Figuring It Out

For Pride Month, a primer on pronouns

BY SARA PEQUEÑO backtalk@indyweek.com

It’s never really the right time to come out, but I’ve always been someone people listen to.

“Queer” is the word I use to describe my sexual preferences and gender. It’s an umbrella term for me. I try not to think about it too much when it comes to dating: I like who I like, and that’s that.

Gender is a little different. Some days I feel like a girl; seldom do I feel like a “woman.”

I tried using “they/them” pronouns (in addition to “she/her”) during the gray area between my 2019 college graduation and the start of COVID-19. I was writing my name on a whiteboard at my old job and needed to include my pronouns. I kept writing “she/they,” only to erase the second word.

I weighed whether a pronoun switch would confuse too many people. I wondered whether I truly felt this way or if I was making all of it up. I talked to my therapist about it. I talked to my trans friends and my queer friends. I decided it wasn’t time to come out yet; I had some stuff to figure out.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, I have had time to think about my gender and sexuality, and I have realized that I have always known who I was. It’s other people who didn’t understand.

A friend from back home once described our hometown in rural North Carolina as a place where everyone knew he was gay but no one really gave him a hard time about it. I don’t think anyone gave me a hard time about it either, but I remember what the people around me were saying.

The first time I heard “gay” as an insult was in the carpool line at my elementary school. I think it was described to me as “boys who kiss boys and girls who kiss girls” in a tone that suggested the very idea was absurd. From then on, I knew I had to associate “gay” and “bad” to blend in, because that’s how everyone else was acting.

There are lots of memories like this. A classmate once told me her parents never let her watch Teletubbies because they were “gay.” There was a teacher who told two of my male classmates, “Don’t do that or people will think you’re gay.” I was always worried that my eyes would linger too long in the locker room and someone would call me out.

It took a long time for me to realize that these weren’t things other people worried about. I thought everyone else was also living in their head.

Growing up, a lot of people around me were going through things that seemed much more important at the time. It felt out of the question that I could be anything other than an ally, but my “rational approach” didn’t make the thoughts go away. I wasn’t really thinking about anyone in particular; I was just thinking about it.

There are a lot of people who will see my photo and tell me I’m still a woman and deny me the agency of making my own decisions about my gender. They do it because that’s all they can see me as. They do it to put me in my place—to put me back in a box I never really fit into.

I don’t really care; I know who I am. Now you do, too. W

Chapel Hill

15 Minutes

BY HANNAH KAUFMAN backtalk@indyweek.com

How’d you first discover your love for trivia?

Growing up, at 7:30 every evening, my mom and I would put Jeopardy! on and watch it in the background, and over time, I would pay more attention to it. I’d compete with my mom to see who could answer first or see if either of us actually knew the answer. I also played Trivial Pursuit a few times—never actually how the game is supposed to be played with the board and everything, but just asking questions. And then getting older, going here to UNC, going to trivias up and down Franklin Street, I always had a great time. I feel like I have a random assortment of general knowledge that serves absolutely no purpose besides, you know, trivia.

Tell me about your preparation process.

It takes about three hours every week to write all the questions and pick out the music for the music round. Two rounds do not change: The first round is news. I write those questions later in the week, closer to trivia, so I have a full week of news to choose from and pick out six questions. [For the] music round, I just peruse Spotify, random searches of genres, decades, and grab a bag of songs. The other categories and rounds change week to week just depending on how I’m feeling—I might get some inspiration from something that goes on in my daily life or an idea I’ve had in the back of my mind.

What are some other categories you do?

I do Before and After, where every question has a two-part clue and the answer to the first part leads directly into the answer to the second part. For instance, one I came up with was “A Florida man wakes up in a blended family.” And that would be “Tom Brady Bunch.”

One category that I do every so often is Movie Title Math. So I’ll give you two movies that have a number in them, but I’m not going to tell you the number. For example: “Cheaper by the __ + __ Samurai.” So Cheaper by the Dozen plus Seven Samurai: the answer is 19. Sometimes I do a random knowledge one or a science round, or a couple of rounds every so often about local stuff, like UNC history or Chapel Hill history or fun facts around our area.

What’s your favorite moment from trivia?

Last summer. My mom knows I do trivia and she had been wanting to come, but she lives in Winston-Salem, so it’s an hour and a half drive … not the most convenient for her. But she really wanted to come to my trivia, so she came out one Wednesday. It was a really busy crowd, so she was able to see everybody there and how popular my trivia was. I knew she was coming, so I did this round about famous moms as a little nod to her. I said, “My mom’s here, let’s celebrate her this round.” Overall, the night was nothing too special—there wasn’t a record-breaking number of teams or a tight final score, but it was just fun, my mom seeing what I do. W

Catch trivia at Linda’s Downbar every Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Visit our website to read the full version of this article.