Loving Like A Mestiza

For someone that has never had a lover, only fuckers, I sure the hell write about love all the time.

This song is beautiful. Two wrongs don't make it right. It's about loving and respect. Having manners and negotiating the contradictions of love. I'm a mestiza lover. Loving in the borderlands space where as a survivor, love wasn't introduce the conventional way. Father and son relationship extended beyond a platonic to a sexually abusive way of parenthood. Father's aren't suppose to love that way. I'm not suppose to experience love that way. I was a mestiza lover. Loving my father and hating him with just a pen and paper in my defense.

I came out at the age of 12 and started having sex at the age of 13 with older men that never loved me. I knew they didn't, but knowing that they didn't love me never stopped me from dreaming they could one day. I was a mestiza lover. Dreaming of a world where I wasn't the only queer Chicano. I knew they existed but I would only see them when I closed my eyes. The duality between the real world and the world I dreamt was blurred. Both worlds made up the voice inside my head that stopped me from ever cutting too deep with the razor.

In the 'real world' I was battling with insecurities from my father's perverted way of loving; my mother's short tempered, depressed and verbally violent way of loving; the older fuckers that objectified my body and would love me by having me suck their brains off; my eldest brother whose love had abandoned me after a drunk night of driving. I was battling but something about living in the 'real world' was still gratifying. Maybe it had to do with my dreams. I would dream that on father's day I would have a father to celebrate with. That he wasn't doing time in prison because his hand ran freely all over my sister's and I's bodies. I dreamt that my mother told me she loved me every day and when she would arrive home after work I wouldn't fear for my emotional safety because she was glad to see her children. I would close my eyes and picture a line of men just waiting to love me. They didn't want to fuck me. They just wanted to hold me inside their arms and remind me that I'm beautiful just the way I am. Lastly, I would dream that I stopped my brother from ever leaving us. That he found a job and no longer needed to travel to vegas for a job fair. I might have been dreaming but something inside, at the core of my heart told me that them dreams could be my 'real world' one day. I was a mestiza lover.

I was a mestiza lover.

I am a mestiza lover.

When I am mean to you, I am mean because i want a reaction out of you. I want you to care about the words I'm throwing at you. Care because i care about you. The only thing about this is that after a while, being mean hurts too much to bare. Usually when the pain becomes unbearable you have just gotten started and usually unwilling to stop. I am a mestiza lover.

Loving like a mestiza means that I carry my heart on my hand and pass a piece of it every time i shake someone's hand or caress their body. I will love forever. However, loving forever means I put my life on the line. Subject-Object to exploitation, violence, discrimination and abandonment. Loving like a mestiza means everything and nothing. Loving like a mestiza means every second is a role of the dice. Always shifting and always loving but never guaranteeing.