yet so much in common too. It feels like long ago but hey, obvious why we were pretty much "The Crayons" together. The queers in the 'burbs claw in the dark to find each other. Our absurd reads, endless summers and maybe the mystery trousers left in my trunk. Beach days, then you moved out right after we graduated. Things got tangible quickly. We did grownup things at 18 in a state where you didn't have to...
Read more