Old school butches always feel like coming home to me. I can spot them in a crowd from a mile away. When they think they're being stealth or when most people are conspicuously ignoring them, I'll be the girl making eyes at them from across grocery store check-out lines or giving them the knowing "family" smile as we pass on the street.
I am thinking of this today because I just met a butch called Sugar and when I first laid eyes on her my body and my brain literally just settled right down. I don't know very much about her, and honestly, with a name like Sugar, I wasn't expecting our visitor to the house to be butch, but as soon as I saw her through the peephole, I opened the door without even stopping to verify who it was. She just looked like family.
As soon as she stepped into our apartment, I could tell that she had some of those intangible qualities I nearly always find in a big, country butch-- an unsophisticated, unpretentious charm-- a simplicity that I so need in my life (at least from time to time) to balance out all my high-maintenance, high-octane, ultra-glittered, calculated crazy. All of this came with Sugar, without her saying more than few casual, passing words, this entire, effortlessly calming circle of butch energy that made me want to sigh out all my air and lay down for a bit to relax.
It's a hard thing in this world to get me to settle. I am always on the go, and this is absolutely purposeful. One of my favorite Kimya Dawson songs, "Tire Swing" has the lyric, "If I stay in one place I lose my mind. I'm a pretty impossible lady to be with," and this is very, very true of me. I'm like a whirlwind, or a very sparkly hurricane that often leaves brownies or hard-earned bruises in its wake. So, when I come across someone that, effortlessly, makes me want to stop moving, it's fairly impressive. As one could only imagine, it's even more difficult to get me to go to sleep. Sleep, to me, feels like quitting, like my body demanding I clock out of life for a few hours, and I always resent it-- I really never lost the feeling that small children have that they're missing something when they're asleep. So, if I meet someone and immediately feel strongly compelled to relax and float in their energy or, even more surprisingly, sleep in their presence, then that's pretty dang special and I'm most probably standing in the energy of a big ole butch from the South or the Desert, the Midwest or a small town in upstate New York, a ranch in one of the Dakotas, or an orchard in rural California. It was a really grounding moment when I learned this about myself, because now it doesn't take me by such surprise. It's still somewhat unexpected at times, but at least I can recognize the triggers!
And it is an ingrained set of triggers. It's part of who I am by location, by personal history, by traditional, not simply a preference. It's a reaction that I can't control, this bouncing of old school butch/high femme energy, but how I act on it may vary. Today, for example, Sugar was only in my home all of 10 minutes to pick up my roommate, so I just enjoyed the rush of endorphins to my brain and let that be that. Other times, if sparks start to fly, I may inquire after said butch to see where the possibilities could go. And still other times, it's so unintentional and excruciatingly brief, like two souls passing in an airport terminal, that it just feels like a little jolt of electricity that leaves you wondering "What if...?" Every time, though, it reminds this fiercely independent, busy, and bossy femme that this is a kill-switch to her relentless brain and that sometimes, even just for a few moments, some time off is necessary and healthy.
...Okay, this peaceful moment is now over. Time to go attack the rest of my day!!!
