At the beginning of last week, I was met with a memory from my childhood. It’s been so long since these events took place, it almost feels like they’re simply stories I’ve always known about and am just now beginning to share.

My bedroom window was open and I could hear the sound of someone cutting their lawn before the smell of it wafted into my apartment. I lay back, closed my eyes, and let the visual take over.

All five of us, my siblings and myself, helped my babysitter with the yard work. We were somewhere in Gary, IN, but nowhere near the neighborhoods I grew up. Our pale skin stood out and I recall Gayle telling us not to talk to any of “them.” Her tone had a specific sharpness to it, a hatred. She was referring to the Black children playing next door. Living with Gayle, we were never allowed to talk to anyone. It was very much, “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to,” type shit but the tone she used to forbid us from speaking with the children running through a sprinkle in their front yard was thick with hate. Though this was not the first time I witnessed racism, it’s one of the earliest memories of it that I can recall.

Cutting the back and front yards of this house took most of the day. The summer sun made for pools of sweat that never stopped, even after the gallon water jugs we brought with us were drunk dry. My youngest sister, no more than five or six years old at the time, got her first bee sting on the inside of her mouth of all places. I shared a similar experience, though my sting didn’t happen as a result of me trying to eat a bee.

We did odd jobs like these to help keep money coming in. In the winter, I have memories of us inside of renovated homes in their early stages - being gutted. Gayle would have us come along with her and help pick up and bag the debris in the various rooms. The smell of the gas generator still fills my nostrils if I spend enough time thinking about it. She found these jobs through the men she knew at the church. They’d often get a kick out of her bringing us along, talking about, “I wish my kids were as obedient as the Kennedy kids.” I can hear the laughter, the aloofness to what was going on. I don’t know why they thought it was funny, why no one cared.

Another tie to my past came back into my life in an active and literal way in the form of meeting up with someone I used to go to high school with back in Indiana. We went to a couple of lesbian bars on the city’s northside that were hosting an event that happens once a month or so for sapphics.

This friend knows nothing about the part of my life that includes Gayle, I don’t think. Friday night was the most we’d ever spoken to one another and I don’t ever recall sharing details of Gayle’s chapter in my life to people I hardly spoke to. Seeing this person had left me feeling incredibly appreciative for all of the change that’s happened, more good than bad, though I must accept both. Talking to her, I remembered how I felt when I was 16 years old and it felt so good to see so much change.

Because this is my website, and I can do what I want, I want to end this with sharing something fun. One of the most recent and seemingly drastic changes to have happened in the last seven days is that I finally put my money where my vulva is and bought a vibrator. When I tell you I feel like a different person, it’s not enough. I feel powerful. I feel hot. I feel fulfilled. I didn’t know I could make my body feel this way on my own. I’ve only come this hard during partnered sex. This is a fucking game changer. Why did I wait so long to buy one? I went out on Friday night and had absolutely no desire to flirt or make out with or go home with a single soul. It wasn’t even on my mind to go out and have a sexual or flirtatious experience, which I think in the past has always been a small hope of mine. Not this time. I knew I was going to go home to my perfect bed with my fully charged toy and give myself exactly what I needed: a hard climax and a good night’s sleep.

Until next time.