PQ Monthly November December 2014 Edition

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PQMONTHLY.COM Vol. 3 No. 11 Nov/Dec 2014

Inside: World AIDS Day, “Transparent,” PQ’s Shop Local Guide, Style Deconstructed, The Imperial Sovereign Rose Court, and Much More!

PHOTO BY ERIC SELLERS

MONTHLY

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PQ TEAM

WHY I DID NOT GO TO THE PARTY

Melanie Davis

Owner/Publisher melanie@pqmonthly.com

Gabriela Kandziora

Director of Business Development

gabriela@pqmonthly.com

chris alvarez

Art Director chris@pqmonthly.com

editorial TEAM daniel borgen

Editor daniel@pqmonthly.com

nick mattos

Founding Staff Writer & Social Media Manager nick@pqmonthly.com

Andrew Edwards Copy Editor

SALES TEAM larry lewis

Sales Representative larry@pqmonthly.com

lynda Wilkinson Sales Representative lynda@pqmonthly.com

Sarah Minifie

Sales Representative sarah@pqmonthly.com

National Advertising Rivendell Media 212-242-6863 sales@rivendellmedia.com

photographers Oscar Foster

Growing up on the campaign trail as a young girl, I can’t remember an election party I missed. As a kid, I would belly up to the bar and order Shirley Temples with extra cherries in hopes the sugar rush would kick in in time for the victory speeches. Over the years, I have had the privilege of celebrating with some of the most powerful and innovative leaders ever to be elected.

I have witnessed hallmark legislation pass, impossible measures succeed, and the public’s interest in democracy climb.

Since moving to Oregon in 1992, I have always felt this place is a battle ground for change and acceptance. As, it has always embraced me and my experiences, and equally those of my communities. I have considered Oregon to be the soul of our nation when dealing with humanitarian causes and a champion for the underdog. Until the 2014 election cycle.

We as Oregonians FAILED on November 4, 2014. We failed because we could not muster up the strength to recognize basic human needs for those who are already here — human beings who simply need access to a driver’s card to get to the job they have been brought here to do (where they are paid less than an American — a “legal citizen”). Parents who need to take their kids to the school that forces them to live in the shadows because school officials can and will call ICE if they detect these students are anything other than American kids sitting at their school desks. Driver’s cards would give this population the ability to travel to a house of worship, where they continue to pray to the Almighty; they pray their aches and pains from unjust labor practices will miraculously heal. Reporting these injuries equals loss of job, deportation — maybe worse; any outcome means families are left here in America to STARVE! In our quest to be all things, Oregon is noted for wine, beer, and spec-

TJ Acena, Ben Burwitz, Belinda Carroll, Marco Davis, Gula Delgatto, Andrew Edwards, Leela Ginelle, Kim Hoffman, Shaley Howard, Konrad Juengling, Richard Jones, LeAnn Locher, Monika MHz, Miss Renee, Katey Pants, and, of course, your PQ Editorial Team

--Melanie Davis

A SMATTERING OF WHAT YOU’LL FIND INSIDE:

Staff Photographer oscar@pqmonthly.com

contributing writers

tacular farm to table meals. Did we forget how we arrived at these notable hallmarks? On whose backs do we stand to be the culinary, wine, and beer capital of our great nation? When you think “farm to table,” you immediately read the farmers’ names at the bottom of your menu; however, do you think of the hundreds of seasonal workers the farmer hires to get their name at the bottom of that pristine menu…when you bite into that succulent meal, do you think of the people living in Oregon in housing that is as bad as most third world countries? When you swirl your wine glass to examine its beautiful legs, do you wonder about those who have broken their backs to make that sip possible?

On November 4, 2014 — election night, I buried myself in work. I had already seen the gap in the poll margins widening against Measure 88.

What eventually was called “Drivers Licenses for Illegals” by the opposition (remember the outrageous commercials about “terrorists boarding airplanes”?) was soundly defeated: 68% to 32%...The vomit of hate that led up to election night regarding this measure was not nearly as palatable as the “farm to table” notion we brag about.

No, I did not go to the election parties for the first time…in my memory.

I knew that I could not see people through my blurred vision; my eyes were filled with tears. I also knew that my thoughts would wander and I would be mentally questioning each handshake as people would say: “Yay, pot won…”, and my thoughts would pulse out of my skin as I would have to bite my tongue from asking: “but then why did we not pass Measure 88?”

We have a great deal to learn from this. As we enter our holiday season of gratitude, I continue to encourage our readers to shop, buy, and support local…however, this season I am going to ask a little bit more. I am not here to have the “great immigration debate” – however, I am going to ask for understanding. I am going to ask of each of you during this glittery season of love and giving, to look at what is around you, what you consume in things: food, beverage, whatever you enjoy. I ask you to understand how it got to you.

I also want to share with you a gift. The gift that we are better than this… many people don’t see the back roads of our state, therefore, they don’t see the people in the fields, the buses shuttling workers to the fields for long days, then back to the labor camp for a brief time of rest. The video below is presented by the Oregon Latino Health Coalition and American Leadership Forum of Oregon. The video is an overview of the challenges of providing healthcare to the seasonal and migrant farmworkers of Oregon and how these health care issues impact the community and the state.

This is who we failed and how it impacts their humble lives: http://vimeo. com/57994873. Please watch it.

ON THE COVER

World AIDS Day and all its activities..............................................Page 5 “Transparent,” the show you better not be missing......................Page 6 How much LGBTQ is in our schools’ history books?......................Page 8 Spirit of Portland Awards..................................................................Page 11 The Imperial Sovereign Rose Court................................................Page 12

503.228.3139

Shop local! Our holiday gifting guide............................................Page 15

proudqueer.com

Your Holiday To-Do List begins.......................................................Page 16 “I love an LA yoga mom look.” Style Deconstructed..................Page 18

THE NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE OF PQ MONTHLY IS RIVENDELL MEDIA, INC. BRILLIANT MEDIA LLC, DBA EL HISPANIC NEWS & PQ MONTHLY.

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Local singer and rapper Kitty Morena Montenegro (Bomb Ass Pussy) is the subject of PQ’s holiday window. Our cover was inspired by Saks ads of yesteryear, and the brilliant Eric Sellers gave our “ad” a modern twist. Photo and styling by Eric Sellers.

When gay, bi, and trans men “come out late”............................Page 20 Also, more from GLAPN, The Rainbow Bracelet Project, 6 months of trans history, a check-in with our coastal correspondent, The Secret Life of Summer Seasons, The Lady Chronicles, Cultivating Life, Everything is Connected, ID Check, and much more! Want to see something you’re not seeing in our pages? Email Daniel@PQMonthly.com

November/December 2014 • 3

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FEATURE

WORLD AIDS DAY 2014 — AND RENEWED URGENCY SURROUNDING INFECTION RATES

By Leela Ginelle, PQ Monthly

Monday December 1st marks the 26th annual World AIDS Day, which will be commemorated by many events in Portland, including Cascade AIDS Project’s inaugural Heroes of HIV Luncheon.

Launched in 1988 by World Health Organization public information officers James W. Bunn and Thomas Nutter, the campaign truly is a global event. For each World AIDS Day, the acting pope has released a greeting message for patients and doctors, and since 1995 each US President has made a commemorative proclamation.

A theme is declared each year by the WHO. Originally these drew criticism, as, fearing the stigma surrounding the disease, early themes focused on children and young people with the disease.

As time progressed, more mature themes, such as “Stigma and Discrimination,” and “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise” were introduced. Since 2011, World AIDS Day’s multi-year theme has been “Getting to Zero.” Where once presidents neglected even to say the word “AIDS,” beginning in 2007, the White House has honored World AIDS Day by displaying a 28 foot red AIDS ribbon from its North P o r tico.

From mid-November on, Portlanders will have many chances to observe World AIDS Day in the Rose City. From November 15-December 7, the Cascade AIDS Project’s Archive Display will be exhibited in the Central Library’s Collins Gallery. On November 21, PSU’s Association of African Students will hold a World AIDS Day event on the campus.

CAP’s Miss HIV Awareness Portland Pageant will be held November 30 at 5pm at Darcelle XV Showplace. The Portland-Mutare Sister City Association will hold its “Think Africa” fundraiser from 6-9pm on December 1 at the Eliot Center. Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette’s free event “Fighting for the Healthiest Generation,” focused on the young population but open to all, takes place December 1, 4:30-7:30.

Also on December 1 is CAP’s “Heroes of HIV Luncheon,” at noon at the Nines Hotel. The event honors OHSU

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researcher, and recipient of a recent $25 million Gates Foundation grant, Louis Picker, corporate sponsor Nike, and 26 year CAP volunteer and former board member Kevin Cook, aka Poison Waters, who has contributed over 2,260 hours to the organization.

Further events include December 3’s “Let’s Kick Ass PDX, HIV Survivors” panel, organized by CAP, from 6-7:30 at the Central Library, the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon’s HIV Day Center 25th Anniversary Lunch, also on December 3, from 12:30-1:30 at Concordia University, and December 5’s Teen Night Out from 7-11 at CAP’s Pivot, featuring food, dancing and free HIV testing.

Sadly, this year’s World AIDS Day arrives during a time of renewed urgency regarding the disease within the LGBTQ community. A recent study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a group described by CAP’s Prevention with Positives Coordinator Benjamin Gerritz as a “widely recognized leader” regarding HIV/AIDS, revealed many disturbing trends.

Among the gay and bisexual men surveyed in the study, only 32% knew that HIV infection rates were rising among gay and bi US men, and 22% erroneously believed rates were falling. Kaiser estimates that 13% of gay men are HIV-positive. The Center for Disease Control suggests that in cities the number could be as high as 20%. Despite this, though, only 30% of gay and bi men studied had been tested within the previous year, and 44% of those under 35 hadn’t ever been tested.

These numbers are especially troubling given that, with attentive medical care, transmission of HIV is now preventable. A person diagnosed HIV-positive who employs anti-retroviral drugs can reduce their viral load to “undetectable” levels, according to recent studies. Likewise, those who are HIV-negative who use PrEP, a treatment now endorsed by the World Health Organization, will enjoy

almost a complete chance of preventing their infection.

Among gay and bi men studied by Kaiser, however, only one fourth understood treating HIV infection helped prevent future transmission, and only 26% knew about PrEP at all.

Such ignorance may be behind the recent upward trends in HIV infection, unfortunately, along with the stigma that still dogs a positive diagnosis. Two thirds of those studied said they’d be “uncomfortable” being in a relationship with someone who was HIV-positive, and 77% expressed discomfort about having casual sex with an HIV-positive man. Such views are counterintuitive, however, as it’s far riskier having sex with someone who doesn’t know their status, like the 44% of young men who’ve never been tested, than with an HIV-positive partner who consistently treats their infection.

Transgender women are another group in the LGBTQ community experiencing alarming trends around HIV infection. A 2013 report from the Center for Disease Control described the transgender community as “among those at highest risk” for infection. Concrete statistics for trans women are scarce as, until recently, incompetent, insensitive practices had lumped their data in with men who have sex with men. Likewise, because of the harassment and discrimination they face there, many trans women avoid the medical establishment, a fact reflected in the CDC’s noting that over half the tests collected involving trans patients occurred at “non-health care facilities.”

That said, the CDC concluded that, “the highest percentage of newly identified HIV-positive test results occurred among transgender people,” and that, “among transgender people, the highest percentages occurred among racial and ethnic minorities.” Within these results, the overwhelming amount of new HIV-positive diagnoses (99%) were trans women, rather than trans men.

While the data collected by the CDC, again, was far from comprehensive, a startling statistic jumps out: in a meta analysis of 29 studies of the population, 27.7%, over one in four, trans women tested HIV-positive.

World AIDS Day is a chance to put a spotlight on this pandemic, and focus on what can be done to treat those who have become infected and prevent its transmission once and for all. Over its 26 year history it’s helped bring this condition out of the shadows and drain it of the stigma it should never have carried.

Now it’s our chance to join with the Cascade AIDS Project and others to honor those living with, and fighting to end, AIDS, “Getting to Zero” once and for all.

November/December 2014 • 5

FEATURE

“TRANSPARENT”: THE SEASON’S HYPNOTIC, STELLAR NEW SHOW

Almost immediately upon its release “Transparent” was heralded as the best new TV show of the season, and it’s easy to see why.

By Leela Ginelle, PQ Monthly

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Almost immediately upon its release “Transparent” was heralded as the best new TV show of the season, and it’s easy to see why: it’s a hypnotic, sophisticated portrait of a family that feels like a great novel, engrossing the viewer, while avoiding any of the increasingly played out tropes of the “Difficult Men,” Golden Era of TV-style classics.

The show is noteworthy for being the first to feature a transgender protagonist, Maura, a retired professor and parent of three children. While it handles this aspect of its story honestly and sensitively, though, the trans aspect does not dominate the show. Instead it’s interested in the invisible dynamics that tether family members to one another, and the way secrets and betrayals ripple, in pattern-like ways from parent to child and sibling to sibling.

The show rarely barrels forward; instead its characters drift, startlingly, in and out of relationships, jobs and residences. The audience cares about them, but even late into the season can feel shocked at seeing Maura, or one of her children react unexpectedly to a comment or situation, and feel that they are mysteries to us and to themselves. In this way it’s fascinating, almost myth-like story telling We meet Maura (expertly played by Jeffery Tambor), just as she’s coming out to her children, Sarah (Amy Landecker), Josh (Jay Duplass), and Ali (Gaby Hoffman). All live somewhat dubiously wealthy lives, given their purported professions (or lack thereof ). All, similarly, live fascinatingly unexamined existences.

The children’s romantic and professional pursuits are in constant upheaval or turmoil. Sarah, a mother of two, leaves her husband for her former college girlfriend. Josh, a compulsive romantic, sabotages his record company career in response to a dalliance with an artist, and Ali careens through partners and gender expressions, seemingly in a hyper-sensitive response to Maura’s decision and her own fatalistic confusion about her prospects and identity.

After coming out, Maura moves from a ritzy home in the toney Pacific Palisades to an LGBTQ-friendly apartment building in West Hollywood. It’s one of many subtle ways the show explores how her trans identity affects her life. We see her experience discrimination in a women’s restroom, and receive harassment from old friends and family members. While these scenes are painful, though, Maura is never a martyr. Her sense of reserve, the lack of verbal intimacy she shares with those around her, and the show’s aversion to melodrama all combine to make transphobia and its wounding power part of

the fabric of the storytelling, as opposed to its message.

“Transparent” flashes back frequently to 1994, a time when Maura seems first to have explored her gender identity. Early on, this appears merely to be adding context. It soon starts building to one particular weekend, though, which spans the entire eighth episode (the season consists of ten), which is fascinating for all the ways it refracts the themes of betrayal, autonomy, and familial love the show explores. “Transparent” never seems to judge its characters, or generate sympathy for them. Instead it seems as curious as they are, treating their lives and world as a kind of laboratory for understanding love, sex, compulsion, manipulation, jealousy, and whatever other emotions and activities result from relationships.

The main criticisms of the show thus far, which I made myself when reviewing the pilot, deal with its unrealistic portrayal of finances, and the selfishness displayed by Maura’s children. For me, the money issues faded away upon accepting that the characters all received about four times as much as their real life counterparts might for the jobs they did.

What was more interesting to me, was the way money affected Maura’s transition. At the mall with her daughters, Maura is affirmed at the makeup counter, where she buys whatever is suggested, and harassed moments later in the women’s room, illustrating the old adage that people like trans women as we’re paying them to. Money serves as a glue between Maura and her children, as well. While they mock her behind her back, questioning her sanity and expressing embarrassment, they put on a more accepting face when visiting, either vying for the house she’s vacated, or asking for loans, manipulating and being manipulated by their wealthy parent, in a kind of ongoing, mutual parasitism.

The selfishness, too, stopped bothering me. Rather than appearing unfeeling, Maura’s children, as the show proceeds, seem helplessly, compulsively single-minded. Judging them, in such light, feels not only unkind, but fruitless. Instead I wanted to understand them, as their drives seemed so mysteriously, fundamentally human. Episode eight, in which we watch a younger, more virile Maura display the exact kind of heedless, primal appetites, to the detriment of her children and wife, adds fascinating context to the dynamic.

Finishing season one of “Transparent,” I only wanted more. Some shows, like “Homeland” disappoint with their inconsistencies, but others, like “The Wire” and “Six Feet Under,” which “Transparent” creator Jill Solloway wrote for, sustain their high quality year after year. I’d love dozens more hours of with these characters, if they were like the ones we’ve gotten so far. pqmonthly.com

FEATURE

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November/December 2014 • 7

FEATURE

ARE PORTLAND STUDENTS LEARNING LGBTQ HISTORY?

“As a black, gay student going to school here in Portland, I questioned myself so many times about why Bayard Rustin isn’t spoken about as much as MLK,” says Giovanni Blair McKenzie, Queer Intersections Portland. Pictured above with Karol Collymore of Equity Foundation.

By Leela Ginelle, PQ Monthly

We’re fortunate to be living in something of an LGBTQ renaissance, with President Obama’s Inaugural mention of Stonewall, the cascade of marriage equality victories, and the recent tide of mainstream transgender support and visibility.

That said, many of us likely remember public school as a place where LGBTQ topics went unmentioned in social studies classes and where homophobic and transphobic attitudes prevailed. Is this changing? The answer would seem to be, yes, but not as fast as many would like.

“LGBT-inclusive curriculum is important because it provides positive representations of LGBT people, history and events and helps to create a tone of acceptance of LGBT people,” says Portland area GLSEN Chair Danny Rosen. Such effects, Rosen says, result “in a more supportive environment for LGBT students.” As evidence, Rosen cites GLSEN’s 2011 National School Climate Survey, which found that LGBT students in schools with LGBT-inclusive curriculum feel safer, experience less anti-LGBT harassment and are twice as likely to say their classmates are accepting of them.

Given such data, how close are our Metro area schools to adopting such curriculum? In Portland Public School District, it appears to be on the horizon.

Retired administrator and current PPS Project Manager Rudy Rudolph is spearheading a group of administrators

and allies in the district to lay the groundwork for successful behalf of LGBTQ youth and young adults with intersectchange regarding the full inclusion of LGBTQ-related cur- ing, marginalized identities, feels the presence of mateririculum. als would have a deep impact on the LGBTQ students in Thus far, this work has taken place behind the scenes. Portland area schools. “I believe students will have more There have been trainings for all administrators about self-worth if they see people like themselves being taught in creating safe, inclusive environments, as well as SMYRC’s schools alongside the many cisgender and straight people Bridge 13 trainings for the district’s counselors. Rudolph is who are on the covers of our history books,” he says. especially proud of the extensive FAQ document distribOregon’s state standards are thematic and broad based. uted to all district employees regarding LGBTQ issues. The They mandate very little in the way of instruction, choosing six page guide, which can be found online, to allow local districts flexibility in adopting offers sensitive, inclusive, highly competent their curriculum. That said, district’s in our guidance on a variety of matters that might area have begun purchasing textbooks with occur in and around classrooms, consissections at least touching on this history. tently reiterating that LGBTQ students and Athena Vadnais, Director of Communiemployees are welcomed and valued at PPS. cations and Community Engagement for Rudolph sees such actions as an importthe Gresham-Barlow School District says ant prelude to introducing LGBTQ materials the district’s tenth grade US History book to classrooms. “We’ve been getting started discusses “the gay rights movement” in a on developing a great base in the district,” section following the civil rights movement. she says. “We haven’t created curriculum When asked whether the district had because we want to build support among issued guidance supporting a teacher’s leadership first.” decision to cover LGBTQ-related subject Rosen agrees such a strategy is importmatter in the way PPS had, should such a ant. Asked what might deter the adoption teacher fear community complaints, for of LGBTQ curriculum, the GLSEN chair instance, Vadnais said it hadn’t. “Our teachresponded, “lack of cohesive and unified Bayard Rustin was the mastermind to some of ers are trained on responding to parents agreement. Curriculum changes generally MLK’s greatest achievements as a civil rights who have concerns or questions about the are committee decisions. Concerns about activist. content of coursework,” Vadnais says. “We community reactions, school funding, necessary train- expect that our teachers and administrators would handle ing of educators and staff and a general lack of awareness inquiries about this subject matter in much the same way of the importance for inclusive curriculum all contribute as any other concern.” to inaction.”

Such an answer ignores the main impediment to inteRudolph says PPS is reaching out to districts that are fur- grating this curriculum into our schools, however, argues ther ahead in such curriculum development, in places like TransActive Executive Director Jenn Burleton. “I think the San Francisco and Los Angeles, and conferring with local primary blockade to including LGBT history in our schools partners in the LGBTQ community, as well, noting the dis- is two-fold: first, a generalized and over-inflated fear of contrict “wants to do it the right way.” She could not offer a time servative backlash at both the community and legislative line for when such curriculum could be introduced, however. levels, which would potentially affect funding, and second The lack of such materials was felt strongly by Queer a lack of culturally competent educators and curricula preIntersections Portland Executive Director, and recent PPS pared to not only discuss the historical facts but to address graduate, Giovanni Blair McKenzie. “As a black, gay stu- any objections to LGBT history that would come from relident going to school here in Portland, I questioned myself gious and ultra-conservative factions.” so many times about why Bayard Rustin isn’t spoken about In that way concerns about LGBTQ history curricula are as much as MLK,” he says. “The Great March on Washing- quite different than any other concerns. Like Rosen and ton, one of the largest political rallies for human rights in McKenzie, Burleton said she hoped to see the quick adopthe United States, and the day Martin Luther King Jr. deliv- tion of such materials, and believed the positive messages ered his historic ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, was all orga- they would carry would help reduce the horrible level of nized by a black, gay man, Bayard Rustin. Rustin was the bullying suffered by LGBTQ students. mastermind to some of MLK’s greatest achievements as “I believe that knowledge, exposure to diversity, and a civil rights activist. Unfortunately, because of his ‘life- awareness of our own historical facts are the antidote to style,’ many believe his work should not be spoken about virtually every kind of stigma,” she says. “It’s much easier or taught in schools.” to demean, hate and oppress your neighbor if you don’t McKenzie, who, along with QI Portland, advocates on know your neighbor.”

Always have supported LGBT rights, Always will.

8 • November/December 2014

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VOICES

FEATURE NEWS

This Ends Badly The Crab-Free Diet

By Michael James Schneider, PQ Monthly

He stands in my doorway, not coming in. His hand holds the bike he rode over on, also halfway through the threshold. Carl mutters something, small talk: “Hey. How did you sleep last night?”

“Like a log,” I say. “A drunk, crying log.”

He doesn’t react. He just looks down at his feet. “Come all the way in, will you?” I ask, now annoyed. Everything’s been going great with Carl. We’ve been dating a couple of months now, so this is about the time for something to get completely and irrevocably fucked up. I look at my watch: Yup, it’s Breakup O’Clock!

He closes the door, and comes into my living room. He leans his bike on the wall and sits down next to me on the couch. I like this guy, he’s a little too young, but at least he doesn’t think all guys over 35 ejaculate sand.

We both stare at my coffee table book; it’s covered in wine stains. My cat Ned jumps up on the couch next to us and I absently pet him while looking at Carl. I lean down to kiss his furry head and mistakenly kiss his large wet eyeball instead. Ugh. This is going well.

“So, uh, you remember that friend who I told you slept over and drunkenly crashed in my bed the other night?” he asks, not making eye contact with me. I nod, my throat gets dry. My eyes get wide. I’d like to say my eyes are hazel but they’re brown as fuck...I’m so basic my phone autocorrects every word to “Volvo” lately. He sees my expression: “No! No, nothing happened, I just...” He reaches into the backpack he brought and starts pulling something out.

Oh, that’s right! I’m cooking dinner for us and I forgot he was bringing the wine.

But then he pulls the bottle the rest of the way out, and I see that it’s not a bottle of Prosecco to go with the Chicken Picatta I was making. It’s a bottle. Of. Fucking. Nix. “We didn’t do anything, but we slept in the same bed, and he gave me crabs.” And like that my brain is racing and trying to make sense of what he said and I’m envisioning him and his friend at the Saturday Market, wicker baskets slung over their arms, skipping up to the seafood vendor. Arm in arm in front of the bed of shaved ice, they point at the tank full of lobsters and crabs, and pick a couple of big ones out. The jolly vendor with the filthy apron laughs as he plunges his hands into the cold water and brings out two huge crabs with cartoon eyes and hands them to Carl’s friend, who then gives them to Carl. And now here’s Carl, about to pull one of them out of his backpack as it serenades us and sings “Kiss The Girl” (whatever) as he and I make out like rabid badgers.

I’m shocked back to reality when Carl clears his throat and continues: “Chances are you don’t actually have them. I mean, you haven’t been itching down there, have you?”

“Oh. Crabs. Okay.” I remain calm. I have not been itching, no. I ask him some questions. We decide to call it an early night, and I close my door after him which waving goodbye with the bottle of Nix shampoo in my hands (in my mind, the bottle reads FOR HUMAN FLEAS). I lock the door and run the fuck to my computer and image search “genital crabs.”

My eyes grow wide as I look upon the horrifying fat little limbs of the parasites, the face that looks like chaos, the pockmarked and scabbed human skin that comes from untreated crabs. Everything goes black as I slump down and pass out.

Later, I’m in the shower, directing the red hot stream of steaming water at my junk as I use the Nix. It burns, and not the gentle Selsun Blue burn to let you know it’s working. No, this is the humiliating burn that only Human Flea Shampoo can give you.

This is the burn that says “Hey World, I’ve Made It! My Body Is Home To A Parasitic Insect!”

I go about my daily life, feeling like each and every one of my crotch hairs is on fire.

Who the hell do I talk to about this? Who can I commiserate with? My married friends don’t have this problem (that I know of ).

I certainly can’t bring it up to my parents (“Hey mom, how’s the arthritis? Oh by the way I might have genital crabs. Did you ever have those?”). So who? My pastor at church?

And that’s when it strikes me. Why am I afraid to tell anyone? Why is this shameful? Yes, we can all agree that STIs and parasites are bad news. But when in our formative years did we learn to keep them a secret and not talk about them to anyone except those who it might directly affect?

Don’t get me wrong, I was waterboarded as a Cub Scout like the rest of you, but there must have also been a point where I learned that STIs are something we Just Don’t Talk About, just like sex.

I wrote recently about monogamy and the strange ways that slutshaming rears its head, and maybe this is another one. Let’s do this: let’s start the conversations about what’s going on around our junk. No, if this happens again I’m not going to broadcast it from the mountains, and yeah I’ll take twice as many precautions. But I won’t treat it like a massive secret that I don’t tell my friends.

If secrets are weird, then I guess transparency is the new normal.

Hey: We need to talk.

Michael James Schneider is a writer, designer, and artist based in Portland, OR. He writes for his wildly unpopular and poorly-named blog BLCKSMITHdesign.com, and just released his first fiction book, The Tropic Of Never, available on Amazon. pqmonthly.com

November/December 2014 • 9

NEWS FEATURE

AUGUST 2013 TO FEBRUARY 2014: AMERICA’S 6 MONTH TRANS EDUCATION allies in their audiences.

The public outcry about this, on social media, and directly to the outlets themselves, led them to quickly change their approach, and affirm that trans individuals have the right to determine their identities, while others have the responsibility to respect their wishes.

After a quiet few months, in November, the Senate debated and voted on a trans-inclusive ENDA, and not a single Republican Senator said anything negative, even in a coded way, about trans folk, a show of restraint indicating a new level of civility around trans Laverne Cox is not only a fine actress, but she’s one of the LGBTQ movement’s most important figures. topics at the political level.

January 2014 might be

By Leela Ginelle, PQ Monthly seen in retrospect as a kind of watershed month for trans people. On January 7, Carmen Carrera and Laverne Cox Prior to the last year or two, the question of whether appeared on Katie Couric. Couric asked the former about trans people and identities would achieve widespread cul- surgery, and Carrera demurred, gently critiquing the host tural acceptance and support felt like an open one. Igno- on her invasion of privacy. When Cox came out the three rance abounded in mainstream reporting on trans subjects, had a discussion about the invasive focus the media places and trans women and men were still punchlines, rather on trans people’s physical transitions. than characters or guests, on shows like “South Park” and This episode made public a grievance that had long sim“The Colbert Report.” mered in the trans community, that of the cis communiDuring a remarkable period between August 2013 and ty’s blithe speculation on trans people’s genitals. Julia SerFebruary 2014, however, that appears to have changed, as ano’s book “Whipping Girl” explored this at length back in a series of events, some of them painful and tragic, resulted 2007. Carrera and Cox’s status as celebrities allowed them in a kind of public consciousness raising around trans to voice this complaint at a national venue for the first people in our society. time. Couric came under a great deal of criticism, both for While it’s something of an arbitrary starting point, I her query, and the non-apology she made about it being a would say this began with Chelsea Manning’s declara- “teachable moment.” It’s worth noting, however, that Cox tion of her identity. Following her conviction, on August returned to the show later, and credited its host for not edit23, 2013, the soldier released a statement saying, “I am ing the moment out, as she easily might have.

Chelsea Manning. I am a female.” In reporting on this, In mid-January, the punk band Against Me!, fronted by mainstream, prestigious media outlets, such as NPR, NY trans woman Laura Jane Grace, began streaming its album Times, The Washington Post and others all showed enor- “Transgender Dysphoria Blues.” The album was the first mous incompetence and insensitivity, pondering aloud the band had made since Grace’s transition, and was searabout when they might recognize Manning’s identity, ingly personal throughout in addressing its title topic. The such as when the government that had just convicted her band’s record was fantastically well-received, with rock agreed to do so, or when she’d had the surgeries her jail- critics making none of the mistakes their news peers had ers would not allow her to attain. For days, they contin- committed regarding names and pronouns five months ued misgendering her, and referring to her former name, prior with Manning. a display that suggested not only that they had no trans Against Me! had released several records before Grace’s staff members in their organizations, but that they felt no transition, and this album rollout, while marred by a few need to respect the feelings of the trans people and their horrible radio interviews, like that with LA DJs Kevin &

Bean, provided a template for how a public figure could be respectfully received in the media when transitioning.

On January 15, an article appeared on the website Grantland called “Dr. V’s Magical Putter,” that, because of its tragic handling of trans issues, caused an online firestorm. It’s author, Caleb Hannan, sought to investigate the inventor of a new putter, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt. He found discrepancies in her past, regarding her credentials and background. He also discovered she was a trans woman.

Hannan, in pursuing his story, outed Vanderbilt to her business partners, and would not agree to keep her trans identity out of the story, even after she threatened to kill herself. In the course of Hannan’s reporting, Vanderbilt did commit suicide. Mindboggingly, Hannan’s story, which can still be found on Grantland, documents all of this with no awareness that anything transphobic or problematic had occurred, and repeatedly conflates her trans status with her false credentials, suggesting they are equally fraudulent.

This episode led to widespread discussions among journalists about the importance of sensitivity when covering trans subjects. The site’s editor published a lengthy, occasionally problematic, apology, attempting to explain how such a story could be published, and pledged to do better, with regards to trans topics. Following this, because of the horrible human cost involved, it became unthinkable that such a thoughtless event could recur.

Finally, on February 5, Janet Mock appeared on Piers Morgan. The activist, who was promoting her memoir, was asked invasive questions, while captions on the screen said things like, “Was a Boy Until 18.” After the show aired, Mock took to Twitter, accusing Morgan of “sensationalizing” her story, and telling his show to “get it the f*k together.” If Couric and Grantland offered examples of gracefully handling mistakes regarding trans issues, Morgan displayed the opposite, trying to shout down his critics on Twitter for hours, and, in the process, resembling Old Man Privilege.

As with genital issues on Katie Couric, Morgan’s queries touched on issues trans people had long decided they don’t like: the designation “born a man,” being asked how they think their partners feel about our birth assignments, etc. Mock was ready speak back about this, and her followers heard her loud and clear. While future interviewers might venture into these areas again inadvertently, or stumble into other transphobic tropes, it’s hard to imagine anyone knowingly displaying the arrogant insensitivity shown by Morgan.

From August 2013 to February 2014 trans people experienced a level of visibility theretofore unseen. While some of the adjustments involved were difficult and even tragic, the community emerged, through the grace and dignity of its celebrities and its collective voice, at a place of greater respect and sensitivity, and our culture’s a safer, more inclusive one than it was before.

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NEWS

LGBTQ PEOPLE AND ALLIES RECOGNIZED BY CITY OF PORTLAND tee of representatives from the Commissioners’ offices, the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, Neighborhood Associations and other diverse community organizations. The Mayor and each Commissioner also select special award winners to recognize specific works and achievements.

PFLAG PORTLAND I nominated PFLAG Portland because I have been so impressed with its love and acceptance. While many individual LGBTQ people and allies have won the SOP Award in the past, this is the first year one of our organizations has been recognized. SOP winner PFLAG Portland evolved from a 1976 group Winners of four Spirit of Portland Awards left to right Khalil Edwards representing PFLAG Portland; Stephen Marc called Parents of Gays (POG). PFLAG at one Beaudoin; Dawn Holt representing PFLAG Portland; George T. Nicola; Amber Starks. Photo by GLAPN President time stood for Parents and Friends of LesbiRobin Will. ans and Gays. Today, the organization is fully

By George T. Nicola, GLAPN supportive of all LGBTQ people. It now consists of three On Thursday, November 6, the City of Portland held components: Portland Chapter, Portland Black Chapter, its 30th annual Spirit of Portland (SOP) Awards ceremony. and East County Chapter.

By educating parents and guiding them to accept and Recipients this year include some LGBTQ people and allies love their LGBTQ children, PFLAG Portland has for many as well as a major LGBTQ and ally organization. decades helped keep families together. Parents and friends The recognitions are described by the City as follows: The Spirit of Portland Awards recognize local individ- have organized to assist their kids and support each other. uals and organizations who have demonstrated an out- PFLAG Portland has also advocated for LGBTQ people’s standing dedication to positive change in our commu- dignity, respect, and legal equality. The group has regularly nity. Award winners are those who have not only worked advocated for changes in schools, congregations and the to improve the community, but who have also gone above broader community for full acceptance for all of our youth, and beyond a dedication to civic engagement in order to including those that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Today, PFLAG Portland is the largest of make a lasting impact.

Award winners are chosen from nominations sub- 13 PFLAG groups in Oregon. About half the members are mitted by fellow Portlanders by a selection commit- straight allies, while the other half are LGBTQ.

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For more information on this amazing organization, see http://pflagpdx.org/wordpress/.

STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN Stephen Marc Beaudoin won the SOP Award for his professional work with PHAME, a Portland non-profit. According to the group’s web site “PHAME creates opportunities for adults with disabilities to experience the joy of artistic expression through lifelong arts education and performance, offering a safe environment to inspire new connections with students, teachers, and the arts community at large.” Stephen has been Executive Director of PHAME since 2010. (http://phamepdx.org/events) Stephen has been active with the LGBTQ movement for many years. In 2013 and 2014, he co-chaired the Basic Rights Oregon Ignite! galas. He currently serves as a Governor-appointed member of the board of Oregon Humanities, volunteers for Business for Culture and the Arts, and supports the election of progressive candidates and causes.

AMBER STARKS Spirit of Portland awardee Amber Starks is an amazing woman and a dedicated straight ally. In 2011, she wanted to braid the hair of African American children in foster care.

She based this on skills she learned growing up.

Amber soon found that she could not do this without a full cosmetology license. That would have required time and money to learn skills she would never need. In fact, a third of the exam questions involved chemicals, something which Amber never planned to use.

Amber got support from the Urban League of Portland.

Her Oregon House Representative Alissa Keny-Guyer introduced House Bill 3409 to create licenses for natural hair stylists. The bill was successfully enacted last year.

LGBTQ PEOPLE AND ALLIES page 15

November/December 2014 • 11

QUEER HISTORY

A ROYAL HISTORY: THE IMPERIAL SOVEREIGN ROSE COURT IN CONTEXT identity; an enormous cross section of Americans participated in groups such as the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Ancient Order of Foresters, the Eagles, B’nai B’rith, and PEO. Along with these positive organizations, hate-oriented brotherhoods such as the Ku Klux Klan swelled in membership.

The overwhelming success of such organizations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was due in large part to their ability to serve as job networks, stag clubs for entertainment and drink, and one of the only sources at the time for medical and life insurance policies. Furthermore, they served as a source of social identity and pride; a walk in Portland’s Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery, for example, reveals that a huge percentage of people buried there felt their identity as a Mason or a Woodman to be so important as to dictate what would appear on their headstone.

It was in this fertile ground that the organization that would eventually find identity as the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court of Oregon would be born.

Founded in 1958, the Court was founded initially by a man named Sam Campbell as the Court of Transylvania. Campbell named himself Queen Samuel I, the Court’s first Monach. Due to social disputes and low membership — and despite Queen Samuel I stepping down as Queen the year after founding the organization — the original Court of Transylvania faltered and dissipated in 1959. In 1965, however, the Pruitts of Portland founded a new Court. From 1965 until 1971, the Pruitts held semi-annual balls; at each of these balls, a Queen was crowned, with her life and achievements celebrated in the style of the then-popular television show ‘Queen for a Day.’ Parallel to this, another “Rose Court Queen” was commonly identified in Portland. Starting in 1907 with Queen Flora, the city of Portland would Oregon’s oldest LGBTQ organization, and one that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity regularly crown a “Rose Court Queen” as part of the annual Rose Festival. In 1930, the city began over the last five decades: the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court of Oregon. selecting the Queen from area high schools; during

By Nick Mattos, PQ Monthly this time, the city began to select a “royal court” of “princesses,” with one “princess” being crowned “queen” Who reigns over Oregon like a sovereign? What was, each year. and is, the most fabulous fraternity in all the land? OreIn what could be considered a spoof on this local tragon’s oldest LGBTQ organization, and one that has raised dition, a female impersonator named Rose was crowned hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity over the last Queen at the Pruitt’s Spring Ball in 1965. She proclaimed five decades: the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court of Oregon. that she had been Rose Queen I and II prior to 1965; as To understand the history of the Imperial Sovereign such, she became known as Rose Queen III. Rose Court of Oregon, it is important to understand the In 1969, the Portland Forum — an early LGBTQ rights history and context of fraternal organizations and queer organization — took over the sponsorship of the balls; rights in Oregon. From its inception, fraternal orders and the following year, the organization formed a partnership secret societies were intrinsic to the American character. with José Sarria, a political activist in San Francisco who As the nation’s identity formed, fraternal organizations and had founded a similarly-structured social group in the Bay brotherhoods were fundamental to individual and group Area in 1965. With this partnership, the International Rose

12 • November/December 2014

Court was founded — and the local organization adopted the name of the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court of Oregon.

To conform to Sarria’s preestablished titles, the office of “queen” was renamed to “Empress,” and shortly thereafter became a publicly-elected office voted upon by the public.

By the late 1970s, the ISRC’s membership had exploded, and its events were some of the most successful in the LGBTQ community. The crowning of an Emperor in 1975 further expanded the size of the Court and their ambition in fundraising and outreach; events and private fundraising went to support a huge array of organizations and causes including early queer rights activism, care for the homeless, and scholarship funds. The Emperor and Empress began a busy schedule of travel to attend events sponsored

by Courts which were springing up all over the nation; to hold down the local front, new titles such as Prince, Princess, White Knight, and Debutante were created to assist the Emperor and Empress in the leadership and work of the ISRC. The Imperial Sovereign Rose Court of Oregon has seen a sharp decline in membership in recent times. However, this is true of virtually every fraternal organization — it is commonly held that most such organizations reached their organizations’ peaks around 1950. Furthermore, studied cited in such popular texts as Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone indicate that a variety of social factors have dramatically shrunk the membership size of most fraternal organizations, religious denominations, service clubs, and even community organizations such as the Parent-Teacher Association. In this regard, the Rose Court’s reduction in size is natural, and perhaps even unavoidable.

However, despite the changes and trends in society, the Rose Court is still going strong. Open to all persons over the age of 21 who live within Washington, Multnomah, Clackamas and Columbia Counties, The ISRC is firmly against discrimination and constantly welcomes new members of all ages. Virtually each week, the Court holds functions open to the public, introducing both community veterans and those new to Oregon to the wonders of queer community.

In October of 2015, the Court will even bring together members of the International Court System from all over the world to celebrate the organization’s 50th anniversary with a Golden Jubilee State Dinner honoring their history and journey as a community. Many things have changed since 1958, for LGBTQ individuals and for society alike. However, for those who count themselves amongst its members, the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court has remained a rock to stand on and a haven to rest within.

For more information on the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court, its numerous events and meetings happening each week, and how you can become a member, visit RoseCourt. org. For information and tickets on the Golden Jubilee State Dinner, visit ICS50.org.

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TRANSITIONS

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STYLE FEATURES

November/December 2014 • 13

FEATURE

VOICES

ID CHECK

What Change Looked Like

By Leela Ginelle, PQ Monthly

During my mid-30s I sought to eliminate spontaneity from my life. My days became divided into repeated activities, a checklist I kept mentally, lording over myself like a sadistic employer.

At a conscious level this was performed in the name of self-care; unconsciously, things were, as they generally are, more complex, such that, several years later I can ascribe various motives to my impulses: unresolved and repressed traumas, being closeted, a desire to “fix myself” through accelerated healing, etc.

Having policed myself so severely during that window, I wonder sometimes what moderation around self-reflection and general upkeep should look like. “If those things hadn’t happened, would I be doing this?” goes my recurrent line of questioning, the desire to know carrying a true poignancy.

Control is like a trick, in that the more one seeks it, the more glaring its absence feels. All my little safeguards, while valiant efforts, could not secure a state of mind I lacked, or make me a person I wasn’t.

My days are populated with both surprises and habits currently, and, assessing them, I can be judgmental, favoring one or the other, and histrionic, worrying I’m either being too strict or spiraling dangerously. I have only my past, and works of fiction to compare my self-consciousness with, which I find frustrating.

My ascent from the time I described above has felt like an act of vindication.

Any liberty I discern within myself, the success I find in my transition, I enfranchise these things with my escape from the horrors of my childhood and from the totalitarian transphobia in which I was raised. I’m never watching thoughts float past indifferently; I’m keeping score.

For years my thoughts turned on themselves. I pathologized myself, secretly longing for some transformation to free me from the perpetual discomfort I felt. Later, it was the world, and the undeniable injustices it contained, which I saw as inarguably personalized throughout my history. The idea of existence without opposition, opposition present at every level in every instant, as it’s been for me from the time I’ve conceived of myself as an individual, is inconceivable, akin to the still, white room at the end of “2001.”

All emotions attached to events, even catastrophic events, pass, though. One grieves, accepts, reconciles, or reconciles one’s self to separation, and, in doing so, acquires a new outlook.

Grooves one’s worn, mental preoccupations, suddenly lack resonance, leaving one

at a loss as to what she’s “doing,” for when one’s passion was making sense of the horrors and repressions of the past, and she finds, suddenly, it no longer is . . . well, the question of what to “do” feels frighteningly open-ended.

Or perhaps “doing” anything, given my history, felt inherently frightening, so that not actively grappling with fear, as I’ve been accustomed to, seemed particularly reckless. It’s not, though, and my default lays much nearer to caution than recklessness regardless.

Dreaming about the future has led me, previously, to the past, as I envisioned a world not haunted by anything that lay there. It felt like a corrupted dream, since pursuing it meant ignoring so much of what surrounded me, and focusing on the things and people I most regretted having encountered.

Dreams today, devoid of such corruption, already feel more tranquil, absent as they are of terror and cruelty, a path not lined with mines and monsters, a world to be taken at face value.

A part of me has always felt burdened by my rootedness, my natural inclination for balance, as though, without that drive, I could have manically pursued my deepest passions. The monkish years of inner work, characterized by doubt, mistrust, self-deprivation, and a deeply ambivalent commitment to staying with myself as I confronted, and hopefully vanquished, the sources of shame and confusion that plagued me involved squashing the desire for escape.

Many of the activities I’d considered off limits, however, somehow emerged and became a part of my identity: femininity, playwriting, romance, and the pursuit of an audience for my work.

It’s probably a mark of trauma that, so many times in my life, I’ve judged things “good” or “bad,” worthwhile or forbidden.

Choices, even small ones, became heightened, like choosing the right color wire to cut while defusing a ticking bomb. Eliminating spontaneity meant factoring out risk, which, frozen as I was by fear, easily, though bitterly, outweighed the losses I suffered in terms of opportunity.

Almost imperceptibly, all the things I sought have come true, not overnight, and not without the kinds of highs and lows I, in my rule bound era, would have worked mightily to avoid. My heart broke and soared a thousand times, and I loved myself as best I could, and with increasing aptitude, unwittingly becoming the heroine of my own story.

Leela Ginelle is a playwright and journalist living in Portland, OR. You can write her at leela@pqmonthly.com.

14 • November/December 2014

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HOLIDAY

SHOP (LOCAL) ‘TIL YOU DROP As we do each and every year, we’re encouraging you, Otto and Brent Heeb have been nationally recognized (18th century) onwards. Maloy’s wanted to offer distincdear readers, to support local businesses this giving season. with home layouts in publications such as Country Living, tive pieces that would be passed down from generation to Here are a few tips from PQ Monthly staffers: Country Home, Better Homes & Gardens and Metropoli- generation. They also offer expert repair and restoration.

Be sensual. She Bop: For a more intimate option. She tan Home. Now representing over 200 dealers, the Stars Be savvy. Direct Buy offers the best way to buy virtually Bop is a women-owned sex toy boutique in Portland, Antiques Malls are Portland’s largest resource for antiques, anything you need for your home, whether you’re shopping Oregon specializing in body safe products and education. collectibles and home decor. for electronics, home furnishings, appliances — whatever Their mission is to promote healthy and safe sexuality by Be Taboo. Sex toys, lingerie, videos, gifts galore at Taboo you desire. Your membership gives you exclusive access to offering quality products and educational workshops in Adult Video. confidential insider pricing. a fun and comfortable environment. She Bop welcomes Be clean! Cub Cleaners is a unique Portland-based busiBe butch. Paradise Harley. All things Harley Davidson. people of all genders and sexual orientations. ness, dedicated to doing a superior job of cleaning your At Paradise, it’s about building quality relationships, and Be lovely. Judith Arnell Jewelers: Judith Arnell has been home, apartment, or condo. They supply a fun, free-spir- their goal is to provide the best environment for customactively designing and manufacturing jewers to hang out and have fun. They offer a elry in her Chicago and Portland studios variety of activities, including Taco Tuesday since 1972. Judith believes that each piece at the Corner Saloon, mystery rides, and of jewelry should embody creative genius more. The coffee’s always on at Paradise! and masterful craftsmanship. “My clients Routinely voted #1 in customer service. can feel confident that each and every piece Be good to your furry friends. NoPo they purchase from Judith Arnell Jewelers is Paws: Canine boutique specializing in both a solid investment and an exceptional locally made & organic products, plus holiswork of wearable art.” Judith creates unique tic dry and raw pet foods. handmade designs and features some of the Be thoughtful. Botanica Floral is an ecocountry’s finest designers. She also offers a friendly full service custom floral studio large collection of vintage antique platinum located in SE Portland, providing exquisite diamond jewelry and specializes in Asscher flowers throughout the Portland metro area cut diamonds. that specializes in local, organic, fair trade Be farm-y. Naomi’s Organic Farm and sustainably grown flowers for wedSupply is ever so gaily and gay-ly owned dings, events, corporate accounts & funcand operated by Naomi and a fabulous Part gallery and part retail shop, The Real Mother Goose has one goal: bring the best work by American artists and craftspeople together with tions, private parties, holidays, tributes & team of humans and goats. Their goal is to friendly, personal service in an attractive and comfortable space. memorials, daily deliveries and more. So provide as many organic, locally and regionally sourced ited guy to clean your place. They will wear a variety of out- whether you are looking for something simple or extravaoptions as possible. They provide organic soil amend- fits, depending upon your choice. They do quality, profes- gant, just give them a call and they’ll provide you with gorments, fertilizers, compost, potting soils, animal feed, sional work in an atmosphere of self-expression and good geous flowers every time. bedding, seeds, tools and books to supply both urban and clean entertainment.

Be artistic. Real Mother Goose: Walk into one of their rural farmers, gardeners, and landscapers. They carry mulBe abroad: It was 1916 when Robert Ganapole began stores, or browse their collections online and you’ll find art tiple organic feed options and one non-organic layer feed, manufacturing custom packing trunks in a small corner of and craft with character. Each piece has a story, an idenfrom both larger and smaller OR & WA mills. They are com- the bustling Portland Waterfront. So began Portland Lug- tity, and a spirit. Each piece is the unique result of a vision, mitted to carrying only non-GMO cover crop, specializing gage. Exceeding customer’s expectations in both quality brought to life by an artist’s hand. Couple that special charin organic, along with organic herb, flower and vegetable and price was the cornerstone that built and maintained acter with a function and you’ve got art for everyday living. seeds, the majority of which are grown in our region. They his thriving business. It continues today as Oregon’s larg- Since starting their business in 1971, they’ve grown from source organic plants when possible, including all vegeta- est luggage, business case, and travel goods store, featur- one tiny shop in Vancouver, Washington, to two Portland, ble and herb starts. ing the West Coast’s most complete selection of brands, Oregon locations with over 10,000 square feet of contemBe grown-up. Paradise Adult Video: Pipes, sexy toys, products, and services. porary fine American craft. Part gallery and part retail shop, sexier gifts — all manner of adult innovation.

Be original. Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams: Premiere, The Real Mother Goose has one goal: bring the best work Be classy. Eyes on Broadway: Provides patients unique internationally-acclaimed home furnishings offering by American artists and craftspeople together with friendly, top quality eyewear and contact lenses using state of the upholstery, tables and storage, rugs, lighting, accesso- personal service in an attractive and comfortable space. For art optometric instrumentation combined with courteous ries and photography/wall art from modern to traditional the casual craft lover and the serious collector, they’ve put professional customer service. Proven track record of giving styles. Relentless community support and activism; their together a combination of distinctive elements that make back to our community. celebrated lifestyle books make a fine gift for a friend or looking at, learning about, and buying art and fine craft Be unique! The Stars Antiques Malls are owned by three loved one. exciting and memorable. friends, who have turned a passion for collecting and decoBe timeless. Maloy Jewelers: In 1986, Maloy’s Jewelry Need more information? Each retailer listed above has rating into a successful business. They started the first Stars Workshop first opened its doors in Portland. The aim was an ad listed in our pages. Thumb through and find each one!

Antiques Mall in 1990 and opened their second store, Stars to offer both lovingly handmade custom pieces and high --Daniel Borgen & Splendid Antiques Mall in 1993. Gayle Tweed, Darwin quality antique and estate jewelry from the Georgian period

LGBTQ PEOPLE AND ALLIES Continued from page 11

Amber has since opened her own Portland business, Conscious Coils, she explains “as a way to encourage us, people of African descent, to love and embrace our hair, ourselves and our diverse culture. I also wanted to create a space where people from all backgrounds and from all walks of life could come together to celebrate, share (styles and tips), be informed about, and promote natural hair care. Finally, I wanted to provide a service to individuals and families in need of natural hair care and styling.”

Although there were many other straight allies who won the SOP award, I am including Amber in this narrative pqmonthly.com

because she has been a close friend of our LGBTQ community and I personally nominated her.

GEORGE T. NICOLA I received an SOP award largely because of my work in documenting Oregon LGBTQ history through the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN). The only major LGBTQ history organization in Oregon, GLAPN has chronicled our past, and in the process produced information which has been used for recent endeavors to advocate for our dignity and equality. My emphasis is that social change comes about not just because of a few great heroes, but also through the efforts of countless “ordinary” people, who in fact do some of the most extraordinary things. In the past few years, I have nominated many of those people

for awards, and several dozen of them have won. For more information on GLAPN, see our web site at http://glapn.org/.

My nomination also mentioned that in 1973, I wrote and lobbied for Oregon’s first bill that would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment and housing. The bill failed House passage by just two votes short of a majority. However, the efforts created numerous straight allies. Within our community, the bill and the process helped build a sense of purpose and identity instrumental in the evolution of what became Oregon’s large LGBTQ movement.

For more about the SOP Awards and a full list of this year’s recipients, see https://www.portlandoregon.gov/ oni/29024.

November/December 2014 • 15

HOLIDAY

YOUR HOLIDAY TO-DO LIST (PART ONE) Slips and Stiches Third Annual Studio Sale: Alex Simon, Sarah Dee Ditson, and Korin Noelle invite you to come visit their studios and shop your little hearts out. They have been locked away creating treasures in order to make all of your holiday dreams come true. Take care of your gift shopping early — or treat yourself to something nice! Two days only — main event is Friday night from 5pm-10pm, and the artists will provide snacks and drinks — and first dibs on the goods! The studio will also be open for sales on Saturday, November 22 from Noon until 5pm. This event grows more and more each year — do not miss it!

Shop and support local. Radius Community Art Studios, 322 SE Morrison.

Poison Waters & Friends Holiday Kick-Off Happy Hour Show with the cast of Hot Chocolate. Poison Waters & Friends are back in Al’s Den for one of their notorious Happy Hour shows! This time around the fabulous cast of HOT CHOCOLATE are the night’s special guests: Maria Peters Lake, Tiara Desmond, Alexis Campbell Starr, and Kourtni Capree Duv. Poison will be celebrating Black Friday shopping and kicking off the most wonderful time of the year — bring your friends and get ready for a fast and friendly, fun and funny Happy Hour experience. PW & Friends are ready to entertain you. As always, no cover. But plan on tipping.

Lots. November 28, 6pm, Al’s Den, 303 SW 12th.

Christmas Child: The story takes place when Mary, a young college student, discovers that she is unexpectedly pregnant.

She decides to break up with her unsupportive boyfriend and leave her fate in her faith’s hands at the urging of her domineering parents. Along the way, she befriends her gay college professor, who is going through his own life decision

16 • November/December 2014

process. The storyline follows these characters and many others as their lives are intersected at just the right moment, at Christmas time.

Written by Maury Evans with music by Mark C.Brown from MCC Houston. Music direction by Grammy winner Darcy White. This is a fund raiser for Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). Performances are December 5th and 6th at 7pm at MCC. Tickets can be purchased at Brown Paper Tickets by searching Christmas Child. Tickets are $10.00 in advance or $13.00 at the door. Cast includes Brian Charles Johnson, a leader in Portland’s LGBTQ community and one of the founding members of the Q Center, and Jeremy Abe, familiar face at CC Slaughters.

The Mr. and Miss Merry Christmas Pageant: Ever want to do a pageant just for the fun of it? Just for charity? Then here you go. Adrienne Alexander and the A Team present the show of your dreams, hosted by the big A and Portland’s princess, Bolivia Carmichaels. Doors 5pm, Pageant 6pm. Embers Avenue, 110 NW Broadway. $8 cover, $5 with clothing or toiletry donation, proceeds benefit EMO HIV Day Center. (For shits and giggles, the categories: presentation, must be of Christmas wrapping paper; talent: must be a Christmas-themed number; question: Christmas lyric question/personal bio. No residency requirement to enter.

Tacoma? Vancouver? Salem? Eugene? Come on down. This is for fun and for charity, so it’s a title that has no expectations or requirements. Plus, Adrienne Alexander is everything. You can see her regularly at Embers.

Your second holiday to-do list arrives in our December issue!

--Daniel Borgen

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GET OUT! VOICES

There is never enough room to list all the events we’d like in our print edition — check online for our weekly weekend forecast, which often has all the latest and greatest.

PQ PICKS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 Slips and Stiches Third Annual Studio Sale: Alex Simon, Sarah Dee Ditson, and Korin Noelle invite you to come visit their studios and shop your little hearts out. They have been locked away creating treasures in order to make all of your holiday dreams come true. Take care of your gift shopping early — or treat yourself to something nice! Two days only — main event is Friday night from 5pm-10pm, and the artists will provide snacks and drinks — and first dibs on the goods! The studio will also be open for sales on Saturday, November 22 from Noon until 5pm. This event grows more and more each year — do not miss it! Shop and support local. Radius Community Art Studios, 322 SE Morrison.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22 Danie Ward, Under Covers! Join Ms. Ward for an intimate night of everyone’s favorite cover songs. If you haven’t heard Danie sing, do yourself a favor and get thee to Local Lounge. 9pm, Local Lounge, 3536 NE MLK. Blow Pony gets a special shout out here for bringing Portland favorite Rica Shay back to the Rose City. 9pm, Rotture, 315 SE Third. Hard Yes! A queer after hours club-night scenario popping up here and there and just when you need it. Last time was Pride weekend with Comfort and Joy. This time is now...for the hell of it. A let loose situation, a queer and queer sentiment situation, a dress up, dress down and sideways situation. Come as you are, come as you want to be. Ask around about it, this event isn’t supposed to be publicized.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23 Christopher Bayerle and Ryan Kost are pleased to announce: “101,” a collection of queer perspectives from the West Coast. They’ll be releasing Issue No. 1 on Nov. 23 at Beech St. Parlor. Come by any time between 6 and 9 pm, have a drink, pick up an issue and talk about the ideas that you find inside, and soak in some chill jams. Zines are $2 each to help print more for distribution in LA, SF, and SEA. Contributors: Jenny Bruso (PDX), Kathryn Garcia (LA), Kevin Kauer (SEA), Ebin Lee (PDX), Kate Linthicum (LA), Mark Thomas (SF). Editors: Christopher Bayerle, Ryan Kost. Music by Secret Sisters. Beech Street Parlor, 412 NE Beech.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30 Miss HIV Awareness Pageant: We proudly present the Miss HIV Awareness Pageant where Darcelle XV & Co. will crown the queen to reign supreme and be the face of the fight against and building awareness around HIV in the Portland area. This will also serve as a yearlong volunteer commitment to Cascade Aids Project, helping them to fulfill their mission one person at a time.

“To prevent HIV infections, support and empower people living with or affected by HIV, and eliminate HIV-related stigma and health disparities.” 5pm, Darcelle XV Showplace, 208 NW Third.

Sabbathhause Discotheque (every last Sunday): GAY night is back at Aalto lounge and it is bigger and more queerer than ever before, featuring some of the best deejays and performers around and hosted by night hawk, Chanticleer Tru. This month features: Chelsea Starr, a legendary deep cuts diva that has cut her teeth all over the globe with her versatile sets that are sure

to set this dance floor on fire. Don’t forget your Sunday best because Ms. Starr (if you nasty) is always turning like the seasons, OK. Leather, cheetah print, cleavage, lips & eyes, kiss kiss, swipe right all night. 8pm, Aalto Lounge, 3356 SE Belmont.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 1 World AIDS Day—see story page 5.

First Annual Heroes of HIV Luncheon: Join Cascade AIDS Project as they honor our community heroes in the fight against HIV/AIDS! This celebratory luncheon will gather together people and organizations that have played vital roles in turning the tables on HIV. This year’s honorees are: Dr. Louis Picker from OHSU, Nike, and Kevin Cook/Poison Waters. Tickets are $75 for and individual ticket, $750 for a table of 10, and $1,000 for a sponsorship table of 10 with table logos. Register athttps://cascadeaids.org/ events/heroes-of-hiv.

Christmas Child: The story takes place when Mary, a young college student, discovers that she is unexpectedly pregnant.

She decides to break up with her unsupportive boyfriend and leave her fate in her faith’s hands at the urging of her domineering parents. Along the way, she befriends her gay college professor, who is going through his own life decision process. The storyline follows these characters and many others as their lives are intersected at just the right moment, at Christmas time.Written by Maury Evans with music by Mark C.Brown from MCC Houston. Music direction by Grammy winner Darcy White. This is a fund raiser for Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). Performances are December 5th and 6th at 7pm at MCC. Tickets can be purchased at Brown Paper Tickets by searching Christmas Child. Tickets are $10.00 in advance or $13.00 at the door. Cast includes Brian Charles Johnson, a leader in Portland’s LGBTQ community and one of the founding members of the Q Center, and Jeremy Abe, familiar face at CC Slaughters.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 15 The days are shorter, darker, and colder, but it’s still an excellent time to get your active socializing on. Gay Skate is a joy. Meet queers and mingle with them outside the bar setting — maybe your dream lover will ask you to hold hands during couples’ skate. And there are themes now!

Themes! (Check online for the latest.) Come dressed to impress and wine beautiful prizes, and look for our publisher, who’s always handing out copies of PQ. And, you know, you’ll probably get a date. Food drive for Take Action Inc. 7pm, Oaks Park, 7805 SE Oaks Park Way. $6.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20 The Mr. and Miss Merry Christmas Pageant: Ever want to do a pageant just for the fun of it? Just for charity? Then here you go.

Adrienne Alexander and the A Team present the show of your dreams, hosted by the big A and Portland’s princess, Bolivia Carmichaels. Doors 5pm, Pageant 6pm. Embers Avenue, 110 NW Broadway. $8 cover, $5 with clothing or toiletry donation, proceeds benefit EMO HIV Day Center. (For shits and giggles, the categories: presentation, must be of Christmas wrapping paper; talent: must be a Christmas-themed number; question: Christmas lyric question/personal bio. No residency requirement to enter. Tacoma? Vancouver? Salem? Eugene? Come on down. This is for fun and for charity, so it’s a title that has no expectations or requirements.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22: LookBook, the event (is back). This is not a dance party. (But they won’t stop you if you do.) This event is all about dressing up, having cocktails, and listening to amazing music all while surrounded by other fashion freaks. Each month party architects pay homage to a style, a trend, a designer that they feel inspires their style and creative spirit. November LookBook celebrates Vivienne Westwood. PQ wants to see your take on this. Come dressed to impress.

This is not a look, it’s a lifestyle — so says Gula Delgatto. Hosted by: Gula Delgatto, Shitney Houston, Michael Shaw Talley. Door Hostess: Wolfgang Sebastian Bloodhawk, Music Curator: Roy G Biv. 9pm, Conquistador, 2045 SE Belmont.

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FEATURES Want more? We’ll give you everything. Head over to pqmonthly.com and check out our online calendar of events, submit your own events, and peruse photos from your reporters-about-town. Also, remember to carefully examine our weekly weekend forecast — with the latest and greatest events — each Wednesday (sometimes Thursday), online only.

--DANIEL BORGEN

DANCE IT OUT FIRST SUNDAYS Bridge Club. A slew of stellar deejays play music on the city’s most treasured patio. Old Boys Club regularly welcomes special guests. (On hiatus until spring.)

EVERY SUNDAY. Superstar Divas. Bolivia Carmichaels, Honey Bea Hart, Topaz Crawford, Isaiah Tillman, and guest stars perform your favorite pop, Broadway, and country hits. Dance floor opens after the show. The Drag Queen Hunger Games are over, and the shows must go on! Check out the newest and freshest Diva hits. 8pm, CC Slaughters, 219 NW Davis. Free!

FIRST THURSDAYS Hip Hop Heaven. Bolivia Carmichaels hosts this hip-hopheavy soiree night every Thursday night at CCs. Midnight guest performers and shows. 9pm, CC Slaughters, 219 NW Davis. Free.

FIRST SATURDAYS Sugar Town. DJ Action Slacks. Keywords: Soul, polyester. 9pm, The Spare Room, 4830 NE 42. $5.

SECOND THURSDAYS I’ve Got a Hole in My Soul. Three keywords, the most important being: DJ Beyondadoubt. Others: soul, shimmy. 9pm, Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison. $5.

SECOND TUESDAYS Bi Bar—every second Tuesday at Crush, and it’s an open, bi-affirming space for music and mingling. Correction: Bi/ Pan/Fluid/Queer. 8pm, Crush, 1400 SE Morrison.

SECOND FRIDAYS Slo Jams is a Queer Modern R&B & Neo Soul Dance Night at Local Lounge. DJ II TRILL (TWERK) and DJ MEXXX-TAPE lay down everything from Mary J // Jagged Edge// Keyshia to Badu//Lauryn Etc. 10pm, Local Lounge, 3536 NE MLK. $5.

SECOND SATURDAYS Hot Flash: Inferno. (Second and Fourth Saturdays) In the heart of Portland is where the women are—dancing the night away and burning up dance floors the second and fourth Saturdays of every month at Trio. Welcoming all women, queers, and their allies. 6pm-10pm, Trio, 909 E. Burnside.

Mrs.: The queen of theme welcomes its new hostess, KajAnne Pepper! And dynamic DJ duo: Beyondadoubt and Ill Camino. Costumes, photo booths, all the hits. 10pm, Mississippi Studios, 3939 N. Mississippi. $5.

SECOND SUNDAYS Beat It at Black Book: A beautiful new queer night all for you at one of the city’s most exciting new(ish) venues.

A monthly event celebrating everything from beards and tattoos to butch queens. Mark your calendars: second Sundays. Hosted by JC Powers, killer deejays. 7pm, Black Book, 20 NW Third.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28: Poison Waters & Friends Holiday Kick-Off Happy Hour Show with the cast of Hot Chocolate. Poison Waters & Friends are back in Al’s Den for one of their notorious Happy Hour shows! This time around the fabulous cast of HOT CHOCOLATE are the night’s special guests: Maria Peters Lake, Tiara Desmond, Alexis Campbell Starr, and Kourtni Capree Duv. Poison will be celebrating Black Friday shopping and kicking off the most wonderful time of the year — bring your friends and get ready for a fast and friendly, fun and funny Happy Hour experience. PW & Friends are ready to entertain you. As always, no cover. But plan on tipping. Lots. 6pm, Al’s Den, 303 SW 12th.

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THIRD WEDNESDAYS Comedy at Crush: Belinda Carroll and a slew of locals rustle up some funny. Special guests, and Crush’s signature cocktail and food menus. Donations, sliding scale.

(Comics have to eat and drink, too, so give!) 9pm, Crush, 1400 SE Morrison.

THIRD THURSDAYS Polari. Troll in for buvare. Back-in-the-day language, music, and elegance. An ease-you-into-the-weekend mixer. Bridge Club boys make the music. Bridge and tunnel patrons have no idea what to do with us when we pour in. Hint: it’s always the Thursday we go to press. What serendipitous fortune! 10pm, Vault, 226 NW 12. Free.

THIRD FRIDAYS Ruthless! Eastside deluxe. DJs Ill Camino, Rhienna. Come welcome new resident deejay Rhienna and listen to the fiercest jams all night long. Keyword: cha cha heels.

10pm, Local Lounge, 3536 NE MLK. $3.

THIRD SATURDAYS Burlescape! Burlesque & boylesque wrapped in a taste of tease! Zora Phoenix, Isaiah Esquire, Tod Alan. (And there’s more than that, kids.) Zora is a treat and a treasure—and so are her shows. Try one out! 9pm, Crush, 1400 SE Morrison. $10.

Gaycation: DJ Charming always welcomes special guests. Be early so you can actually get a drink. Sweaty deliciousness, hottest babes. THE party. Yes, boys, even you can hit on Mr. Charming. We know you want to. 9pm, Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison. $5.

FOURTH FRIDAYS Twerk. DJs ILL Camino and II Trill. Keywords: bring your twerk. The city’s longest-running queer hip hop/R&B party--where artists, deejays, performers come to mix, mingle, and move on the dance floor. Established fun, all night long. 9pm, Local Lounge, 3536 NE MLK. $5.

FOURTH SATURDAYS Blow Pony. Two giant floors. Wide variety of music, plenty of room for dancing. Rowdy, crowdy, sweaty betty, the one tried and true, even after all these years. 9pm, Rotture/Branx, 315 SE 3. $5.

LAST THURSDAYS Laid Out, Bridgetown’s newest gay dance party. Seriously, the posters read: “gay dance party.” And oh, how it’s a gay dance party. Thursdays are a real thing again. Deejays Gossip Cat and Pocket Rock-It, with photos by Eric Sellers. 9pm, Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison. $3 after 10pm.

LAST SUNDAYS Sabbathhause Discotheque, gay night is back at Aalto lounge and it is bigger and more queer than ever before.

Featuring some of the best deejays and performers around and hosted by night hawk Chanticleer Tru. 8pm, Aalto Lounge, 3356 SE Belmont.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5: Shorty Shorts! And this year, it’s a double feature. Your ticket to this year’s Shorty Shorts festival includes a 7PM viewing of the classic, king of indies — John Water’s “Hairspray”! After the movie there will be a short break, and then attendees will come back with a Hair Hopper contest where the best hair wins. Then we will pull the raffle to pick the winner of tickets to see the “Prince of Puke,” John Waters himself, the following Monday at the Aladdin Theater. Then Shorty Shorts will start — and again this year, organizers are so excited to show off of Portland’s ideas and talent. (This year, Shorty Shorts will play once again on Sunday — but without the energy of opening night. 6pm, Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton.

November/December 2014 • 17

FEATURES STYLE

“I LOVE AN L.A. YOGA MOM LOOK”

By Eric Sellers and Michael Shaw Talley, PQ Monthly

In a city teeming with fashion, personal expression, and trendsetters, we want to get into the heads of some of Portland’s stylish LGBTQ icons. To us, style is not made in magazines, malls or on television; it’s personal. That is the reason for this style deconstruction.

Name: Marc Tobia (Stacy Stl Lisa), Age: 28, Occupation: “Professional” / Artist / Entrepreneur \ PQ: What age were you when you realized style mattered?

MT: I was 12 when I got into style. It was the summer before the 7th grade, and I wanted to impress on my first day of school. I came in 70s platforms, raver pants, and a button up...I thought I was so cool and fashion forward. At the time, I was really interested with what future style and sounds of music would be like. I was really into cyber-punk/goth, and Nine Inch Nails, Bjork, electronic music and Orgy was what I listened to. Orgy really influenced my style at that time.

PQ: Who gives you a style boner today?

MT: I love what Brooke Candy has done for platforms. That music video by Grimes for “Genesis” is like what David Bowie did for his song/video “Ashes to Ashes”—getting the upcoming club kids who are presenting the underground that will later influence mainstream fashion. My friend West has and is always a big inspiration for me...He is really good at marrying high-fashion with street-wear punk; Helmut Lang was made to climb fences in. I’m also loving the current Health Goth trend; it’s a perfect blend of Yoga Mom aesthetic/comfort, with tech fabrics, and all black—wearing all black is something you can’t really go wrong with. I love comfort as much as I like clashing/this doesn’t make sense/practicality outfits.

PQ: What is your most valued article of clothing you have purchased?

MT: I have a lot of pieces I love. I don’t have one piece of clothing that is most valuable to me. I try to find pieces of clothing that have something interesting about the cut, texture, color, and will always be compelling.

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PQ: Smells? Are you all natural? Soaps? Sprays? Discuss. We wanna know brands!

MT: I love an all-natural smell. During the weekend I usually don’t wear deodorant, but during the week for work I do. It’s one of those sensitive things where some people hate the smell of colognes and some people hate the smell of all-natural...I didn’t wear or own deodorant for probably five solid years, but once I began a more “professional” career I decided it was one of those things I should adopt and didn’t care. When I do wear deodorant I try and wear natural products (you know, the type that wears off really quickly), because I initially stopped wearing deodorant because of how bad it is for you—seriously, I had to go to the doctor once because my deodorant was giving me a bad reaction from all the crap that’s put in it.

PQ: The soundtrack of your closet, what’s on your Style EP? MT: Grunge, Techno/Electro, Punk/Art fag music, Minimal/Ambient PQ: EAT, DRINK, SCENE. What do you nosh? What’s your sip? Where are your haunts?

MT: I’m kind of boring and have a terrible habit of eating at the hot bar of New Seasons, ALL THE TIME. It’s just so easy and there are so many choices! Otherwise, I go to the Red Fox, drink a vodka-soda-bitters, and munch on bar food. I love nachos.

PQ: Shoes! O my god! Shoes! What do you have? What do you need?

Brands, color, styles? Let’s talk shoes!

MT: I’m really, really bad with shoes. It’s the one thing I always admit to being bad with when it comes to style. I have a pair of combat boots that I have worn since the 8th grade (I had clown feet when I was a kid), but rarely do now, since they have been torn up to the state where water will come right in...I usually wear a pair of shoes until they are fully worn out; holes in the toe will not even stop me. I love platforms for that reason, because they last forever and make you feel like you are walking on the moon. Right now I have this pair of Nikes that are woven with thick bands that are unique. I’d like to get shoes with more color; most of my shoes are simple and black.

PQ: Forever young! I wanna be forever young! What do you slather and slop on to pamper yourself?

MT: Coconut butter. Usually at night, just because it can make me smell like popcorn. Baths/saunas/hot springs: sometimes great for your skin (hot springs definitely are), but mostly great for muscles and relaxation.

PQ: You’re going to a party...you stop by the market ...what do you bring?

MT: A straw, if in drag. Otherwise, beer...hard alcohol if it’s a group party, non-BYOB. PQ: You’re going on vacation! Where would you go? What one item is a must bring?

MT: Berlin. I want that techno. Item to bring: shoes to go crazy dancing in.

PQ: Who is your favorite artist, fashion designer, musician and why?

MT: Leigh Bowery: I wrote my art thesis on him. He was very ahead of his time, and crossed over so many genres, and brought high-art and low-brow art to a level that is both real and attainable. For fashion, Marc Jacobs usually has great stuff and shows. Alexander McQueen always knew (and his House is still bringing it) how to make great high-concept clothing. I also love Comme de Garcon. Bjork is like Leigh, always ahead of her time, concept, sound, thoughts.

PQ: What’s your most irritating fashion faux pas?

MT: People saying you can’t do this or that, or what is and what is not OK. For example, people that hate on sweatpants being worn out of the house. ..I love an LA Yoga Mom look — it’s just so comfortable and who knows when you might get pulled into a pilates/ yoga class?

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FEATURE PERS{ECTOVES

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November/December 2014 • 19

NIGHTLIFE FEATURE

LATE BLOOMERS — WHEN GAY, BI, AND TRANS MEN “COME OUT LATE”

By Matt Pizzuti, PQ Monthly

Find us on Facebook:

facebook.com/pqmonthly 20 • November/December 2014

Coming out is usually a messy process — much more than just announcing who you really are (and who you love) at Thanksgiving dinner. It’s an ordeal of learning new perspectives on politics and history, working out relationships with current family and acquaintances, going through some new and sometimes painful experiences in dating, and joining a culture where future friends and potential partners await.

But as Vinnie Kinsella explained, coming out in your 30s, 40s, or beyond brings an additional level of complexity to finding a place in the LGBT community.

“It’s liberating and confusing at the same time,” said Kinsella, who came out in his 30s and is an organizer of a local social group for gay, bi, and trans men in that very situation. “You’re an adult, so people kind of expect you to have it together, but you’re thrust into this new community with norms you don’t get yet.”

Case in point: “People will say ‘are you a top or a bottom?’” and you’re like, I’m not experienced enough to even know,” Kinsella said. “And there’s a little bit of bias against you with people who think you’re damaged goods because you came out so late. You talk to a 28-year-old, someone who’s younger than you, and they might look at you like ‘what’s wrong with you, I came out at 18.’”

Kinsella, now 36, is newly out but already looking to make an impact on the community. He came out at 34, right about the time he moved from Clark County to Portland. It was soon after, when he went on some dates with a fellow “late-bloomer” in town, that he saw a need to bring more of such men together.

“It was nice to have another guy who ‘got it,’” he said.

“So my intent was to get a group of guys together for coffee, or baking” — anything to build camaraderie.

He went through meetup.com, a social networking website for users to discover or create social events, and started a new group to host social gatherings for men coming out in Portland. “I didn’t realize when I started it how many men just in this area identified as late bloomers,” Kinsella said.

The group, which Kinsella was expecting to have 10-12 members when he started it a year ago, bears that same name: PDX Late Bloomers Club. Its ranks now swell at 106 and counting.

“It’s kind of halfway social, halfway support group.

I wanted it to be fun, but of course what happens is men looking online while they’re coming out at 40, 50 or even 60 years old are looking for support.”

Many of the men who approach Late Bloomers have families or children, and many come from a more deeply religious background than most of the general population. They’re often exiting very active roles in a conservative religious community.

“My running joke is that if you want to find a closeted gay man, go into a church and look on the leadership team,” Kinsella said.

But that means that for many late bloomers, coming

out entails a bigger shift in identity and values, and often more anxiety and resistance, than other gay men have gone through.

Kinsella’s own first-ever contact with the LGBT community was online, which, aside from the age difference is not so far off from the way that most gay youth first make contact with peers.

There’s Grindr — “I downloaded and deleted that about three times,” Kinsella said. At one point he said he Googled “I’m gay and I’m Christian, what do I do?” and found an organization called Gay Christian Network, where Portland residents in the user forum directed him to a queer Bible study group at Portland’s Q Center.

“I have the benefit of being an extrovert, which I realize, more and more, is anomalous,” Kinsella said. “Men say ‘I don’t want to go to a bar,’ and look for a support group or for something secure and safe.”

Another way to help late bloomers take that big step into the openly-LGBT community is helping them get their hands on supportive materials where they are now.

“There are campaigns for high school kids called ‘it gets better,’ but I’ve never seen any for a guy in his 40s,” Kinsella said.

Kinsella has a background in book publishing — he taught in the Portland State University publishing program for 8 years — and he said it made sense to use that to put something together for late-bloomers.

“The stories I hear are so similar, but so different, at the same time,” he said. “Most of the coming out books you see are like ‘what do you do if your parents freak out?’ which doesn’t affect those who are now independent of their parents. But I want to make the book I wanted to see when I came out.”

The vision — a collection of stories called “Fashionably Late” — will compile 25 stories from gay men who came out later in life and is currently open for submissions.

On a much shorter timeline, a chance to hear some of the Late Bloomers’ stories in Portland is coming this December. Several of the men from Late Bloomers will be sharing their stories live in Portland on December 11, at the Dark Night of the Soul stand-up tragedy series.

“It’s made to be sort of a cathartic event; I don’t think you can leave without crying,” Kinsella said. “It’s a storytelling event where queer-identified men tell stories reclaiming their stories of shame — a narrative of their lives they don’t want anymore.”

And it’s that very topic — shame — that Kinsella said is most important for the community to understand regarding men who come out well into adulthood.

“The thing I want to start providing is, instead of presenting their stories as ‘oh these guys are finally coming out,’ to point out that they’re doing a brave thing coming out,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be about shame — they’ve dealt with enough of that in their lives.”

Find the PDX Late Bloomers Club meetup group for men coming out queer as adults at http://www.meetup.com/ PDX-Late-Bloomers-Club/ pqmonthly.com

CALENDAR

VOICES

THE LADY CHRONICLES Home is Where Your Ex-Boyfriend Is

By Daniel Borgen, PQ Monthly

Now: A couple of weeks ago, I was eating lunch at my place of employment — a boutique that offers rejuvenating skin creams on bustling Northwest 23rd Avenue — sitting at the desk in our office, absentmindedly thumbing through Grindr profiles.

(It’s been eons since any piqued my interest; I don’t say this as some sort of hotshot heartthrob, I say it to illustrate a point about small towns and oversaturation.) As I shoveled a delicious Baja Bowl (with pork!) from Pepino’s into my mouth, the familiar Grindr chirp sang its sweet song into my tired old ears. Who’s trying to get my attention? A bot? An escort? (Two recent trips have left me broke; sorry bro.) “Hey sexy.” Hi. “Do you know who this is?” No. “Jacob!” What?!

It takes several minutes for me to acknowledge the gravity of the situation.

Then: I have to be honest; my baby gay days are very fuzzy. I claim to remember things vividly, but mostly I’ve just kept good notes over the years. When someone tells me about something I did at The City Nightclub or about someone they saw me locking lips with on Stark, I nod politely, then excuse myself as I jump into the nearest broom closet or phone booth to scribble down the details. Like our beloved Joan Didion, I can be maniac about taking notes.

My memory betrays me; it employs trickery. That said, a few people stay above the shadowy fray, and Jacob is among them.

He was, after all, my very first boyfriend (though I was not his); when we were very young, we locked gazes while sitting on blankets in the grass opposite one another at Peacock in the Park. We shared Bartles and Jaymes (or Boones Strawberry Hill) and it was pure magic; sunshine, Poison Waters, and baby gay love.

Now: If I could have serenaded Jacob with “Landslide” the moment when our Grindr apps found one another, I would have. I’ve had many lovers in the two decades since those first, innocent summer days and I’ve had a variety of relationships end in myriad ways. Without going into painstaking detail (I do not have one thousand pages at my disposal), let me say simply: I am on speaking terms with few of the men who’ve spent prolonged periods of time in my bedroom. In examining this phenomenon with Therapist, we’ve determined this happens because I stick around longer than I should; as the oldest child from a “broken home,” I was taught early to “make it work,” to be the “caregiver,” no matter the emotional cost. Things may have ended similarly with Jacob, but neither of us remembers specifically why we broke up (20 years). Young love ends as quickly as it begins; it is its own phenomenon. We were both thrilled to find each other and we set a date for dinner and drinks.

Then: When Jacob and I met, I was barely out. I had told a few close, trusted friends, definitely not my Pentecostal family; I even played it straight at work. (Oh, the tales the old Gap Girls could tell about my first weeks folding sweaters, talking about my many “girlfriends,” and admiring the gorgeous women who frequented our khaki palace. They had a pool going — Tina won.)

I also still lived at home at the time, and since this all happened in the late 1990s, we didn’t have cell phones; he’d call my parents’ landline so we could chat and make dates. He came from an affluent family and was emancipated, living in an apartment in SW Portland, which I loved to visit. I felt quite elegant venturing into the big city to sleep over at my rich boyfriend’s home. I lived in northern Clark County (Orchards) in my Pentecostal family’s blue-with-beigetrim split-level house. Occasionally I’d get very nervous when he called, and I feigned accents, pretending to be our housekeeper or gardener. (We didn’t have either.) I aimed to keep up appearances, and he loved me, so he never questioned it. “Your housekeeper is very kind when I call,” he’d say.

Now: We met for dinner at Jo Bar, on the street where I work, near the apartment where I live. Jacob just moved back to Portland from New York City, where he worked in fashion and antiques. (Can you even?) As I have told my closest friends and coworkers, it had been eons since I had such a pleasant night with a gentleman.

Jacob and I reminisced, laughed about the past, marveled that we lived through some of our more sordid adventures, talked about our failures and triumphs alike, and three hours passed before we realized even an hour had. Dining with Jacob that evening was like curling up with my favorite book and a bottle of wine on a snow day — in my pajamas; it was extraordinarily comfortable and easy. After dinner, I took him to see drag queens and strippers, and we partied like we were 20. (Note: we are no longer 20.) The next day at work, my hangover was alleviated by memories of baby gay love.

During dinner, when we were revisiting our coming out stories and talking about how we met, Jacob said something to me I will never forget. “You know, I don’t think I ever told you how much I respected you for surviving what you did — that church you grew up in was no joke,” he said. “Most of us never deal with anything like that. I always thought you were — are — so smart and brave.” I resisted the urge to pull out my notebook and record those words so I’d never forget them — though, it turns out, I didn’t need to. There’s nothing quite like having someone who’s known you for so long — and so intimately — look you in the eyes and tell you you’re just fine. It is an unexpected but welcome affirmation.

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November/December 2014 • 21

NIGHTLIFE STYLE

NEWS

LIFE IS GOOD. ENJOY THE RIDE! LGBTQ ACTIVIST KHALIL EDWARDS RECEIVES EMERALD AWARD

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vice”. The award was given to him by the Zeta Sigma Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority at the group’s November 9 brunch in Portland. The program stated: We will honor Black Men for their achievements and significant contributions to their communities with an event themed “Suit & Tie Brunch: Dedicated Men Suited for Service & Tied to their Communities”.

The brunch was a fundraiser for the Zeta Sigma Omega Scholarship Fund – The Roberta C. Vann Scholarship, which provides scholarships to African American women attending a 4-year college or university.

Khalil is PFLAG Portland Black Chapter Coordinator and Basic Rights Oregon Racial Justice and Alliance Building Organizer.

Portland LGBTQ activist Khalil Edwards has received the 2014 Emerald Award “For Dedication and Commitment to Public Ser-

For more information on the awards, see http://events.kgw.com/27th_Emerald_ Awards_Suit_Tie_Brunch/301419595.html.

LGBTQ ATTORNEYS AND GROUP RECEIVE LEGAL AWARDS

By George T. Nicola, GLAPN

A number of prominent Oregon LGBTQ community members are receiving awards from professional law organizations this year.

Three awards were given by OGALLA: The LGBT Bar Association of Oregon at its October 18th annual dinner. Lake James H. Perriguey and Lea Ann Easton were each given its Award of Merit. This was in recognition of their plaintiff representation in Geiger v. Kitzhaber, the lead law suit that brought marriage equality to Oregon. For the past 16 years, Lake has also represented other members of our community in discrimination cases. In October, Basic Rights Oregon gave its Fighting Spirit Award to Lake, Lea Ann, and the ACLU cooperating attorneys representing Basic Rights Oregon and plaintiff couples in the accompanying marriage equality case Rummell v. Kitzhaber.

OGALLA presented its Community Service Award to Basic Rights Oregon in recognition of its 18 years of advocacy for LGBTQ Oregonians and in particular its work to bring marriage equality to Oregon. In 2013, Basic Rights Oregon launched Oregon United for Marriage and also joined a federal lawsuit with ACLU of Oregon, which was

later consolidated with the Geiger lawsuit previously filed by Lake Perriguey and Lea Ann Easton – in a parallel effort to win the freedom to marry. In May 2014, as a result of the Geiger/Rummell cases, Oregon’s unconstitutional marriage ban was permanently enjoined by the District of Oregon. Throughout its educational efforts and policy work, Basic Rights Oregon has taken an intersectional approach to protect all members of our community, so that we can all work to end homophobia, transphobia and racism.

Another organization, the Gus J. Solomon Chapter of the American Inns of Court, has given Lake Perriguey the Solomon Award for Excellent Advocacy. Additionally, the Oregon State Bar has announced that Lake will receive the President’s Public Service Award at its December 4 luncheon.

This award “honors attorneys for their commitments to public service and pro bono work.” More details are available at http:// www.osbar.org/osbevents#awards.

Two of the attorneys from the Rummell v. Kitzhaber case, Misha Isaak and Cliff Davidson, also received the highest award bestowed by the National LGBT Bar Association: the “Best LGBT Lawyers under 40 in the United States.”

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OPINION

ARTS & CULTURE

SAVE THE DATE! DECEMBER 18th PQ Press Party at: Look out for: PQ Podcasts!

• December 18, 2014, 5P.M.-7 P.M. SCANDALS (11125 SW Stark St, Portland, OR 97205) Find us on Facebook:

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MONTHLY

Mouthy & November/December 2014 • 23

FEATURE ARTS & CULTURE

NEWS

PRIDE FOUNDATION AWARDS GRANTS TO 56 ORGANIZATIONS SUPPORTING LGBTQ COMMUNITY IN THE NORTHWEST

Eleven Oregon Organizations among Grantees

Pride Foundation recently announced today it has awarded $303,775 to 56 organizations that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth, adults, and families in the Northwest. In Oregon, a total of $60,100 was invested in eleven organizations.

Despite the recent progress Oregon has made in regards to legal protections for the LGBTQ community — including marriage equality and increased access to healthcare for transgender people — LGBTQ people still face heightened risks of hate crimes, poverty, homelessness, discrimination, bullying, HIV infection, and mistreatment in social and human services.

By directing resources to those who remain most invisible and vulnerable despite recent progress, Pride Foundation’s community grants program is making an important statement about the work that lies ahead and the continued need in the LGBTQ community.

“Our grantees reflect the diversity of our community, and the breadth of issues affecting LGBTQ people throughout their lives,” said Kris Hermanns, Executive Director of Pride Foundation. “When viewed collectively, these investments paint a comprehensive picture of the road ahead—from safe schools, to workplace equality, to culturally-competent healthcare and social services, to food and housing security, to elder care.”

Grantees in Oregon will be working to reduce barriers faced in rural communities, and other priorities include youth, people of color, transgender people, and elders.

Highlights from Pride Foundation’s 2014 Oregon grants include: Center for Intercultural Organizing (Portland): $5,000 to build internal capacity to ensure their organizational structure emphasizes the needs of LGBTQ members and to grow the Resilient Connections group, which supports LGBTQ 24 • November/December 2014

immigrants and refugees.

HIV Alliance (Eugene): $7,500 to supp o r t H I V p re v e n t i o n and outreach in eleven rural counties in Oregon through HIV counseling, testing and referral services, building a gay men’s health network, and a support group.

Lotus Rising Project (Medford): $5,000 to support Lotus Rising Project’s programs to create institutional change in schools and cultural change in communities through reducing bullying in area schools and building youth leaders.

PFLAG Oregon Central Coast (Newport): $3,100 to make area schools and communities safer for LGBTQ youth living in rural environments.

SAGE Metro Portland (Portland): $5,000 to support Service and Advocacy for LGBT Elders (SAGE) Metro Portland, a project of Friendly House — the only organization in Oregon that provides community services and programming specifically for LGBTQ older adults.

TransActive Gender Center (Portland): $10,000 to support TransActive — an organization providing a holistic range of services and expertise (client services, education, and advocacy) to empower transgender and gender non-conforming children, youth, and their families to live healthy lives, free of discrimination.

This year’s grantees include LGBTQ organizations as well as mainstream organizations providing programming and services specifically to the LGBTQ population.

LGBTQ issues only receive 0.26% of total foundation dollars (26 cents for every 100 dollars), making Pride Foundation’s work even more critical.

In addition to their community grants program, Pride Foundation also makes investments in LGBTQ youth, adults, and families through a scholarship program, donor-advised, and donor-designated funds. In total, the foundation has invested nearly $7.1 million this year to support LGBTQ people in their home communities.

“In all that we do, we are focusing our resources and grant dollars on bridging the gap between legal victories and the ability for all LGBTQ people to be who they are, where they are,” said Hermanns. “We are honored to partner with wonderful organizations and individuals throughout our region and country that share our values and hopes for our community.”

The full list of Pride Foundation grantees and project descriptions is available at www.pridefoundation.org/grantees. pqmonthly.com

VOICES

Silence

By Nick Mattos

1) I was that guy, weeping on the Trimet bus. It’s a hot June day in 2012, and the bus is packed full of people in the after-work rush; I am struggling to keep it together, but even so, I cover my mouth with my hand and pretend to be transfixed by something out the window. I’m on my way home from my first day in a course on Transcendental Meditation, and I desperately want to tell this to the man sitting next to me as some sort of explanation as to why it’s totally fine that I’m crying, that these are happy tears.

Instead, I watch him try to turn as far away from me as he could without seeming rude.

I return to staring out the window with tears running down my face.

2) Historically, I have never been big on quiet. I grew up in a home full of intense noise and chaos, where full participation in the din was expected; starting in my early teens, I became the sort of overextended student that balanced school, a job, and extracurriculars daily. When I grew up, I landed in a series of relationships with men who, in acting out of the scripts they learned in their own homes of origin, weaponized quietness through use of the “silent treatment,” rendering quiet moments an uncomfortable signal that feelings were hurt and something was wrong relationally. As a result, I became a compulsively busy and loud guy, with a brain that ran like a freight train on a 24-hour schedule.

Naturally, nothing was more alien or more anxiety-producing for me than a temporary break in the din.

3) I was on the bus, blessed heartily with the gift of tears, because just an hour beforehand I had learned something extraordinary. All along, beneath the mental chatter, and the depressive rumination, and the frantic anxiety, and the complex armor I had constructed around my heart to keep it safe, and the nightmares that followed me into the daytime, something was waiting for me to rediscover it. That thing, the reason I was weeping with joy, was silence.

4) “Silence vibrating is Creation,” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the meditation teacher who taught my teacher, once said. “Silence flowing is Love. Silence shared is Friendship. Silence seen is Infinity. Silence heard is Adoration. Silence expressed is Beauty.

Silence maintained is Strength. Silence omitted is Suffering. Silence allowed is Rest.

Silence recorded is Scripture. Silence preserved is Our Tradition. Silence given is Initiating. Silence received is Joy. Silence per-

ceived is Knowledge. Silence stabilized is Fulfillment. Silence alone is.”

5) Soon after I learned how to meditate and got re-acquainted with silence, I started this very column you’re reading right now. I had just completed a brief foray into serial fiction — an experiment which emerged from my being too troubled by the state of my own life to write about it, and which offered generous proof that I am definitely not a fiction-writing kind of guy. I knew I wanted to do a new column, a creative nonfiction series; however, I couldn’t think of a name. “What would I want people to repeat to themselves?” I wondered. “What would I need to remember myself?”

6) I named this column Everything Is Connected because it’s truth of the matter: everything is indeed connected, because everything emerges from, is sustained within, and ultimately returns to silence.

Everyone is connected because, deep beneath each of our distinct sets of anxieties and ruminations and panics and pleasures, the same silence is running through each of us like a current. This is the fact of the matter: every month since I started writing these to you, all I’ve been trying to do was to stand beside you and point toward that silence, to let us both enjoy the sensation of it flowing through us and everything else. If I have ever been able to do that, I could weep with joy.

7) Most days, I still spend twenty minutes twice a day intentionally reaching towards silence. I do it because, when I do set aside that time, it’s vastly easier to touch that silence in the remaining twenty-three hours and twenty minutes of the day. It’s far easier for me to observe the world and see that it is huge, and luminous with a million reasons our lives are worth saving, yours and mine both. It gives me a context to understand that we are actually in this together, that everything is indeed connected, and that we need to make it work.

Making friends with silence has given me ample reason to cry with joy in public, and in private, and here on the page for you, standing beside you and pointing towards it. My greatest hope is that perhaps, maybe once or twice, I’ve helped you touch that silence too. Even if I haven’t, though, it’s still there. This is the wondrous thing, and the miracle: before there was anything else, there was silence — long after the last words are said, after we are gone, there beneath the humming of the world, silence will be there, waiting for the next time the words will emerge and the world will be remade.

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November/December 2014 • 25

COMMUNITY

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREA FREE OF THE RAINBOW BRACELET PROJECT

By Konrad Juengling, Special for PQ Monthly

The Rainbow Bracelet Project is an LGBTQ-focused organization that was started in Oregon last year by two who that believe in LGBTQ equality. Andrea is known for heading the Gay Marriage Oregon website in Oregon before marriage equality came to us, and I sat down with her to talk about another venture that she is still running.

Konrad Juengling: Thanks for agreeing to meet with us!

I know you’ve got a pretty busy schedule.

Andrea Free: Thank you! I’m really excited.

KJ: Can you tell us a little bit about the Rainbow Bracelet Project? What inspired you to start it?

AF: Rainbow Bracelet Project was officially started by my friend Allison Tannehill and me in March of 2013. Before actually launching our project, Allison had been making and sending out bracelets to her online friends as a way to for everyone to connect. Then, early last year, I had the idea that we could take what she was doing and turn it into something much bigger. I wanted to use the bracelets not only to connect people but to also encourage others to open up a dialogue about LGBT equality. I also wanted us to donate a portion of our proceeds to LGBT organizations.

I already had the Gay Marriage Oregon Facebook page and the Oregon Marriage Equality website and realized those could be used to promote our idea.

KJ: You were actually the creator of the Gay Marriage Oregon website before same sex marriage was made legal in Oregon. So RBP was a separate venture from the Gay Marriage Oregon website?

AF: Yes. I had started the Gay Marriage page and website way before the Rainbow Bracelet Project.

KJ: Some people might say that with the legalization of marriage equality in Oregon we no longer need organizations like RBP. How would you respond to that?

AF: I would remind them that: 1) We don’t have federal marriage equality yet. 2) Our project goes beyond Oregon and even the United States. 3) What we’re fighting for isn’t just marriage. Even though federal marriage equality is something that will likely happen in the near future, that doesn’t mean everyone will suddenly be a supporter of equality. There will still be a large number of people who don’t approve. There will still be kids being bullied, LGBT people being beaten as they walk home at night, people being let go from their job for being openly gay, etc. There’s a lot of work we have to do to educate people still.

KJ: You mentioned donating to other LGBTQ organizations. What organizations have you partnered with?

AF: We’ve donated to Pride NW, Oregon United for Marriage, Born This Way Foundation, True Colors Fund, National Center for Transgender Equality, Support Marriage Equality in Colorado, Cascade AIDS Project, Athlete Ally and Equality House.

KJ: What kind of responses have you gotten from people hearing about RBP? AF: We’ve had overwhelmingly positive and inspiring messages about RBP. When people look into what our project actually is — beyond just the bracelets, we get such great responses. I don’t even know where to begin when telling you about it...we’ve had teenagers message us saying they were going to buy our bracelets and use them as a way to come out to their friends (giving a bracelet to each friend as they come out), we’ve had parents buy bracelets for their LGBT kids to show their support. Overall, we just get a lot of messages from people saying how much they love our project and that it means a lot to them.

It’s exciting for us to see how passionate so many people are about our project.

KJ: Who’s the biggest name to wear one of your bracelets?

AF: Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey of Uh Huh Her. Leisha Hailey was also on The L Word. Allison [Tannehill] went to an Uh Huh Her show and got to meet them and tell them all about our project. She even got a photo of them with our bracelets on, which was pretty cool!

KJ: Do you have plans to expand beyond bracelets?

AF: We actually have already added other items. Not everyone likes to wear a bracelet or can wear one because of their job, so we have key chains we make as well (which are basically mini bracelets). We also have buttons, magnets, bumper stickers, and regular stickers. I imagine we’ll keep adding items as our project continues to grow.

KJ: How long do you plan on keeping this project going?

AF: I honestly don’t know. I would imagine at least several more years. As I mentioned before, there will still be a lot more to achieve after federal marriage equality. And our focus isn’t just on the U.S. either. We are all people regardless of where we live, so I guess as long as we feel that our project still serves a purpose and that it’s making a difference in the lives of others, we will continue on.

KJ: As of September, it looks like RBP has made it to 46 states and 17 countries. Which 4 states are you currently missing?

AF: Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Vermont. I’m not sure why it’s those four states that are left, but I’m excited for the day when we’ve reached all 50 states.

KJ: Absolutely. What’s the country that surprised you the most that you’ve made it into?

AF: I’d say, actually, that I’m always pretty surprised to

get international orders. Or rather, I guess I’m always really excited. To know that our bracelets are all over the world is amazing. Japan would be one of the more exciting and surprising countries, as well as a country I’d never heard of before called Mauritius.

KJ: How many bracelets would you estimate you’ve made at this point?

AF: Oh wow! That’s a difficult question! 1500+? It’s hard to say for sure. We donate at least $1 from each bracelet purchased, so that helps us to keep track a bit (you know, $1,000 = 1,000 bracelets), but we’ve also given away a lot of bracelets, which makes it hard to know for sure.

KJ: Do you have anyone that helps you out or works for you?

AF: Allison and I do most everything ourselves. She tends to do more of the bracelet-making, and I do the website and social media. However, I make bracelets sometimes too, and she does some of our non-Facebook social media.

We do a pretty good job at splitting the responsibilities of our project, but there have been a few times when people have been kind enough to help us out when we’ve been preparing for big projects (like selling our bracelets at Portland Pride the last two years). We’ve had a few people offer to help make bracelets or help us prepare the embroidery floss to be made into bracelets. We’re always so appreciative of those who want to help us out.

KJ: What should readers know about you personally?

AF: That this project is something that means a great deal to both Allison and me. It’s important to us to feel like we are making a difference in this world; this project is what we are really passionate about. Aside from project stuff, I’m a silly and fun person just trying to make this life the best it can be.

KJ: Finally, the basics: How can people get one and how much do they cost?

AF: They can visit our website’s order page. Bracelets are $7 each or $6.50 each for more than one (no shipping charge). The website is rainbowbraceletproject.com/order/ .

KJ: Any last thoughts you’d like to leave readers with?

AF: I’d like to mention the gallery on our website; it’s one of the things that excites me the most about our project. We ask that each person who buys a bracelet send us in a photo of them wearing their bracelet to be included in our gallery. I then put it in a frame and include their first name, whether they are LGBT or an ally, and where they are located. Not everyone chooses to send in a photo, but a lot of people have, and it’s just so cool to look through the gallery and see all kinds of people from all over the U.S. and world wearing bracelets that the two of us made ourselves.

The gallery is at rainbowbraceletproject.com/gallery/ .

Konrad Juengling is a Portland State University graduate with a Bachelors in Psychology and a Minor in Women, Gender & Sexualities Studies. He collects literature and lives with his fiancé Robert in Beaverton.

FEATURES

26 • November/December 2014

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PERSPECTIVES VOICES

SUMMER COMES OUT AS A DRAG QUEEN

FEATURE MARRIAGE ARTSCOMMUNITY & CULTURE

By Summer Seasons, Special for PQ Monthly

friends and family, but was concerned by the fact that I was dressed like a whore. I lost that day and she was pretty comforting, but there Coming out as gay in my house was rel- still wasn’t much talk about it. atively painless. My parents just sat me I was determined to get involved in chardown one day and said “We know you’re gay, ity so I ran for the title of Debutante instead. and that’s okay.” I was confused at 16, but I remember my mom and me driving on they enrolled themselves the freeway; we were disin counseling at PFLAG, cussing drag and she asked, and sent me to go see a gay “Son, are you planning on counselor as well. Soon becoming a woman?” I was everybody in the house was taken aback by this because OK with it, and we just went that’d never occurred to me, about business as normal. although I did have a transUntil I started doing drag. gender best friend. I always Originally I didn’t really looked at drag as a charachave the desire to be a drag ter, never as my life. I told queen, I wanted to design her this and the reasons why and make clothes for them.

I did it. For some reason that Sneaking out of the house time it clicked with her and one night I found myself at she said, “OK, well if this is the City Nightclub — boy, going to be your thing, I can’t was I in heaven. Lady O hit have you dressed terribly, the stage. She was stun- Illustration by Terry Blas let’s go shopping!” and we ning, and I was enamored. did, and I remember coming A few weeks later I ran into her, and she home just being baffled that I was finally was nice, but when I asked if I could sew accepted. for her, she laid that idea to the wayside, My brother was a completely different because she didn’t know me, and I’d never story, he has always pretty much known really designed before. Much was the case about “Summer Seasons” since her incepwith every other drag queen along the way. tion. Most of the time he didn’t really care So I decided if they wouldn’t wear them, I’d about it, until he discovered how fabulous I do it myself. was and he has now become my biggest fan!

A few coworkers helped me gather the He’s been there every step of the way, and things I needed, and I was all set to make helped build me up to everyone he knows. my big debut. Even back then I thought my My father was the last step to conquer. family wouldn’t be OK with it, so I’d only do When I won Debutante, my White Knight it when I was staying at a friend’s house, and I needed someone to drive us in the or when I’d have time to change before I parade. I’d called my brother and he said, got home. I’d always hide everything, and “No, call dad.” My mom said the same thing, never told anyone. I’m pretty sure my mom and so in my desperation I called him. He found out though, I often “borrowed” things said, “Son, I’ve been waiting for this call, from her, and would leave them in different and if this is what you’re going to do, the places, and many a time I’d go to my room whole family and I are going to ride with and find that everything had been thrown you; I will drive you with pride.” And he did. away. I never let that stop me and I went From that day forward I had their complete about building my name for myself. acceptance.

I got pretty good at doing drag, and found My sister came in later, but she always myself working at the Embers Avenue. I told has respected me and for that I am grateful. my family I was working as a cocktail server, My mother has been to every step up and because I was ashamed of what they would step down I’ve ever had, and my father has think of me. Thankfully by then I lived on driven me in the parade three times and my own and was able to start building the watched me host it just as many, They now mass of things that drag requires. I started come as a family and watch me perform at reaching out to family friends and some Darcelle XV Showplace, and I couldn’t be relatives, but I always had this big secret prouder. This year my grandmother and looming over me. great aunt came, and fought over who got I found myself ready to run for a title, and to take pictures first.

I submitted my application to run for Miss I was always afraid of what the family Gay Portland the first time and boy was I would think that I never gave them the ready. I handed out flyers to everyone I knew chance to accept me. When I opened up and started inviting everyone. One day a my eyes to allow them to know me, they did, family friend asked me if my mother was and it’s been great ever since. I’m no longer coming and I said no way! She then sat me afraid to take those chances, for I know I live down and encouraged me to tell my mom a very blessed life, with a family who’s got and see if she’d come and support. My mom my back always! The dating world, however, did in a very big way and brought some other is a different story for next time. pqmonthly.com

November/December 2014 • 27

PERSPECTIVES BOOKS

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It was a traumatic experience and even though we would talk about it, I buried deep my reality — being the one that I have an active imagination; some might say I have an brought on his attack. I couldn’t even look at that until yesoveractive one. I have always called it my reality. The veil terday, November 5, 2014. My 6 year old mind had made me between worlds is thin for this queen. What I am about to my father’s attempted killer and I had never forgiven myself share, I don’t do so lightly, it is a deeply personal and soulful for it, nor was I even able to examine it until yesterday. It explains why I worked so hard to be tale. In my world, I am of royal blood. I the perfect son. Of course, I have not have been a leader, a warrior, a priestbecome a master of my mouth and ess, and a goddess of love. I have lived my lack of a filter, but I always try many lives, each time returning to to shine in their eyes. It makes me understand the deeper relations of realize why I wore the happy face all humankind and how to find the harthrough my childhood and young mony and natural grace and beauty adulthood even when all I wanted we are all meant to share. I have a to do was cry. I became my mother’s deep connection to the Earth and all warrior at 6 and never looked back. I of her magical abundance found in am the first to jump to a person’s aid nature. I speak with the spirits of the to achieve karmic retribution and to forest and am always led to a deeper find peace. understanding of my quest as queen.

My fantasy life began that year.

I am a queen of a different nature.

Surrounded by forest, I began my I am meant to live and work alongside quest there. The battles have been my people, and I only say my people tough, each time I forced myself because they/you have welcomed me to allow my soul to open further as with loving arms and compassion, I stood above my fears to try to see building our kingdom together so that the horizon. Yesterday, I was brought we can all revel in the knowledge that face to face with that 6 year old; I we have ascended as one. Are you still was able to help set him free from all with me? those years of turmoil. I held him in My eyes see color and pattern and my arms and told him how brave he connection in ways I can’t explain; I has been to battle so long and that drink it all in, trying not to judge. GenWhenever the world is too much, I search out nature, just standing he has made it to his kingdom and I erally, I do not share these things. How in the forest I realize that it all just is as it is. released him to his glory. If you had can I explain that I hear dragonflies whisper to me, that I see our ancestors’ spirits in the sides been a secret bystander of the moment you would have seen of mountains and rock walls? That I feel the Earth hug me me hugging a tree, casting one of its broken branches into when I lay upon her, or that I am always drawn to the ocean the stream. Is my alternate universe a coping mechanism? in a storm to be reminded just how small I am? Yesterday, A means of escape? Am I crazy?

The way I look at it is that my world has given me the I was on one of my forest walks. They are not so easy to do alone. I have to stop myself from being crippled by fear to go tools to dig deep within my being to uncover and underto the places I do alone. I have to rise above my fear of being stand who I am. My communion with nature and the spirit attacked, stalked by a wild animal or to finally have the veil creatures that help to guide me are what have made me drop and be welcomed into my kingdom and never return. myself. They have educated me on the powers within and As I was strolling along, arms wide to say hello and touch have helped me to cultivate my powers and magic. Those all that I could as I went, one of my deepest buried mem- of you that know, know what I speak is true. I am a goddess ories came seeping to the surface and gave me pause as I warrior and I am on a quest to uncover the truth of who I understood what I was being able to see for the first time — am and to free myself from pain and shame so that I may stand naked before you with nothing to hide and everyit happened almost 40 years ago, when I was 6.

The memory: My family and I are at the kitchen table thing to give. Whenever the world is too much, I search out having dinner, meatloaf and mashed potatoes; I am on nature, just standing in the forest I realize that it all just is one of my rolls at the table, unable to shut the fuck up, as it is. I can make a big deal about it or recognize that I getting my siblings all riled up and my dad just couldn’t am so lucky to get to hear a stream sing, celebrate in the take another moment of it. In a silent rage, he went to the beauty of things always popping up out of the ground, the dining room to eat his meal in peace. It is all my fault. Mom comfort of being held by a tree or the whispers from the asks me to see if dad would like more meatloaf; I walk into wind telling me that I am on the right path.

I was recently asked about how I picture my death. I the dining room with the plate of meatloaf, with a perfect layer of catsup glistening on top, to find my dad dead on have always pictured a violent death. I used to say, when I the floor. At first, I think it is a joke he is playing on me as was in my 20s, that at 50 I would just walk into the ocean punishment. I put the plate down and go down to tickle and be taken away. I said that mostly because I spent my childhood in nursing homes, watching my grandma suffer him and say I am sorry. He doesn’t move. I scream.

I remember the orange carpet, my dad motionless on and I wanted none of it! At 46, I don’t see that as an option. the floor, someone getting the neighbor, an EMT, and my I am just getting started. I do see violence, maybe because I grandma moving with lightning speed and beginning CPR on am a warrior queen, maybe because I live in a small coastal my dad. He wasn’t dead, he had suffered a major heart attack town and I wander in the woods alone, maybe because I and he was sent to Duke University for an experimental heart walk like I want some fries with my shake. All I do know is operation. Gone for months, letters arriving weekly, and my that when it does happen, the moment I breathe my last mom raising her 4 kids, all of us anxiously awaiting Daddy’s breath, I will be whisked up on the wings of flying unicorns, return. When he did return, he was wheeled off of the plane into the arms of my gallant king, locked in a deep kiss as with a huge red bow rapped around him, the most romantic we soar through the sky drinking in the beauty of winning gesture ever. At this time of year, I always get really sad and the battle and surviving the quest. Until then, I continue just last year my dad sent me a letter telling me it was the anni- my quest, opening my soul and drinking in the beauty of this life, because it is mine and I am worth it. versary of his heart attack. That explains it. pqmonthly.com

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November/December 2014 • 29

NEWS

PORTLAND LGBTQ COMMUNITY MEMBERS RECEIVE CIVIL RIGHTS AWARDS

By George T. Nicola, GLAPN

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. In commemoration, Portland State University was hosting sponsor for an October 6 program remembering Oregon’s own civil rights legacy by honoring the organizations and individuals leading the fight for equality and justice. The Cyreena Boston Ashby evening award ceremony was opened by Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown, the highest ranking LGBTQ public official in Oregon. She was followed by a diverse and inclusive group of speakers and awardees.

Two LGBTQ activists were recognized.

Khalil Edwards, PFLAG Portland Black Chapter Coordinator and Basic Rights Oregon Racial Justice and Alliance Building Organizer, received a Rising Leaders Award. The award was presented to him by HIV/AIDS activist and Cascade AIDS Project employee Maurice Evans who has also been involved in PFLAG Portland Black Chapter. The organization is the first PFLAG chapter in the nation created by and for the black community. It is dedicated to supporting African American

LGBTQ persons, families, and friends through love, education and advocacy.

Vanessa Usui was given a Modern Day Civil Rights Champions Award. Vanessa is an attorney and is currently board Chair of Basic Rights Oregon. The award was presented to her by Basic Rights Oregon’s Executive Director Jeana Frazzini.

Founded in 1996, Basic Rights Oregon is the state’s chief advocacy, education and political organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In fulfilling its mission to build power for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Oregonians, the organization has secured historic victories such as enacting a comprehensive and inclusive non-discrimination policy in 2007, as well as in 2012, making Oregon the first state to clarify that transgender-specific health insurance exclusions violate Oregon law.

Also winning a Rising Leaders Award was Cyreena Boston Ashby. Cyreena is a dedicated straight ally and a Basic Rights Oregon board member. Professionally she is the Director of the Portland African American Leadership Forum which coordinates policy advocacy and leadership development for African Americans in Oregon.

LGBTQ participation in the ceremony was a tribute to the hard work done by so many in our community, and to the progress we have made because of that.

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NEWS

OREGON STATE BAR UNVEILS DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION STORY WALL

By George T. Nicola, GLAPN

The Story Wall is a large collage that chronicles the legal system and profession’s gradual progress toward better reflecting the communities it must serve.

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The Oregon State Bar (OSB) unveiled the new Diversity & Inclusion Story Wall at its Tigard headquarters November 7. The Story Wall is a large collage that chronicles the legal system and profession’s gradual progress toward better reflecting the communities it must serve. The Wall’s web site states “Our goal is to build on the history featured in this exhibit and add new milestones over time.”

OSB’s Legal Heritage Interest Group had been talking about a similar project for about ten years. Mariann Hyland, OSB Director of Diversity & Inclusion, helped move the project forward and managed it. She had created a similar display in her previous position at Oregon Health & Science University. Through the resources of veteran Oregon historian Chet Orloff, the Diversity & Inclusion Story Wall enlisted a genuinely diverse group of people to suggest content.

The Wall has a considerable amount of LGBT legal history. Much of it was provided

by GLAPN (Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest). Also participating and providing content was OGALLA: The LGBT Bar Association of Oregon; Oregon Hispanic Bar Association; Oregon Minority Lawyers Association; and Oregon Women Lawyers.

LGBT community members at the

unveiling event included Oregon Supreme Court Justice Virginia Linder; PQ Monthly owner Melanie Davis; attorneys Lake James Perriguey and Paul Justin Carlos Southwick; Know Your City Board President Cameron Whitten; former OSB President Mark Johnson; and myself as a representative of GLAPN. OSB states that: “Diversity and inclusion mean acknowledging, embracing and valuing the unique contributions our individual backgrounds make to strengthen our legal community, increase access to justice, and promote laws and creative solutions that better serve clients and communities.

Diversity includes, but is not limited to: age; culture; disability; ethnicity; gender, gender identity or expression; geographic location; national origin; race; religion; sexual orientation; and socio-economic status.”

“Our business case statement: A diverse and inclusive bar is necessary to attract and retain talented employees and leaders; effectively serve diverse clients with diverse needs; understand and adapt to increasingly diverse local and global markets; devise creative solutions to complex problems; and improve access to justice, respect for the rule of law, and credibility of the legal profession.”

For more information on the Story Wall, please see https://www.osbar.org/storywall.

November/December 2014 • 31

BUSINESS BRIEFS

By Gabriela Kandziora, PQ Monthly

Over the weekend of November 7-9, I went to the “Portland German Film Festival” (http://www.portlandgermanfilmfestival.com/ ) happening at Cinema 21. As I stood in line, I felt very grateful for this theatre. I looked at the awesome diversity of the films that were showing there, just on Sunday, November 9, 2014: “Pride” — a film set in London and Wales, based on a true story of “Lesbians and Gays Supporting the Miners”; “Dear White People” — the lives of four black students at an Ivy League college; and a long list of German films, set in modern Germany, such as “Alles Inklusive” and of course, always a film from WWII, such as “Lauf Junge Lauf” — the true story of a young boy escaping the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. The diversity of topics was truly beautiful to see. I gladly paid for my tickets to four movies — yes, four!

(It was a film fest!) I took in an afternoon of shows, starting with “Pride” and ended with the story of the young Jewish boy. For those 6 hours, I was witness to many different experiences, lives, emotions, and learned about history.

I feel grateful for Cinema 21, the Hollywood Theatre, and the other dozen independent theatres because since

32 • November/December 2014

I moved to Portland in 1983, I have spent hours at these theatres watching amazing films that will never make it to the huge cinemas at the malls. Have you ever thought what it would be like not have Cinema 21 or Hollywood Theatre or access to these mind-expanding films? I shudder to think. The independent and foreign films that I have seen at our independent theatres have opened my eyes, educated me, informed me, and allowed me to spend a few hours in the lives of others, outside Portland…and most often, outside of the USA. There is so much more to cinema than the US films made in Hollywood. In fact, most of the Hollywood blockbusters bore me to tears. When I want to see a slice of someone else’s’ life, to feel what they felt and went through, to feel true reality, I go to Cinema 21 or the Hollywood Theatre and take in a foreign or independent film. Through the years, I have seen everything from stories on transgendered people: “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”, motorcycle documentaries in winter, when riding days are few and far between, the “PDX Latin American Film Festival” (http://hollywoodtheatre.org/pdx-latin-americanfilm-fest/) and even the “Portland Ecofilm Festival” (http:// hollywoodtheatre.org/ecofilm) and of course, our beloved Portland Lesbian Gay Film Fest (http://www.pqmonthly. com/tag/portland-lesbian-and-gay-film-festival ), Port-

land Queer Documentary Film Fest (https://www.facebook.com/QDocFest) and Portland Queer Film Festival (http://pdxqueerfilm.com/).

Often, a portion of your ticket price goes to support a worthy cause and the popcorn and snacks are less expensive at our independent theatres. The next time you are seeking some entertainment, perhaps you would like to take in a film at our vast list of Independent Theatres! I suggest supporting these cinemas because they support us whole-heartedly! Kick back with a tasty microbrew, a slice of pizza and enjoy cinema that helps promote diversity. Here is a list of all the independent theatres in Portland. http://tinyurl.com/2um2sdr.

Along with cinema, Portland has some great live theatre venues. Portland Center Stage (www.pcs.org), Triangle Productions (www.trianglepro.org), and Milagro Theatre (www.Milagro.org) are always top on my list. I have found these venues to produce some of the most entertaining productions I have ever seen. Make a night of it! Hit Happy Hour and dinner, then visit the theatre.

Keep up-to-date on what’s coming up by getting on the email lists from these venues. Again, these theatres support our LGBTQ Community, please support them. Mention PQ Monthly to let them know their advertising dollars are effective.

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VOICES

CULTIVATING LIFE Take Back the Holidays!

By LeAnn Locher, PQ Monthly

I get it. The holidays are overdone.

Over-commercialized. I just wish they’d be over. Forget the Christmas crap that shows up in the stores in September, the overdone details of gift wrap and complex appetizer platters on Pinterest boards.

Screw the “shop ‘til you drop” mentality and racking up ridiculous bills. And d o n’t g e t m e started on the most recent bribing of children through Elf on the Shelf.

Abandoning all of this doesn’t mean you have to turn into the Scrooge and slam your door for the next several months.

What if we reinvented the holidays? What if we said, at their c o re, w e l ov e what they stand for : th a n k f u l ness, togetherness, good food, and celebrating the ones we love?

Maybe we say goodbye to the standard that just seems to let us down, and make them what we want them to be?

In our house, we celebrate my partner’s Mexican heritage with holidays like Dia de los Muertos, and in December and January, this includes Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe and the Epiphany, or Dia de reyes magos. Fortunately, these holidays have not been blown into over commercialized money makers devoid of meaning, and for us, they bring opportunities to cook, gather, celebrate and recognize those we love in our lives.

Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe, or Virgin of Guadalupe Day, falls on December 12, and celebrates both the indigenous and the Catholic history of the Mexican people, specifically with a woman at its center: Guadalupe. In addition, she’s a mixture of the cultures that blended to form Mexico: Aztec and Spanish Catholic; often she’s referred to as the first mestizo, or first Mexican. December 12, 1851 is the day she appeared on a hill outside Mexico City, and in our house on December 12, we celebrate with friends and

chosen family with a feast of homemade posole and offerings to La Virgen in thanks for a wonderful year.

Posole is a traditional prehispanic soup, consisting of hominy, pork, chile peppers and seasonings. It’s a fun, interactive dinner, with the posole ladled out in bowls, and the passing around the table the elements you add in individually, from radishes to avocado to Mexican oregano and lime. The 12th falls right in the middle of December, before we’re all burned out from the holidays and overcommitted to parties, gatherings and work obligations: perfect timing. Of course we toast with tequila and words of thanks for the year, and share the story of the amazing female figure at the center of Mexican culture.

On January 6, we celebrate the epiphany or Dia d reyes magos. In Mexico and many other Latin American countries, Santa Claus doesn’t signify the gift giving that he does here in the United States. The three wise men are those who bring gifts, leaving them in or near the shoes of children. We gather with friends casually to share gifts with kids, after all the hype of Christmas, and when they can really enjoy the opening of a single gift. We drink atole, a traditional hot masa drink, and eat a rosca de reyes, a king’s cake pastry purchased at a local panaderia, or Mexican bakery.

Hidden inside the cake is a small plastic baby and whoever receives the piece with the hidden baby throws a party on February 2. See? We can keep the holidays going for months.

Yes, we still have the obligatory family and work holiday parties and gatherings, but our Mexican holidays feel different, special, meaningful and authentic. And isn’t that precisely what we yearn for this time of year? I’m done with the hype of commercialized Christmas and look forward to the love and joy celebrated around the figure of Virgin of Guadalupe, a steaming bowl of posole, and the excitement of discovering a plastic baby in my rosca. But most importantly, it’s sharing these moments with my chosen family I cherish. Cheers.

LeAnn Locher looks forward to the holidays, she swears.

She can be reached at leann@pqmonthly.com. pqmonthly.com

November/December 2014 • 33

QUEER APERTURE Through his Queer Aperture project, photographer Jeffrey Horvitz has spent years documenting the LGBTQ communities of Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C. He’s well aware that a picture paints a whole mess of words, but here he offers a few actual words to better acquaint us with his dynamic subjects.

What is your name?

Andrew Tweedie

Favorite movie?

“Auntie Mame”

How long have you lived in Portland?

9 years

Favorite word?

G*d Damn

What is the first time you noticed that gayness existed?

12 years old

Least favorite word?

Hate

What would you consider a guilty pleasure?

Ham

Favorite swear word?

Fuck

You’re having a dinner party of 6 , whom would you invite?

Judy Shepard, Oprah, Greg Kruger, my mother, my first boyfriend, and Maya Angelou

What is your profession?

Development Director

What would you consider a perfect meal?

Home cooked Southern comfort food What would be a perfect day off?

At the beach

PHOTO BY JEFFREY HORVITZ

If you could with a snap of a finger what would be another profession you would like to do?

Philanthropist Whom would you like to meet dead or alive?

My father

Favorite book?

“The Help”

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