volume one hundred and sixty-one

i know who i am not

📍Written from Kaurna (otherwise known as Adelaide), after (too many) hours at my desk. I don't how I got this volume out, but I did. It was heavily inspired by thoughts I had during and after my gorgeous conversation with Maddy Weeks, which will be released this week on My Dad Stole My Limelight.

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The afternoon sun was streaming in through the bare windows. The blinds were still fully rolled up, despite the house tour coming with an “I close these privacy shades because I don’t want anyone to see in”. I wanted to let the barely there winter sunlight in during the day and gaze at the stars from the lounge at night. So open they remained.

Two fluffy border collies sat up at my feet, staring at me in confusion. Again. Why does this person keep pausing to stand in front of the television? If they want to watch, why aren’t they sitting on the lounge where we can cuddle them?

The television program playing was The Best of Mick Jagger. The station “The 70s” had been on for the majority of my time in this temporary home. Music videos and live concerts from the era I always felt I should have grown up in, allowed me to believe I was there with grainy visuals and distorted, prickly audio. And, of course, the flawless fashion. The channel was playing every time I came downstairs from the office so that I had a soundtrack while grabbing a snack in procrastination. On weekend mornings, I put it on as soon as I woke. 

I had listened to the Top 40 Tracks of the 1970s. I had listened to Ballads from the 1970s. I had listened to Disco Countdown. And now I was listening to the very best of Mick.

On this day, I had walked through the living room and stopped, again. I was admiring Mick’s thick, lush, messy mop of shaggy hair, his grape-coloured flared jeans, his skin-tight magenta shirt, his thick belt with the large gold buckle positioned to his right hip and his black shiny-heeled boots. He walked over to the microphone stand, grabbed it with one hand and then stared into the camera and therefore directly into the living room.

I watched his mouth make the words with intentionality. He enunciated every single sound and left his lips and teeth open between lyrics, hanging there in nothingness, just like I hung onto the song.

He began to point at the camera with demand, to match the importance of the phrases he was singing. In doing so, he revealed a large cuff of golden beads on his wrist.

As he pulled back from the camera and stood upright — ready to launch into the chorus of the song with all of his energy — a wave came over me. 

I was familiar with this feeling.

It happened every time a male rockstar of this era did their thing.

Lust.

He began to wave his arms around, his voice grew louder, his hips began to shake and his mouth opened bigger. His bandmates came more into the frame in brown pants, busy button-up shirts, lime green vests, hot pink boots and bold satin scarves. The music grew louder and the camera shot changed to an extreme close-up of Mick’s face as he grabbed the mic stand again and threw it down to his side the way someone might dip you when you danced with them.

And I said “Oh fuck!”

How had it never been clear to me before? It was suddenly so evidently, unquestionably, clear as day, staring me in the face obvious to me at that moment that I was not attracted to Mick at all.

“I want to be him.”

Mick broke free from the stand altogether as it loudly bounded to the stage floor, bringing with him the microphone in his loose hands. He began to move all over the stage. His entire body was unrestricted as he swayed and swung and strutted in utter freedom.

And I began to feel like I was floating free, too.

He dove into the crowd of screaming girls and for the first time in my life, I didn’t envy them.

I envied him.

Mick’s body got looser and freer and I began to roar the words out along with him and move my body, too.

Years of compulsory heterosexuality seemed to be shoved away with every hip pop and hand fling. Every idea of gender was squashed with every loud foot stomp in my bare feet that imagined my boots that were sitting upstairs.

Decades of looking at, listening to and studying Mick Jagger (and Keith Richards, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Axl Rose, Slash, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Robert Smith, Willie Nelson, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, John Lennon, Prince, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave… should I keep going?) had left me believing that these were men I lusted after. I had daydreamed many times of marrying them, of seducing them, of having them notice me.

I have been noticed. There have been multiple times in my life that men like them — men who are famous, men who I am curious about deeply, men who check all of my impossible boxes for what my dream man would be — have taken an interest in me. And I have run. But not before I have acted extremely, extremely uncool. Like, speaking to the bar manager about what it is like to work in the hospitality industry for an hour while the guy sits in the corner waiting, or telling another what a fan I am of his ex-wife’s work, or referencing another’s movie from the year I was four years old that he was in for sixty seconds. 

The lusting was not for them but for what they have and who they are and I didn’t know that, so when it showed up in the way I assumed I wanted it, I was confused and quite honestly terrified. Their masculinity isn’t sexy to me in that I want it, it is sexy in that I want to carry it with me.

The world has a default setting. That default setting is that I am a woman and these are all men and men and women should be together and therefore if I take an interest in these men, then I must be attracted to them.

I have slowly — through the isolation of lockdowns, through travel, through interviewing people on my podcast, through reading, through journaling, through truth-revealing dreams — begun to question all of that.

I don't know a lot and that is so fun for me. But I do know, without any question, that while I am very proud to be a strong and fierce woman, I want to be like Mick, too.

I also know when I ask myself if I have ever actually been attracted to these men — to any men — the answer is alarming and liberating.

This is the most free I have ever felt. I wake up and feel empowered getting dressed. I don’t feel guilty about listening to music from lots of male artists and not only female artists (though there are lots of those) because I finally understand why I am feeling drawn to them. I notice women differently. I notice men in such a different way.

My life now is me feeling as though I am dancing around on a stage in grape and magenta and my mouth says “Here I am!”.

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometime you'll find

You get what you need.

Lovely reader, my wonderful queer readers especially, head into the comments and tell me a moment everything changed for you. Your ah-ha!

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here are three things i struggled with this week:

🔥 Burnout. Getting there. 

❤️‍🩹 Grief.

🌡️ The weather app says sunny and it is pouring rain out my window. Both are lovely, but what do I wear?

here are three blessings from this week:

🌅 You. Everything you were, you will continue to be to me, and I will always remember you in that way, beautiful soul.

🦋 Looking for the signs, and finding them everywhere.

🎤 Being on stage every darn week because nothing is holding me back from having fun anymore.

here are three goals for the coming week:

☀️ Markets!

🌿 Continue exploring with my weekly Sunday nature walks.

🦥 Do less.

pics or it didn’t happen:

farewell to a friend 🧡

I love you and I appreciate you reading my letters because I really enjoy writing them to you.

🧡, LD (lauren deborah | they/she)