Test - Lesbian Essays and Other Writings by Nicki HastieLesbian Essays and Other Writings by Nicki Hastie

Proper pockets

I like proper pockets
which give full access,
not a con that's a flap.

All this a record of me.
I use words in a
connected confession:

occasional pleasure and
a list of guilt become less
embarrassing sliced out.

I live inside others and
beside myself, on standby,
curious, always the

spectrum alongside.
It's OK, I carry on,
the same me.

Freedom

I write because
there is no
prescribed path.

To change course,
to make changes,
to manoeuvre an
immensely long way.

I imagine feet
hunkering down
in the driving seat.

I always knew

I always knew I wanted to write
When I was a child
I wanted a book deal.
I was 40 before I was ready
to express enough with gusto.
The age you manage, with
the addition of chilli, to have
the balls to advance.
So, that's now.

There's me, the younger sibling

I can see that no one is managing.
Something vital is just wrong, some
of it genuinely might crumble.

Looking at our strands, I engage
and involve. I need to stop
the picture wobbling.

I cling to and brace you,
so nothing goes wrong
in the city of Lego.

There's a rebel in her

At five years old, just try,
in the healthiest way, to talk.
At 14, just be nice and kind,
pretend to be perfect,
just do things quietly.
The curse of adolescence:
to go over what went wrong.

She doesn't miss the sound
of 80s tragedy. A teenager
setting out crying,
she tries to declare;
nobody wants it discussed.
She insists on a voice.
There's a rebel in her.

When I was young

When I was young
my mother was
good at talking,
my father was
the smell of
formaldehyde.

Schools can break you.
I turned to relationships -
that's how we learn in life.
My way is to bottle it up.

Later in life
I don't have children.
Later in life
I sit on my sofa.
I'm anxious.

I sit on the sofa, gurgling.
I have a conversation with me.

Somewhere in between

The 70s taught that forcing
people to change led to depression.

I lived through 1981. Defiant.
Somewhere in between sweet
and subversive. Apparently,
I played a questionable boy,
and then I turned to politics.

I wanted to have the words
to talk to a therapist.

Feels like it's just you

To a child everybody feels older.
You're walking into a cold wind
of grown women who love
to be like everybody else.
The memory makes you feel
empty in the wrong places.
Your true muse would be
transgressive, with no doubt of
themselves. Soon you will
trouble a person, and then
another. Soon it will become hard,
all the time. Your life wriggling
in a binbag of haunted depth.

Silent for so long

Silent for so long,
what you don't know
literally inside you.
People expected me
to play the cello, while
other girls were lazy.

I enjoyed studying,
talking about books.
I put an unhealthy amount
of pressure on myself.
I was trying to relieve
what is distracting me.

I think about
my own existence.
Lying there, obsessed
about a satisfying death.

The Teacher

The teacher I adore is someone who explains
it's about liking yourself. It's a quality
warmth of friends. I am enamoured.

Other people make it more uncomfortable.
Don't like that I'm impressed.
I feel awkward; I'm in conflict.

I watch moments burst.
It's hard to remember
the pleasure above all that.

The Other

Mid-teens are layered with power.
To be different looks like lack.

There's a defined style,
surface markers that could
make you feel better about yourself.
The Other is a rough, scratchy noise.

This is the downside to a limited world.
Price to pay for yielding to their way.

All is revealed

At the beginning of my teens
I was into a boyfriend,
oddly performing
as one of the girls.
Trying on their role
in fantasies of youth.

At their end, the memory
of a breast wobbles.
It makes perfect sense
that bras burned.
There's more
to female sexuality.

Parents are going to affect you

Stories taught me to read.
Parents are going to affect you.

My father was his job - in daylight hours.
The truth isn't always being gathered.

I'd watched my dad;
you can learn from mistakes.

I can't stop watching. I try
to plot a different route.

I find I'm not sure
what I actually feel.

An open letter

I haven't a dress, I can't
look like a girl. I find
t-shirts to crush my breast.
I want no part of manliness.
I am allowed imagination,
to have a broad view
of my name. Inside,
I appear like I mean.

Not being

My mother could have no money.
Instead, like a child to my father.
He was able to be because he was smart.
Looking back, I was in a constant state
of outrage. The work culture needs to change.
Being a mother and not being paid:
it's hard to feel passionate about their world.

At 17

Is there something wrong with you?
Other children are happy!

My sister called me an animal.
At 17, I was not young.

Having a sister was catastrophic.
Don't try it!

I didn't really understand who suffered.
The result was a workaholic.

If you don't have time to think
it's difficult to find happiness.

Not quite enough

There's a serious intensity
which is not quite enough
in Hereford.

Not quite the real thing.
Mostly, there is only me,
bleating:

Hereford is
a tiny, simple place.

Working out

The life writers put into context.
She is shown conversations,
how women are drawn to women.
That's why I can tell that will be me.

I play a woman working out problems.
There's a lot of feeling.
It's part dialogue, but mainly many,
many thoughts and characters.

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