PQ Monthly: February 2012

QUEER AND NOW MONTHLY

PQMONTHLY.COM VOL 1 No. 1 February 2012

KAIA

WILSON

MATTILDA BERSTEIN SYCAMORE

MARRIAGE

EQUALITY IN

WASHINGTON

A QUEER

RE-TAKEOVER OF STARK ST.

VIOLENCE SURVIVAL

Photo by Xilia Faye

FREE

TALES OF INTIMATE PARTNER

• February 2012

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PQ TEAM Melanie Davis

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Principal & Business Development

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julie cortez

THE PQ BUNCH

Editor-in-Chief julie@pqmonthly.com T. 503.228.3139 ext. 310

Melanie Davis

Gabriela Kandziora

Nick Mattos

Erin Rook

Julie Cortez

Chris Alvarez

Xilia Faye

Lynda Wilkinson

Larry Lewis

Aimee Genter-Gilmore

Jose Rivas

Daniel Borgen

chris alvarez

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erin rook

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daniel borgen

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nick mattos

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larry lewis

Sales Representative larry@pqmonthly.com T. 503.228.3139 ext. 313

Izzy Ventura

Here’s the story … … of one mighty excited group of people. The staff of PQ Monthly has been in a tizzy for the last few weeks — scrambling within an incredibly short gestation period to bring into the world a new publication worthy of our community.

We hope you’re as gaga over our new baby as we are — and that you’ll feel a sense of parental responsibility for it as well. PQ Monthly is a work in progress, and it will take a village to help it grow to what it can and should be. We’ll need your suggestions, your letters, your guest columns and opinions, your advertising dollars (let’s be honest — we really need those!), and your expertise as story sources as we move forward.

Our goal at PQ Monthly is to represent, celebrate, and commingle ever letter and every color of the LGBTQ community. We recognize it will be impossible to reach this level of inclusion in every single issue — and we don’t even come close this first time around — but if you don’t see an aspect of the community represented on a semi-regular basis, we need to hear from you.

Our wish list for the near future includes letters to the editor (of course), more community opinion pieces and columns, readers’ photo submissions, restaurant and business profiles, birth and marriage announcements, obituaries, and much more. What’s on your wish list? Please email info@pqmonthly. com to let us know. Also, please check in regularly at pqmonthly.com for blogs, news updates, expanded features, and to submit your events and your announcements of major life transitions. Of course we look forward to a lively exchange in the comment sections of the articles.

We would be incredibly remiss if we did not also take an opportunity to express our appreciation for Just Out’s many years of informing and empowering our community, especially during times when we couldn’t be as out and proud as we are now. This big bouncing queer baby of ours wouldn’t exist without its predecessors.

PQ Monthly is a voice for all letters, all colors, all generations — for all Proud Queers.

Affectionately and excitedly, The PQ Monthly Team

lynda Wilkinson

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A SMATTERING OF WHAT YOU’LL FIND INSIDE:

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proudqueer.com

Vancouver weighs in on marriage equality..................................................................................... page 7 How inclusive should fundraiser galas be?...................................................................................... page 8 Intimate partner violence survivors find ways to thrive.................................................................. page 12 The re-queering of Stark Street; opposing viewpoints on queer spaces...................................... pages 15 & 17 LGBTQ elders embrace change....................................................................................................... page 18 Kaia Wilson keeps it real.................................................................................................................... page 20 Carter Sickels on pills, Pentacostals, and Portland.......................................................................... page 24 Mattilda Berstein Sycamore calls for a radical queer revolution................................................... page 27 Magic Mouth plays your language................................................................................................... page 28 Columns: The Lady Chronicles, Rain City, and Cultivating Life

Brilliant Media LLC, DBA El Hispanic NEws & PQ Monthly.

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Plus Query a Queer, Astroscopes with Miss Renee, This Month in Queer History … and more!

February 2012 •

NEWS BRIEFS

BREVITY ROCKS! NEWS FROM NEAR AND FAR LOCAL Together, we can … push our gay agenda faster and farther. At least, that seems to be the idea behind a number of burgeoning community collaborations.

The Sexual and Gender Minority Youth Resource Center officially merged with Q Center February 1. SMYRC, which provides a wide range of services for LGBTQ youth, including drop-in programs in Multnomah and Washington counties and organizes the annual Oregon Queer Youth Summit, will move from its current home at 3024 NE M.L.K., Jr. Blvd. to a new satellite site at 2406 NE Sandy Blvd in mid-March.

Read more on page 7.

of October. Queer Heroes NW will recognize folks who impacted the local movement during June online and in an exhibit at Q Center. Nominations are open until March 1 and can be submitted at pdxqcenter.org.

Also seeking nominations for influential community members is the Oregon Safe Schools and Communities Coalition. The OSSCC is looking to recognize an individual, via the Richard E. Walker award, who has made a significant contribution to creating safe schools and communities for all children and families, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Past recipients of the recently established award are John Lenssen of Albany and Marion Hammer of Lake Oswego. Nomination forms can be downloaded at oregonsafeschools.org and are due by April 1.

Another promising partnership on the horizon is the collaboration between Basic Rights Oregon and the Community of Welcoming Congregations. The two organizations recently announced the formation of an inter-faith leadership team dedicated to LGBTQ advocacy. The newly formed group is looking for members. Contact Demi at demi@basicrights.org to learn more.

Even the media is joining in the spirit of fellowship.

With the closure of Just Out in December 2011, various LGBTQ media outlets stepped up to meet the community’s needs. Rather than attempting to compete with one another, qPDX, FabulousPDX, and PQ Monthly agreed to collaborate and support one another while maintaining the integrity of their individual publications. Perhaps that trend will continue with the other new media kids in town, Tumblr site Lesbians in Portland (LIPDX), a spin-off of the popular Lesbians in San Francisco site.

Make you feel all warm and fuzzy doesn’t it? Hold onto that feeling while you read the next item.

Those lucky individuals expecting to get cash back from Uncle Sam this tax season can now make a direct donation to Cascade AIDS Project. The local HIV/AIDS advocacy organization was recently added to the Oregon Charitable Checkoff List. To donate, write in CAP #28 on line 68a and pat yourself on the back.

Pride NW is also full speed ahead. Booths for the festival have already gone on sale and parade registration opened Feb. 16. The parade line-up is first-come first-serve this year (aka no lottery system) and early registration is encouraged. The organization that brings us the annual Portland Pride Festival and Parade (June 15-17) is also launching its first “annual” spring fundraiser. The March 29 event will offer guests the opportunity to chat with three of the candidates in Portland’s mayoral race: Eileen Brady, Charlie Hales, and Jefferson Smith. More updates are available on Pride NW’s recently overhauled website, pridenw.org.

Speaking of the mayoral candidates, the above-mentioned are only three of the 18 total who have filed with the city. While the media has largely honed in on those with the greatest fundraising success, the full roster includes the following: Max Bauske, Samuel Belisle, Eileen Brady, Loren Charles Brown, Max Brumm, Dave Campbell, Robert James Carron, Bill Dant, Charlie Hales, Shonda Colleen Kelley, Scott McAlpine, Blake Nieman-Davis, Josh Nutall, Scott Rose, Robin Howie, Jefferson Smith, and Steve Sung.

• February 2012

In California, just the day before, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that anti-gay Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, it’s not time to put those wedding cakes in the oven just yet. The ruling has been stayed until the appeals process is exhausted. Prop 8 supporters have until Feb. 28 to file an appeal, which they have vowed to do. Still, most eyes are toward the U.S. Supreme Court, where the case may or may not end up.

New Jersey is also diving into the fight for marriage equality. The state’s Senate passed a bill in support of same-sex marriage Feb. 13. As of press time, the bill was expected to also pass the House on Feb. 16. Gov. Chris Christie has said that he would veto the bill and favors a ballot measure on the issue. But Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire said she would try to sway her New Jersey counterpart.

The Mayors for the Freedom to Marry movement is also gaining momentum with 146 mayors signed on as of press time, including the mayors of Portland, Eugene, and Vancouver. If your mayor isn’t on the list, you can download a statement for them to sign at freedomtomarry.org.

WORLD Half-way across the world, Australian lawmakers are also contemplating marriage equality. Two virtually identical bills, both seeking to overturn a ban on same-sex marriage while providing an out for ministers who don’t want to marry gays, were introduced in Parliament Feb. 13 (just in time for Valentine’s Day). Sadly, neither bill is expected to succeed.

Enough looking back, you say, what does the future hold?

Pride season may be a ways off yet, but our PQ crystal ball is already showing some new developments. (No word yet on the weather). Q Center and the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific NW are seeking nominations for the first-ever Queer Heroes NW Project. The project is inspired by the national LGBT History Month media campaign, which highlights a gay a day throughout the month

Marriage is the word of the month, with major victories in both Washington and California. The Washington State Legislature voted Feb. 8 to approve a same-sex marriage bill that Gov. Christine Gregoire signed into law Feb. 13. Opponents of the law filed paperwork for Referendum 73, a ballot measure intended to repeal t h e j u s t - p a s s e d l a w, three hours after Gregoire signed the bill. According to Seattle PI, opponents (operating under the name Preserve Marriage Washington) have until June 6 to gather 120,577 valid signatures. Marriage equality is on hold until the issue is decided by voters. Read more on page 7.

Gov. Christine Gregoire

While you’re feeling congratulatory, give some kudos to Cascade AIDS staffer and youth advocate Ernesto Dominguez, who received the Paul A. Anderson Youth Leadership Award in January at the annual Creating Change Conference in Baltimore. Read more on page 11.

Q Patrol PDX is gearing up for patrol season (starting Memorial Day weekend). Those interested in volunteering should contact qpatrolpdx@gmail.com to stay up-to-date on upcoming trainings.

NATIONAL

In other news outside the queer bubble, Trimet is proposing a series of changes to fares and services intended to address a $17 million budget shortfall. The suggested tactics include eliminating zones, increasing fares, and reducing service on a number of bus lines. For a full list of the routes and tickets affected, visit trimet.org.

As we say farewell to round-trip bus rides on a twohour transfer, let us also bid adieu to two local businesses: The Star E Rose Café and It’s My Pleasure. Both popular places for LGBTQ folks to get various fixes, they will surely be missed.

Meanwhile in South Africa, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2006, anti-gay murders have increasingly been in the news. A Cape Town court is currently trying four men in the death of a gay bar owner.

Some have speculated that the man’s death is the work of a serial killer, due to similarities between his death and those of six other gay men over the past 18 months, though authorities reject this claim. Arrests in the most recent case came shortly after four men were sentenced to 18 years in the stabbing and stoning death of a South African lesbian. pqmonthly.com

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February 2012 •

NEWS BRIEFS

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February 2012 •

NEWS

SMYRC JOINS Q CENTER TO FORM ONE FAMILY

Photo courtesy of Q Center

SMYRC youth played an active role in the decision to join forces with Q Center. To read some of their perspectives on the merger, visit pqmonthly.com.

By Erin Rook PQ Monthly

Portland’s Q Center welcomed a new family member Feb. 1 when it officially took the Sexual and Gender Minority Youth Resource Center (SMYRC) under its wing. The merger, which transfers the administration of the youth organization’s programming from Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, promises to bolster both SMYRC’s organizational resources and Q Center’s youth programming.

When talk of a merger first began over

a year ago, SMYRC was in a precarious position. Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare wanted to relinquish its role as program administrator and use the building SMYRC occupied for other purposes.

SMYRC responded by forming an advisory council comprised of youth and adults to explore its options. While the council considered a number of solutions — including incorporating as a 501(c) 3 non-profit — it ultimately concluded that Q Center would be the best fit.

“Everyone came to the same conclusion — that this is the home where they need to

land,” says Q Center executive director Barbara McCullough-Jones.

Q Center is doing its best to make that landing as smooth as possible. As a result of the merger, SMYRC’s program coordinators will work full-time instead of part-time and will be joined by a third hire, thereby doubling Q Center’s full-time staff. The youth will also get a new drop-in/resource center site at 2406 NE Sandy Blvd, Suite 100, due to open by mid-March.

Program coordinator Bree Abby anticipates that the benefit to SMYRC youth will extend beyond concrete additions such as staff and facilities.

“I hope that SMYRC being under the Q Center umbrella will allow us to fundraise and provide outreach in a way that we have not had the organizational capacity to do previously,” Abby says in an interview on the Q Center blog. (She declined an interview with PQ Monthly). “I also imagine that this merger will expose SMYRC youth to even more supportive, positive LGBTQ adult role models, found by GLSEN [the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network] to be one of the largest protective factors for at-risk youth.”

While most of SMYRC’s programming will take place at the Sandy Blvd. site, McCulloughJones says that some services for older youth will be provided at Q Center, in cooperation

with the We Are Here program.

Between the two sites, Q Center will continue to offer the services youth have come to expect from SMYRC: a drop-in/resource center for LGBTQ youth ages 12-23, a cultural-competency training program called Bridge 13, the Washington County Pride Project, and counseling services.

These offerings serve two purposes.

They fulfill the specific requirements of the county grants as well as the larger mission of SMYRC. “The Multnomah County contract is premised on addressing [academically] at-risk youth as defined by Multnomah County,” McCullough-Jones says, explaining the programmatic focus on graduation rates, academic success, and career readiness. “In terms of compliance that has to be what we do and say.”

But that doesn’t mean SMYRC is limited to those goals. Ultimately, McCulloughJones says, Q Center and SMYRC are committed to working creatively within the youth empowerment model to support the youth they serve.

The active involvement of the youth is one of things that makes SMYRC so special, according to Abby.

“Having worked with youth previously in settings where they were often mandated to one family page 16

VANCOUVER WEIGHS IN ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE LEGISLATION

Photo by Anni Becker

Kelly Keigwin and her partner Sam MacKenzie are both Vancouver-based artists.

By Daniel Borgen PQ Monthly

Washington state lawmakers voted to approve gay marriage on Feb. 8, setting the stage for our neighbor to the north to become the seventh state in the country to grant same-sex couples marriage equality. pqmonthly.com

The vote came one day after a landmark court ruling in California that struck down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Prop 8.

Washington’s new law is modeled after similar legislation in New York a nd a l lows exceptions for churches and religious groups who do not wish to perform same-sex marriages or open their facilities to gay and lesbian couples.

O ver t he la st decade or so, Wash i ng ton has stead i ly expanded rights for gay and lesbian couples; it was once one of 30 states that have laws on t he books def ining marriage as being between one man and one woman. The state approved rights for domestic partners in 2007 and in 2009 passed a bill routinely referred to as everything-but-marriage legislation.

Even though the new law likely won’t take immediate effect — opponents can gather 120,000 signatures and put the issue of same-sex marriage to a public referendum — the Washington vote adds a certain measure of inevitability to the question of gay marriage.

And despite the probability

of a referendum going to voters, momentum builds, and questions of “if” are replaced with questions of “when.”

As same-sex marriage inches closer to reality, news outlets have covered not only the steady march to equality, but the potential economic boon associated with granting gay and lesbian couples marriage rights. We at PQ really wanted, for now, to simply gauge local reaction, so we talked to some Vancouver residents to get their take on recent developments. Because, let’s face it, who thought Vancouver would see marriage equality before Portland? Below is a sample of local perspective.

“I could be a bit sheltered, but it seems to me most people think it should — and will — happen,” said Carrie Winters, owner of Moe’s Barbershop, a downtown staple and hub of activity and com mu n it y. “There is a lso a silence about it because I believe most people have accepted it as inevitable. I also want the fight against gay marriage to start ra i si ng quest ion s a s to w hy opponents believe they have the luxury to fight over ideas rather

than fight the issues that are happening right now. Why are opponents spending time and resources to fight gay marriage when there are people suffering and in need of help? Why is the Mormon Church spending time and resources to fight gay marriage instead of, say, feedi ng t he poor? Ca l l me cra z y, but I think all these gay marriage opponents talking about ‘va lues’ should be more concerned with current economic c ond it ion s a nd hu ma n su ffering — the mentally ill, the elderly, the homeless.”

Claire Ghormley, who’s owned and operated a variety of small businesses in the downtown area, had this to say: “What surprised me most has been my family’s reaction. I come from a Catholic family and my immediate family has been highly supportive of marriage equality.”

Kelly Keigwin and her partner, Sam Mackenzie, are both local artists who’ve had their work shown at a variety of galleries and venues. Keigwin, presently showing at Angst Gallery, offered this: “I feel fortunate to live in a state where change is happening

and we, along with many other couples we know, may have the opportunity to marry if we continue to gain momentum and support for the probably November ballot box. I think it’s wonderful that so many politicians have spoken out about equality and see this as a civil rights issue, rather than a religious one. To see people crossing party lines to do the right thing makes me proud to live in this state.”

“My initial reaction was to start planning our wedding and to join in the celebration with our friends and family,” Keigwin added. “Unfortunately, the reality of the referendum possibly being placed on the November ballot has made me a little angry that our rights — granted to us by our government — might be taken away by a popular vote. But I do have faith in Washington as a progressive state that believes in equal rights. We remain optimistic that Washington voters will do the right thing.”

Stay w it h PQ Mont h ly for more on this story as developments warrant, along with profiles of couples and their wedding plans.

February 2012 •

NEWS

FUNDRAISING FROM PETER TO SERVE PAUL

What does the Winter Gala support?

Should — or could —galas like the Q Center’s be accessible to all?

Photo courtesy of Q Center

Photo courtesy of Q Center

By Nick Mattos PQ Monthly

galas page 11

Photo courtesy of Q Center

Portland, OR — The Q Center’s Winter Gala is the organization’s major fundraiser of the year, providing a significant portion of the money needed to keep the LGBTQ community center operating. However, some community members assert that the event caters to the richest segment of Portland queers — and in doing so alienates the people that the Q Center seeks to serve.

According to the Oregon Department of Justice’s Charities Database, the LGBTQ Community Center Fund (doing business as the Q Center) had a total revenue of $226,527 during the 2010 calendar year (2011 tax documents were not publicly available at time of publication). Of this amount, the Q Center claims that 26 percent came from the gala, and expects to pull a similar percentage of the budget in with 2012’s Never Out Of Style Gala.

“It’s our primary fundraiser for the year,” said Logan Lynn, Q Center Public relations manager, “so most of our budget gets set that night.”

One major addition to the Q Center budget adds a degree of pressure to the fundraising at this year’s event. The merger of the Q Center and SMYRC, Portland’s LGBTQ youth program, adds approximately $190,000 to Q Center’s annual budget [See “TITLE OF ARTICLE,” page ##]. Nearly 30 percent of expected revenue is projected to come from private donations — including donations raised at events such as the gala.

As explained in the 2012 gala pamphlet, the gala intends to have 650 attendees whom they characterize as “business leaders, political leaders, [and] Q Center supporters.” However, with ticket prices starting at $100 for one general admission entry and going up to $2,500 for a 10-person VIP booth, some Q Center supporters find that they are not included in that 650 attendee goal because the gala is out of reach for them financially.

James Byrd, a 30-year-old Oregon City resident, observed on the gala’s Facebook invite that “full-time students can’t afford an extra $100” for general admission tickets.

Richard Wilde, a 63-year-old retiree in Portland, phrases it even more strongly. “[The gala] excludes the vast majority of middle income working people because of the cost. ... The gala is just an extension of who [the Q Center] currently caters to … [who are] primarily upper income gays.”

“[Gala tickets are] pricey, but that’s the point,” Lynn said in defense of the ticket cost. “Being as it is a fundraiser, the tickets are set at a certain price so it’s not financially set up for everyone.

That’s because we’re trying to make the most money we can.”

The Q Center’s general admission tickets are also in the middle price range when considering other nonprofit gala events in Portland.

Basic Rights Oregon, for example, priced general admission tickets for their Ignite event at $75, while Planned Parenthood of the Columbia-Willamette charged $250 for their Evening Gala tickets. Lynn pointed out that “The thing about programs and services is that they cost money to offer,” Lynn said. “There is just no way around that fact. We use this one night to fund the majority of Q Center’s four program areas over the other 364 days in the year.

Q Center’s Winter Gala is actually one of the most affordable annual fundraisers in town. Our House does great work for our community and their standard ticket to their annual auction is $175. Cascade AIDS Project also has an annual auction with $100 general admission tickets and $250 patron tickets. … Everyone has to raise money, and we are no different. Without fundraisers, nonprofits disappear — along with the programs and services they provide.”

In order to open up attendance at the gala to supporters who may not have the means to purchase tickets themselves, the Q Center does offer volunteer work-trade options, as well as a sponsorship program through which donors provide tickets for lower-income supporters.

“I would love to see more sponsorship happen so that those who can’t afford can still attend,” Lynn said.

Tickets are also not the only way that funds are raised at the gala; the money also comes from a silent auction, corporate sponsorships, and a special appeal.

“I think it’s fair to say that the special appeal is one of the most important, lucrative components,” said Daniel Borgen, Winter Gala planning committee volunteer.

• February 2012

As reported by Logan Lynn, Q Center Public Relations manager, the Center’s budget for 2012 is “roughly $625,000.” Twenty-six percent the budget — an estimated $162,500 — comes from special events; 90 percent of that comes specifically from the gala.

Beyond the fundraising events, 30 percent of the Q Center’s revenue comes from grants, 20 percent from individual donors, 13 percent from corporate sponsors, 9 percent from facility rentals, and 2 percent from other sources of revenue.

As to where the money goes, the Q Center is proud of its efficient usage of its funds. The Center’s projected 2012 budget indicates that only 49 percent of the Center’s expenses go to personnel. Twenty-two percent goes to facilities and maintenance, a number likely higher due to the merger with SMYRC. Sixteen percent goes towards special events, such as the Q Center Concert Series. Finally, 13 percent is spent on administrative and general costs.

Programming-wise, the Q Center offers a diverse range of services and resources for all members of the queer community. The Q Patrol, a direct action community safety initiative, strives to keep the city’s queers safe in the places that they socialize and party. The center’s LGBTQ Chemical Dependency and Support Program offers private donationbased counseling for individuals questioning their usage of drugs and alcohol, and has a policy to never turn away clients for lack of funds.

The We Are Here project provides resources and support for LGBTQ youth at no charge; while the program’s offerings are likely to change due to the SMYRC merger, they continue to provide a safe space for Portland’s queer youth to come of age in a supportive community. The Communi-T Trans Resource Fair connects trans and genderqueer individuals with each other and other community members to address health, legal, and social needs and organize for better visibility and representation.

Even beyond the branded programming, the Q Center serves as a central hub of activity for numerous clubs, organizations, and events serving the queer community. Each week sees groups such as Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Interpersonal Violence Support Group, the Coming Out Group, and LGBTQI & Disabled meeting in the space to provide comfort and support to a wide cross-section of the city’s queer population. All such groups meet in the space for a sliding-scale donation-based entry fee, again with nobody turned away for lack of funds.

For more information about the Q Center’s offerings to all members of the community — and the role that the gala and other events play in the Q Center’s operations — check out their website at www.pdxqcenter.org.

pqmonthly.com

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February 2012 •

NEWS STORIES

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pqmonthly.com

NEWS

LOCAL YOUTH ACTIVIST WINS NATIONAL LEADERSHIP AWARD

galas: “Without fundraisers, nonprofits disappear — along with the programs and services they provide.”

Continued from page

By Julie Cortez PQ Monthly

Portland, OR — Ernesto Domínguez, 23, has firsthand knowledge of the types of challenges facing the youth he helps through his work at Cascade AIDS Project, Advocates for Youth, and the Oregon Queer Youth Summit.

Domínguez experienced homelessness for nearly a year and a half when his mother kicked him out of the house at age 16 because he is gay.

At the same time, Domínguez was homeless in another sense. To the nation he considers home, in which he had lived since he was 1 year old, he was an “alien,” and an “illegal” one at that.

He discovered that many social services aimed at the homeless were not available to the undocumented. And while his relationship has improved with his mother, he has not seen her in five years and she’s never met his partner of three years because she now lives in his native Mexico and his undocumented status makes leaving the country and air travel in general very risky..

“Coming out as undocumented has always been a lot harder for me that coming out as queer,” Domínguez told PQ Monthly. “You never know who you can trust, or how they’re going to take it.”

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force presented Domínguez with the Paul A. Anderson Youth Leadership Award at last month’s 24th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, held in Baltimore, Md. The Task Force honored Domínguez for his work on behalf of the LGBT community, but he used his speech at the conference to draw attention spe-

Photo by Lloyd Wolf

Ernesto Domínguez received the Paul A. Anderson Youth Leadership award at the Creating Change Conference that took place Jan. 25-29 in Baltimore. cifically to the plight of the undocumented.

“I stand here today with the distinct privilege that many others to not have,” he said. “I say privilege because I am aware of how many of our queer and undocumented brothers and sisters … are unable to attend Creating Change.”

Domínguez added that until recently, he would have been unable to accept the award due to his undocumented status. Two and a half years ago, however, he was granted U Nonimmigrant Status — often referred as a “U Visa” — because he was the victim of a violent crime.

Domínguez told PQ Monthly that “if all goes well” he’ll be able to apply for permanent legal residency this fall, but for now, even with the U Visa, he’s been advised by an immigration lawyer not to sign petitions, make political contributions, or write to a congressperson.

“Any of these things can be considered as treason as defined in immigration documents,” he said in his speech. “And even things like protesting can jeopardize the political visa — a visa that was only granted to me because a U.S. citizen committed a heinous crime against me. That was my only path to citizenship.”

Thanks to the visa, Domínguez is now able to do his job at Cascade AIDS Project reaching out to youth through social media and his volunteer efforts on behalf HIV prevention, immi-

gration reform, and reproductive rights without fear of deportation. He can’t vote yet, “but I can still have a voice and be more vocal than a lot of my peers.”

Domínguez has experienced a lack of understanding about his identities from both of the communities with which he identifies — the Latino and LGBTQ communities.

Regarding his immigration status, he’s heard the likes of: “Why don’t you just marry a girl?,” “You speak perfect English; how can you be undocumented?,” and “Why don’t you just get in line [for citizenship]?”

“If there was a line,” Domínguez said, “I’d be happy to get in it.”

From Latinos, he’s had questions about why he isn’t more effeminate and why he doesn’t dress like a girl. His brother has been supportive, but thought being gay “meant I wanted to be a woman or was going to have a sex change,” Domínguez said.

While he’s found “a lot of really amazing allies … there’s just a lot of misunderstanding on both sides,” Domínguez added.

What he seeks to help both sides to understand is that they share a struggle for rights and for recognition.

“Our communities are not separate,” he said.

“They intersect.”

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In other words, one of the important objectives of the night, in addition to providing a grand event, is to encourage the attendees to give generously beyond their purchase of tickets.

The ticket price isn’t controversial to many — even if they can’t currently afford to pay.

“I don’t think that the tickets are too expensive,” said Kathryn Knowlson, a Portland resident who has taken advantage of Q Center resources in the past and who was recently laid off from her job. “For me, in my personal current situation, I can’t pay it — but I don’t think that means it’s a wrong price. If I had $100 to donate to a charitable cause, it would be worth it to me to support their mission of supporting and celebrating the LGBTQ community. I’m glad that they have events like this to support diversity and communitybuilding, and that there are people able to give in order to support it.”

However, some community members such as Wilde still expressed concern that, despite serving a critical role in the Q Center’s yearly fundraising, the gala alienates the very base that it serves.

“Our community cannot truly hope to inspire its youth, heal those who are hurting, and provide for the general welfare of our brothers and sisters,” Wilde said, “if we do not adhere to the values and virtues of ordinary people who have managed to bring us as far as we have come and can take us yet even farther. … The gala needs to reach out to all of the LGBT community, not just to the ones who have money.”

February 2012 • 11

FEATURES

FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING: Life after intimate partner violence

By Erin Rook PQ Monthly

Trigger warning: The following article contains accounts of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

The lived experience of intimate partner violence is so marked by the daily struggle to survive that it seems an understatement to call those who make it out alive “survivors.” Even those who meet death at the hands of their partners are surviving until the day they die. In emerging victorious from that battle, they cease to be mere survivors and begin, rather, to thrive. These are the stories three queer survivors who are doing just that.

Katie

It’s only been two years since Katie, 26, left her abuser for the elusive “light at the end of the tunnel,” but she is already basking in its radiance. The lesbian law student is excelling in her classes while holding down two campus leadership positions and three jobs. She is in a happy, healthy relationship and looking forward to what the future holds.

As she marks the anniversary of her freedom from emotional and sexual violence, Katie says she feels compelled to speak out about her experience.

“I feel this strong desire not to be silent about it lately,” she says, even though it’s still both embarrassing and terrifying to talk about the abuse.

What started out as “normal shitty girlfriend stuff,” Katie explains, progressed in a matter of months to oppressive emotional abuse. Her girlfriend had a long list of rules for Katie to follow, all designed to control her. Don’t cut your hair. Don’t lose weight.

Dress femme. Call when you wake up. Text before bed.

“She had this way of making it seem like there was something wrong with me and I believed her,” Katie explains. “I was trying to disprove her by not breaking up with her.”

She also held out hope that she could change her girlfriend. After all, she had good qualities too, and was well-respected by the larger community. Then, in addition to the daily emotional abuse, her girlfriend started raping her.

“We’d be having sex and I would not want it anymore and she would continue,” Katie explains. “It was rape but it wasn’t the standard idea of it. It happened a lot, and it hurt a lot.”

Katie attempted to end the relationship many times over the two years, but her abuser had too much power over her.

So when Katie’s girlfriend broke up with her for a month, she took advantage of the breathing room and secretly applied 12 • February 2012

FOR ALL THE HEALING I DID AROUND IT AND SUPPORT I GOT FOR PHYSICAL VIOLENCE, THE HARDEST PART TO COME TO TERMS WITH WAS THE RAPE. IF YOU SAY YES FOR MONTHS IS IT REALLY RAPE WHEN YOU SAY NO? THE ANSWER IS YES. ERIKA

to law schools far from home.

“I just had this little bit of defiance in me,” Katie says. “I had faith that I could not be so miserable at some point. But I didn’t feel strong enough to break up and still be in same city.”

The relationship continued long-distance six months into Katie’s studies before she found the strength to end it for good.

The positive reinforcement she was getting from school fed her growing defiance and reminded her that life could be better.

It took time, but it did get better. Therapy and giving a name to her experiences helped.

“Around August I started feeling better.

Not just better, but stronger than I ever had and started believing that I’m not an idiot, that I’m not ugly,” Katie recalls. “[Identifying the abuse] helped me stop believing the lies so much. Not just the lies she told, but the ones I developed.”

Erika

It’s been half a life since Erika Stanley, 35, escaped from emotional, physical, and sexual violence she faced at the hands of her boyfriend. But despite the passage of time and its attendant healing, talking about her experiences reveals a vulnerability belied by the confidence with which she takes the stage as a performance artist.

In retrospect, Erika realizes she was out of her depth when she moved in with her much older drug dealer at age 18. Still, the relationship offered her an exploration of BDSM and queer sex that she can’t throw out with the proverbial bathwater, contaminated though it was.

“He wasn’t exclusively a top, but his controlling stuff started to leak outside of safe consensual space into beating and a lot of controlling [behaviors], then rape before I left,” she explains. They were only together for six to eight months, but “it didn’t take long to blow up.”

Eventually, her abuser ended the relationship and kicked her out of his apartment. Erika believes he saw where things were going and got scared.

“After the really bad beating where he broke my nose and the rape, he knew he was losing control,” she recalls. “I think he knew it was getting really bad.”

She eventually found healing through the spiritual support of a women’s circle,

counseling, and friends and family.

“For all the healing I did around it and support I got for physical violence, the hardest part to come to terms with was the rape,” Erika recalls. “If you say yes for months is it really rape when you say no? The answer is yes. … I was sodomized. I was raped.”

Also challenging was convincing herself, after all that degradation, that she was worthy of being loved, respected, heard, and seen.

“Understanding that we are all worthy, that’s the key,” Erika says. “That’s my fuckng word. That’s scarier than thinking about having my head knocked into a radiator or the horrible stuff I didn’t need to see to learn this lesson. I’m still learning that lesson.”

Harrison

Harrison, a 30-something artist, has come along way from the isolation and fear that marked his first few years in Portland. And yet, though his real name is well known in the local queer community, he still cannot safely reveal it when discussing the abuse he suffered when he arrived here six years ago. Unlike Katie and Erika, he still shares a city with his abuser.

The violence began shortly after he moved to town and fell hard and fast for another artist. Drawn by an intensity that mirrored the twisted conflation of love and violence familiar from his childhood, Harrison was quickly seduced.

But it wasn’t long before the butterflies faded and a dark, jealous edge emerged, marked by controlling behaviors, insults, and threats. Soon, his abuser’s behaviors fell into a predictable two-week cycle. The first week was “glorious,” while the second lead up to a “horrific breakdown” that Harrison would make himself crazy trying to prevent.

“Throughout all of this, there was a pervasive belittling of me, of my skills and my talents. He would routinely make me feel ugly and worthless,” Harrison says. “I believed [him]. This became my self narrative.”

After about a year, Harrison broke free from the cycle of abuse, but it took time for him to emerge from the self-destructive spin-out that followed.

“I felt like a broken object.” Harrison says. “I fell into a deep depression and lost my job. I lost it.”

Tattoo by Giannina Rose

Photo by Erin Rook, PQ Monthly

After a period of risky and reckless behavior, Harrison finally sought help in therapy. Though he thought of himself as “this normal guy who went through something bad,” his therapist quickly identified the relationship as abusive and his symptoms as indicative of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Harrison says he’s learned a lot in the five years since it ended.

“I want to believe that these things happen for an important reason to make me better, Harrison says. “I do think that I’ve been able to take this experience and make it into something that has genuinely improved my life, my relationships, and the lives of people around me.”

If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you needs help dealing with an abusive relationship, call Bradley Angle’s 24-hour crisis line at 503-281-2442.

Read more about these thriving survivors online at pqmonthly.com. pqmonthly.com

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February 2012 • 13

14 • February 2012

pqmonthly.com

NIGHTLIFE

STORMING STARK: A QUEER (RE-)TAKEOVER

Photo by BatchFoto

Photo by BatchFoto

By Daniel Borgen PQ Monthly

In a city like ours, where one can stake out a handful of queer nights at venues all over town—week in and week out, one might pose the argument that Portland doesn’t really need an all-queer, all-the-time watering hole or club.

The wilting of the legendary gay triangle has been lamented (and written about) ad nauseum; its demise remains a rather stark blight on our landscape, one that comes up in chats with out-of-towners and old friends but is largely the furthest thing from our collective queer minds. The community has been too busy getting Bent, finding our Homomentum, and — up until recently — dining at the Cafeteria to wallow or stay static. Out of sight, out of mind.

As new retail, restaurant, and hotel spaces spring up in spots once only frequented after dark, a few venerable haunts remain. While it’s not too hard to argue queer traffic on Stark has waned, one bar has set out to buck the trend.

Red Cap is breathing new life into Portland’s nightlife — as well as revitalizing a brand that had been largely abandoned. Helmed by Samuel Thomas, promotions manager at Red Cap and Boxxes, these two landmarks have again found their stride — and relevancy.

While Peep Show, the brainchild of Artemis Chase, drew big crowds and big names (like Joey Arias and Sherry Vine — along with plenty of local talent) before the Thomas era, Portland’s Queer Music Festival (a Thomas invention) seemed to serve as an impetus for the venue’s rather subtle overhaul and rebirth. Drawing crowds that rivaled Pride in terms of size, the festival helped widen Red Cap’s scope and reach, reminding a very diverse community the bona fide gem that was at their disposal.

Last summer, post-Music Fest and during negotiations to tackle promotions, Thomas was brainstorming.

“We went through a couple of months of negotiation before they finally hired me on as promotions manager at the end of October,” he explained. “So those months between pqmonthly.com

Party-goers take it EASY with DJ Lustache at Red Cap. the festival and getting hired I was brainstorming and thinking of ways to really bring life back to these two clubs.”

From there came rather popular nights like SALON (last Tuesdays, Serendipity Jones), EASY (first Saturdays, DJs Lustache and Jezabelle), Never Enough (80s night, second Tuesdays, DJ Ray Gun), and the enduring Peep Show (third Fridays). Whew.

“It’s funny,” Thomas said, outlining the talent recruitment process. “Being so heavily invested in Portland’s nightlife — from live music to dance nights — I just started calling up friends and asking them if they wanted to come deejay for Red Cap or Boxxes. I let people have free reign — mostly — on deciding their own styles and really making their own parties the way they want. Because of that, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.”

And the bar’s renewed success seems to rebuke any calls or questions that so-called gay bars have come to an end in Portland. “As much as the LGBTQ community can go out to practically any bar or club and feel comfortable, we still need a place to call our own, a safe haven where we are guaranteed non-discrimination and protection,” Thomas pointed out. “Some people may not feel the need to ever set foot inside a LGBTQ bar or club, but I think for most of us, the knowledge and availability of a safe and friendly space is incredibly important.”

It certainly doesn’t hurt matters if that safe place also doubles as one of the most exciting places to go on any given night. In addition to the already-stellar nights and lineups, Thomas plans to add more components to the equation, including two coups: the addition of Queerlandia and San Francisco-based Bearracuda — the biggest rotating bear party in the country. With plans to utilize both spaces simultaneously, creating a sprawling party atmosphere, Thomas’ maneuvers evoke memories of Stark Street’s glory days.

And although those days were glorious, it’s common knowledge that in its heyday, Stark catered to a mostly gay, mostly male crowd.

Photo by BatchFoto

“I am a huge fan of using downtown for what it used to be — the center of a community,” Thomas said. “Portland is blessed to be so diverse and have so many awesome venues, clubs, bars, and parties all over town; I’m hoping we can all work together toward a bright future. Stark Street has changed drastically the last 10 years or so, from ‘Vaseline Alley’ to a much more gentrified area. With those changes I see the bars adjusting accordingly, so yes — we are not a ‘primarily gay boy’ neighborhood anymore.”

And, in the midst of all the diversity, Thomas often uses one of the more clever taglines we’ve seen of late: “Bringing Vaseline Alley back to Stark Street.”

With all this revitalization, it’s important to note the descriptive moniker coined by Thomas: alternative. “I deliberately started using the term ‘alternative club’ shortly after being hired at Red Cap,” Thomas explained. “I identify as queer, and fully embrace the LGBTQ community, but [in] watching our clientele and reaching out to a new audience, I wanted to find a word that would not only appeal to our own community, but to the straight people who have also started coming in. Because of recruiting so many DJs and performers outside the ‘normal’ club scene, I felt it was only fitting. We are embracing everyone. We want to be a safe haven for bears, trans, gays, queers, lesbians, straights, those unidentified — for everyone. So to me, personally, the term just works better.”

Whatever the technical label, it’s pretty clear whatever philosophy Thomas is applying to Red Cap and Boxxes is working — and crowds are responding. Now, instead of an empty patio and vacant chairs, passers-by are apt to see crammed sidewalks and queers aplenty. Vaseline or no, it’s rather empowering and refreshing to see Portland queers reclaiming and reinventing old territory.

Stay tuned to PQ for news on Bearracuda’s Red Cap arrival — slated for April—and for Queerlandia’s Stark Street launch (March 17). Stay abreast of everything at Facebook.com/redcappdx.

February 2012 • 15

NEWS

A CHILDHOOD ON THE MARGINS INFORMS ETHOS DIRECTOR’S APPROACH TO MUSIC EDUCATION Ethos Music Center to register their children for sliding-scale music lessons.

Unlike his mother, these parents don’t have the resources to pay for fullprice classes, and their children’s schools may not offer any form of music education.

Ethos exists to bridge that gap. Chávez, recently named executive director of the community music school, is there to ensure Ethos remains financially strong and programmatically focused so that young people can continue to reap the broad benefits of music education.

Photo by Xilia Faye, PQ Monthly “Music really has this Ethos executive director Jedidiah Chávez believes in the transforma- transformative sort of abiltive power of music. ity to reach at-risk youth,” Chávez says, citing studBy Erin Rook ies that show music education PQ Monthly increases SAT scores and improves academic performance. “So when Growing up, Jedidiah Chávez we look at the evaluations and see didn’t have a lot, but there was that increase in academics, it’s really always music. His mother, a cona simple solution. I think music can cert pianist, bartended and waited reach a lot of kids that are traditiontables to support her son and proally underserved. Music has the abilvide for his musical education. ity to engage students who may oth“She had a jar she would put her erwise fall through the cracks.” tips in, and she would put a couple Chávez, who first joined Ethos dollars in another jar for music lesin 2008 as a grant writer and was sons,” Chávez, 32, recalls. “I just soon promoted to director of develremember feeling really guilty that opment, knows firsthand what a she was working so hard to provide lifeline arts education can be. As a music lessons for me.” “chubby” queer Latino kid growing It’s a memory that is triggered up in Loveland, Col., he sought and every time he sees parents walk into

found solace in the art room from an otherwise torturous high school experience.

“I dropped out of school when I was 16. High school was a very difficult place for me,” Chávez recalls.

“Had it not been for my art teacher I probably wouldn’t have stayed till I was 16.”

Fortunately, that love of the arts stuck with Chávez, inspiring him to continue his education outside high school. After attending community college, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Northern Colorado and a master of fine arts from Vermont College.

Although Chávez prevailed over the challenges he faced in his early education, his experiences as a youth on the margins continues to inform his work with Ethos.

“I think that my identity certainly frames how I view our programs, specifically access to our programs,” Chávez says. “My mother was a single parent, my father was undocumented, from Mexico City, so I was also raised as ‘the other’ in a lot of different ways. I will never forget that experience and it absolutely shapes my leadership.”

And it’s clear that Chávez’s leadership has shaped Ethos. In the last four years, he increased contributed revenue by 30 percent, helped secure $1.5 million for capital improvements to Ethos’ North Portland headquarters, and partnered with the Corporation for National and Community Service to place 10

AmeriCorps-affiliated music teachers in small towns across Oregon.

But it’s not all about the numbers. By coming up with creative ways to keep Ethos afloat in the face of decreasing foundation support and increasing economic hardship, Chávez is setting the stage for the measures that matter — namely, staying in school and out of trouble.

“We had a student in Fossil who took lessons with one of our AmeriCorps members. He was in and out of juvenile detention and not doing well in school. Last spring, he was accepted into Berklee College of Music,” Chávez recalls, adding that the musical accomplishment is not the highlight of the story. “We are not necessarily interested in preparing students to be performers.

We see the ability music has as an intervention tool.”

When 41 percent of Portland high school students fail to graduate in four years and an 11-yearold is accused of flashing a loaded gun on a Max train, the need for an intervention is clear.

“The great thing is that music can reach kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks and give them a voice. They may still be bullied, but they have an outlet and a mentor in their instructor,” Chávez says. And when it comes right down to it: “If they have a trombone in their hand they don’t have a gun in their hand.”

one family

point where safety issues come into play,” the center is not philosophically opposed to engaging with police — a point of contention for members of the community opposed to Q Center’s cooperation with the Portland Police Bureau in the formation of Q Patrol.

“It’s still a work in progress,” McCullough-Jones says. “We’re signed and all one family now, but it’s still a process of blending cultures, families, policies, ways of making our way through the day.

Ultimately, strengthening the program is what it’s all about.”

Continued from page

receive services, I had a lot of experiences with youth clients who were understandably disengaged or resistant to working with me,” Abby says

in the Q Center interview. “Coming to SMYRC was like coming home in that all of the youth accessing our services are highly motivated to be here and very engaged.”

McCullough-Jones says that while Q Center tries to “err on the side of self-determination to the

To learn more about Ethos Music Center, visit ethos.org.

Victoria Lyn Miller, 1974-2012 Victoria Lyn Miller was born November 30, 1974; and passed away unexpectedly on January 28, 2012, in her partner’s arms.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone who had met her that wasn’t some how touched.

In true Victoria form her s e r v i c e p a c ke d t he hous e with dreadlocks sitting next to white coats. No matter what stage in life you met her (or her you), you experienced some-

16 • February 2012

thing unique and special.

Yet, as the past week has shown, there are certain words that keep reoccurring: radiant, brilliant, energy, laughter, love, and life.

Love seemed to be what she was surrounded by the most, leaving behind two wonderful parents Jim and Holly Miller; her brother Steve and his wife Shawna; her beloved PCRO and MBA cohor t (OHSU ), quite

the extended chosen family, and most of all her two young sons Ryan and Cameron and her partner Crystal Greer. The three of them were her whole world.

In her words, “My life started the day we kissed and I plan to end it the same way … I will love you forever … In this life and the next and back again.”

Honor her memory by living and loving fully.

THIS MONTH IN QUEER HISTORY 1791 – New Hampshire restricts its sodomy law to male-male acts only, and retains the death penalty.

[Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific NW] 1903 – Police conduct the first recorded raid on a gay bathhouse in the United States (Aristan Hotel Baths), resulting in the arrest of 26 men. Twelve were charged with sodomy and seven were convicted and sentenced to prison. [“Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940”] 1918 – Dr. Alan L. Hart, the first documented female-to-male transgender person in the United States and a graduate of Lewis & Clark College and University of Oregon Medical Department in Oregon (now OHSU), married his first wife Inez Stark. Hart was one of the first FTM individuals to undergo sex reassignment surgery. [GLAPN] 1918 – A gay Oregonian convicted of sodomy challenges the state’s sterilization law and wins. [GLAPN] 1950 – The Maine Supreme Court rules that cunnilingus is a “crime against nature.” [GLAPN] 1975 – Oregon House Bill 2637, which seeks to ban anti-gay discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations, stalls in committee. [GLAPN] 1988 – The Portland-based gay newspaper, City Week, changes its name to Oregon Gay News.

[GLAPN] 1988 – The Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) files an initiative to repeal Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s executive order banning discrimination against gays in government jobs. The initiative, called Measure 8, ultimately passes. [GLAPN] 2004 – Same-sex marriage licenses are issues in San Francisco, but later annulled. [queerhistory.blogspot.com] 2005 – The Civil Marriage Act, seeking to grant same-sex couples marriage equality, is introduced in Canada. [queerhistory. blogspot.com] 2008 – Oregon passes a law allowing same-sex couples to register as domestic partners. [queerhistory.blogspot.com] 2009 – Iceland elects Johanna Sigurdardottir Prime Minister, making her the first openly LGBTQ head of government. [queerhistory. blogspot.com] 2012 – PQ Monthly launches its first issue. pqmonthly.com

OPINION

DO WE STILL NEED QUEER SPACES?

Two perspectives on the necessity of queer bars and bookstores

By Nick Mattos PQ Monthly

The story of queer culture is one that has played out in bars, bathhouses, and bookstores. Over two centuries ago in 1810, a saloon called the White Swan scandalized London for giving gay men the first explicitly

bathhouse. The Internet has largely replaced the “tea room� and the bookstore as a means to meet other queer people and plan the next phase of the fight for equal rights. As a result, many queer spaces have closed their doors, unable to stay financially solvent when the community no longer depends upon them for their social, romantic, and political lives. The question emerges: in this phase of queer culture, is there a necessity for queer-specific spaces at all?

As part of this ongoing conversation, two community members offer their (sometimes controversial) perspectives on the necessity of space set aside for the LGBTQ community. This conversation is far from over — and needs you to contribute your voice and your thoughts to it. Please participate in the ongoing conversation and make your opinions heard at www. pqmonthly.com.

Racquel Russo — Musician/filmmaker/performer “[ The issue of queer-only spaces] Photo courtesy of Racquel Russo is an issue about both the preservasafe space to be with one another. tion of culture and the celeSince then, countless queer bars and bration of community. I think bathhouses have followed in its foot- of my grandfather going to steps, providing a space and context his Italian Heritage Club. for the liberation of LGBTQ people. That club was his gay bar, if Queer bookstores a lso ser ved as you will. He could toss a bocci the epicenters of the organized gay ball while wearing a white rights movement, allowing activists wife beater and playfully slap to meet and plan with one another in other men on the ass. Places a safe and supportive space. Without where like-minded people spaces like the Stonewall Inn or the can gather with freedom of Oscar Wilde Bookshop, queer cul- expression provide a certain ture as we know it simply wouldn’t safety that other spaces can’t exist. begin to guarantee.

However, times have changed, and That said, I also think there the realities of modern LGBTQ life are is a line drawn out of reason. starkly different than anything the The idea of queer art spaces, patrons of the White Swan could have gay music venues — these imagined. In cities like Portland we can seem to be unnecessary, a find people similar to us in all manner sort of self-imposed segregaof spaces, not just within the bar or tion. I think in order to achieve

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acceptance and equality, minority groups have to endure the difficulty and awkwardness of real integration.�

Tylor Phelps — Advertising account manager “Even if we want [queer-only spaces], we certainly don’t need them.

If we can get used to the disappointing lack of hardcore pornography playing on every visible screen, I think we would fit in just fine at plenty of nonqueer-specific bars and spaces in Portland. ‌ If you’re living in one of the most tolerant societies in the history of the world, in one of the most liberal cities in the nation, and still feel left out, it might just be you. Even if it isn’t, segregating yourself is probably not going to help in any meaningful way.

However, [the necessity of queeronly spaces] depends on where you live. If you lived in a small Midwestern town it would probably be nice to have a local gay bar. If you lived in the French banlieues of Marseilles, however, you might be more concerned about making yourself an easier target for violent assault by religious fundamentalists than any perceived need for a leather bar.�

NEWS

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FEATURES

LGBTQ ELDERS EXPLORE THE UPSIDE OF CHANGE

By Erin Rook

friends with straight people is much easier — they unconsciously flaunt their sexuality so they are easy to identify and there are so many of them.”

The same could be said for gay-friendly retirement communities, but Smith isn’t giving up in his search for the perfect place to rest his head — or his next adventure.

“I am not ready to call it quits,” Smith says. “I hope to remain mobile, active, helpful when I can be, interested in other people and life in general.”

PQ Monthly

The only constant in life is change — a truism that seems to intensify with the passage of time.

“One of the things about aging is that there are changes,” says Peggy Hackenbruck, a cofacilitator for Gay & Grey’s support group for LGBTQ seniors. “You can’t predict what the changes are so you do have to continue to learn how to deal with change.”

While some of those changes can be hard to accept — such as the loss of a partner, health, or home — age lends a perspective and experience that can help with that process.

“You’ve done it and you have some strategies for working with it,” Hackenbruck says.

Three seniors share their strategies for dealing with change — and some of the things they’ve gained in a time so often associated with loss.

Everything old is new again

Steve Smith keeps it pragmatic as he looks for “the final residence before the final residence.”

Photo by Karen Tweedy-Holmes

Emerging from the cocoon of retirement The life cycle of the butterfly serves as an apt and common metaphor for many kinds of transformations. For Nikki/Neil Heilpern, an “old married queer” for whom gender is subject to perpetual evolution, the magic inherent in that metamorphosis is as vivid and relevant at age 69 as it was in her childhood.

“You’re not afraid of butterflies are you?”

Heilpern asks, looking down at the shimmering wings adorning her shirt and slacks.

Though she tries to embrace the change they represent, it doesn’t always come easily.

When Heilpern’s body delivered a pink slip five years ago in the form of employment-ending pain, she accepted her new reality, but never really adjusted to life without work.

“I was at the state capitol doing my routines,” Heilpern says of her last day working as a journalist. “I had just interviewed someone on the Senate side. I was walking over to the House side. Halfway across I stopped. I could feel the pain in my back and legs and just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I don’t have the stamina.’ So I got in the elevator, got in my car, and went home.”

She not only retired from reporting and photographing after that day, she also closed up shop on her traveling puppet show. While this gave Heilpern’s body a chance to rest, it spurred her mind into a three-year depression.

Eventually, she realized she needed to feel useful lest she “shrivel up.” So Heilpern started attending a support group for LGBTQ elders and began volunteering with children at Friendly House. Now, she is preparing to come out of retirement to write and photograph again.

“I have to force myself to get out of the house,” Heilpern admits. “I can’t give into the image I have that I’m an old person. I’ve made 69 revolutions around the sun, but inside I’m still a kid.”

Fortunately, she has plenty of projects to choose from. Of the 300 or so writing proj18 • February 2012

Nikki (Neil) Heilpern takes inspiration from the butterfly as she prepares to re-emerge from retirement. ects on her to-do list, she is most excited about her children’s book manuscript, “The Maccabee Kids.”

“I’m going beyond my fear of rejection,” she says. “If I keep putting it off because of my fears, my song will go unsung.”

Settling down, but not settling As Steve Smith begins his search for the “final residence before the final residence,” he is weighing a different sort of rejection.

The 70-year-old retired teacher is in the market for a place to live out the rest of his days and, like many LGBTQ seniors, is finding the options rather limited by both finances and fear of discrimination.

One community he looked into had great curb appeal. One of Smith’s gay male friends lives there with happily with his partner — a fact that helps to assuage any fears of returning to the closet. But the price tag was simply too high.

“For one of the best retirement communities in Portland that would mean having about $1.5 million in order to qualify for a one-bedroom (plus den) apartment.

Being 50 cents short of that sum I decided to admire the building from afar rather than

Photo by Erin Rook, PQ Monthly

buy in,” Smith jokes dryly.

Smith may not be looking for luxury, but he is concerned about being forced to spend the rest of his life surrounded by people whose attitudes about LGBTQ people were formed when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness.

“Even though I’ve never lived or worked in a gay ghetto, I do wonder about living in close quarters with a largely heterosexual population of my own generation,” Smith admits. “Owners and administrators of retirement communities can have the best intentions, but will fellow residents be the people I thought I left behind on the elementary school playground?”

Whatever the future holds for Smith, he will likely tackle it with the same pragmatic attitude that has marked his recent life transitions. When he was preparing to retire a few years ago, his financial adviser told him he wouldn’t be able to afford living in the San Francisco area without a job. So he researched his options via gay chat rooms and landed in Portland.

“Making gay friends was a little like finding a job — it took some time, a little effort, and willingness to be the stranger in a crowd,” Smith recalls. “Finding and making

Contrary the ageist adage about “old dogs” not being able to learn “new tricks,” 69-year-old Peggy Hackenbruck is finding that older LGBTQ folks are in some ways better positioned to create new community resources than their younger counterparts.

Call it the “Been there, done that” effect.

“We are really the first group of LGBT seniors that have a community identity,” Hackenbruck says, which includes politics, music, art and the shared experience of living through the birth of the AIDS epidemic. “From Stonewall on we had to create other kinds of cultural community groups and businesses.”

Just as a once-fractured community came together in the face of the AIDS crisis to make alliances and commitments to care for one another, Hackenbruck says LGBTQ seniors are realizing once again that they are all in this together.

“Many of us don’t have children, and those who do, may have children [and] grandchildren we aren’t out to,” Hackenbruck says. “By and large, we have each other.”

It is this realization that inspired Hackenbruck to take her background in community organizing and mental health to the next logical step — co-facilitating a support group for LGBTQ seniors through Gay & Grey.

While she recognizing the power in LGBTQ seniors coming together to face the challenges of aging, she also acknowledges the vital role to be played both straight allies and younger LGBTQ folks. “[It helps] having a perspective that we have generations coming up behind us and knowing that you all are going to move forward in the areas that need to be addressed,” Hackenbruck says.

As for the support of the broader community, Hackenbruck says it is both necessary and deserved. Fortunately, organizations such as Friendly House, which runs the Gay & Grey program, are stepping up to offer their expertise and access to financial resources.

“This isn’t a grassroots GLBT phenomenon. This is something that is grounded in a regular old senior center,” Hackenbruck says. And that’s as it should be. “We are a part of this greater community and we deserve to have a share of the services.”

For information on resources for LGBTQ elders, visit friendlyhouseinc.org/programs/ gay-and-grey. pqmonthly.com

pqmonthly.com

February 2012 • 19

ARTS & CULTURE

REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE

KAIA WILSON KEEPS IT REAL WITH NEW SOLO ALBUM Getting by with a little help from her fans It’s that working-class realness that turned Wilson on to Kickstarter to fund her upcoming solo album, the first since 2008’s “Godmakesmonkeys.” Her current barista gig doesn’t quite cover the costs of producing her new solo album, “TWO ADULT WOMEN IN LOVE” (slated for a March/April release), but contributions from fans poured in quickly, raising more than $14,000 (twice the stated goal) by the end of the campaign.

“What’s really cool about it is most of my backers so far, and probably the majority of my backers, will give me ten bucks and they’re gonna get a digital download, which is basically a pre-order of the record,” Wilson explains. (She ultimately received one $5,000 donation, but about 70 percent of backers pledged $35 or less.) “So it’s kinda killing two birds with one stone. It’s getting my record done and people who actually give something do get something back.”

Queer music icon Kaia Wilson has love, and her fans, to thank getting her new album off the ground.

By Erin Rook PQ Monthly

The dream of the ’90s is alive in Kaia Wilson. To be fair, it never really died.

“This was a running joke for me a long time before ‘Portlandia,’ — a joke that I didn’t even start because I didn’t realize I lived in the ’90s,” Wilson says. “My friends had to tell me I lived in the ’90s solidly into 2008 and I’m like, ‘Really? I do, don’t I?’” The signs are all there. The 38-year-old queer music icon shows up to our interview at the cozy Beech Street Parlor wearing her signature Vans, Levis, and red plaid jacket.

She admits she doesn’t really buy new clothes, instead dividing her collection of blue jeans and band T-shirts into tubs and rotating them every few years to keep things fresh.

It’s a practical aesthetic for the not-quitestarving artist, even as it seems to belie the very real (if not always financial) success Wilson has had as a musician. Though her 20 • February 2012

PhotoS by Xilia Faye, PQ Monthly

20-year career – both as a soloist and with revered queercore/ punk bands Team Dresch and The Butchies — has earned her a loyal, global fan base, it never really brought in the big bucks.

Instead, Wilson gets by the way so many Portlanders do. Minimum wage work keeps her fed, while her art keeps her (and, arguably, many of her fans) alive.

“I still rough it. I kinda can’t afford not to,” Wilson says, recalling nights spent on strangers’ floors and in “gnarly” hotels during last year’s solo tour. “For me, [music] is a job that doesn’t even pay my bills. It’s a love. But it also is a job.”

As such, Wilson can relate to the “Portlandia” sketch featuring fellow musicians Aimee Mann and Sarah McLachlan cleaning houses and doing landscape work.

“I cleaned people’s houses, I landscaped, I walked people’s dogs,” she says. “That’s real, man. That’s me.”

As the stakes increase, artists have to get creative, adding perks that appeal to the serious fan. Wilson admits that coming up with rewards was difficult, in part because they often draw from a concept of celebrity she doesn’t fully buy into.

“It totally stressed me out, like, ‘What’s so special about me?’ I got all weird about it like, ‘Oh you get to have a Skype conversation with me, lucky you!’” she says, rattling off other rejected ideas for ephemera, such as “a copy of my pubic hair” or “a menstrual print.”

Wilson may not be offering any period pieces, but larger donations come with such thank-you gifts as signed album extras, ping pong lessons (Wilson competed in the 2010 Gay Games), a personalized song, and a private show. A fan herself, Wilson says she understands people wanting to have something special.

“If Sinead O’Conner was going to give me one of her hairs — that she now has — I’d give a hundred bucks for that shit,” she admits.

Inspired by love, anchored by loss Of course, the real reward will be the album itself. Wilson says it’s her best solo album to date — more poetic, technically skilled, and eclectic than past albums. And, because it touches on universal themes of love and loss, she hopes it will achieve a higher purpose —”relating and connecting to as many people as I possibly can through music and having a positive influence.”

Wilson has been writing and recording the album over the past six years, giving it time to absorb a wide range of life experiences.

“I really wrote from a place of a lot of very serious and real grief. A lot of the songs, about half of them, are about really sad shit that happened to me,” Wilson says. “I think it has a lot of material that is very quickly and easily relatable.”

But it isn’t all sad songs. In fact, it was the album’s happier tracks that provided the impetus to move the project forward.

“It’s cause I fell in love,” she admits. “And then I wrote some new songs and I [thought] I might as well record them and then take all the other ones and spruce them up or whatever I’m going to do to them and put out a record.”

It’s those love songs (as well as the album title and likewise lover-ly cover art) that keep the album gay.

“As a songwriter, my gay content has been mostly brought by way of a love song to a girl,” she says. “I mostly just sing about how much I’m into my girlfriend. Oh, poor girls who’ve dated me … . So in terms of [the album’s] gay content it’s just love songs about my current — and hopefully forever — girlfriend.”

Subtle though it may seem – especially when compared to the more overtly queer music she made with Team Dresch and The Butchies – that openness is vitally important to Wilson.

“It’s an important part of your life because every day, somewhere or other, there’s someone saying you’re gnarly because you’re gay,” Wilson says. “You get uplifted by having a sense of community and validation.”

The message: “It Gets Gayer” Coming of age as an out lesbian and general outcast in the rural Oregon town of Jasper, Wilson says she got a lot more negative messages than uplifting ones.

“I was pretty fucking angsty. I was just a weirdo too, so I got harassed for being weird, for being a fucking hippie punk goth with hairy legs and fucking half a shaved head, combat boots … . I was a fucking freak and I was gay. I was a vegetarian and I was anti-war,” Wilson says. “I was definitely, kaia wilson page 26

pqmonthly.com

ON THE COVER

Photo by Xilia Faye, PQ Monthly

Gisella Contreras is an independent beauty consultant with Mary Kay Cosmetics. She is a motivated woman who loves life and has and amazing attitude. She loves and plays volleyball and tennis and enjoys staying in shape.

Austin Tatious is a performance, visual, and makeup artist. While his performances are primarily punk and horror genderfuck drag (as Victoriantrollop-by-way-ofthe-post-apocalypse Velvet Hexe), he makes the occasional foray into burlesque and more abstract/surPhoto by Xilia Faye, PQ Monthly real stage shows as well. Excess, violence, anachronism, and the descent into madness are common themes pervading his work, though certainly not without a healthy dose of kitsch and wicked humor.

Chris Brown is a baker, student, and dapper young gentleman enjoying life in Portland.

Born and raised in Virginia, he brings Southern gentility to everything he does — even though he seems to rarely leave the kitchen these days.

Photo by Xilia Faye, PQ Monthly

Dede Desperate is full-time student focusing on social sciences, a proud dog owner, and a volunteer coordinator at Q Center. Dede has been passionate about LGBTQQA rights since growing up in the heartland of America.

She has spent years in Portland being a dancer, performer, and is soon to be a indie horror flick Photo by Xilia Faye, PQ Monthly princess. Dede is desperate to make sure every Queerdo has the opportunity to show the world that “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re volunteering for the greater good and looking good while we do it.”

Cover photography by Xilia Faye pqmonthly.com

GET OUT!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17

Thursday, February 23

Return to Sugar Town! Portland’s dancingest LGBTQueer soul dance party was temporarily knocked off of the PDX queer dance card due to the sudden closure of their venue.

Never fear! The beat moves on to the Spare Room, with DJ Action Slacks and special guest DJ Freaky Outty, in addition to sweet treats by Emily Franco and photobooth by Leila Hofstein. 9 p.m. to late, The Spare Room, 4830 NE 42nd, 21+, $5 cover.

Portland Drag Race! Come early to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, then stick around for our very own local version, hosted by the elegant Poison Waters.

8 p.m., Red Cap Garage, 1035 SW Stark, 21+.

Saturday, February 18 The Q Center Winter Gala 2012: Never Out of Style, celebrates community while raising funds for our very own LGBTQ community center. Featuring Bob Mould, Lisa Mann, and Hal Gerard, with a live auction, dancing, and drinks. 6 p.m.

V.I.P. reception; 7 p.m. general admission; YU Contemporary Art Center, 800 SE 10th Ave., $100 general admission, $175 V.I.P., pdxqcenter.org.

Friday, February 24 The Oregon Bears growl into our hearts with the Double X Dance. Once a month, your favorite local bears migrate to the Eagle for the scruffiest dance night in town! 9:00 p.m., C.C. Slaughter’s, 219 NW 3rd Ave., 21+.

Saturday, February 25

The Living Room presents a screening of “Inlaws & Outlaws,” a film that weaves together the true stories of couples and singles — both gay and straight — into a collective narrative that is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking. 7 p.m., Ainsworth House, 19130 Lot Whitcomb Dr., Oregon City, www.inlawsandoutlawsfilm.

Happy birthday, Gaycation! com/.

After six years of hot, sweaty, queer love on the dance floor, Portland’s most controverGaycation turns it up a notch sial queer dance party, Blow with a special set from inter- Pony, celebrates its 5th birthnationally-loved DJ Lauren day with a live performance Flax, along with resident DJs by Leslie & the Lys. Yeah, that’s Mr. Charming and Snowtiger. right ... Leslie Hall has packed Come on out and shake it! 9 up her gem sweaters to bring p.m., Holocene, 1001 SE Mor- us some midwestern love. 9 rison, 21+, $5 cover. p.m., Branx/Rotture, 315 SW 3rd, 21+, $10, blowpony.com.

Sunday, February 19

The Rose City Softball Association, Oregon’s largest lesbian and gay sports organization, kicks off their annual new member drive for the 2012 season with a New Player Meet and Greet. Interested in playing? Now’s your chance!

6-8 p.m., Hobo’s, 120 NW 3rd, 18+, rosecitysoftball.org.

Monday, February 27

Commemorate Dame Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday with a special screening of her iconic classic, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Proceeds will support Cascade AIDS Project and Portland’s public arts-focused school, da Vinci Arts Middle School. These two non-profit organizations reflect what Ms. Monday, February 20 Taylor is best remembered as — a tireless AIDS activist and Gay Skate Returns! This an artist who began her craft month’s gay skate is a ROLL as a young child. 7 p.m., HollyBOUNCE for Portland Black wood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, Pride. Ever booty-dropped on $10+ suggested donation. skates? If not, you haven’t lived ... 7 p.m., Oaks Park Roller Susan and the SurfTones Skating Rink, 7805 SE Oaks strum out their special brand Park Way, $6. of reverbed surf-rock in sup-

CALENDAR

Have an event you want us to know about? Email us at: calendar@pqmonthly.com

port of their new album, “Shore,” with openers Wave Sauce and Surf Weasels. The forecast for the night? Hot chicks and cool surf guitar. 9 p.m., Duff’s Garage, 1635 SE 7th, 21+, $5, www.susansurftone.com.

takably bent stylings of these two wordsmiths. 8:00 p.m., Fez Ballroom, 316 SW 11th Ave., 21+, $10-15 sliding scale.

Friday, March 9

Dirty Queer is your friendly local x-rated open mic for Thursday, March 1 erotic entertainers of all sorts.

If you haven’t experienced it Paper Cowgrrls invites yet, you have no idea what women to pack up their mate- you’re missing. 6:30-8:30 p.m., rials and join others using In Other Words, 14 NE Killingpaper as a base for their crafty sworth, 18+, $1-$5 suggested outlet. Form a community donation, dirtyqueer.com. and finish your projects with friends. 6:30 p.m., Q Center, Saturday, March 10 4115 N, Mississippi Ave., $5 Q Center packs in the gaybies for Storytime with Maria.

Youth Librarian Maria Lowe Homomentum knocks you reads stories, sings songs, on your tail with queer cabaand engages the children of ret goodness, offering glitter LGBTQ families with activities and ridiculousness at every for every age. 9:30-10:30 a.m., turn. Fill your soul with perQ Center, 4115 N, Mississippi formances, audience particiAve., Free! pation, and prizes! 8 p.m., Fez Ballroom, 316 SW 11th Ave., Wednesday, March 21+, $5-10 sliding scale.

Friday, March 2

Monday, March 5 Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore presents “Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?,” an anthology invoking the anger, flamboyance, and subversion that once thrived in the gay subculture to inspire a debate about the perils of assimilation. Sycamore will be joined at this event by contributor Ezra RedEagle Whitman. 7:30 p.m., Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com.

Tuesday, March 6

14-Friday, March 16

Lewis & Clark presents their annual gender symposium, Objection! Gender, Sex, Law, and Social Change.

Come out for three days of workshops, panel discussions, readings, performances, lectures, and other events exploring gender, sexuality, law, and social change. All sessions are free and open to the public.

For more information, visit http://college.lclark.edu/ departments/gender_studies/symposium/.

Saturday, March 17

The Young Person’s Guide to the Gay Men’s Chorus is a multimedia extravaganza, featuring local teen actors performing on video with the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus.

Showcasing the most memorable works of gay choruses and composers, the songs will serve as the soundtrack to a PGMC-original “sitcom.”

Reed College, 3203 Wednesday, March 7 8SEp.m., Woodstock Blvd., Kaul Ivan E. Coyote and S. Bear Auditorium, $16-30, http:// Bergman: Queer Words and buy.pdxgmc.org. There is an Family Stories. Enjoy the encore of this performance funny, the dirty, the teary, Sunday, March 18, at 2 p.m. the tender and the unmisThe Border Riders Motorcycle Club, the largest and second oldest gay motorcycle club in North America, holds a Meet and Greet for gay men interested in recreational motorcycle touring.

7-9 p.m., The Eagle Portland, 835 N. Lombard, 21+, borderriders.com.

February 2012 • 21

22 • February 2012

pqmonthly.com

The Lady Chronicles Thin lines, love and hate Daniel Borgen PQ Monthly

Every few months, I develop this nagging itch — nothing caused by overt carousing or reckless forays into adult-oriented adventures. It’s more like a pressing need to escape the rougher realities that come with residing in our fair city. While there’s plenty to love, certainly, a notorious onetwo punch provides me the impetus to occasionally briefly jump ship.

The first, obvious enough: the sky’s knack for everlasting dulls and grays. The other: the single degree of separation, our mixed blessing — although it’s more curse in terms of romance. Dating here feels like attending a dozen high school reunions simultaneously, all crammed together into regular (yes, wildly fun) queer nights or favorite dive bars. The coupled among us, who currently vastly outnumber their uncoupled counterparts, enjoy an orbit mostly outside this periphery, gobbling up the good parts of our mixed blessing, brushing aside the bulk of the curse.

I’m open about my ongoing love affair with San Francisco; she’s tantalizingly close, boasting what we lack: oceans of diversity — and choice. (A certain friend of mine, Craig, if given the opportunity, can quickly rattle off a hundred reasons why that’s not the case.) Now customary, thrice-yearly treks to California allow me to revel in the relative unknowns of a de facto metropolis. Participants in the conspicuous mass exodus that’s gone down the last half-year argue my routines serve as precursors to the inevitable: a permanent jump. I’m not so sure.

Even though my two closest friends in SF are both freshly wifed down, I manage to get my fixes by sauntering around town with them, exploring tried and true haunts, finding new ones. There, especially, it’s easy — and refreshing — being an unrecognizable face in very large crowds. And it’s a chance to showcase some measure of my social prowess, since Grindr and repetition here sometimes render me a four-worded zombie. “Hey, how’s your night?” “Hey man, what’s up?” Also: down south there’s no best friend to feign surprise that I have anyone on Grindr left to talk to.

If I’m ever for a moment forgetting my

romantic station while home, I can count on certain family members to remind me — even if it’s at a funeral. There, one notoriously assertive aunt enjoyed making declarations around a very full table. “Did you ever think you’d be this old and single? It’s like we need to combine your approach with those kids who run away and get married at 18 and forge the perfect compromise.” It’s always nice to have such things pointed out. At a funeral.

Last month, in San Francisco, I observed my friends in their new circumstances. One is in his first ever live-in scenario; the other fell in love in Portland just before embarking on his adventure — and unintentional long distance relationship — down south. The former and I sat down and talked boys over dinner in SoMa. He picked my brain, grilling me about how couples work. Though I’m always happy to dole out advice, I do wonder why friends approach me. They do know my track record? Clearly I’m the shining beacon of relationship mettle; mining my past for romantic inspiration is like logging into adam4adam and actually expecting to find a new, interesting crowd.

At the funeral, the minister talked about predestination, about supernatural forces that have our days numbered ahead of time. While I find it inexplicably excruciating to sit and listen to the drivel I abandoned along with my childhood, I thought about the way I see some of my family, and how their innocuous commentary creeps around in my head. Do I think they, who’ve known me since before I can remember myself, have some sort of secret insight into my programming? Can I steal a glance?

On “30 Rock,” Liz Lemon, facing one of her many dating predicaments, opines on the longing to start a relationship years in, when “you don’t really have to try anymore.”

Her point had more to do with finding comfort than letting herself go, of course. While a lady can certainly fantasize about such impossibilities, friends embarking on new romantic endeavors remind me how great the early stuff is, too.

Romantic cycles ebb and flow; and while living in the ebb, it’s nice to relish friends’ collective happiness. And even if you’re a dating train wreck, you should, if asked, let your advice flow freely. We’ve seen friends — de facto family — at their ugliest and best. I can say with certainty our special insight — call it supernatural — proves infinitely more important than any peripheral relative’s, as invaluable as intangible comforts involved with staying close to home.

For almost three years, Daniel wrote “Lady about Town” for Just Out. Email Daniel@PQMonthly.com.

PQ Monthly is published the 3rd Thursday of every month. Please contact us for advertising opportunities at 503.228.3139, ext. 350. www.pqmonthly.com pqmonthly.com

February 2012 • 23

ARTS & CULTURE

CARTER’S HOUR: ON PILLS, PENTECOSTALS, AND PORTLAND

By Daniel Borgen PQ Monthly

“The Evening Hour,” the debut novel

by Portland’s Carter Sickels, straddles the trickiest of literary lines; it is part character study, part page-turning, well-plotted, dramatic tour de force. “Hour” tackles death, deception, violence, destruction, love, succeeding in painting vivid pictures while weaving an incredibly complex tale. Set in an old coal town in West Virginia, the novel follows a complicated protagonist named Cole Freeman — who, while caring for the elderly (and, arguably, genuinely loving them) in a retirement community, moonlights as a drug dealer peddling their various prescription drugs.

Cole, according to Carter, has been around for a while.

“He came to me before I knew what t he novel was going to be about,” Ca r ter explained. “I’d read this article — I think in the New York Times magazine—about people get t i ng add ic te d to Ox ycotin. There was this young dealer who bought pills from the old people a nd t hen resold t hem to h is friends. He was sharp and resourceful.

One day I wrote a scene where an aide in a nursing home spoon-feeds oatmeal to a resident, then steals his money. This was the birth of Cole, and he stuck with me. I wanted to know who this guy was, who stole and bought drugs from the elderly,

but who also took care of the residents and characters. The vivid background was borne his grandparents.” out of more relentless research; Carter read Although he is arguably the most com- books, watched films, and traveled extenpelling facet of “The Evening Hour,” Cole sively.

Freeman isn’t the only literary device keep“Early on, I was researching environing readers hooked. The novel is littered mental issues in Appalachia — that was with religious underpinnings, including a when I found out about the mountaintop snake-taming Pentecostal grandfather and removal coal mining. I couldn’t comprereferences to scripture, all handled deftly hend it. They were blowing up mountains. and expertly, after extensive research on So I went down to see what was happenAppalachian fundamentalists. ing.”

“I’ve always been drawn to the complexThere Carter met up with Coal River ities of religion.”

Mountain Watch, Carter continued: a group that works I WANTED TO SHOW HOW to stop the destruc“I felt drawn to the snake handling L O V E A N D E M O T I O N A L tion of commu[Pentecostal] sect es affected VULNERABILITY CONTRASTS WITH nbyi t imountaintop because it was this type of Christianity THE EXTREMISM — FOR EXAMPLE, removal mining. that seemed so dif- THE HATEFULNESS TOWARD GAYS “What I saw ferent than what I changed me and knew. There is a very AND LESBIANS AND THE FEAR breathed life into mystical element to OF HOMOSEXUALITY. my novel,” Carter it — the Holy Ghost revealed. “I just felt moving through you, being able to inter- like my own life was so small when I met pret signs, to speak in tongues. The inti- these people who were laying down their macy and vulnerability people exhibited lives and fighting for everything — their was really beautiful.” homes, their land, the survival of their comAnd yes, religion’s long, complicated his- munities and culture.” tory with queers provided some inspiraOne thing remains clear: whatever tion, too. On that front, Carter elaborated: breathed life into “The Evening Hour” cre“I wanted to write about the complexity of ated an undeniable, critically-acclaimed the beliefs — this kind of beauty and emo- success. And it isn’t just critics heaping tional experience coupled with scary fun- praise onto the novel. damentalism. I wanted to show how love “Support from the Portland writing comand emotional vulnerability contrasts with munity and from the queer community has the extremism — for example, the hateful- been incredible,” Carter said. “And I don’t ness toward gays and lesbians and the fear just mean critics. People are reading the of homosexuality.” book closely and care about the characters.

This fictional coal mining town in West Readers have pointed out things to me in Virginia serves as the perfect backdrop for my own writing I didn’t even notice — thedelving into such intricate themes and matic connections, for example. It’s very

cool and humbling. It’s wonderful to get this kind of response, where it seems like people are truly connecting to the book.”

It’s pretty safe to contend that’s precisely

what happens when one achieves literary greatness. And it further explains why “The Evening Hour” has been roundly praised — from Portland to Boston.

“The Evening Hour” is out now via Bloomsbury. Find it wherever fine books are sold. (Independent bookstores are a good place to start.)

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February 2012 • 25

kaia wilson: “For me, [music] is a job that doesn’t even pay my bills. It’s a love.”

Continued from page 20

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along with some nerds, the most made fun of.”

That angst found an outlet in music at an early age; Wilson wrote her first song, “You Make Me Cry That Special Way,” at age 9. But with the emergence of Team Dresch, The Butchies, and Wilson’s solo albums, it also found resonance with a entire generation of queer youth.

Though she may reject fame’s premise that she is somehow “special,” Wilson recognizes that her music and her words have had impressive reach and impact. She frequently hears that her outspoken and accepting lyrics have literally saved lives.

“I think I have a talent at doing something and I’m excited about sharing it. But along with that talent is something that feels a little bigger,” she says. “Which is a message that I didn’t get as a kid and most people don’t get in their lives, or not enough.”

For more on Kaia Wilson’s new album, Kickstarter campaign, and upcoming tour with Amy Ray (Indigo Girls), visit myspace.com/kaiawilsonmusic. For outtakes from this interview, visit pqmonthly.com.

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ARTS & CULTURE

FABULOUSLY REVOLTING

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE DISHES ABOUT ASSIMILATION, EXCLUSION, AND THE PROMISE OF RADICAL QUEER COMMUNITY

By Nick Mattos PQ Monthly

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore wants you to start the revolution. Described as “startlingly bold and provocative” by Howard Zinn, the genderqueer activist is the author of two novels, most recently 2008’s “So Many Ways to Sleep Badly,” and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies, including “Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity” and an expanded second edition of “That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation.”

Hir latest anthology, “Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform,” brings together many leading radical queer writers to consider the ways queer culture works against itself by assimilating the norms of straight society and abandoning the “wild possibility” intrinsic to countercultural life. In advance of hir reading at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne on March 5, Sycamore was kind enough to answer a few questions from PQ Monthly about the ways queer culture fails its members, the impulse towards smugness in communities such as Portland, and why gay people need to “get crazy and open up to the possibilities of your life.”

PQ: First off, why do you think faggots are so afraid of faggots?

MBS: That is a sneaky question — isn’t there a whole book on that subject? And, of course, there could be many, many more.

In short, gay culture has become obsessed with mandatory masculinity, objectification without appreciation, and a relentless drive to police the borders. The grossest limitations of straight conformity are now considered the ultimate measures of gay success.

In the sexual realm, this means that desire is regimented rather than exploratory, risk is demonized rather than applauded, consumerism exists unquestioned, “straightacting” is the norm, femininity is shunned, and anyone who doesn’t abide by a white middle-class value system is ignored. Take a look at any cruising site and you’re guaranteed to find an endless range of posts that say things like “no femmes or fatties” or “no blacks or Asians.” I’m getting scared just thinking about it!

PQ: In the book, you touch upon the ways that the traditional culture of queer sex is being replaced by models that basically emulate straight culture’s take on dating. Why do you think it’s important to preserve the “old ways?” Can we ever return to a “golden age of promiscuity?”

MBS: Actually, I think it’s more paradoxical than that. Yes, there is this “we’re just like you” emphasis on normalcy and straight privilege at any cost — marriage, military, pqmonthly.com

adoption, priesthood. But simultaneously there’s the brutal, calculated hyper-objectification of most gay male cruising spaces where everyone is just another chat screen waiting to open or close. Next! I don’t think there was ever a golden age. I’m not interested in romanticizing the past, especially a past I wasn’t part of, since I was born in the 1970s. Yes, there were possibilities that existed in the ‘70s — or, even in the early ‘90s — that don’t exist now, but the same hierarchies existed. What’s changed is that now these hierarchies are unquestioned, and that’s horrifying. But what we need is not a return to something that may or may not have ever existed, but a total reinvention of the ways that we live with and love and lust for and take care of one another.

PQ: One of the debates that rage within the queer community is whether it should be all-inclusive — with all takes on sex, gender, ethnicity, and class all lumped together into one group — or whether sub-types of queers naturally segregate themselves out into “scenes.” What’s your take on this? Do “scenes” fracture queer community, or strengthen the individuals within them?

MBS: I don’t think there is a singular “queer community.” There are a lot of different communities that sometimes enhance the possibilities for gender, sexual, social, cultural, and political self-determination, and, sometimes [those communities] fail miserably! I do believe in “queer” as an umbrella term that encompasses all types of sexual freaks and iconoclasts and outsiders and fuck-ups and flamboyantly flagrant violators of straitjacket normalcy.

But, you see, without a politic, it’s nothing. The problem with “scene” is that it just becomes another method of exclusion. I’m more interested in cultures that embrace fluidity, and seek to undo all hierarchies.

Don’t get me wrong — we all need to find the people that mean something to us in order to survive and thrive. However, let’s try to create more options for everyone.

PQ: How has “Faggots” been received by the gay community so far? Have there been any surprising reactions?

MBS: Well, the book is just now coming out into the world, with a Valentine’s Day release. It’s the perfect romantic gift, right?

Interestingly, I just did an event at USC [the University of Southern California], where my use of the word “faggot” was quite controversial to one particular, well, faggot, I suppose. That surprised me. As far as I’m concerned, “gay” has become a consumer identity based on what you wear, where you shop, what gym you go to, what kind of cocktails you drink or which AA group you belong to. With the book, I want to explore the possibilities of a flaming faggotry that

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore will speak at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne on March 5. challenges the corporate-cozy norms of this assimilationist lifestyle. As C.A. Conrad says in the book, “it’s time to get crazy and open to the possibilities of your life.”

PQ: If you had your druthers, what would queer culture look like?

MBS: Oh, honey, I have no idea. Let’s just say there would be a lot more emphasis on communal responsibility, on creating space for people on the margins, on exploration, on transformation, on negotiation, on intimacy that builds, on accountability — yes, accountability —, defiance, deviance, on coming together to challenge the violence of the world that wants us to die or disappear. Of course, we can’t change the queer world without changing the rest of the world.

If everyone had access to housing, comprehensive healthcare, delicious healthy food, the right to stay in this country or leave if you want to, a meaningful and satisfying sex and romantic life — if this country stopped its imperialistic quest to dominate the world — well, that would be a good start, right?

PQ: In addition to your work as an essayist and editor, you’ve also written two novels. How do you juggle these different genres? Do you find that there’s bleed between your work — say, memoir sneaking into your fiction?

MBS: Well, I used to say that the difference between fiction and autobiography is that autobiography is all lies, so that’s why

Photo by Gina Carducci

I write fiction. Now that I write nonfiction too, I try to use the techniques of experimental writing to expose the mechanism.

There isn’t one thing called “truth,” right?

The book I just finished is actually, well, a memoir, I guess — it’s called “The End of San Francisco,” and it’s about my political, cultural, social, and emotional formations — and their undoing. I hope it breaks people’s hearts. I know it broke mine.

PQ: You’ve been putting your work out as a writer for decades. How have you and your work changed during this process? What projects do you have coming up next?

MBS: Has it really been decades? Time is so strange. Well, I see myself as an experimental writer, so that means I’m always open to experiments, right? Writing for me is the way that I’m able to exist in the world, to express myself so that I don’t disappear.

In some ways I’ve become more hopeful, and in some ways less. Maybe my work has become more vulnerable. That’s something I’ve always striving for — to expose everything that I’m afraid of, and then maybe I can go on. Strangely, that makes me feel safer. Growing up as a queer kid in an abusive family where I couldn’t express what was really happening — where the violence was always camouflaged beneath the apparent success of my upwardly mobile parents — I had no way to speak, really. That’s why I mattilda page 31

February 2012 • 27

ARTS & CULTURE

MAGIC

found Stephfon Bartee — whose stage presence is nothing short of otherworldly — and Brendan Scott, and soon settled on the pair as full-time band members. Stephfon adds impressive vocals and a relentless tambourine, Brendan the steady bass.

“Ana has a lot of history playing punk and Latin music,” Peter said, expounding on MM’s current dynamic. “Brendan has great rhythmic sensibility — since his main craft has been DJing.” (Most know him as the popular DJ Pocket Rock-It.) Both Peter and Stephfon grew up choir boys with mothers as pastors, a background Peter credits for their vocal relationship.

“Even though we have different voices and styles, we have chemistry in harmonies and phrasing that is hard to find.”

W hen it comes to song writing and arranging, MM starts when one of the foursome comes to t he group w it h a simple hook or bass line, and the rest of the band starts piling on parts. Peter and Stephfon trade off singing, often crafting lyrics on the spot together, working their now-signature call and response angle.

“It’s always a mystery what we’ll come up with,” Peter said. “We go to practice and

MOUTH

SPEAKING (ER, PLAYING) YOUR LANGUAGE

By Daniel Borgen PQ Monthly

You can tell just about all you need to know about a band by live performances.

From on-stage chemistry to energy to precision of craft, most of what you see and hear during live sets serves as a sort of harbinger—a gauge of a group’s trajectory and direction. While Magic Mouth definitely boasts a certain amount of charming rawness—as most evolving acts do—they also possess most of the aforementioned qualities in spades; they are, undoubtedly, a band headed upward. If chemistry alone dictated success, they’d have already gone platinum.

Magic Mouth built their catalogue—and following—playing live sets all around town; since their inception, they’ve played a variety of disparate venues, slowly, successfully building a reputation. Though bands aren’t often best described with mere words, a few apt descriptors get tossed MM’s way repeatedly: high energy, booty shakin’, a seamless melding of multiple genres—punk, rock, and soul.

Peter Condra, one of MM’s founding members (also vocalist and guitarist), sums up their style thusly: “Punk, R&B, and American spirituals are for sure our biggest influences. We experiment with different sounds but we’ve wound up making really pure rock music.”

Magic Mouth formed in the summer of 2010 when Peter and Ana Briseño — a frenetic drum machine (listen for screams of “Ana!” from audiences at concerts) — put together a show for a surprise birthday party in Astoria.

“We got our shit together, threw together a set with a few originals and some Nina Simone covers, all of which we performed as a two piece — White Stripes-style,” Peter explained. “Ana had been in lots of local bands for years in Portland and was eager to do a project that was more queer-focused in terms of our audience and collaborations. We started playing gigs like Sundays at Aalto, Not Enough, Queerlandia, and the Miss Thing Finale with Chichi and Chonga.”

Once momentum began, so did the collaborations. After several, the original duo 28 • February 2012

“IT’S ALWAYS A MYSTERY WHAT WE’LL COME UP WITH. WE GO TO PRACTICE AND OUR SOUND KEEPS MORPHING.”

Peter, MM

Magic Mouth are (top photo, left to right): Stephfon Bartee, Peter Condra, Ana Briseño, and Brendan Scott.

Photos by Xilia Faye, PQ Monthly

our sound keeps morphing.”

Fortunately, Magic Mouth is in the midst of plans to record new music — and a video — with big plans for spring.

“We’re recording a six-song EP with loca l musicia ns a nd producers Nate Otani [Boys on the Storm] and Damon Boucher [hip hop producer and MC],” Peter revealed. “We want to share and document what we’ve done and then keep writing new material.” The aforementioned video, for their single “Believer,” has Helmy Membreno at the helm, and should be released in April — along with the band’s EP. But you don’t have to wait until April to hear their music again. You can check out one of Magic Mouth’s notorious live sets Feb. 24, when they, alongside a slew of local favorites, play a show at Rotture — one they’ve dubbed “Party Language.”

And, take it from us, if there’s one thing Magic Mouth can do, it’s show an audience a good time. Or maybe go just so you can someday declare: “I saw them when.”

“Party Language” starts at 9 p.m. sharp.

For the latest on Magic Mouth, follow them on Facebook. Or check out www.magicmouth.tumblr.com. We’ll have more MM on our blog. pqmonthly.com

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pqmonthly.com

Ways to survive a Northwest winter

LeAnn Locher

There are numerous activities that can keep hardcore gardeners busy during winter months.

LeAnn Locher PQ Monthly

Seriously. Winters are rough.

Grey, rain, cold, dark, rinse, repeat.

As an avid cultivator of great things from the garden, kitchen, and life, February can be a low point. Still reading? It gets better. I have a whole arsenal of tools in my handy tool belt to get me through the wintertime SADs. Here they are.

Read good gardening books.

During our sunshine months, who has time to read? Now’s the time.

I’ve got my eyes on two new books out, both about edibles. “Grow Cook Eat: A Food Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening� by Willi Galloway is one. I’ve been reading Willi’s blog for years and she always has tasty recipes using produce fresh from her garden, like arugula pesto, and simple easy dishes with herbs and eggs.

The other, “Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers from Small Spaces� by Gayla Trail is high on my must-read list. Gayla’s down-to-earth approach to gardening and her writing is refreshing and inspirational, and her book photography and design is beautiful. I’m interested in growing more herbs and edible flowers in our garden this year because they pack so much flavor and visual punch into meals.

In addition, Felder Rushing put out a new book in 2011, “Slow Gardening: A No-Stress Philosophy for All Senses and All Seasons,� whose title alone speaks to me and a need to relax into gardening a bit more. If pqmonthly.com

you’ve never read Rushing’s books, you should. We all should. He’s a breath of fresh air.

Sink yourself into plant catalogs, print or online. A few of my favorites to tide me over, especially in the dark, dismal days of a Portland February, include: Annie’s Annuals & Perennials (anniesannuals.com), High Country Gardens (highcountrygardens.com), Plant Delights Nursery (plantdelights.com), and Territorial Seed Company (territorialseed.com).

Get your act together and (finally) make a plan. Now is the time to get those measurements together and sketch out this year’s beds, project, or garden. A little planning now can save a lot of headaches later.

Make sure you’re leaving space for paths wide enough to get through, and time your crops appropriately.

If you have an iPad, check out the new Grow Planner app in the iTunes store from Mother Earth News. It helps you plan, space, and time your garden for your specific location and growing season.

Visit a greenhouse. If an escape to Puerta Vallarta isn’t possible in order to survive our winter, I recommend scheduled visits to a few indoor nurseries where the temperatures are warm and the humidity fills your lungs. My favorites?

The greenhouse at Cistus Nursery and Portland Nursery both have a healthy and strong selection of plants, in case you need to increase your winter indoor oxygen.

Craft a terrarium and grow a little somethin’ somethin’ indoors. Get inspiration and everything you need

to put together your own tiny indoor garden at Artemisia just off Burnside at SE 28th in Portland. Tiny works of growing, living art are at your fingertips to help tide you over until spring.

Go to gardening talks or shows.

Portland Yard, Garden & Patio Show is Feb. 17-19, 2012, at the Oregon Convention Center. Word is all of the seminars are free this year. Learn about garden allies in our gardens, including pollinators and predators with the March 13 speaker at the Multnomah County Master Gardeners (metromastergardeners.org/ multnomah/) meeting. Always free, always informative.

Window gaze at the birds in your garden. Hummingbirds, robins, bluejays and bushtits — all are regular visitors to our winter garden and I’m excited about every single one. Commit to cultivating a birdfriendly habitat and you too can enjoy all of the wintertime visitors to your garden.

Immerse yourself in citrus. California is producing the most delicious citrus this time of year, and that means it’s a perfect time to make homemade limoncello or kumquat marmalade. Plus, the aroma of citrus is sure to lift your spirits and enhance a gloomy grey wintertime mood.

Head to the PQ Monthly website for some of my recipes and more.

LeAnn Locher is a domestic arts bad ass growing and cultivating all kinds of good things in North Portland. She’d love to hear what you’re growing in the ground or cooking in the kitchen.

mattilda: Continued from page 27

write — so I can see myself, so I can help others to see me, so maybe we can all see one another for at least a moment or two, right? And my anthologies, those are kind of a combination of political organizing, community-building, and instigation. My newest project is an anthology called “We Are Not Just the 99%: Queering The Occupy Movement, Reimagining Resistance.�

I’m now circulating the call for submissions, and anyone is certainly welcome to send me anything. [For more information on the call for submissions, check out mattildabernsteinsycamore. com.]

PQ: You’re coming to Portland on March 5. What are your thoughts on the city and the queer community here? What would you want to see change, improve, or disappear about queer life in the city?

MBS: Portland is always one of my favorite places to read. I always get great crowds at Powell’s on Hawthorne, so I can’t wait to see who shows up this time! I don’t know Portland that well. The last time I was there was 2008, and one thing I noticed was that there were some similarities with San Francisco in the early ‘90s.

There’s a really vibrant culture of queer outcasts and freaks, a homemade messiness, a wild sense of possibility. There’s also sometimes a smugness, a self-satisfied “we have arrived� feeling that emerges in any destination city, as though now that we’ve found our queer worlds, we can just stop working on anything else. That’s what we always have to resist.

Sycamore’s latest anthology “Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?� comes out Feb. 14 on AK Press. Ze will be appearing at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne (3723 SE Hawthorne, Portland) on Monday, March 5, at 7:30 pm for a reading, book signing, and Q&A session. For more info on Sycamore and hir work, go to mattildabernsteinsycamore.com.

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Cultivating Life

PERSPECTIVES

IMAGES

SEE AND BE SEEN We want to see more of you! Do you have photos you’d like to share in the pages of PQ Monthly? We’re looking for shots of our readers and their families and friends on vacation, out on the town, volunteering, taking a stand … you get the idea. Send your photos along with a photo credit and caption to info@pqmonthly.com, post them on our Facebook page, or tag PQ Monthly in them.

Included in this month’s photos are shots from the Her HRC Celebration Feb. 9 at Lola’s Room, Asian Pacific Islander Pride’s Lunar New Year Banquet Jan. 21 at the Eliot Center, BENT Feb. 10 at Foggy Notion, and Have a Heart On: Sexxxy Dance Party Feb. 10 at Crush.

API Lunar New Year photos by Izzy Ventura All other photos by Xilia Faye

32 • February 2012

pqmonthly.com

IMAGES

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February 2012 • 33

PERSPECTIVES

RAIN CITY

WHITNEY HOUSTON Aug. 9, 1963 – Feb. 11, 2012

The morning after the apocalypse

By Nick Mattos PQ Monthly

2 p.m. Sunday afternoon, and the city is as dark as the witching hour. The rain runs sideways down the red line MAX train window while the Hollywood District zips by outside, the reflection of my walkof-shame hair superimposed over it. “Bzzzt!” My phone vibrates. “Come to coffee,” Ryan’s text reads on the shiny screen. I run my hand over my head, smoothing my hair and smiling.

Stumptown is full of morning-after hipsters, blasting Azealia Banks like it was still Saturday night. Ryan hunches over the table, peering at the newspaper through round-framed glasses. He looks at my wrinkled clothes, the rosy glow in my cheeks. “Nice hair,” he says, amused. “Was he good?”

“Fantastic,” I reply, setting my Americano down. “Hence the spring in my step.”

“How many dates has it been?”

“Just a few so far. Good ones, too.”

Ryan rolls the sleeves of his black shirt up. “It must be. You smell like a gentleman’s smoking room. Pipe tobacco and whiskey and …”

“Don’t go on. I haven’t taken a shower yet.”

“Gross, Nick.” He laughs. The visibly hungover girl beside him turns away sourly, displeased by our good spirits. “Oh, yeah,” Ryan continues, reaching into his old leather bag, “I found something for you.” He hands me a small pamphlet, printed boldly with the query “Are These The Last Days?”

“You know me too well, Ryan. Thank you.”

“Who else do I know that collects religious propaganda? My pleasure.”

“Funny timing, too. Just last night I got to thinking about this.”

Ryan laughs. “You were concerned about Biblical prophecy while you were on a date?”

“Not exactly. There was this moment, there in the darkness with the wind whipping against the side of the house, when I kissed that anarchy symbol tattooed on his arm …”

“Punk fuckin’ rock.” Ryan sneers with amusement.

“Yeah, it’s hot. Anyway, I suddenly wondered what the revolution would look like, you know?

Whether I would even notice the necessity for it, or if it was even happening, in a town like this.”

“Do you mean, like, full-on storming the Capital? Or some sort of grand Occupy thing?”

“Not even a political revolution, necessarily,” I say, sipping my coffee. “Just a radical shift in

how culture works. I mean, bear in mind that in, what, the last two or so months, I lost basically everything — my job, my boyfriend, my money, my peace of mind. I really didn’t see any of that coming until — bam! —my life was a country song.”

Ryan looks up at me with sympathy. “You’ve done a pretty damn good job getting most of those things back, though.”

“Well, thank you. But, what if we lost our culture the same way?” The combination of caffeine and anxiety makes my heart beat fast in my chest.

“What if it just happens that we wake up one day, and something down at the root of how we live is different?”

Over the speakers, Lana Del Rey asks us to choose our last words because this is the last time, because we were born to die.

“That makes sense,” Ryan says, “but I take the viewpoint that it’s always happening.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, one eyebrow cocked.

“People’s needs are constantly changing. There are fundamental things that are constant. They need food and shelter and love, things like that.

But beyond those, the attitudes, practices, and goals that we have in mind are constantly changing, evolving, and dying.” Ryan pauses thoughtfully, then goes on. “This isn’t bad, of course, but it’s hard. We’re always saddled with the task of rebuilding culture. This is why it’s alive — because it can die out. It’s always the morning after the apocalypse. We’re always rebuilding our world — and that’s a good thing.”

“Heavy,” I observe. Ryan and I finish our coffee, hug each other goodbye. I head down to the waterfront, my hands dug deep into the pockets of my peacoat, walking quickly with my shoulders up around my ears and Ryan’s pamphlet in my fist. High above, the dark sky is a steel-grey dome. The tops of the buildings and bridges reach up to pierce the clouds while the rain falls upon everything with saintly equanimity.

Mid-stride, it hits me, and I stop. “Damn,” I whisper, looking at the river, the runners, the bicyclists, and the buildings. “Ryan was right.”

The city is slick with rain, shining with a million reasons why this world is worth saving, a million stories worth telling. It’s times like these that break my heart, that make me want to pray.

Instead, I make a vow. I walk fast and think of the queers and the freaks and the wild beauty of our lives here in the rainy city, and I vow to tell our stories, to document who does the building of our culture here, and who has taken on the task of ripping it down.

I pull the pamphlet out of my pocket, smiling.

“Are These The Last Days?” it asks. Nope, I think, crumpling it in my hand. These are the first. I toss it into a garbage can and keep walking home.

Nick Mattos is a writer and yoga teacher living in SE Portland.

Reach him at nick@PQMonthly.com.

34 • February 2012

By Daniel Borgen PQ Monthly

I’ve never really understood intense public outcry over celebrities’ deaths. I realize a measure of fascination is in order, certainly, but the hysterics and wailing and hasty construction of impromptu shrines and heaping piles of flowers and other mementos? I couldn’t fathom it.

Then, last Saturday, while on a shopping safari at JCP in support of Ellen, a barrage of text messages started coming in. Whitney Houston died. And now, much to my chagrin, I get it.

For me, Whitney was more than a big gay icon. She embodied — simultaneously — high glamour, the invention of the diva, sheer sonic perfection, and ease. For all her superstardom, her smile and laugh made her seem approachable, real, and completely human.

Growing up very much in the closet and very much in a strict, conservative religious setting, Whitney’s music, like no other artist’s, became the soundtrack to my life. In that incredible voice I found comfort. And it didn’t hurt that she was so influenced by gospel — as a church kid, her crossover assuaged a little of my guilt.

Yes, that voice. But perhaps even more than her voice, her unabashedly emotive lyrics. Besides unearthing someone’s diary and exploring

their innermost secrets, I can’t think of an adequate way to exude such raw emotion.

Unapologetically all-love, all-thetime, she sang words that’d make you cringe if they were spoken. “I have nothing if I don’t have you.” And she always asked the most important questions. “Where do broken hearts go?” “How will I know if he really loves me?” “Didn’t we almost have it all?” Each of her songs made my early gay angst infinitely more bearable. If that glamorous, beautiful goddess felt like nothing without love, then I didn’t feel so bad for feeling the same.

Yes, in music there’s rarely consensus, but we can all concede the soundtracks to our lives — however different they might be — leave permanent marks. Singers publicly, proudly declare what our hearts are thinking; and we feel a little less crazy.

So, for me, Whitney was my fantasy, my comfort, my escape.

As this past Whitney weekend wore on, I eventually pried myself off the couch and away from hours of YouTube videos. I sauntered to CCs that Sunday night, where the Superstar Divas hastily assembled a pretty stellar Whitney tribute. I sat with friends, belting out every lyric to every song. It was a fitting way to allay some sorrow while adding a few more tracks to my life’s soundtrack. pqmonthly.com

ARTS BRIEFS

Photo courtesy of Max Voltage

Rae Spoon kicks off F-holes’ queer music series.

Portland drag personalities Fannie Mae Darling and Gula Delgatto made their MTV2 debut in January, appearing in the music video for Cake’s “Mustache Man ( Wasted).” Shot by Alicia J. Rose, the video casts the duo as clerks in a wig shop seduced by mustachioed man who whisks them away to his van.

Wish you could be on TV too? The NBC series “Grimm” is looking for people of all ages, body types, and experience levels to be stand-ins and speaking and non-speaking extras. Shooting runs from February to April. Send a blank email to grimmextras@ gmail.com to get an application – and don’t forget to send a few photos of your lovely face.

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture – the controversial

exhibit that conservative lawmakers successfully censored during its 2010 debut at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery – is coming to the West Coast, unedited. The first major exhibition to explore the role of gender identity and sexual orientation in modern American portraiture, Hide/Seek opens at the Tacoma Art Museum March 17.

Whispers of roadtrips are floating across the interwebs. Sign up to be a Hide/Seeker (we’re not entirely sure what that means, but we did it anyway) at tacomaartmuseum.org.

Closer to home, Disjecta hosts Portland 2 0 1 2 . T h e biennial celebration of contemporary art spans 24 artists/teams, five venues, and four months. It all kicks off February 26 with an opening reception at The Art Gym and runs through May 19.

Find out more at disjecta.org/2012.

If you’re more into words than pictures, check this out. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, editor of “Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots,” talks gender liberation with contributor Ezra RedEagle Whitman March 5 at Powell’s on Hawthorne. Read more on page 27. Local author Carter Sickels’ novel The Evening Hour is getting strong reviews. Read more on page 24.

Well on its way to becoming a triple threat, Pants-Off Productions launches a new project, F-holes: a queer grassroots music series with a February 19 show at The Know

featuring Rae Spoon, Timmy Straw and The Crossettes. Pants-Off is currently in the midst of its third season of the queer variety show Homomentum which culminates in the Homo’s Got Talent dance-off competition in May. For more proof that it gets gaymazing, visit pantsoffpdx.com.

What else is new, you ask? A whole host of queer dance nights, that’s what. There’s never been a shortage of new blood on the gay dance floor, and it looks like 2012 is no exception. There’s Easy: the 1970s-meetsmodern beats night from DJs Lustache and Jezabelle (first Saturdays at Red Cap Garage), HOTT: a gay boy-friendly lesbian night from the producer of Code Blue and Chocolate City (Top 40, electro, hip-hop; second Saturdays at Crush), Bridge Club: a gay afternoon dance party from Old Boys Club (first Sundays at Produce Row) and Booty Call: a dirty South hip-hop night hosted by Ecstacy Inferno (third Saturdays at Red Cap). Also launching March 15 is TRANS-IT: a new night from DJ Bender (third Thursdays at Crush). Did we miss one? You’ll be sure to let us know.

Despite the influx of new nights, a number of oldies but goodies are still holding it down. Gaycation (Holocene/”Homocene”) celebrates six years of packing the homos in like sweaty sardines February 18 with special guest DJ Lauren Flax (Creep). Blow Pony (Branx/Rotture) marks its fifth year

of doubly packed dance floors February 25 with Leslie and the Lys. And on March 9, Bent (Foggy Notion/”Faggy Nation”) turns two with special guests Jenna Riot (San Francisco’s 13 Licks) and CLR Jamz (Oakland’s Ships in the Night).

Also celebrating an anniversary this month is the Portland Lesbian Choir. The group has been singing for 25 years and is always accepting new members. To get in on that auditory action, stop by one of their weekly rehearsals (no audition required).

And save the date for the choir’s official 25th anniversary concert and celebration on June 23. Learn more at plchoir.org.

Of course, the big music news of the month is the premature death of pop music diva Whitney Houston. The singer was reportedly found dead February 11 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. She was 48. PQ Monthly’s Daniel Borgen reflects on her legacy in his life as a young gay man on page XX. Though Houston died the day before the 2012 Grammys, the awards show pulled together a tribute performance from Jennifer Hudson, who offered a heartfelt and classy rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” But the real show-stealer was Adele, who won in all five categories she was nominated in, including album and song of the year.

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THE FUN STUFF

ASTROSCOPES WITH MISS RENEE Aries

Miss Renee aka Tarot Chick is an empath, tarot card reader, and spiritual astrologer of 19 years based out of NE Portland. She loves love notes so feel free to holla or schedule a tarot / astrology chart session:

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ANSWERS TO PUZZLES ON PAGE 39

The bad: Frustration Station is in full effect with your ruler Mars retrograding in Virgo, forcing you to “slow yo rowll” and pay attention to details. The fab: Saturn’s retrograde (as of Feb. 8) can show you how bustin’ your butt since fall 2010 is paying off and what to tweak. Hayyyy!

Taurus

Jupiter, the planet of luck, is in our sign fellow Taureans! Mixed with our lovely ruler Venus, sizzling away in fiery Aries, it’s gettin’ HOT! Fully utilize those renowned Taurean “bedroom eyes.” But caution: Jupiter’s over-indulgence and Aries’ recklessness can spell “oops” down the line. Have fun, stay grounded.

Gemini

Wanna save your hair/sanity/ liver? Take my advice: Do NOT ask open-ended questions over the next three weeks starting NOW. Your usually sharp ruler, Mercury, just entered dreamy Pisces-land making you feel like you’ve taken crazy pills when communication goes in circles. Gameplan: Black. White. Facts. BREAK!

Cancer

Homework: Women in your life may be workin’ your LAST NERVE! Several planets in intuitive Pisces can help you utilize Cancerian sensitivity and peep what’s underneath. Baffle them with understanding. Funwork: This is a great time to go for what you want and let your imagination roam freely.

Translation: Get freaky.

Leo

Saturn in relationship-oriented Libra and several planets in group conscious Aquarius had you focused on the importance of cooperative relating. That was then. Saturn retrograding gives you a break on the “we” and fiery Venus in “me first” Aries is your opportunity to remind us why everybody wants “you.”

Meowww.

Virgo

Daaaaang, Virgo! Are you sore, honey? Fiery Mars has been riding you like a pony over the last three months.

Mars’ retrograde finally gives you a chance to rest and regroup. Take it. Three weeks of Mercury in dreamy Pisces will likely hinder succinct communication anyway. Chill and bypass frustration.

Libra

Saturn’s been grinding through Libra since 2010, making you scrutinize/redefine all relationships. Its retrograde (as of Feb. 8) gives you a moment to reflect on how much you’ve learned and grown there. Your ruler Venus, opposing in Aries, may turn that Libran “we” into an “I.” Captain your ship, love.

Scorpio

You’re rather telepathic all on your own but with Mercury, the planet of communication, floating through psychic Pisces you can rejoice in all that damned mental “noise” temporarily being dimmed and people just “getting” the message. Vibe us to death, honey; it’s delicious. Just use your powers for good, not evil.

Sagittarius

You’ve been burning to be free for months. Venus in courageous, proactive Aries may bring something/someone you’ve been wanting oh so close! That irksome Mars retrograde, however, may force you to tweak the foundation to ensure it’ll hold for you first. It’s worth slowing and getting it over with.

Capricorn

Yup. I’m asking you to pause as you’re FINALLY starting to see results. Goaty, you’ve been humpin’ it up that hill for awhile and now that you’re near the top, take a moment to look back and understand why you started this climb in the first place.

Re-prioritize as necessary.

Aquarius

Sigh. I know you HATE following the recipe. Unfortunately Mars retrograding in exacting, precise Virgo will soon shine an interrogation light onto your inconsistencies like you stole somethin’. If you want what you say you want, your actions need to reflect that. Stop avoiding/skipping steps. You’re QUITE capable. Fist bump.

Pisces

It’s time to kick your shoes off, soak your feet, and sigh in relief.

Pesky Mars opposing you has retrograded and stopped pushing you for a moment. Mercury just entered Pisces-land.

Communicate through lyrics/ stories/poetry.

Dig out your photography gear/paints and brushes. Who’s cooking you dinner tonight?

End Up Tales Night Moves

Successfully navigating post-Grindr encounters can be tricky, especially diving into the realm of actual phone numbers and empty pledges to maintain contact. Suitors may take you up on offers to stay in touch. And call. And call a few more times. While you’re passive aggressively letting all those phone calls go to voicemail, you at least have the good sense to store your former associate’s digits in your mobile device. Because, well, at least you know when it’s him calling.

It might be a cold, raining Thursday (Thirst-day) night, and you are heading down to Old Town to meet some friends at a notorious gay spot that plays lots of hip hop music and serves $1 drinks. You could walk, but it’s cold and you’re lazy, so trusty Radio Cab it is. They seem to be taking longer than usual, so you head downstairs, out of

your apartment building, to wait on the street.

Your phone rings; your old Grindr flame is calling again, and you, again, let the call go to voicemail. You look down the street, and Radio Cab is indeed waiting.

Thank goodness, it’s cold and you’re so thirsty. As you approach the car, the outline of the driver takes shape. So does recognition. Your old Grindr courter is your cab driver, and he’s been calling to say your taxi has arrived.

The unexpected, awkward scenario is only augmented by the your driver taking the longest route to Old Town imaginable, and you filling up awkward silences with word vomit about politics and Newt Gingrich and “Really, I don’t go to CC Slaughter’s all that often.” Because that’s clearly what former lovers talk about. How, in a city filled with cab drivers—and you use them regularly— is he yours that fateful night? And how did you forget his occupation? Did it ever even come up?

I think I’m most miffed I still had to pay the fare. Couldn’t a little something have been worked out, for old time’s sake?

How did your romantic encounter end up? Send anonymous stories, protecting names and identities, from awkward dating—and other—scenarios to us at enduptales@PQMonthly.com.

38 • February 2012

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THE FUN STUFF

QUERY A QUEER

So why would a publication seeking to give a voice to every letter and color in our diverse community use such a potentially divisive term?

The short answer is, it’s the best fit.

People often joke about the “alphabet soup” that is our ever-expanding community acronym, while quietly fretting over the sequence of the letters and Are you a lesbian puzzled by gay men? A how many to include. We are a community comprised transgender person pondering bisexuality? of smaller groups, each with particular, if often overlapA straight person perplexed by queers of all ping, subcultures. Despite our distinct identities and the stripes? PQ is here to help you through your unique challenges and experiences that come with them, we are all bound together by the shared oppression we “questioning” period. Send your questions to face based on our non-conformity to society’s gender info@pqmonthly.com and put Query a and sexual norms.

Queer in the subject line.

Now, some folks may say there’s nothing abnormal about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender — that we should focus on what we have in common with our hetQuestion: Why does PQ Monthly use the word “queer” in reference erosexual and cisgender peers. Jonathan Reitan told to the LGBTQ community and (though abbreviated) in PQ he hates the word queer: “I’m gay, not queer. I don’t wish to have my sexuality described as being ‘odd’ or the title of the publication? ‘unusual.’”

Others will argue that we ought to celebrate our difference, Answer: I recognize that the word “queer” can mean strikingly dif- our “queerness,” and stand in opposition to the oppressive ferent things to different people. Whether you love it, hate gender and sex roles placed on us by society. Jack O Elliot it, or tolerate it, you are certainly not alone. Our polling on wrote: “The queerer the better! I still cherish the bright crimson glow of some faces when confronted with camp, Facebook made that clear. cosmic drag, gender f**k, etc. There is no such thing as too queer. It is our heritage and lest we become assimilated to a nice shade of beige — it is our hope.”

39. Ranked or graded If you ask me, it’s a false dichotomy. Who says we have to THEME: U.S. PRESIDENTS 40. Used in fencing choose between assimilation/acceptance and pride in our ACROSS 41. Luciano Pavarotti, e.g. difference/deviance? The truth is there are some quirky, 43. Actress ____ Sofer 1. Three square ones a day freaky, downright strange heterosexual, cisgender folks out 44.

“Your Body Is a Wonderland” 6. Feline sound there. There are also some exceptionally “vanilla” LGBTQ performer 9. Slope or hillside 13. Muslim God 14. Spermatozoa counterpart 15. “Little Deuce _____,” song 16. _____ Boothe Luce 17. “Lake” in Provence 18. Taken by server 19. *Where most Presidents went to college 21. *He was famously Catholic 23. “He ___ and drank the precious words...”

24. Fool 25. Toy maker 28. “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” 30. Interstellar cloud 35. Like sinister side in “Star Wars” 37. Mountain goat terrain

DOWN 1. One of these is approximately equal to speed of sound 2. Famous female scat singer 3. Having or resembling wings 4. Caterpillar precursor 5. Holder for #40 Across 6. Result of dampness 7. Actress Longoria 8. Mad or crazy 9. *Pres. Coolidge was “____ on the Fourth of July” 10. Ill-mannered 11. Imitated 12. Suggestive of supernatural 15. Talk it over 20. Respond 22. Longest division of geological time 24. Grain storage 25. Organ swelling 26. Largest city in Bolivia 27. Goddess of love, Norse mythology

pqmonthly.com

46. ____ Lee 47. Hat part 48. Popular flowering shrub 50. Do over 52. Feared by illegal immigrants 53. “Far and ____” the best 55. It fought British rule 57. Like a snake 61. *Tallest President 65. Hoppity-like board game 66. *35 is the minimum ___ 68. Embryo sacs 69. Type of flu 70. Chewbacca’s sidekick 71. Like yellow polka dot bikini 72. Not nice 73. R&R spot 74. Plural of suffix denoting female

folks, for whom sexual and gender identity is but a minor part of who they are and no large contributor to their cultural reality. In such a beautifully mixed up world, what does it mean to be different, to be queer? And what does that have to do with our acceptance as full citizens with equal rights and respect?

It all comes down to visibility. Not just in society at large, but within our own diverse community. That we are different (in varying ways and degrees) is a simple fact of life and one I consider worthy of celebration. Our difference, and society’s historical reactions to that, helped us forge a patchwork culture that sustains us in times of trial and gives us the collective strength to fight the good fight. To reject that history and culture, to me, feels disrespectful and self-defeating.

On an internal level, the benefits of the word queer are clear. It serves as an umbrella for all those who reside outside society’s gender and sexual norms, whether or not they explicitly identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual, two-spirit, or any of the other shades of the great gay rainbow. Beth Mattson told PQ she loves the word as she loves “all phrases that sound like I should be shouting them to counteract them as epithets. Also, it’s easier to say than LGBTQ and often younger and more inclusive than ‘gay.’”

By adopting a term that reflects what we have in common with one another, we can divert our attention from brainstorming better ways to arrange the letters to the important work of building community and fighting for justice.

That said, the word queer is not one size fits all, and I recognize that it’s not reflective of everyone’s individual identity.

That’s why I always ask folks how they identify, in their own words. But when it comes to the community as a whole, I believe that “queer” is the most inclusive and least awkward way to say we are all family.

-Erin Rook, PQ Monthly staff writer

CROSSWORD

29. Wraths 31. Aggressive remark 32. Wombs 33. Most famous Bolshevik?

34. *First White House inhabitant 36. ____ over 38. *He won popular but lost electoral vote 42. Exact halves of diameters 45. *Oldest elected President 49. Hole punching tool 51. Like baroque 54. Indian nursemaids 56. Highest points 57. It featured George Michael 58. Enthusiastic review 59. Hipbones 60. FBI agent 61. River in Siberia 62. Singles 63. Drawn in the sand?

64. They oppose the yeahs 67. Generation ___

February 2012 • 39

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