Tonight, I want start with something that pisses me off… specifically because I am not normal.

I’m not allowed anywhere else other than venues like this to rant about what pisses me because I am not a friendless English Professor, a rude and classless hipster or Trump on Twitter.

But there are two words tonight that I’d like to clear up once for all.

A COINCIDENCE is defined as two chance things that happen the SAME way.

Medieval Latin root – “coincidere” gave us the bastardized English word coincide – meaning to agree, or be the same. So coincidences exist in the same space or they are things of the same nature, like people you never knew as a child, that you meet as an adult, you find out they grew up in an overly religious household just like you did, and you wind up getting high and drunk as you become new best friends/neighbors in the same bar. You also both become alcoholic and excessively promiscuous for the same reasons!

IRONY, however, is the opposite of all that. Irony means when the opposite of what you expect or want to happen occurs, or the opposite of what you want to hear is said.

It is radically and intentionally different. The Greek root “eiron” (which coincidentally sounds like moron, was derived by Socrates’ method of treating morons as if they were wise…) actually the root word itself translates to ‘simulated ignorance’ or to mock something.

So, as a wildly improbable example, if we were to find out that Trump is bisexual and RuPaul met in disguise in Acapulco, things happened and they have a love child from an orgy with a Mexican-American billionaire business partner being deported because of her becoming a victim of his new immigration law and due to family shame he loses his fortune and has a stroke – this is not a funny coincidence.

THIS would be what we would call hilariously ironic…for him.

So, there you are. Irony is not coincidence, even though situations in life can be both coincidental or ironic.

All clear? Good. Now…back to me.

All my life, I’ve desperately wanted to fit in, with any likeable group. I mean sure, we all have people who surround us from work and school and even in our family that we love…and the rest of them. It’s no coincidence that you have wanted to fit in with some group, desirable to you, as well because you no doubt have some folks you love that surround you too…and the rest of them.

We all want to be surrounded by love and accepted. Humans are coincidentally the same that way.

It becomes sickeningly ironic when you decide to express a part of your identity to be the same as a group you feel a part of and sometimes even loved within.

But, within that same group…there’s the rest of them. The ones that will never truly accept you. The ones that tout unity and love equal for all, but only show it to some.

I just so happen to be a part of a few human (at least I think most of them are) groups that have this as an issue.

I’m a part of the LGBTQ community – but some feel bisexuality demands that I ‘pick a side’ as it were, because being married to a man for 15 years and after divorcing him to be in a happy, same- sex relationship is too socially confusing and therefore shouldn’t be allowed.

You think YOU’RE confused…I was married for fifteen years…I thought orgasms were a myth!

And then there’s the NERD/ASPIRING WRITER community – I follow darkly sarcastic cult comics, wrote fan-fiction through high school to not kill myself from loneliness and even became an indie author, screenwriter and comic…all because I love the other nerds that do too. Alas, there are few that will never let me truly be IN because of not being able to readily find something I’ve written in a Rotten Tomatoes lineup and (and this is really the main problem for some of them) I don’t currently have a penis.

For this, there’s a LOT of things that need to be explained in detail to me about the IRONY of misogynistic capitalism in publishing and production.

So…what? I’m supposed to believe that forcing the executives to NOT represent the population at large can equate proper entertainment decisions or that Halle Berry really DID make a good IRONIC Catwoman???

Maybe I’m just confused or maybe we COINCIDENTALLY need equal pay and access in this industry so it reflects half of everyone any damned way?

And yet another group I belong to are Black Southerners. When you’re a not-so-skinny black girl from New Orleans, there are certain things that you’re expected to like. If you are this same girl and you want to join in with family laughs and make friends easily, you’ll keep trying to force coincidences, putting yourself in situations to say you like things that you don’t.

Eventually, ‘Talking White’, eating differently, getting British Puns and being black you very quickly become the IRONIC joke of the family.

For example: Gumbo is a symbol of Southern-ness more than it is a dish. Whenever I am out of town staying in someone’s home, especially in Texas and California for some strange reason, they ask me to make it for them.

They say: Oh! You’re from New Orleans? Isn’t that a coincidence…my nephew’s girlfriend is from Lafayette and SHE made us some Gumbo…so you…? I’m supposed to know how. They take one look at me and they assume that I do.

I don’t.

They probably assume events in my childhood as well, such as me being in the kitchen with my grandmother, only knee high by her side, cleaning and chopping onions and peeling and deveining shrimp, following her step by step instructions and watching her every move to imprint upon my mind the real way to men’s’ hearts.

It’s a rude and IRONIC awakening to people who get to know me to find out that, no, that didn’t happen.

The few times I have EVER been in the kitchen at my grandmother’s side was to bother her while she was cooking for everyone else, to stop cooking and watch me dance, sing, or force her to listen to me read aloud a story that I wrote. And whenever I did want to learn to do anything in the kitchen, it was to bake sweets for my already deserving friends who coincidentally danced, sang and wrote with me, not to win anyone over.

True to her IRONIC form, I had a rebel grandmother that always told me, ‘forget marriage and kids and go for your dreams’. So, there’s that.

Back to Gumbo…Gumbo is usually cooked for and served to groups of people at a time. Making it is a social event and the few folks who make it well are usually known for it in their social circles. I’ve had the honor of tasting it several times in groups that I then wanted to be a part of from some of the most reputable makers of it in and around my hometown. I’ve even sampled gourmet versions of it and Gumbos that actually won awards. Every single time I’ve tried it, no matter the maker or the version, I’ve walked away with the same feeling.

Gumbo, to me, is mental equivalent to what a dirty lake must taste like. Eating it does not make me feel more African or Caribbean, Native American or French-Creole. It just makes me say to myself, ‘Well here’s ANOTHER thing that’ll make you an IRONIC weirdo to everyone you meet!’ The only thing that makes this experience ten times worse, and yet at the same time somewhat redeeming, is when there is okra in the Gumbo.

Okra is one of those vegetables that is either loved or hated by people. Whether chopped and added to a lake of Gumbo or battered and deep fried try vegetable fat, most folks know that it is an acquired taste and ALLOW you to not like it.

You have to get a PASS – the OKRA PASS.

So when it’s in the Gumbo, it’s easier for me to wave it away by preference in local social situations without fear of being IRONICALLY rude to someone’s offer or subjecting myself to a public flogging.

Isn’t it funny how there are things that we are supposed to like and assumed to know a lot about because of the way we look and where we come from? And also, isn’t it a bit cheeky that there is a ‘they’ that can tell us what we are ‘allowed’ to not like something? COINCIDENCE???

I guess this is why I’ve tried over the years again and again to sample this and that, do things others expected me to do, taste things, etc. I know that deep in my inner being I truly don’t like any of this shit, but I’ll still try it…IRONICALLY!

In some sense, there are things in life we all do this with. We only notice that were just trying things that we’d rather not even bother with if people would just leave us the hell alone about them – certain expected careers, well researched and common degrees, marriage as the ideal, having loads of kids, owning property, episodes of the Real Housewives…it’s all just social pressure.

Now some would say that these types of thoughts are just me expressing the limitations and walls that I have created and built around myself. To some degree, I guess that may be true.

But it would be ignorant to deny that prejudices and stereotypical generalizations are created from these types of expectations for all of us socially and secularly.

We shun IRONY in people. We only feel comfortable with those with which we presume coincidences.

We all have some range of expectations in our adult lives that come from what we look like and what people expect from people that look the way we do.

And there also seems to be a parallel list of things that we are also expected to not like, and even being disgusted by. And it’s okay if they are COINCIDENTAL to the beliefs of a certain group…so if you’re a writer, you can only be traditionally published and wield a penis to truly know what you’re doing – or to be able to prove you can…if you’re a black girl from the ghetto, you are NOT ALLOWED to know ANYTHING about Monty Python or admire people like John Cleese or without also being neurotically obsessed with Doctor Who.

It’s not allowed.

That AND, you know, British rule, colonialist enslavement, bad teeth and tea…I’m a black girl from a poor urban area I am NOT ALLOWED to like any of that shit.

The world around us made these lists. I know people listening or reading this will doubt what I say, but it’s true. If this were not true, we wouldn’t have worries surrounding such things like racism and cultural appropriation or gentrification or Kanye!

My point is that lots of the limits that are created internally can, and usually do, originate from our environments, our nurtured conditioning, and social expectations and people who coincidentally love us…to death, or at the very least to the point of sucking down as many Zolofts and Xanax and whiskey as a Stepford wife.

Whether based on COINCIDENCES or IRONY, good things or bad, stereotypes are still just stereotypes. Folks who know me know that I will call myself a weirdo in the loving and IRONIC connotation. I know that I wave my freak flag high at work and in public and at the most inopportune and IRONIC of times...thoroughly to the embarrassment of friends and family alike.

This is one of the things that makes me so socially awkward. But it is my superhero-like awareness of my weird ways, THIS gives me more FUN COINCIDENCES with those I love being around.

I love the QUEER community – QUEER LAND.

In QUEER LAND, I don’t have to worry about fitting in or picking just one gender or sexually. I can have it all! I’m loved for all I CAN be.

I’m finally accepted…In Queer Land - I am IN.

And OUT!

I love Queer Land so much, I’m trying to re-create it everywhere I can!

A Real Queer Land – a truest version of a world where all are actually equal. We do what we love and get paid the SAME.

We do WHO we love and when we announce our love to our friends, we’ll get treated by our friends the SAME WAY as before.

We never have to over-explain to make some other person feel more comfortable.

If we want, we all can be black, from the south, thicker than a snicker and avoid okra, always, and especially in the Gumbo that half of us don’t even eat anyway!

We can be black, from the ghetto and simultaneously have a passion for puns and British humor, whilst hating slavery and ethnically-provoked war…DRINKING GOOD TEA AND LAGER and not have to concurrently be a Dr. Who fiend and EVEN take excellent care of our teeth!

I stand with the freaks who believe that no one gets to tell us what to like, what not to like. And I hope tonight that I have proven that all of life may have situational irony and coincidences, but life is better served with equality and options.

Coincidentally, if I were to start blending in with the ‘normals’, I wouldn’t know myself anymore and I will be plagued with depression, anxiety and internal conflicts that will make me drink even more than I do now!

It’s no coincidence living up to this ideal is much harder nowadays that I have a daughter growing up to be very much a beautifully ironic weirdo like her mother.

Know what? I’ll just get her to try some okra. It’ll be good for her!

Thank you.