On Taking Up Space

By Angel Lemke

Just a few days after I met her, Andrea overheard me apologizing to a classmate for taking up too much space; I had sprawled my books and other academic paraphernalia across a couple desks while working on something between classes. “Don’t apologize for that; women apologize for taking up space too often.” If I didn’t know I liked her before that, I definitely knew then.

It also stuck with me, though, because it seemed kind of funny, her telling me to be comfortable taking up space. For one thing, I probably have 200 pounds on her. I take up a lot more space just by walking in the room. For another, I self-identify as a butch. No matter how many varieties of butch I meet, no matter how expansive a definition I might give (see the title essay in S. Bear Bergmann’s Butch is a Noun for my favorite), I feel I can say confidently that butches take up space. Some of us swagger more than others, but demureness is not really in our line. Part of inhabiting my body authentically demands that I take up space in ways that, we are told, are decidedly not feminine.

But on this International Butch Appreciation Day – that is, according to Facebook holidays – I am struck by how difficult I find it to take up space.

About a month ago, my moving plans fell through, and too late for me to renew the lease on my apartment of the last four years. The fallout is that for at least the next couple months, I live an itinerant existence, depending on, as they say, the kindness of strangers…well, actually good friends and my grandma.

I find it deeply unsettling, being in other people’s spaces so much.

I was in a long-distance relationship a few years back; I used to fly from Columbus to LA with a supply of towels for the week in tow because I didn’t want to leave a single piece of laundry behind. After we broke up, this became a symbol of the relationship’s dysfunction, the unnecessary and costly lengths which I would go to in order to avoid disturbing her. When she left Columbus after a visit, my place would be wrecked, the mark of her presence everywhere, dirty dishes, rifled drawers, packaging from purchases, boxes to be mailed back to LA to meet her. When I left her place, you couldn’t tell anyone had been there. I was fastidious, memorizing where on the kitchen window ledge her olive oil bottle rested, drying off the shower curtain with the towels I’d brought along. I would not let myself be accused of being an inconvenience. I would take up as little space as possible.

But I learned that behavior before she came along. I have known for a long time that to be loved one must not be too much trouble.

And this has something to do with butchness for me, as well. In conversation with another butch about a fierce, room-filling femme, my interlocutor says, “She says I don’t talk enough.”
“Yeah, she used to say that to me, too.”

“Yeah, but I think that’s part of who we [meaning butches and bois] are.”

We sit back and bask in the presence of girls who take up space. We swagger to our seats when we do it, and we do not cross our legs, but they are the show and we are the spectators. The theater is theirs; our seats are rented.

Or as that butch said later in that same conversation, “It’s her world; we just live in it.”

(Side note, lest I be mistaken in my focus on butches: there’s nothing I like better than a femme who fills up the room with bravado and laughter. Take up space, ladies, in every way you can. See also, Ivan Coyote on youtube.)

In this “housing crisis” of mine, the hardest part has been that I’ve been told by some loved ones that there’s no room for me, that my presence is too much for them, that I take up too much space. You’d think I’d be angry about that, but the truth is, a big part of me believes them. Part of me thinks that taking up any space at all is too much.

I spent the night at a friend’s place last night, a friend who offered her home the moment she knew about my situation, and for more than just the here-and-there night of crashing that I’m willing, reluctantly, to take her up on, even though her place is small and my staying required the moving of a piece of furniture into storage.

She had to offer at least three times before I even considered taking her up on it. Every friend who’s offered shelter has had to do so in the face of my most apologetic, insecure self, repeatedly asking, “Are you sure you don’t mind? Really, you can say no. Really, it’s okay.”

But today, in honor of my brethren butches and my sister femmes, I’m going to try—really try—to just say “Thank you” and feel lucky in the knowing that the space my friends offer is there for me to take up.

Writer and activist Angel Lemke is a welcome contributor to POTB.

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto