Rainbow Voices
A Student Publication Georgetown University LGBTQ Resource Center
Letter From the Editors Dear Lovers of Art,
Rainbow Voices was born out of the need for more open, authentic, vulnerable LGBTQ expression on campus. Though Georgetown does not provide many outlets for queer art, it certainly has no shortage of artists. By creating Rainbow Voices, we hoped to give these artists the space they needed share themselves with the world---free from limits, free from rejection, and free from judgment. We have broken the publication into four sections: Suppression, Depression, Expression and Redemption. Inspired by the artwork of Samu Boyne, who also designed the cover of this publication, we believe these four categories encapsulate many of the common themes in the LGBTQ journey. It is our hope that reading these pieces can serve as a reprieve from the pressure and self-regulation of everyday life. It should also serve as encouragement. Know that, no matter where you are in your journey, you are not alone. As members of the LGBTQ Community, we all have experience sacrificing authenticity. Genuine expression, it seems, is a luxury so often unafforded to us by the larger heteronormative world. The works you will find within these pages are raw and moving expressions of our queer selves in the form of poetry, prose, and visual art. Our journey is sad. Our journey is celebratory. But above all else, our journey is our truth. We would like to extend a special thank you to the LGBTQ Resource Center, for the guidance and support that brought us together, to Alli Kaufman, Jack Townsend, and Margaux Fontaine, for their help designing and creating our publication, and to all our artists, who have exhibited brave vulnerability in offering their dearest works for submission. Enjoy!
Ryan Yoch
Rainbow Voices
Zack Abu-Akeel
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Table of Contents Suppression
Supression Out Untitled Untitled Dear Daddy Brokenhearted Misfit Object
Samu Boyne Zack Frial Anonymous Skyye Skyye Orunima Chakraborti Anonymous
Depression
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Depression Tired To My Ex-Girlfriend Oil Painting Father Mom’s Birthday In Response... Photography Mi Niño Consentido The Aftermath
Samu Boyne Anonymous Anonymous Victoria Ma Timothy Rosenberger Timothy Rosenberger Anonymous Maria CristinaManinang Ibarra Anonymous Orunima Chakraborti
13 14 15
Expression Looking for Signs of Life A One-Year Reflection Masculinity Endings Untitled Our Language is a Treasure
Samu Boyne Vincent DeLaurentis Colleen Roberts Chad Gasman Landon Naylor Anonymous Shane Dante Quinn & Isaac Warren
23 24 26 27 28 30 32
Redemption First Kiss Untitled Hearts on Fire Coming Together Quotes on Queering Letters to the Revolution Photography Untitled Case Closed
Samu Boyne Anonymous Jasmin Ouseph Ryan Yoch Lauren Gray Lauren Gray Lydia X. Z. Brown Zackary Abu-Akeel Skyye Henry Callender
35 36
16 17 18 19 20 21
Expression
Redemption
37 38 39 40 41 45
Spring 2017
This is some copy.
Suppression
Author Name
Suppression
This is the title
Out Zack Frial
“So how did you two meet?” What do I say? A seemingly innocent gesture, but one which threatened to tear down my closet – the closet I built to hide. Last summer, I promised to leave my door always open, but only now had someone tried to look inside. I had ventured out before, but always scurried back to its warm safety. It was far too easy to lose oneself, swathed in winter coats, those impenetrable shells. The closet defined me. Should I even answer? It was necessary to remind myself that my closet was not the only one whose integrity was in jeopardy. I could not out myself, without outing him, too. Surely, he faced the same dilemma. Unlike myself, he dared to wear his coats outside, though I remained blind to how many still sheltered his bare body from cold human prejudice. His status was not mine to gamble. We met at the Center. A sweltering Saturday. For once, I could step out and shed my coats. Naked and free, together we celebrated the colors of our true skin. Disrobed of moth-eaten greys, my deep purple shimmered,
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despite having been shielded from sunlight for almost two decades. His skin – a variegation of blue and pink. Others were orange and green, iridescent and transparent: the room was a rainbow. But freedom never lasts. To my darkness I retreated. Must I lie? A truthful answer would lead to more probing. In the process, I’d be stripped of all protection and so would he. I couldn’t betray my knowledge of him. Yet by lying, I betrayed myself. To break that vow I made, during my crisis last summer, never to hide again…I couldn’t. “We just…know each other.” I failed.
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Untitled Anonymous
I was at a Georgetown party. It was crowded. Everyone was drinking and swaying to the music. I see a hetero couple making out near where I’m standing with a group of my friends- no one even bats an eye or turns their head to acknowledge the PDA. A little time passes and I run into this girl I know. We’re both feeling tipsy and feeling each other. So we start to make out. Nothing crazy- we were really just kissing. Suddenly our little corner is lit up. There’s a crowd around us. People are recording us and posting the videos on their Snapchat and yelling about how crazy this party has become. Two girls are making out! One guy taps on my shoulder and when I turn around he asks, “can I join?” When the straight couple was kissing, they were left alone. It seemed as if everyone understood that what they were doing was between them; yet somehow what we were doing calls for crowd involvement and we’re treated as a display meant to entertain the masses? My sexuality isn’t a show. If heteros don’t want to respect me, can they at least leave me alone?
Spring 2017
Untitled Skyye
Trying to love a Woman with a broken heart Can be hard to do I wish you saw me... I wish your eyes would finally focus on me and see what’s standing right in front of you... Yet it’s like your eyes have lost sight because you have no idea what it looks like to be treated right. You think it’s your mind playing tricks on you...think your delusional... in a hallucinogenic state because all of your exes decided your fate a long time ago... If a genie walked up to me on the street and asked me to make one wish I wouldn’t wish for millions of dollars, fancy ass cars or what have you... I’d say...I want to time travel... yea...I want to go back in time... go back in time and look directly in the eyes of all the people who made it impossible for you to love me. I would, Rewind time and Make them swallow the very tongues that they used to tell lies and abuse your
Rainbow Voices
mind. Explain to them that, I am the ghost of a woman who dies a little everyday watching the woman her heart beats for not allow herself to feel the same. Suffering the blame for the pain that they caused. Sitting In a cell in a prison that they’ve created, fighting to prove my innocence but continuing to serve this sentence... I would make it so you never met them...then maybe you wouldn’t be so jaded and deaf to my hearts cadence but genies do not exist so all I can do is exert patience... I pray.. That one day...you will not continue to fight...For I am the perfect reflection of what love is suppose to look like...but all you see when you look at me are those faces that have haunted your soul for years. The only time you allow yourself to be free is when you dream and even then you can’t seem to get a good nights sleep... I am your lullaby...and my soul sings whenever you are near me... Hear me...
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Dear Daddy Skyye
Dear Daddy… For years now we have chosen to ignore the elephant in the room. Yes this big ass elephant that we pretend is not even there. But as I’ve grown so has it… So large that it can no longer fit in our house, No more hiding it behind the couch When company comes over or those awkward moments become too much to bear… I just wish we would face thing head on, go toe to toe, pound for pound and yet… We continue to treat it like a puddle on the ground and walk around like We don’t want to get our feet wet… I know it’s hard to look at what you’ve created and not see the image you thought you painted But…I’m still beautiful Daddy I may have traded in my innocent barrettes but I am still your little girl…in a big world full of hate. See, people hate what they don’t understand so they hate me at first glance While me and my lover hold hands, I swear if looks could kill… Shit I’d be dead where I stand… But don’t go beating yourself up thinking it’s due to bad parenting because certainly… I knew who I was long before I
realized that the handprints you left on my mother’s skin Were not marks of passion but… mere photographs of your own insecurities. And NO my heart was not stolen and broken by a member of the opposite sex I DON’T hate men… NO it’s not a choice If I’m already treated differently because of the melanin in my skin Why would I choose to add another nail to the cross for society to crucify me with? As a parent, I know you always look to yourself to place the blame but the truth is This is in my DNA…I was made this way… And rather than hear me tell you “I’m gay,” You choose to sleep peacefully under a blanket of denial While I toss and turn my way through sleepless days …wanting to be honest with you... Wanting to reveal the truth that is my very existence… Praying for your acceptance yet, fully prepared for the worst possible outcome. So Now that that’s off my chest, there’s really only one question left… Do you still love me Daddy? …Do you?
Spring 2017
Brokenhearted Misfit Orunima Chakraborti
i am the romantic who doesn’t want to accept that she already has two halves. i am the dirty secret, clutching at the scraps of dignity you throw me. i am the confused heart, recoiling from the pain done by my hand. i am the fear of thousands, praying that a hand doesn’t rewrite love’s definition again. i am the one who finally realized that if I never give up,
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i don’t know when to let go. i am the mistake, the error in the perfect child. i am the girl who never knew before how it felt to sing brokenhearted words and mean it. i am the generation you sacrifice. Tomorrow, I will stand tall. the bottom layer of my mind clear – I will be free. Someone else will convince me I’m beautiful,
just like she did. but You – I feel your grip around my heart, taste the fear in my thoughts. to you, i am nothing. she is nothing. until I walk my steps convinced. Misfit. together we hide our lives from you though it’s already night. how long before You wake?
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Object Anonymous
I empathize with women, I do. But we are different, because grab me by the pussy and I say yes. It feels quite diastolic in between beats from failing hearts, emburdened by a sprue of things I find imitable.
Oculi as discerning as Kerry Vincent’s gaze upon something now far less sweet; a look up and down but never in-tap me twice.
Spring 2017
Depression
Tired Anonymous
I should be angry. I should be enraged and impassioned. I should be motivated to fight and struggle. But I’m not. I’m simply too tired. I’m tired of going to my evolutionary biology class. Tired of being a gay person in a space where my sexual orientation is reduced to an outlier in the data. I’m tired of hearing professors casually use the word “rape” in classes containing survivors of sexual assault. I’m tired of being warned to avoid certain professors because they’re sexist. (Does anyone even ever say that to male students?) I’m tired of people believing that my painted nails and long hair tell them anything substantive about me. I’m tired of explaining why a lesbian cares so much about reproductive choice. I’m tired of that little bit of discomfort every time I write or say “mi novia” in my Spanish classes and have to hope I don’t get corrected. I’m tired of going to parties with my straight friends and being the only one that doesn’t get the option of a hook-up (I enjoy sex just as much as everyone else.)
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I’m tired of my dreams of motherhood being tainted by the extraordinary cost of IVF and the logistic and bureaucratic nightmare of the adoption process. I’m tired of feeling feminist shame every time I enjoy a TV show or movie that happens to include female characters that exemplify lofty western beauty standards. I’m tired of being asked if I have a boyfriend. The answer is always going to be no, no matter how much you’d like to define me by relationships with men. I’m tired of knowing how much more likely I am to be raped that my hetero best friend. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I’m tired of knowing how likely it is that my hetero best friend will be raped before we graduate. She didn’t do anything to deserve this either. I’m tired of explaining why feminism is still relevant. I’m tired of being told I talk too much about these things. You can bet that no matter how tired I get, I will never stop talking.
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To My Ex-Girlfriend Anonymous
You caught me flirting with a boy. He was my best friend and you were pissed. That night, you asked if I was gay. I’m bi, I told you, but you didn’t believe me. That’s understandable, because I didn’t believe myself then. I know I shouldn’t forgive you for questioning my identity, but I do. We dated for six more months after that, before you left me for another boy. I kept asking myself, was I not man enough? Am I not man enough?
Oil painting by Victoria Ma
Spring 2017
Father
Timothy Rosenberger
Father, do you forgive me when I sin? When I die will heaven let me in? To where will I go after I die? To say I’m your loved child feels a lie
I fell to my knees and with you I’d plead to make space in heaven for children like me
At three I planned to marry a man You shook your head and didn’t understand Ignored the man I loved at seventeen Blinded yourself to what you should have seen
To heaven’s high door I appealed once more and found space in heaven for children like me
I fall to my knees and with you I plead to make space in heaven for children like me I bang on your door and kneel once more won’t you make space in heaven for children like me You didn’t find a space for me right then. You cut me off and left me out to fend without a place to call my own; my home was places that till then I’d never known
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Maybe someday we’ll find another way the same God listens to us when we pray If not in this world then in the next May you see that all children are blessed I’ll fall to my knees and with him I’ll plead show you space in heaven for children like me At heaven’s gold door we will meet once more If there is space in heaven for children like me
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Mom’s Birthday Timothy Rosenberger
The quintessentially American cream of mushroom soup poured from a Campbell’s can seeps around and into the meticulously stuffed and rolled chicken crepes The faux-French entre clashes with the delicious but very Youngstown Birthday Punch: a bottle of Hawaiian punch, 2 liter of ginger ale, quart of orange sherbet Bubbling and hissing in a cut glass bowel The presents sit on the festive table cloth from Oriental Trading Company. The edges are all uneven and misshapen by the love of personal wrapping China place settings, carefully handed down from her grandmother to her mother to her sit in front of four seats Meager gifts. Water glasses, a new trash can and some homemade coupons from my sister As if she wouldn’t otherwise mow the lawn
She makes it to my gift- a little envelope She gushes as she pulls out the plane tickets to Italy She has always wanted to go. She is so excited It is the perfect gift, she says But it isn’t the gift she most wants because that isn’t a gift I can give She will never meet my wife She will never hold the first child that I have with that wife And all the money and all the trips and all the things that I am able to give her all the achievements I ever have all the loves I love and any children I bring into the world Will never give her a nice, normal, son the gift for which she wishes As she bends her head over the many little candles wedged into an amateurishly frosted bright green mound of Duncan Hines devils food and pushes out a gust of air extinguishing the candles and igniting the next disappointing year
Spring 2017
In Response... Anonymous
In response to “In Praise of Latin Night at the Queer Club,” written by Justin Torres for The Washington Post, June 13, 2016 The week after the Pulse shooting, Town Danceboutique hosted “a night of solidarity” to “remember our slain [siblings] in Orlando.” After days of feeling like shit, of longing and praying for queer comunidad and not finding it, Latin Night at the Queer Club seemed like the ritual I needed: a way to reclaim the joy and hope of dance, of embodied prayer, in a space that I had come to associate with so much pain and violence. Instead of healing, the space I found myself in simply served to remind me that the comunidad and familia I was seeking is like queerness itself - something that, to quote José Esteban Muñoz, is “not yet here.” ... esta es mi fantasia; un sueño in which latin night at the queer club truly is sacred. yo soy el mariconcitx with the half tejanx ass that barely speaks Spanish, tratando de reclamar su latinidad while i burn out the machismo that stains my blood. en mi fantasia, latin night at the queer club es el lugar en lo que digo “vete a la chingada” to my whiteness, to my toxic masculinity; en lo que i embrace my femininity y mi queer-fluid joteria, surrendering myself as sacrifice to the rain god who’s taken the form of a boy i trust leading me in a cumbia to selena; en lo que bachateo with my bestfriends, feeling ourselves bien sexy, switching as we lead and follow each other before breaking off para buscar another cute queer to take it to the next level with. en mi fantasia, latin night at the queer club is where i heal, where i am free, where i am liberated, collectively, alongside the ones i love. pero como dice justin – in latin night at the queer club, you’re lucky if you feel safe, if you feel reflected and affirmed in all of yourself, if you feel part of a “we”, an “us”.
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you’re lucky if you can bachata, or cumbia, or salsa, or just bailar in whatever way you know how to, without your latinidad being questioned or put on the spot. you’re lucky if you don’t have to take care of your wasted hetero friends trying to suck your soul out of your neck. you’re lucky if you or your loved ones aren’t the only queer women at the club, if you’re not not invisible or alienated, if there are other queer folx who don’t get turned off by your aesthetic - masc, femme, queer - in a space that is all too often made for gay cis men. you’re lucky if you’re able to dance, to feel sexy, without hyper aggressive men exercising their perceived entitlement to your body, trying to drag you into the bathroom, putting their hands in your pants without your consent, interrogating you over the sound of selena’s perfect voice, shouting - “are you hard yet?” despite your weak, uneasily smiling, repeated reply, “stop”; if you’re a survivor and the club doesn’t trigger past traumas, doesn’t remind you que tu gente - queer people - are more likely than heteros to be sexually harassed or assaulted. you’re lucky if the violence outside the club - the toxic masculinity, the homophobia, the transphobia, the white supremacy - isn’t replicated inside by the ones who call themselves your siblings, the ones who’ve internalized the entitlement or hatred of the world that apparently only exists outside those doors. pero like, esa es mi fantasia. quién sabe si existe fuera de mi imagination...
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Even though my immigrant grandparents claimed to have lived good lives filled with love and grandchildren, I continue to wonder how they navigate[d] the feeling of loneliness in this country. Quite a bit has changed about me between 2012 and 2016, but in both photographs, I can still see my own dealings of alienation and isolation projected onto Lolo and Lola.
Photographs and description by Maria Cristina Maninang Ibarra
Spring 2017
Mi Niño Consentido Anonymous
Mi Niño Consentido: He always got everything that he wanted. Whether it cost half of his parent’s paycheck, he knew he’d eventually get it. He wanted everything. They had little to nothing. Yet, his parents always made the sacrifice. But then again they were used to having little to nothing because for the majority of their lives they had nothing. But he got everything, even if it cost half of his parent’s paycheck. Él era el consentido de la familia, so can you blame him? His parents lived in an impoverished country during the formative period of their lives. They learned how to cherish and be grateful for what everything that they had. Long hours of hard manual labor and two meals a day were enough to keep them feeling satisfied. We have grown accustom to living under the same roof and have developed different experiences of satisfaction. Compraselo. Sabes que lo merece. His parents told him that he should never have to work hard as they did. All they wanted from him was to go to school and get good grades. In addition to being el consentido, he’d get rewarded everytime he’d pass onto another year. It wasn’t necessary considering the fact that he was a nurtured, spoiled, little brat. He was el consentido. But can you blame him? For stealing from his parents, leaving them with the same old faded clothes because it was always him who came before them . Can you blame his parents? For not teaching their kid that he won’t always get what he wants. Who is to blame? I still blame myself.
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The Aftermath Orunima Chakraborti
To the parents who disowned their children because they came out – do you know what it’s like to not be able to have a child? You have one of the greatest gifts in the world, and you throw it away? To the people who say queerness is a phase – do you know what it’s like to have the deepest feelings you’ve experienced be called experimentation? To straight, white boys who don’t realize privilege runs in their blood – do you know what it feels like to be an Asian-American, bisexual woman? To be scared of your own identity? To our society – do you know the difference between accepting lesbian relationships and sexualizing them? To straight people who are excited to bring home their significant other – do you know the pain of your parents asking you to be someone else? To know that, even if you found your soulmate, your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins wouldn’t be happy for you at your wedding? To people who think bisexuality is indecision – do you feel the frustration of knowing that, if you end up in a heterosexual relationship, your family will invalidate the “gay” part of you?
To the happy, straight couples walking hand in hand on the street – do you know what it’s like to meet in secret like criminals, to fear to kiss each other in public, to be scared of something that should only bring you joy? To live in a world that assumes you’re someone else? To parents who refuse to understand that sexuality isn’t a tradition or culture – where is your unconditional love? And to all the people who believe the pain we’re feeling right now is invalid…because we’re two women…who the fuck gives you the right to tell us our love, desires, hopes, dreams, experiences, heartbreak, and pain aren’t real? Who gives you the right to make our lives less human than yours? To you all – do you know? Have you even tried to understand? I don’t want to resent you for the privileges and happiness you may possess. I don’t wish to take them away from you; I wish for them to be extended to all human beings. But I ask that you remember, have empathy for, and help those who don’t have these privileges. I ask that you live with respect, never forgetting the hardships I or anyone else may face because of who we are.
Spring 2017
Expression
Graphics by Vincent DeLaurentis
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Looking for Signs of Life Vincent DeLaurentis
“Looking for Signs of Life: Queer Affect, Community, and Loneliness at Georgetown University” is a reflective piece on my experience of queerness and its relationship to the landscape of Georgetown. I produced the map by taking an official campus map from the information desk in the Leavey Center and aimlessly “drifting” around Georgetown, evoking the feeling and affective experience of drifting through space. As I was drifting, I looked at buildings, squares, and other elements of the materiality of Georgetown. If some element of this materiality would evoke a memory or affective response related to my experience of queerness/Queerness and queer community at Georgetown, I would mark a small, unlabeled dot on the official campus map and then keep walking. After finishing the drift, I digitized the campus map and deleted the base map, leaving only the dots I had marked in their original spatial relationship to each other. I replaced the base map with a black background, made the dots white, and connected them to each other in a way that resembled a constellation. As a graduating senior, this was as much a reflective exercise as it was a productive exercise. I have lived the entirety of my openly queer life at Georgetown and the drift allowed me to reflect on the relationship between my queerness and queer community and the spaces I have inhabited. This was important in that it offered me a space to think more critically about my queerness and my growth as a queer person before moving on to a new realm in which I will have to navigate, perform, and produce my queerness. In juxtaposing the official campus map and the constellation, I hope to evoke a few things. First, in marking out queer community and affectivity on the official campus map I seek to show how, though the official Georgetown gaze works
to invisibilize queer students and experiences on the “landscape” of Georgetown, my queerness has subverted this impulse and imprinted and ingrained itself into these spaces. This demonstrates how queerness can contest the official university gaze and implies the hidden realities of queerness on campus; Queering both space and spatial representation. It also implies deeply personalized and competing queer gazes that work to reveal the unique affective and mnemonic elements of an individual’s experience of queerness. While one has access only to one’s own queer gaze and what it reveals, one is pushed to reflect on how other queer experiences and affects may be built into and hidden within the materiality of Georgetown’s landscape. In viewing my queer constellation, reflect on what your queer constellation might look like. More so, in producing a counter-topography and implying verticality in the form of the constellation, I work to contest the official landscape produced by Georgetown and to stake a claim that my queerness and its affect cannot be contained or represented in the flat, instrumentalized, institutional map. Indeed, my queerness and its beauty and power transcend the limits and constraints of this school, which often seeks to crush it. My queerness speaks, fills, and produces volumes. Finally, in the play between the black background and the bright constellation, I hope to evoke the loneliness and isolation of searching for queerness and community on Georgetown’s campus by aesthetically tying it to floating through space. While there have been small points of light drawing me to different people, places, and spaces, I have mostly felt left alone in a void, searching for something that may only exist in the mythologies of my desires.
Spring 2017
A One-Year Reflection Colleen Roberts
As you know, a year ago today, I was a student in Father Kemp’s “Struggle and Transcendence” class. This elderly fellow, whom we both love, may be out there...way out there. But I truly think that his own personal kind of madness is intricately wound up in his brilliance. While students, myself included, take for granted his lax professorial style, Father Kemp’s “Struggle and Transcendence” was one of those classes that I did not know I needed. And as I sat in that class several times a week, it saved me. In a way in that I did not know I needed to be saved. Father Kemp probably knew all of this though. Again, all a part of his brilliance. “Struggle and Transcendence” was grown out of Bernard Lonergan’s “Method in Theology”. Lonergan is without a doubt a phenomenal philosopher, and I am not too keen on philosophy. It often, as you know, infuriates me that random old white guys are given the credentials to identify what is valued in this world, and how value should be interpreted. Not here for it. [I digress.] But Lonergan, like beloved Father Kemp, is different. Lonergan’s philosophical reflections are focused on themes of growth, process, and transcendence. From the start, Lonergan lays it all out. He presents truths like – life is full of challenges, spirituality is a journey, love is paramount, God is the manifestation of love, morality is nothing without action, and that transformation is possible. <That is a lot right? Yeah, I think so. I reflect on my time in this particular class, because as I opened with, I sat in “Struggle” a year ago today. Class discussions on Lonergan were instrumental in creating the life I live today. Why? As we became closer friends, it was clear to me that our relationship was important to me. Yet, I had not considered us being more than friends.
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Us being together as we are today was never a serious consideration that passed through my mind. That is, until I sat up late at night reading Lonergan. It was during sessions of “Struggle” that I sat in my seat, scribbling notes, nodding my head in agreement to someone’s audible comments, but what I was really experiencing was a kind of revelation. Through this class, I recognized that my feelings for you were transcendental. As we talked about the more just world Lonergan envisions, the processes that we must undergo to achieve that world, you were constantly on my mind. I really do mean constantly. It was in this class that I realized that my love for you was something greater than what I thought, or maybe previously understood, it to be. My love for you became essential to my interpretation of “Method in Theology”. And with this recognition, I recognized the importance of our love. I don’t know if you remember all the times post March 22 that we lay in bed and I tried to explain to you how I see God in you. You are a manifestation of love. You are a spirit fueled to bring about some kind of justice. And each time these themes came up in class, I thought of you. This book helped me to understand my passion for social justice, my ongoing search for God, my expressions of love. I say that “Struggle,” saved me from myself because in this space my reflections on love were not constrained by society’s norms. Lonergan himself was a Jesuit. So the love he spoke about was just that. Love. Love between folks. Love between God(dess) and humans. The love we spoke about was not narrowly defined by any human standard. The love we discussed was not purely romantic. It was not to
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any degree heteronormative, sexist, or any kind of oppressive. Eventually these racing thoughts were too much and too distracting. At this point, I recognized that I had to talk to you about our friendship. I had to tell you that this thing that existed between the two of us was something different than anything else in my world. I had to tell you that Us. pointed to something greater. Something like a life altering, transformative love. That is the conversation I wanted to have with you. I really did have a plan in place to ask you if you wanted to walk to Dupont on that Thursday, as we made our way to the Banana Leaf. A curveball in this plan was my drunkenness and liquid courage on the Saturday before. Whoops. Although we often joke about how that Saturday led to us being together, I think that “Struggle” was instrumental start of Us.. “Struggle” gave me the courage to be vulnerable with you, way before one too many glasses of malbec entered into the equation. I am happy to celebrate Us. on each March 22 from now until..... As I think we would both agree, our love and the beginning of our relationship was a process that started sometime before, at some unidentifiable date. But we choose to pause and take note today, that some time about a year ago you and I turned toward transcendence together. Across the Atlantic or across the room from each other. I hope you know that our love is real. Our love is impactful. Our love is strong. Happy anniversary.
Spring 2017
“Masculinity” by Chad Gasman
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Endings Landon Naylor
What’s an end and what’s a beginning anyway, you wonder. You’ve had so many, so many beginnings and endings or endings and beginnings that you can’t keep track of them all anymore. And does it even really matter now? You’re out of your home and you’re out of that closet but how did you get from there to here? This is another beginning that comes near your next endgraduation in 74 days-and you know you should really be at the library reading or studying but, oh, isn’t this nice-isn’t it nice to have gay friends and to go out with them and be out with them? Really you’re just drinking $2 beers at the new bar on campus so you’re not very far out but you’re still out and isn’t that nice? And on your third cheap beer you do that thing you’ve been doing recently which is telling, you’re actually telling when you’re asked what was coming out like for you? and it’s empowering to tell the truth. So you tell the story of that ending, the ending of your life as a poorly closeted, young, gay man in Alabama; you tell of your first coming out that saw you off to conversion “therapy”at sixteen and later saw you fake straightness to get out-or back in-and saw you struggling for three years until the second coming at nineteen which was when you really got it. And you got out too-out of a home too depressing to live in, out of the small, depressing room at the Baptist Counseling Center where you were sent-sentenced-to work on your soul, and most importantly out of that dangerous indoctrination that forced what they call “internalized homophobia” on you and forced what they call “baggage” on you and forced you to live in the long shadow of that enormous closet it took forever to find your way out of and you’re still in the shadow of those doors even as you move further and farther away from the end of that lie. Where is the sun?
Did you say before that this was a beginning, sitting here drinking $2 beers with new friends? No, you must have meant to say ending. At least, if this is a beginning then it’s an ending too. This is the end of your inhibitions, your being unable to connect with anyone because you’ve had such a fucking weight to live under until now. And how did you unload that weight? How did you make it to this end-how did you make it here into this “tavern” with these people laughing over these beers while songs from a bad 90s playlist hang in the air? You sat down with a real therapist six months earlier. That’s it. That’s how you made it here tonight. She said: It sounds like that was a pretty big defense mechanism for you-maybe something you did to protect yourself? She was talking about your emotions because you’d confessed that you’d cut them off and forgotten how to turn them back on and had maybe even forgotten where you’d left them. Just try to realize whatever it is you’re experiencing; allow yourself to feel those emotions if you can, she said. You listened and that’s the reason you’re here. It’s good that you’re opening up and allowing yourself to be vulnerable, she says. You are, you are, and you are laughing and you become lighter and freer every time you tell your story because it feels like you’re giving it away and what would you say to your parents now if you could? Oh, don’t think about them. Think of yourself and how you’re present here and now and where you’re going on your own without them and think of how you can laugh now and date now and even dance now and when you feel the heat on your neck and look back you find sun rising in your eyes and it feels so good.
Spring 2017
Untitled Anonymous
When I was in fourth grade my friend Sophia told me that she was a lesbian I told her I couldn’t be her friend anymore Because I had been taught that straightness was close to godliness But that’s another story This story is about a chest More specifically the secret within it. I didn’t always know the chest existed, Let alone the secret inside. The chest was stuffed away, And locked for me by someone who had swallowed the key And I never did learn how to pick locks. I grew up and learned my way immersed in conservatism and masculinity I was born into and grew up in Leviticus 20:13—I breathed Oxygen in, machismo out. Not knowing the chest existed, I was sure I was haunted The secret, bouncing around inside the chest Sounded an awful lot like a ghost to me I remember my tíos would call me gay One time my tío called me a maricón It was a joke to him, but it made my mother angry She didn’t joke like that In the same way one doesn’t joke about death Still hadn’t found the chest. It really was concealed well Clandestinely buried beneath my beliefs The necessity of my masculinity The fear of being a maricón.
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I remember the argument I got into with my brother He told me being gay was natural And that it wasn’t a choice I remember yelling “for a man to lie with another man as a woman is an abomination” I still wonder If it was him I was trying to convince As I got older, one way or another the haphazardly constructed mountain of my dispositions covering it collapsed Sorting through the debris I happened upon the chest It was shaking violently, terrifyingly It seemed like something was trying to escape I stored the chest in my closet where I couldn’t see it And tried not to think about it But every so often I could hear the chest banging around in my closet Every once in a while I wondered what was inside what was I supposed to do? I didn’t have the key to open it My mother will tell you She doesn’t have a problem with people being gay It’s not her place to pass judgement She’ll say it’s between a person and god I wonder if she’ll ever know Those are the words I think about Every single time I think about coming out to her. I wonder if she knows That she was the one who swallowed the key.
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But— A key is not always necessary Sometimes a workaround is possible or— Sometimes what’s inside the chest Wants to escape more Than anyone wants to lock it up. Sometimes what’s in the chest Just grows louder and louder And the banging harder and harder Until the lock on the chest isn’t enough To confine what’s inside any longer. I was 16 when I accepted that I was pansexual. No amount of religion Or machismo Or questioning Or conditioning Could cover the secret any longer. I saw myself emerge from the chest I saw myself and I was beautiful And I was liberated. I have never shared what I found in the chest with my parents. I have never wanted to share my findings with them More than I do now. As the chest is now broken open, I know it’s not needed, and perhaps my parents don’t know they still have it, but I’m going to get the key back anyway.
Spring 2017
Our Language is a Treasure Shane Dante Quinn with Isaac Warren
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The opening lines of the Moldovan anthem translates to â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our language is a treasure.â&#x20AC;? We believe every language is a treasure and that their speakers should feel the same. This is an ongoing project and we are not native/fluent speakers of many of these languages,so please excuse any mistakes and correct us.
Spring 2017
Redemption
First Kiss Anonymous
Sweaty palms and wayward eyes, Blushing cheeks and crimson skies, Should I, should he, should we try, To end the night like this. Hearts beat fast with busy minds, Calculating place and time, Punishments should fit the crime, Our only crime is bliss. We both know the time is near, Our highest hope, our biggest fear, A pause that seems to last a year, A chance that we can’t miss.
So close our faces almost touch, The weight between us is too much, No turning back it’s break or bust.
The rush. The risk. First kiss.
Untitled Jasmin Ouseph
you don’t like that you’re a smoker make apologies when you kiss me i don’t tell you no matter what flavor you are i still like the taste
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Hearts on Fire Ryan Yoch
The night before the warrior’s quest They both awoke with fear The chance to free what plagued their hearts Was then, was now, was here
Time froze when he first saw the pair Awestruck and green with rage He hurled six decades at the two For loves grows gray with age
The couple met with urgency Atop a cliff of white Their breath was mixed with ocean air Their eyes were mixed with night
Their bones now weak, their knees now soft Time now owned their dance But he could not control the tune That played from their romance
They drew their bodies closer and They met each other’s eyes One hand found the other’s waist They smiled with surprise
Then finally Death came to them Erupting from the sky He raised his fists, he shook the earth He yelled, “Prepare to die” They looked at one another And then back into his eyes They raised their hands above their heads And sang their final cry
But just as they prepared to share Their hidden words of love Demons swarmed the lovers from The blackened sky above Up first was Doubt with icy hands Made cold from years alone The warmth he saw between the pair Sent shivers through his bones He reached his frozen fingers down To rip the two apart But when he tried to touch them he Was melted by their hearts Temptation watched with confidence For she knew how to win She sent two minions down to them To break their hearts with sin But when the minions came to them Red-lipped with outstretched arms They held their gaze so fiercely that The spirits did no harm
“If you take us now, my friend We’ll surely go together For now that we have found true love We’ll stay in love forever” When Death heard this he hung his head He knew that he’d been beat He laid two rings upon the ground And made his last retreat They held each other once again And promised to be true With tears of joy they said their vows And both whispered, “I do.” If Time, Temptation, Doubt and Death Were bested by desire Then surely nothing can divide Two hearts so set on fire
Spring 2017
Painting by Lauren Gray
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Quotes on Queering Lauren Gray
“It’s not about coming out, but coming together” These words were spoken with wisdom and care when I was in Georgetown. I have held onto them ever since. These words soothed my uncertain queer soul in a way that I did not know it needed. Me, a senior at Georgetown at the time, could not even wrap mind around this newfound love I found with another woman. Could I be a lesbian? Could I be bisexual? Could I call myself queer? Could I still be a Christian? Could I still be black? All of these things, these parts of me felt like they did not belong together (I mean, how could they? I did not even know what to call myself anymore). I did not know what people would call me when they found out. The one thing I did know was that these were the pieces of me and they would come together to create either a beautiful blend of colors or a mosaic but either way they would come together. “You’re dating a girl? Talk to me again when you lose 30 pounds and you’ll probably reconsider.” My mother spoke these words. A woman who loved me unconditionally but did not know what unconditional love looked like if it was for a queer daughter. These words represent how the outside world views my sexuality as a reaction, as a lapse in judgment. Did she say this because she genuinely thought my weight caused me to fall in love with another woman? Was this her way of comforting herself into thinking it was a phase? Regardless, the words stung. They made me feel like this gentle, beautiful, and reassuring love that was blossoming between my partner and I was a mistake due to my physical appearance. “Baby. You held onto my hand. You did not let go.” My girlfriend spoke these words. This woman, who has braved so many storms but also enhanced so many memories, said this to me with tears in her eyes. Our blackness, our woman-ness, our queerness were things I was scared to be proud of—especially in public. She made me brave that day whether she knew it or not. How could I continue to feel this mix of shame and fear when she made me feel comfortable, strong, intelligent any other time we were together? She allowed me to be my best self, excuse me, my best QUEER self and for that I am grateful. Her boldness and respect for my reservation when showing public displays of affection made me want to dig deep and pull out a woman who would be certain enough in our love to hold her hand through the uncertainty of public disapproval. I love her. I love her. I love her and she loves me.
Spring 2017
Letters to the Revolution Lydia X. Z. Brown, January 2017
Content/TW: Discussion of racist and ableist violence, mentions of sexual violence Dear fellow organizers, activists, rabble-rousers, and rebels: I’m writing to you already reeling in the beginning of 2017. My partner, my friends, and I kept joking, darkly, between November 8 and the end of 2016 that the dumpster fire that was last year was finally hurtling toward its merciful end to die incinerated in the nuclear fission that is the sun. 2016 killed many beloved people, including openly genderfluid, disabled, mad, and other marginalized and oppressed people of color. It brought another continual onslaught of violence in the history of the United States, everywhere from the furtherance of horrific state violence against Indigenous peoples in Standing Rock and the poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, to the near-silence from U.S. activists on genocide in Aleppo and eugenicist mass murder in Sagamihara. Not for one moment have my friends and comrades rested because not for one moment have we been able to pause the train wreck. My comrade Talila Lewis (better known as TL) consistency talks about being at and beyond capacity, constantly. This is the
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reality for those of us doing far more than is theoretically humanly possible, those of us who have no choice about doing the work, those of us who literally cannot stop or turn off our minds. When 2016 came to an end, 2017 had hardly crept into existence before sensationalist headlines spattered with news of a vicious attack on a young disabled person by four fellow young people. Many kinds of people who readily voted for Trump – the ones who believe that being white means they are under attack, the ones who feel that the first Black president was an abject failure essentially because he is Black, the ones who are inexplicably terrified by more open and public discussions about power, privilege, and oppression – have immediately begun to use this attack to further push an anti-Black racist agenda by blaming it on the Black Lives Matter movement. (The attackers in this case are Black while the victim is white.) And we’ve witnessed an explosion of response/ analysis completely failing at intersectionality – either missing the anti-Blackness or missing the ableism, or both, while the entire history of this country was built on the backs of murdered and brutally displaced Indigenous peoples, aUnnd out of the labor of forcibly trafficked and enslaved Black people on much
of the same unceded land. It was built on eugenics – a white supremacist science that depends on ableism to decide which brains and bodies are functional, fit, healthy, and worthy – and on genocide and on rape. What many of my fellow activists and thinkers and doers seem to have forgotten is that it’s possible to have complicated, nuanced discussions without compromising our values and what we fight for. I’ve spent the past few years exhausted by having to constantly defend my existence as a multifaceted person – as a person who both wields, at times, immense privilege and power in some ways as college educated, upper-middle class background, light-skinned, U.S. citizen, hearing/sighted, culturally Christian; while at the same time facing marginalization or direct targeting in many others as neurodivergent, disabled, genderqueer, east asian, culturally displaced, transracial/transnational adoptee. I live many complex realities, and I find myself pressured constantly to pick one, maybe two, and ignore the rest of who I am. It’s easy in some ways to deal with open hatred and disdain from those who despise what I am and mince no words about how they believe being transgender is a fad or being disabled is an excuse for the lazy.
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“The Queers Want the Fall of the Regime” (Ashawaz yureedoon iskat anitham) Queered from the Arab Spring Rallying Cry: “The People Want the Fall of the Regime” By Zackary Abu-Akeel
(cont.) It’s harder for me to deal with my fellow organizers and activists, because we often do not live up to the values and vision we work so hard for. And to be clear, friends, that absolutely includes me. If we hope to keep resisting, keep fighting, keep laboring for love and justice and freedom as Donald Trump comes into power, we must recognize some key linkages in all their complexities – We have to drive the fight home, and refuse to
settle for compromise or half-measures. As my partner Shain Neumeier constantly reminds us, incrementalism for the sake of incrementalism will get us nowhere. We must fight with full force and hold nothing back, and recognize that yes, there is an enemy – and that enemy is every system of violence we can name. We cannot meet halfway when demanding respect for our right to exist, our right to self-determination, our right to freedom. After all, half-existence is really death, half self-determination is control, half-freedom is still oppression.
Spring 2017
(cont.) At the same time, we have to remain vigilant in our own communities, campaigns, and spaces. Now is not the time for empty, placating messages of “love trumps hate” or “same struggle, different difference.” Now is not the time to deceive ourselves into believing that the previous eight years were some kind of progressive miracle by erasing the reality of thousands of deportations and drone strikes, and continued support for violent occupations everywhere from Tibet to Palestine to the land where we live and breathe here. Now is not the time to pretend that all is right where we are in left or radical spaces either, because it is not. I have experienced more trauma and abusive behavior from fellow activists and organizers, people who shared experiences of marginalization, people who worked together with me on campaigns and actions, than I have from people outside socalled movement spaces. I understand that’s not the same for everyone, but I know that trauma from movement people is a thing, and as an autistic person, I’m naturally wired to be good at pattern recognition. One pattern I recognize is the constant practice of disavowal. We learn that we may only lay claim to our own humanity by doing so at the expense of
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someone else. This is my history, as an east asian – especially a transnationally adopted one – in the U.S., pressured to invest myself into the myths of whiteness and the model minority, which tell me that I can be treated as almost like a real person if I assimilate into whiteness and disavow Black, Brown, and Indigenous people of color. This is my history, as a queer, asexual, genderqueer person, pressured to fight against pathologizing queer and trans people by insisting nothing is wrong with us while something is wrong with “actually” mentally ill people. This is my history, as an autistic neurodivergent person, pressured to perform being as high-functioning and close to “normal” as possible, so I can be treated as almost like a real person if I disavow those other, “severely” disabled, “low-functioning” autistic people. Always trying to gain power at the expense of someone else, to move the fences separating worthy/unworthy, desirable/undesirable, normal/ defective a few inches over – still keeping someone else outside – instead of tearing down the walls.
icizing capitalism, as my comrade Chrissy Maritza Etienne has helped me understand. We can still be settlers, still be occupiers, still be gentrifiers, even if/ as we are also displaced, also colonized, also oppressed – comrades like Kat Yang Stevens and Abla Abelhadi call attention to this reality constantly. This is interpersonal, and it’s also deeply personal. It’s what Sally Kempton taught us – “It’s hard to fight an enemy with outposts in your head.” And without new frames of reference for value, worth, magnificence, and love, we will keep those outposts in there. We will keep being part of anti-Blackness, part of ableism, part of anti-Semitism, part of transmisogyny, part of Islamoracism, part of class oppression. These things didn’t magically reappear on November 8; they have simply adapted while continuing the same violence we already know, and we can’t let ourselves grow complacent about our individual un/learning processes. On a larger scale than the personal and interpersonal, we maintain communities and spaces that claim to be welcoming, inclusive, affirming – even radical and revolutionary – but that fail to deliver on their We marginalized folks are invest- most basic promises. They are ed in the class ascension project, not accessible to no or low-inworking to gain more wealth, come people. They are not more prestige, more trappings accessible to d/Deaf and hard of of class status, even when crithearing people.
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(cont.) They are not accessible to people with mobility disabilities, with or without mobility aids. They are not genuinely supportive of trans people whose outward gender expressions don’t conform with binary expectations about gender. They don’t center Black, Brown, Latinx, Indigenous, Mixed-Race, Asian, or other People of Color. They don’t engage with people who don’t have the ability or class privilege to use the right social justice language or terminology – folks who are often targeted/marginalized at the most intersections of oppression, and who, unlike me with the privilege I’ve got, are the least likely to end up at conferences, on boards of directors, testifying at state legislatures, writing in widely read platforms, or speaking at colleges. We act like once we’re woke, socially conscious, radicalized, or whatever the fuck we want to call it, we’re unable to make mistakes or perpetuate any kind of oppression anymore in our “perfect” radical spaces. The truth – the harder truth, the uncomfortable truth – is that we are all learning and growing, all the time. The truth is that our spaces practices disavowal as much as we do on our own as individuals. The truth is that movement work is ableist as fuck. Racist as fuck. Classist as fuck. Exclusionary. Isolating. Traumatizing. Hurtful. Everything we work
to fight against outside those spaces. And we shouldn’t be fighting for our right to exist – we shouldn’t be fighting for survival – in the spaces that are supposed to be fighting against oppression already. We shouldn’t be unquestioningly copying the same oppressive structures we name as violent and harmful – whether the punitive criminal justice mentality as Porpentine calls it, or the hierarchies of capitalist thinking and power structures. One thing that I know we need to do better on is recognizing disability justice – a term invented by Black and Brown disabled activists and artists, including Patricia Berne and Leroy F. Moore Jr. – as an imperative for all of our struggles and liberation work. If it’s accessible to people with intense language disabilities, it’s probably much more accessible to people who don’t speak English or who speak/read very little. If it’s accessible to people with episodic chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, trauma, or pain, it’s also more accessible to people with unstable work, unstable housing, unstable transportation access. If it’s accessible to people who don’t have degrees or fancy jobs, it’s also more accessible to people who are or have been locked up in prison, locked down in psych wards, or locked in within group homes and other institutions.
Centering those of us who live – comfortably or uncomfortably, willingly or forcibly – with disabled as part of our identities and experiences means treating all people, regardless of how our brains or bodies work, as worthy of love and care – not in spite of who and what we are, but as and for all that we are, in all our complexities. Disability justice allows us to embrace weakness, vulnerability, frailty, and imperfection. It helps us understand that we are valuable separate from our production, as Ki’tay Davidson wrote in his clarion call for disability justice. It demands hard work of us – the hard work of true intersectionality as Kimberlé Crenshaw meant it when she coined the term to describe her unique oppression as a Black woman. It does not let us settle for anything short of full freedom –liberation, justice, active love. And it recognizes that all systems of oppression really are interconnected – not the same, not identical, but necessary for and dependent on one another. I am not the only person to talk or write about this – Mia Mingus, Talila Lewis, Robert Jones Jr. (Son of Baldwin), s.e. smith, AJ Withers, Eli Clare, and Mel Baggs, among many others, have all done so too in many places and at many times – but please don’t let this letter be the last time you witness talk of this.
Spring 2017
(cont.) All oppression in some way depends on ableism to exist – whether through assumptions about intelligence, emotional maturity, decision-making capacity, educability, health, physical or mental stability, reproductive value, or functionality. Understanding, talking about, and incorporating disability justice into whatever work we’re doing means that we’re far, far better equipped to address whatever issue, whatever oppression we’re up against. It means we’re in a better place to actually work on doing self-care. It means we’re in a better place to actually work on making our movements radically accessible. It means we’re in a better place to actually dismantle every component of settler-colonialism or capitalism or white supremacy or patriarchy. It means we’re in a better place to learn and grow and to love and care for one another as we tumble together into the next four years of the struggle. This is not easy work. But it is vital for our continued survival and ongoing resistance. I hope to labor alongside you, with whatever contributions you and I can make together, in our work to become free. In solidarity, as we work toward justice and freedom, Lydia
This letter was written as part of Letters to the Revolution, an on-line platform where leading artists and activists from marginalized communities were asked to write letters of strength and focus in light of the upcoming administration. To read the rest of this letter, and more like it, go to letterstotherevolution.com
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Untitled Skyye
I want be your favorite memory. And when you think of me... I want your body to relive the moment that we stripped away hesitation and conversation as you revealed to me your most honest reflection... Get those same goosebumps on your skin that I read like Braille trying to see your story more clearly... i want you to envision the position I had u in when we no longer listened to our doubts but instead satisfied all of our senses... I want you in that time... whenever I am on your mind. When you opened your legs and showed me your soul... where the most vulnerable part of you hides. Baring all and exposing your flaws...
I tasted them all... Nothing has ever tasted sweeter... Am I there yet? I wanna be a part of your thought process so whenever you undress... You feel me there... smell my scent that sends hunger pains through your body , craving the passion we shared... Close your eyes... squeeze your thighs... as you daydream about that time... remember me.. the moment where your wildest fantasy became your perfect reality
Photo by Henry Callander
Spring 2017