The Day Grace Jones Changed My Life
"Do what you feel when you feel like it if you feel like it."
Two years ago, my life got turned whoops-side down when I fell in love with a woman while in a committed relationship with a man. It caught me by surprise, which I took to mean that there were parts of myself that I was ignoring. I went back and forth, up and down between the two of them, not because of their differences, but because of the differences in who I was with each of them, i.e. dominant vs submissive, masculine vs feminine, passive vs combative. All of these diametric facets were pouring out of the same, one me, just never at the same time. Since then I've been on a quest to find out what is the sum of all my parts. What does it all mean? Watching this 1985 interview of Madame Grace Jones on the Australian current affairs show "Day By Day" gave me an answer; It's all about the different parts, not what they average out to be.
I resonated particularly with Grace's views of gender norms. I grew up in a single parent home, so I didn't have clear distinctions of what a man should do or be in comparison to a woman. I watched my mother do it all. I also went through a big "tomboy" phase in elementary school (I was really close with my older brother. I wore baggy JNCO jeans, and I would steal his shoes). Over-analyzing, I figured that phase was directly tied to my first sapphic adventure. Maybe it was, or maybe it wasn't. More than likely, in both instances, much like the time I wanted my family to call me Kristy instead of Kristen, I was simply doing what I felt when I felt like it because I felt like it. It makes sense that sometimes I feel masculine and other times I feel feminine. I am made of both a man and a woman.