“Not Like Us” by Marie Cartier

I walk my dog at night—usually after midnight I walk in my neighborhood with my dog, Zuma, a dead ringer for Toto from the Wizard of Oz. We are both quiet. I have a small flask of chardonnay I keep in my breast pocket. I might photograph the moon. I might do Wordle and send my result to my wife. Answer a few emails, but I don’t stay on the phone.

I say my “gratitudes” out loud – at least ten of them before I even look at my phone…I say, “I’m grateful for…” (fill in the blank)—the fact that my truck has a moon roof, and I opened it on the way home; My wife is cooking chicken soup; I saw a former student at the coffee shop; I wrote the web footnotes to chapter 12 of the 2^nd ed. of my book; due to the publisher this spring – these are all real gratitudes I said out loud yesterday.

In any case I walk and say my gratitudes and Zuma gets the news of the neighborhood dogs by sniffing the edges of everyone’s lawns and I have some wine and the moon shines on us in its different phases.

Takes about 45 minutes every night of the week.

From years in theater and performance art and now traveling an hour and a half commute from my house to work, I am used to and still do get home late – around 11 or later—it’s not every night but enough that I am used to walking my dog later and going to bed late and sleeping in (hopefully). It’s a routine that works with my schedule.

On one such night during my work week, I heard a voice yell, “Why do you walk your dogs so late? Why don’t you do it earlier? You’re waking my dogs up!”

Now, mind you my dog never makes a sound on these walks. She walks with me, and we walk …her sniffing here and there…sometimes jumping up on me for a scratch behind her ears…and of course I am on a dog walk so of course once or twice we stop, and I pick up dog poop—a definite rule of anyone walking a dog. But we are quiet, people are asleep. The only time Zuma might bark is because sometimes we see a fellow nighttime traveler walking the neighborhood—sometimes taking out their trash, or also walking their dog.

So—why do you walk your dog so late? Why don’t you do it earlier?

My immediate reaction without a lot of forethought was to yell back, “I just got home from work.”

This was met with silence. And I moved on. I had just come home from a pretty grueling day—an hour and 45 minutes commute after teaching 4 classes…I was teaching the prison industrial complex, rape culture, the disappeared women in Juarez in my Gender Women’s Studies classes, and the masquerading law during which gay people had to wear three items of “gender appropriate” clothing and were often beaten or worse by police –the history of LGBTQ+ and activism class…so, a typical day for me and I unwind at night by walking with my dog and a glass of wine, “I just got home from work.”

There. I’m not like you, I thought. I’m not like you—I work late. I get home late. I don’t work 9 to 5. Lots of us don’t. I work late. I get home late. I walk my dog under the moon.

This home where I was chastised for walking late was the only home in my neighborhood, which flew a Trump flag in the last election.

Not everyone works 9 to 5, buddy. Some of us work nights.

This 2025 Super Bowl half time show really spoke to me—Serena doing the Crip Walk because she’s from Compton and learned it in the neighborhood. She did the Crip Walk after winning Wimbledon and got severely dissed for it—why? Because apparently a Wimbledon winner doesn’t act like that—but, she was a winner, and she did act like that—so does a Wimbledon winner get to act like that—do a Crip Walk after winning?

She won. She wanted to do her own dance on the court—so she did it. Do it. Is that what a Wimbledon player looks like? Yup.

Apparently not to those who thought that Serena dancing joyously after winning, becoming a winner, was still “too much.”

I was thrilled to see her do it.  Do it. While Lamar sang, “Not Like Us.”

Project 2025 would like to legislate all of us to be like…who? A hetero-normative patriarchal …etc. —but we are, most of, in our own communities “like us.” We are not like Project 2025 Stepford wives – we are like us.

The truth is none of us are like any others exactly. And none of us in our groups are exactly like any other groups.

I definitively do not want to take anything away from the real Black experience of that half-time show. This was a shout out that said clearly, and with Serena dancing for ten seconds during it to one of the largest audiences possible—this was a shout out that yes, Wimbledon winners dance like this, Black experience is Black experience and valuable, to be kept, to be praised—and not apologized for.

What I do want to illustrate here is right now in the US there is a massive yell coming from the White House, “Why do you have to walk your dog at night? So late?… Do the Crip Walk? Be a lesbian? Be transgender? Need an abortion? Need to have a living wage? Work for a living? Be undocumented for thirty years and have a family and live in the US?

Why?

Why aren’t you like “us”? More often this looks like: White. Christian. Upper class. etc.

Because most of us, most of us are not like each other—we are diverse, our groups are different, and we tolerate each other with equity and the idea that we all make a melting pot and we like it that way—often, hopefully. America is better for having all of us. A culture responding to the Statue of Liberty—bring in those “struggling to be free.”

We tolerate each other, and hopefully often we find ways to enjoy each other’s company.

I just got off work. I’m walking my dog, and it is dark, and we are under the moon after a twelve plus hour day. This is my street, too, and I do this, and this is my shot. This is my street, too—my “shot” of a day and I’m not going to waste it. Not even this night. This small routine.

We are not like each other and trying to homogenize this to make it so…what? Legislate trans people out of existence? Make it so a ten-year-old must have a baby after she’s been raped? She has to have the baby?

We will still be us and you cannot make everyone be like you…it may be you that you have your kids grow up gay and that will make them happy rather than sad, or dead from suicide. The world with Black people and other peoples of color being empowered. Women continuing to have autonomy. Somebody may always be yelling out the window, “Why do you have to walk your dog so late?” Why do you have to be gay? A strong woman? A person with AIDS? …

Fill in the blank. Why can’t you….

Because I am not like you. I’m like me. I can’t be like you. Because I’m like me, and mine. It’s not gonna happen for me to be like you. I’m gonna be like me, and mine.

And I like me and mine.