September 2017: Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of Your Fist
A few weeks ago I was told I needed an echo. It was a new doctor who saw my blood pressure and my EKG and said I would have to come back in a few hours for an echocardiogram. I still couldn't understand a lot of the words or the meaning of the numbers, and I was too proud to ask more. I waited until I was with the receptionist, scheduling my afternoon appointment, to ask. "An echo is a picture of your heart," she said. For all of my life I'd thought of my heart as that bloody emotional metaphor, a vessel for the feelings that came with loving queers and breaking up, crushes, the tug of humanity, a lonely ache that some years felt like it would never end, a pulsing light that grew as I grew. Now my heart was part of my body, possibly in danger, probably just a cautionary flutter, something we needed to examine. "You're so young," the doctor kept saying. I was a puzzle to her.
The echo took place in a tight, darkened room, where I had to lie on my side on a table with my left arm bent above my head. It was the kind of pose for pillow talk or gauzy fashion shoots in magazines. I let my head rest tentatively against my arm, draping my other arm down my right side, acutely aware of the papery hospital gown, the paunch of my stomach, my bare chest being slicked with clear gel for the wand to touch. The doctor sat close to me in front of a monitor, gently pressing the wand against the skin my heart beat behind. It came to life on the monitor, a riot of staticky grey and white, a dark shape in the middle. The pulsing wobble of a heartbeat from the inside out filled the room.
I couldn't tell if my heart was a good heart or a bad heart. A healthy heart or a struggling heart. The shape on the screen could be anything: an upside down whale, a goblin opening and closing its mouth, a creature trying to figure itself out. There was a flap that opened and closed and looked so lost, so stressed out. I wanted to tell it to calm down. I remembered being twenty two and seeing Sleater Kinney at Irving Plaza in a sea of young queers. The opening band was a two person outfit that bellowed the chorus of one song: your heart is a muscle the size of your fist / keep loving / keep fighting. I remember dancing in that sweaty, full body way I danced when I was younger, uninhibited, unaware of the future, fully alive. I danced with my eyes closed, the bass something I could feel in my chest, my t-shirt damp with sweat. I would cut my eyes across the dark of the room to steal glances of the boyish girls, the heat of a space where anything could happen. I hadn't thought of the song in years and years but here it was, mashed up against the worry in my head as I watched my muscle heart on a screen. I couldn't truly understand that we were inside of my body until the doctor pressed the wand into the slight middle of my chest and we were suddenly looking up at my heart from down below, as if I was a visitor inside my own skin. "Hold your breath," she said, and I would hold it. On the monitor, she pressed buttons and turned knobs. She made the sound change. She counted the waves. She turned the screen from black and white to a disco of red and blue. She drew triangles, dots, shaded lines. She took sixty-four pictures of my heart.
The doctor was brown skinned and looked tired. She sometimes would pause to rub her eye with a gloved hand. When I'd entered the small office, there was a laptop in the corner, the web browser open to the headline of Bannon's dismissal from the White House. Under a stack of manila folders was a copy of Between The World and Me. This little room was still in the throes of the world. My heart was a 2017 heart, a modern day heart, a white woman's heart, trying to hold all the complicated sadness and rage and fear of America. Two weeks later a cardiologist would call to tell me the echo was normal, and there'd be relief but also the lingering question of what now, what next. What is a normal heart in today's world? How am I to best train the muscle that will keep me loving and keep me fighting? At night when I can't sleep, I curl a hand under my t-shirt in the warm bed and press hard enough against my skin that I can feel my heart, and I do not have the answers yet but I am committed to the questions.
xo,
c
P.S.
* This is my TinyLetter's two year anniversary <3. I'm returning to short essays instead of recipes + essays (I think I'm putting food writing on the shelf for a bit). Above all, I'm indebted to everyone who has read these missives in the last two years and shared their kindness, their own stories, their connections. Looking forward to another year of being honest and receiving such great love.
* Save the date! I'll be reading with some fantastic queer writers on September 28 as part of the Inkluded Community Reading. More details + a full line up will be out soon!
* Speaking of soon, next week I'll be posting information about my 6-week workshop, Finish What You Start. Thanks to those of you who reached out about the workshop! I'll be sure to share details as soon as I have them.
* Lots of folks have been sharing this New York Times op-ed, Waiting for a Perfect Protest? It's an important message to white moderates with great historical context. Definitely worth reading.
* The Montrose Center in Houston is trying to raise $500,000 for their LGBTQ Disaster Relief Fund!
* Philadelphia: my brother's acrobatic performance arts troupe Almanac is performing this month at The Painted Bride as part of Philly Fringe - it's really incredible theater!
* Horse + cat = best friends