I was talking with a friend and our conversation was about who we are, you know... deep inside. To show our real selves behind all the different masks that we wear in front of all the various people in our lives. I suppose it's only natural to believe that the people who know me best are my family and my lover, Hitomi. I want you to know that the friend I was talking to, I trust completely and she trusts me and I was explaining that at times and even during all the times that I write here, I feel that I'm still projecting myself as Momo the fantastic, Momo the strong, Momo the incredible, Momo who is always reliable and always open and honest Jazz.
The truth is that this is just another mask that I wear and inside I'm as human as anyone else with my own fears and issues. This week has been a rather strained and emotional week for me and during that conversation with my friend I broke down and cried in front of her. I felt quite unsettled at my tears and yet I also felt such a great weight leaving me. I told her that I just give and give and I'm always there for people and I enjoy it. But at the end of it all I am drained and there seems to be nothing left for myself and sometimes when I need a pair of arms to hold me and have someone tell me it'll be alright... well often there's no one there.
"But you've got Hitomi san" you cry out. "You live next door to your brother, the one you have always been close to", you add.
Yes I do have these wonderful amazing people in my life. I love my brother so much and I know he has worries and burdens of his own so I could never add to the weight on his shoulders. I know family share both joy and tears but I just can't do to him. I look at him and I believe I see that he too tries to show me strength and he is protective of me. I see my beloved Mother reflected in his eyes. I give him a hug and tell him I love him but I can never open and tell him of a problem that I feel on that intimate level. As for the most wonderful girl in the world, my rock, my reason to live and love, I find that the moments that I feel most vulnerable, the times I'm most in need are the times that she's away. 'Jazz the warrior' some have called me and I smile at that and I do think I project a tough exterior appearance. "She has battled against great adversity" they say and that's true too. But inside, deep down inside in the parts of my soul where most wouldn't dare to look, I am very tender and delicate and I am such a fragile thing. I am as the seeds of the dandelion awaiting a gentle breeze. Parts of me blown across unknown landscapes and far from the soil I call home.
Why, because I have held onto my emotions and not let them out. Slowly they built up higher and higher and the pressure behind the dam became immense, the pains grew too much. I cried and they all came flooding out. But you don't want to hear how uselessly human I am. You want to know about 'Jazz the strong', don't you?
Well honestly my dear friends, the truth is that I often show people what I think that they expect to see in me and like so many others I try to hide my weaknesses. I wear masks and have hidden so much because I was and I am still am scared of being 'me' if the real me is surely such a frail and insubstantial thing. I want to be strong!
Back to Hitomi!
When she's away she always makes time to phone me. If it's late at night I just take the phone and jump on my bed and we chat away about anything and everything for hours. Very often she takes little photographs the same as I do and she sends to me in e-mails. Photos of where she is, what she sees and often with some of the girls she works with. I like the ones where she visits places like these here in Giza, Easter Island and Beijing. In truth all of this is really in Taiyo Park. But when I see her photographs where she's with other girls I feel a little excluded. I know it's stupid and I know she's mine and I don't have any reason for jealously. I just wish that it was me with her there instead of these girls that she works with.
When she comes home from these venues, I want to cook for her, sit and eat with her and listen to her adventures. I want to tell her what's been happening here while she's been away. All this excitement is crushed because she comes home tired. She puts her bag by the bathroom ready to sort her laundry. She showers while I make something simple because she doesn't want to eat a lot and I'm not to bother. Then she wants to go to bed and I join her and then again, she's too tired even for....
In my own selfish way I felt left out and a hug and a kiss and a smile should be enough for anyone after a month away. I just wanted more.
Do I expect too much?
On Friday morning I returned to work and caught up with what's happening and especially with my little protégé, Chinami. She has done very well and I'm quite proud of her. In the afternoon my computer failed and I couldn't even retrieve my data from the company server on a second terminal. I lost a lot of work. A young boy came from downstairs had a look at it and then decided to take it down to the IT department. I had to start again on my presentation from a blank template. I scowled over that but to offset my frown I had the news that next week I have been confirmed from selection to be involved in the presentation of a treasure hunt for charity so I'm really pleased about that and a smile did indeed return.
Oh never mind!
At 11:30pm I whispered to Hitomi that I had a small headache and that I would go home and she could stay with her friends. Hitomi shook her head and quickly finished her drink and said goodbye too. We got a taxi and dropped Nanako home and then we came home together and for the first time in the last twenty four hours that she has been home I felt really good about us and that I felt special to her again.
I must sound really terrible to you guys!
Once home Hitomi gave me a reassuring hug and made me feel happy again and she even had a gift for me and when I opened it I was so amazed. It was absolutely wonderful and so thoughtful of her and before I say what it was, I need to blog a little more about something.
Lesbians!
OK honestly, what do the average non-gay people think about us? I'm sure that some will think at once of porn movies. I'm sure some will think that we're abnormal and I know some feel threatened by us. Lock up your innocent daughters, there's a mad Lesbian on the loose! (Laughs) Most preferred it when it was hidden maybe?
Before openness, outings and gay pride and a long time before today's general semi acceptance of gay people, it was all so very wicked and it was all kept hidden behind secret signs and codes and ways that only others of our kind would know. I wish someone had told me what those secrets were? How on Earth is someone supposed to find these things out?
Anyway....
Throughout history there have been iconic figures that have represented aspects of our gay community. In more modern times they have been from the worlds of arts and sports and music and movies. Celebrities who stood out and it wouldn't matter if they themselves were gay or not, that wasn't the point. They only had to have associative qualities like open flamboyance and glamor, a certain charm and charisma or even a determination to be true to themselves no matter how hard life made it for them.
There have been some surprising people identified as Gay icons but there are many who are almost universally known. Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Bette Midler, Grace Jones, Cher, Madonna, Cindi Lauper, K.D Lang, Maggie Cho, Lily Allen all come to mind. But one of my favorites was Marilyn Monroe. When I first read about her I fell in love with her. She was quite a tragic figure really who suffered many hardships and lots of controversy still exists about her life, her loves and her seemingly strange death. She was a real little girl called Norma Jean Baker and she was trapped in the body of a Goddess.
Hitomi had bought for me a beautiful white halter neck dress with the flowing wide pleat skirt just like the dress that Marilyn wore in the 1955 movie "The seven year itch". I know that I don't fill the dress out in the same way as Marilyn did but then I would ask you 'who could?' To my mind Marilyn was paradisiacal and in every image that I have ever seen of her she is perfection. I even considered dying my hair blond once. So here I am, looking like but with full credit to one of history's most beautiful and alluring women.
Marilyn Monroe, my Goddess.
I love her and I really do love Hitomi.
It wasn't that this was the moment of such a thoughtful and wonderful gift. It was beautiful and I thanked her very much. But it was now after she had rested from her fatigue that she gave herself to me and that my dear readers, more than anything else is what I needed most. Norma Jean was a candle in the wind and I often feel like I'm the dandelion seeds. I also feel like a little girl lost sometimes in an adult body.
In those moments that I need and she is at home... that is when I feel complete and just for one moment when someone reassures me, I feel strong again.
Oh my stars! I sound so co-dependent!
Elton John - Goodbye Norma Jean (Candle in the Wind)