Author: Carmine "Red" Zingiber

Fuck You, Telling Me That I’m Not Queer, Eat Shit and Fall off your High Fucking horse

Dear Reader,

I worked hard to be as queer as I am and I didn’t expect to have to defend my identity from another person who shares in my struggles.

But here we fucking are.

Fuck Muñoz and his “we are not yet queer.” (Muñoz 1)

This is a problem that I think I’ve struggled with quite a bit, queerness as an ideal rather than a reality, as if there’s some faggot out there that we all aim to be like. This implication that there’s a right way to be queer is so fucking dangerous.

Do you know how much I’ve screamed?

How many streams of salt poured from my puffy eyes?

How much I craved for just one person to see me as a woman?

How many nights I’ve thought that I’d be better off dead than myself?

How many nights I still do?

You don’t and Muñoz sure as shit doesn’t

“We are not yet queer.” (Muñoz 1)

How fucking dare you.

As if queerness is something to be earned.

Even if I had never suffered then I’d still be queer.

Muñoz thinks that “Queerness is a longing that propels us forward.” (Muñoz 1)

It’s not.

Queerness has happened and continues to happen.

Have you ever seen Annie?

Annie’s an orphan and she sings a song called Tomorrow.

It’s a song of longing for a better time, for a then and there, rather than a here and now.

Do you know what the problem is with Tomorrow?

TOMORROW NEVER COMES!!!

Reality sucks but it’s the only place that you can get a decent meal.

It’s the only place that we’ll ever be.

I get Muñoz’s point. I really do. There’s a queer utopia that only exists in our wildest dreams and god be damned if we don’t try to get there.

But to rob queerness of its power by making it seem as if it is unobtainable is fucking diabolical.

I always liked Eli Claire’s Mountain as a tale of telling struggles.

It acknowledges that struggles aren’t one-way streets, that stopping and taking a breath doesn’t make you slow or weak, or that sometimes you even have to go back down the mountain to breathe a little easier.

Muñoz seems to view struggles as a sea voyage, always trying to catch the horizon, and always failing to grasp it.

I like my feet on solid ground and despise the seasickness that Muñoz gives me.

Sincerely Queer,

Carmine “Red” Zingiber

Finally, an Author That Speaks My Language (Why I Love Driskill and Their Rage More Than Any Other Writer in This Class)

Content Warning: Brief mentions of suicide

For Matthew

I have died too many deaths that were not mine.
Audre Lorde

I have found my body collapsible,
choking on your death
like a small child who seeks to understand
by stuffing pennies and marbles into mouth.

It reverberates across the continent,
fallout from an old, old story.
How when they found you,
at first they thought you were a scarecrow
crucified on a Wyoming fence.

In Seattle, 1000 lit candles.
(I wanted the city to burn.)

In San Francisco, a rainbow flag hung half-mast.
(I wanted earth to split open.)

In DC, the president finally spoke.
(I wanted screams to shatter glass.)

In Laramie, they wore armbands.
(I wanted a revolution.)

Thousands upon thousands say NeverAgain, NeverAgain.
(I don’t want to remember you as symbol.)

We have no more time for symbols.
We have no more time for vigils.
We have no more time

because when I started writing
this poem for you, Matthew,

you were still alive.

 

In memoriam: Matthew Shepard

 

 

Dear Reader,

I’m angry again.

I am angry with those who aren’t angry.

Nothing pisses me off more than someone with no rage in their heart.

They must be blind.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about candles or rainbow flags or speeches given by limp dicked politicians or armbands or chants.

They’re killing us.

The Trevor Project. (2022). 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/assets/static/trevor01_2022survey_final.pdf

They’re fucking driving our kids to despair and suicide.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about candles or rainbow flags or speeches given by limp dicked politicians or armbands or chants.

This shit needs to burn.

I want to watch those who’ve made me suffer to be brutalized, to be made to pay for their sins, to make sure that they never hurt anyone again.

You know what I don’t want to do?

HAVE A FUCKING CONVERSATION WITH THEM!

I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS ABOUT CANDLES OR RAINBOW FLAGS OR SPEECHES GIVEN BY LIMP DICKED POLITICIANS OR ARMBANDS OR CHANTS!!!

WATCHING MY FRIENDS TRY TO USE THE MASTER’S TOOLS TO DISMANTLE THE MASTER’S HOUSE FUCKING INFURIATES ME!

AMERICA DOESN’T HAVE A CONSCIENCE!

IT DOESN’T HAVE A SOUL!

IT DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT THAT MY KIN ARE DYING!

THE ONLY WAY FOR US TO SAVE OURSELVES IS TO FIGHT BACK!

FOR US TO BURN CITIES TO RUBBLE!

FOR US TO SPLIT THE EARTH OPEN!

FOR US TO SCREAM LOUD ENOUGH TO SHATTER GLASS!

FOR US TO REVOLT!

our kin are dying, facing genocide, and I can’t be anything but angry

Driskill is the one author we’ve read who understands this.

Driskill makes a similar point in Pedagogy.

“What does this classroom have to do with you anyway?
What does it have to do with any of us?” (Driskill Pedagogy)

Every day I have to hear about the shit that goes on outside of our classroom and I have to ask myself, when I’m going to class in the morning, “What does it have to do with any of us?”

I’ve come to the answer that it has very little to do with me.

Yours With Blood and Rage of Crimson Red,

Carmine “Red” Zingiber

I Am Really Not in the Fucking Mood to Do the Work That Eli Claire Does and if I’m Going to Keep It Real With You Reader I’m Not Sure if His Work Is Worth It (Why I Say Fuck You So Often)

TW: Descriptions of torture

Dear Reader,

I am a really fucking angry woman. If I was as articulate as I was angry I wouldn’t need to be taking an English class. Luckily though I know, someone both angrier and more articulate than I will ever be, James Baldwin. A quote from To Be Baptized has been bouncing around in my head for a while.

“I said that we could petition and petition and march and march and raise money and give money until we wore ourselves out and the stars began to moan: none of this endeavor would or could reach the core of the matter, it would change nobody’s fate. The thirty thousand dollars raised tonight would be gone in bail bonds in the morning, and so it would continue until we dropped. Nothing would ever reach the conscience of the people of this nation–it was a dream to suppose that the people of any nation had a conscience. Some individuals within the nation might, and the nation always saw to it that these people came to a bad, if not a bloody end. Nothing we could do would prevent, at last, an open confrontation. And where, then, when the chips were down, would we stand?” (Baldwin 436).

America doesn’t have a fucking conscience, it never did, and any peaceful protest will fail. I think that Claire fails to understand this in his concerns that “The harder part…rural homophobic violence.” (Claire Losing Home 44). While I admire this idea that we can simply “dialog across our differences” it’s ultimately proven to be a false one.

Rat torture. Reserved for the worst of the worst. What they’d do is take a bunch of rats, put them in a bucket, and place that bucket upside down on the wretched creature’s stomach. The rats would scamper around for a while, trying to get out of the bucket, banging their little heads and hands against the steel, until they’d realize there was only one way out. Rat teeth can’t tear through steel but they’re more than sharp enough to rip through flesh.

Claire has fallen in love with the man whose belly he sits upon and tries to claw his way through steel. I’m not going to try to talk to someone who doesn’t believe that I have a right to exist and try to convince them that “actually I am a human being.” Claire is either an idiot or a fool for asking me to try. What are you even talking about? The paradox of tolerance is an essential part of any worthwhile philosophy.

I’m generally so sick and fucking tired of this idea of “calling people in instead of calling them out.” Would you ask a sheep to call a wolf in? FUCK NO. You get that sheep *something* to make sure that the wolf stays the fuck away from your woolly little buddy. Like, if someone calls me a faggot my response isn’t going to be “H-hey it’s wrong to talk to people like that.” You know what I’m going to say? “FUCK YOU!!!”

Yours in Burning Hot Rage That Boils Me Alive,

Carmine “Red” Zingiber

Baldwin, J. (1998). James Baldwin – Collected Essays. Penguin.

 

** note: edited by Prof Kersh on 10/9.  Please feel free to ask me any questions**

The Narrator Is a Self-Sabotaging Asshole Who Would Throw a Torch Into a Pile of Buildings, and When They Are Consumed, Sit Among the Ruins and Lament the Fall (The Measure of Love isn’t Loss)

‘You’re bored,’ (Winterson 27)

Dear Reader,

Fuck The Narrator.

To live a life of only the most extreme highs and the worst lows is to live a life of incredible heartbreak and sorrow. The Narrator shows that they clearly don’t understand this from the get-go when they ask, “Why is the measure of love loss?” (Winterson 9). The Narrator presupposes that the measure of love is loss. The Narrator scales sheer cliff faces just to jump off of them into the sea and, exhausted from the climb, they don’t have the strength to save themselves from the treacherous waters that they threw themself into! They wait, on the verge of drowning, tossed by the malignant waves, for a hand to scoop them up, take them home, then as soon as they feel better, they go and pull the same shit all over again bitching the whole time about how the measure of love is loss.

“We agreed that…holidays, not homecoming..” (Winterson 27)

This is the one point in the book where The Narrator might have ended up truly happy. Not the shallow exhilaration of an adrenaline junkie but true, lasting, and reliable happiness. The Narrator can’t settle for that though, The Narrator conflates stability with boredom because The Narrator thinks that the measure of love is loss. The Narrator describes this feeling as “a teetotaller caught
glancing at the bottle” (Winterson 27). The Narrator falls off the wagon, and takes a swig of the strong stuff, the top-shelf liquor, not that The Narrator cares about the vintage. The Narrator just needs to feel the burn in their throat. Then when they wake up hungover, working a job waiting tables in Yorkshire, they bitch and moan some more about “What is the point of movement…breathe the dead.” (Winterson 107-108). 

I may have soliloquized a bit much, let me try again.

The Narrator is a warning. I don’t think that we’re supposed to either trust or like The Narrator. I think that Winterson wants us to question everything that The Narrator says. More specifically we’re not supposed to believe that the measure of love is loss. At least, I don’t believe that Winterson believes it. Need more proof?

“See? Even here in this private place my syntax has fallen prey to the deceit.” (Winterson 15)

We are faced with a reliably unreliable narrator, reliable in that we know that they cannot be relied upon. The changes in structure, most notably on page 14, where the piece changes into a screenplay, and page 113 where the piece changes into a medical journal, reinforce this point. We can’t even trust in prose.

I know very little about queer love, less than I know about queer sex anyways, but I know enough to know that love can’t be measured by loss. I have a partner of more than seven months now. Is the love that I feel for them any less when I squeeze them tightly in my arms? Can my love not be measured because I haven’t yet lost? Of course not dear reader for that would be an idiotic notion. Cause you’d never have love, only lost love.

Love is fucking awesome and emotional stability also rocks. If you measure love in terms of loss you’ll wind up with neither.

Yours Forever,

Carmine “Red” Zingiber