As I apply to graduate schools and lust for spring, I’m re-examining values. My own and our cultures’. I feel intimate/at odds with the ideas of meritocracy. Hard work. Striving for success. Yes sexy talk for realz.
While studying for the GRE and finishing extensive applications, I realize I’ve pushed my commitment to pleasure to the side. My creative/kinky brain feels like mush while fine tuning and sculpting cognitive skills I haven’t used in decades. Arg! Who commits to “An Orgasm a Day” while relearning quant math and shoving vocabulary words in every crevice possible? As I ask is it possible to do both, I realize I’ve forgotten to wield my most prized sex+ smarts this winter. Flirting.
It is amazing to be ripe, in my forties, full on perspective and adult opportunities (nine years plus of daily meditation practice, ten years of building an established writing life, twenty+ years into my commitment to reproductive justice, social change, anti-racism, pleasure…). I stop and shake my head at how rich my varied, queer, dynamic, radical experience makes me.
Yet as I sit with the Princeton Review GRE study guide in my lap, I feel anything but smart, badAss or sexy. This test taking process mid-career seems both absurd and illuminating. White supremacist in nature, I see how inaccessible it is for so many people. I simultaneously enjoy and revile revisiting my over-achieving academic self who in the past knew exactly how to snag high scores & stellar grades = get where she wanted to go within a wack, whiteness-centering system.
2020 context provides phenomenal contrast to the last time I wrestled with standardized tests in 1995. I love being the age I am because it’s easier to choose to stay curious about experiences vs. be consumed with fear of failure. The outcome will be what it is. I have multiple programs and paths of interest. I simultaneously stare down/call out oppressive systems and engage radical opportunities to create sea- change. Folx keep reminding me “I’m the costumer.” That I get to decide what is right for me to “wear”. Bam! these demanding, bitchy, bossy institutions better cater to, compliment, cosplay with (even better yet crossplay) and seduce this queer queen like nobody’s business. Hmmm, is it even possible for institutions to flirt?
Important question to explore on another SiMC post. In the meantime, I’ve decided I’m a registered student at the University of Flirt. This “schooling” is the opposite of engaging only the critical mind. Flirting is about finding the most deliciously playful parts of every moment. Flirting is about how I creatively connect with someone(s) and exaggerate the fuck out of their best qualities. Similar to code switching, flirting while GRE prepping strengthens the ability to be one part of myself in this moment (brainiac) and another (sexy, kink desiring queer top+bottom) in the next. This skill, untested by the ETS, is really the one high-ranking competitive schools should be shopping for. It’s what life is about- knowing how and when to insert oneself to get the most joy, intelligence, kindness, truth, opportunity and justice out of any given moment. It s extremely important prowess for folx who exist on the margins.
While my math skills are rusty, with a little online practice I realize my flirting skills are not. Instead of self flogging, I easily re-focused and strengthened that area of self. My point is, it’s amazing what we have the capacity to learn, re-learn, forget and fine tune.I can’t wait to get my degree from the University of Flirt. Yes, my certificate/diploma Erin O’Daniel PhD, Doctor of Flirt will look so damn good on my wall.
As with meditation and social change, flirting acknowledges what arises quickly and what passes away. There is power in accepting simple truths and pushing boundaries. Nothing stays the same. Most everything constantly shifts. How fun and daunting to use life, allow life to offer up opportunities, embrace all that comes and goes, to fine tune, flex strong parts of ourselves. Get to know the wildly contrasting interests and desires that live right here in my body. Yes here’s to change happening in gentle steady radical ways everyday, connection allowing us to experience the fullness of life, resisting and allowing in some seasons more dramatically than others. As the ingredients of mortality flirt with what Is now, next, nubile and delicious, we as sensual beings flirt with this sense of freedom for each other, our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our lives.
Last night my meditation group talked about deprogramming. University of Flirt rigorously teaches students to notice moments when doors open in our lives and how to walk through into different worlds. U of F trains us to let go of old ways of thinking and trying to control the experience. We step into a more pleasure oriented way of seeing the world beyond black and white, right/wrong boxes.
While filling out these master’s programs apps, I spent time entering names of classes and grades from both undergraduate institutions I attended. Even though I worked my education (pure learning pleasure!) and noticed a distinct difference in required classes at the beginning vs upper level radical brilliance at end (Literature of Dissent, Womxn Writing Autobiography, Race and White Culture, etc.), nothing asked me to discover who I am as a pleasure activist/become a flirt expert. Oh damn imagine the foreplay in that A+!?
University of Flirt has body autonomy and play and intelligence and mind science built in. All the classes, all the art, all the power to move beyond where and who we are right now. No racist, heteronormative fear-based patriarchy sizing up what and how we learn. Rigorous learning- yes. Applied flirting in new arenas- most definitely.
My soul craves alternative styles of learning + growing + building relationship/community. Thank you reproductive justice bike collectives, meditation family. writing group, and University of Flirt. No white supremacy hammering my head, skin, soul to fit in. Fuck that hurts. I don’t ever want to do that to myself again. University of Flirt PhD here I come and forEva. Our brilliance, our bodies, our beauty.