Dépaysement, Take II

Austin, I love you. You are warm and strange, and you are always creating, creating.

Austin, I love you. But there's someone else. There always has been. And I couldn't get her out of my hair, even if I tried.

See, it's not as simple as roux and hurricanes. It's her brown skin and saunter, the way she electrifies straight hair. Louisiana drips down my back and wedges herself under my fingernails, under my tongue. Louisiana is damp and panting.

Beyond the flash of sequins and tease of feathers and the allure of misbehaving on Bourbon Street, Louisiana spits at local color. It's rust from her mouth into her Gulf, and how she is the deep groan of a pier settling into the murky spillway. And oh yes, Louisiana does spill. She flops into the queso, the tortillas, the fried avocados I eat here. Fat and gorgeous and sweating, she purses her cypress lips and rolls her moonshine eyes at East Texas--where don't nobody make groceries--and says a novena for your sister, the one whose husband ran off last August, the hottest damn month of the year.

Louisiana takes herself a beautiful vat of brown gulf water and serves up an etouffe. And maybe she's dirty, swampy, and alligator-eyed. Maybe the races she's winning have names like "Incarceration Rates" or "Most New Cases of Gonnorhea and Syphilis." But maybe you're just embarrassed because despite all that, she still sways her hips. 

Because just beneath her surface is a glorious and profane heritage of Haitian voodoo queens, French-Catholic bacchanalia, devastating slave labor, and sweet, backwater coonasses. And if you slide on past New Orleans, into Acadiana--into Church Point and Mamou and Eunice-- for the courir, the Mardi Gras run--you'll see where they make community matter. They go door to door to door to door, asking for ingredients for a gumbo everybody shares. To every person in town, they say, "We need you. What you got that you can give? You give us an onion, a pepper, a handful of flour, and we'll turn it into something that feeds us all. 

So Austin, what are you going to do when I show up at your door and ask? Cause you know I'm going to ask. I'll feed you, baby, if you answer when I call:

Donnez que'que'chose pour le Mardi Gras!

Truth, Counter-Truth, Dare

The first time I recognized a woman as simultaneously beautiful and fat, I was 25 years old.

For a quarter of a century
I had this fucked up theory
I believed that every fat woman was secretly
A vessel for shame and disgrace.
That the judgments of America were written on her face
That she could be sweet, or funny, but not sexy
That all the room in her personality, was taken up by being heavy
And I was afraid that if I talked too loud or too much
All of a sudden people would notice the way my thighs touch
As though those things were in any way related
Like somehow playing smaller would keep me inoculated
Against the photoshopped princess I was supposed to be

But when I met Allison, that lie slipped out from under me
Everything about her was big:
Her hair, her eyes, her belly, her thighs
Her arms, her lips, her breasts, her hips
Allison was not afraid to take up space
From the moment her smile radiated from her face
Allison glowed: I mean light shone from her
This woman didn't just walk to her own off beat drummer
She danced, and when she picked up a tune
Her big honey voice could hush up a room
I met Allison, and for the first time
I realized a fat woman could also be fine
And maybe, just maybe, that fate could be mine

Things I used to believe, I'm taking years to unlearn
And I still have good days and bad days in turn
So I make it a game to make it easier to bear
For the things I have to remember to choose every day, I'll call it Truth, Counter-Truth, Dare

Truth: When a classmate pointed out how my belly stuck out over my waistband, I threw my lunch away untouched. And then at home I cried for hours and ate an entire box of powdered donuts, a block of cheese, half a jar of Nutella, and a tupperware of leftover spaghetti. I fell asleep in my closet, covered in crumbs, and marinara, and shame.
Counter-Truth: It is not actually insulting to be perceived as fat.
Dare: The next time someone asks you if you're pregnant, say, "Oh, I'm not pregnant. I'm just fat. You're right, though, my skin is glowing from all this excess of awesome."

Truth: Sometimes being big means you are invisible to salespeople at retail stores.
Counter-Truth: People much more actively oppressed than you have had to walk up to unfriendly counters and ask to be served. You got this. Yes, I know invisibility hurts. But invisibility you choose by pretending yourself away is even worse.
Dare: Do not play small. It doesn't suit you.

Truth: Kate Moss said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.
Counter-Truth: Kate Moss has clearly never eaten a single meal in Louisiana. If she'd ever had good jambalaya, or hot fresh beignets, or a fully-dressed po-boy with that rich brown gravy that drips all the way down your chin...homegirl would know what a foodgasm feels like. And it doesn't matter what size your jeans are: when you're done, you gonna want to unbutton them.
Dare: Eat good food. I mean, eat good food.

Truth: I have slunk out of dance halls and aerobics classes with my head hanging low, feeling that I was too fat and too slow, that I must be the only person in the room who didn't get it.
Counter-Truth: All bodies are good bodies. Even the ones that sweat a lot. Even the ones that don't step-ball-change real smoothly. Those bodies can still shimmy like nobody's business.
Dare: Move your body. Every day. Even if parts of you keep jiggling after the rest of you stops. You were made to dance. You were made to shine.

Truth: My mother cupped my face in her sweet, caring hand, and said she worried that because of my weight, no one would want to date me.
Counter-Truth: Even the most well-intentioned parent who loves you with her whole heart can sometimes also be wrong.
Dare: Fall in love with yourself. Until you do, it won't matter whether or not anyone else has. Fall in love with yourself. You are worth loving.

These are just a few of the gifts that Allison gave
My daily prescription to help me be brave
It's the game I play, and you can play too
Be unafraid. Love yourself. Take up space. I dare you.