Diary #9: "Who's Selling Utopia This Week?"

“Oh, you’re going back to WACKYJAC’s corporate offices now?” she asks.

I blink. Does that mean that when I get back to my little grape-iMac-Badtz Maru-stuffed enclave there will be a personal assistant waiting for me with today’s press releases, a travel agenda and fistfulls of petty cash -- maybe a steaming mocha and my daily-obsessive-sammich (fyi: poppy bagel, scallion cream cheese, salmon, Bermuda onions, tomato)?

No, not quite. I smile and say as much.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were a local business...” she intones.

Ah, there’s a different vision with that turn of phrase. “Local business.” The little guys. The one’s who do it for love, you know, not that money stuff. Like little coffee shops and organic veggies and homemade soap. The one’s that cost more but you’re supposed to feel better about. The one’s you won’t see on tv. (The one’s with beautifully-pierced and impeccably-banged helper-grrls postering the WACKYJAC gospel with wheatpaste from every bus stop? No, no, must let go of this idea of having personal assistants...)

What are we, anyway? Not feminist megacorp. Not a crunchy undie-stand at the farmer’s market, either. Not an anarcho-lingerie collective, though someone ought to get on that one. Which vision are we peddling with our business, anyway? (And why does the word “business” sour in my mouth from time to time?)

I find myself, and WACKYJAC, sitting at the collision of social movements, subcultural vibes, group-mind-formations. I imagine that what I’m doing here points to a utopia somewhere down the line. I imagine that there can still be such things as “utopias” without being alienating and oppressive to somebody.

There’s lots of utopias envisioned by these colliding communities we straddle. Erotic utopias, earth-loving utopias, mom-valuing utopias, body-worshipping utopias, Goddess utopias, culinary utopias where eating is nothing but shameless and ordinary. I adore utopian visions. I do commerce in ideals and I traffic in dreams. Besides, I’m an Aquarius sharing a birthday with Lord Byron and Roe v. Wade, double-wrapped in cliche, and I can take it.

Here’s where I throw up my hands, however. Someone else is always trying to tell me how their utopia is the right utopia, and instructing me on what I have to do to get there. That’s fine, for them. Most of the world seems rather wrapped up in this game, and it's easy to think that right wing zealot types have cornered the market on it. Does this sound at all familiar? “Be good now, and paradise will be around the corner, we promise. Don’t see it yet? You must not be being good enough. Keep trying. Really. The good people see it. Why can’t you?”

Could be that ol’ Protestant work ethic, could be the on-the-streets call to go anticapitalist and disavow one’s ties to the system. Either way, whether I’m working for the man or against the man, I don’t have the patience. I’m setting my sights on the sorts of utopias that already exist, those rare shared moments that erupt without notice, the dreams that show up unannounced and confound all of our politely-organized politicking and make us do something loud and a little sideways of ourselves.

For the record, my utopian business ideal is to do my job so well that we don't need feminism anymore, to put myself out of business so I can go write on a foggy hill somewhere about something else for a change. I don’t claim to know where “real change” happens, but I do suppose that feminists and witches and anarchists and peace activists and pervs and queers and sluts and freaks all need to eat in the meantime. I’d rather be fed by the tribe of undie lovin’ feminists, personally. I’d like to think I feed you something back, too.

xo.
undiegirl