The views and ideas expressed in the contained works do not reflect those of the Queer Me Out staff or the Florida State University Pride Student Union. All rights revert back to their original owners upon publication. This magazine is funded by the Florida State University Pride Student Union and Student Government Association. Many thanks to all who have made this magazine possible.
Letter From the Editors Dear Reader, In Fall 2017, Pride Student Union began working on Queer Me Out, the first ever zine dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community at Florida State University and the greater Tallahassee area. Queer Me Out would not be possible without the dedication and creativity of the volunteer staff of Pride’s Public Relations Committee. After many hours of brainstorming, networking, planning and drafting, we are proud to finally share the first issue of Queer Me Out with all of our wonderful readers. We hope this zine will become a prolonged, creative platform to share art and information for FSU’s LGBTQ+ community. To our staff and advisors who spent countless days and nights bringing this zine to fruition, thank you. Without each and every one of you, Queer Me Out would have never been more than a single student’s dream. For those staff and artists eager to work on the zine and submit pieces in the future, we cannot wait to work on future issues with you. Thank you to all the featured creators in this issue for sharing your love, talent, creativity and passion with us. We are proud to showcase each and every one of your pieces with the world and are honored to be the platform through which your talent shines. To all: Please enjoy this very special first (of many!) issue of Queer Me Out.
Editors in Chief
Denzel Pierre & Niki Overley-Matheus
Table
of
Contents
FICTION, POETRY
VISUAL ART
Alien, Mia S. Willis -- 3 These Two Survive, Lucy Miree -- 4 Real Girls wear waterproof, Rose Helsinger -- 5 Forest Fires, Allison Williams -- 6 I Am Hollen Star, Carissa Garde -- 7 The Things they said, Mat Wenzel -- 9 Trigger Warning** To The Man I Followed To The Grave, Miles Cox -- 11 Precious Moments, Melanie raybon -- 12 Self Portrait, Morgan Wegner -- Cover I love art and art loves me, Kiara Gilbert -- 3 Drip Drop, Tiara Urena -- 6 Clouds, Cam Gilbert -- 10 Bottles, Sam Caldwell -- 10 Posctcard 5, Zach Linge -- 11 We Beat With One Pulse, Andy Costa -- 14 I Dream in Color, Joi Belle -- Back Cover
Staff Content
Queerstory -- 15 Queer Me Out -- 16 Lavender List -- 17 LGBTQ+ Resources -- 18 Artists Page -- 19 Staff Page -- 20
** Trigger Warning due to profanity and slurs. Please read ‘The Things They Said’ at your own discretion.
2
I Love Art and Art Loves Me
from the collection “musings in print�
Alien
a haiku diptych.
Kiara Gilbert
there is something to be said for being lost. in a home. in a land. foreign. a stranger in the morror. infidel tongue in your own mouth
--Mia S. Willis 3
These Two Survive “Here dwell together still two men of note, who never lived and so can never die” - Vincent Starrett, “221B” The first time I love you, we go everywhere in a carriage, And the streets are all lit by gas lamps, And our mustaches are stiff. You wear a green carnation in your buttonhole. My cane goes clickety-clack on the cobblestones. We cannot walk the streets arm in arm, But in the secluded warmth of our parlor Your hand skims my cheek. I meet you again when bombs are falling And the men on the radio say That the world is really ending. I cling to you, my buoy in a roiling sea. There’s a war coming, darling. Do you think the fellas will notice If I take you out back for a slow dance To the somber crooner’s bon voyage? Next time, it’s the age of glam And punk and liberation and so much glitter. It sticks to your eyelashes. We march in the street with a song on our lips And pink triangles on our tee-shirts, a reminder Of our last life. We are young and electric, making out to Bowie. I hold your hand at the grocery store. The fourth time I find you, You’re wearing a blue scarf and texting. We brush shoulders and meet eyes, And there is no great revelation. No atom bomb, no pride parade. There is only the gentle sighing of the heart, As it seems to say, “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
-- Lucy Miree
5 4
Real Girls Wear Waterproof Rose Helsinger
I put on mascara the same way I taught my mother to. Lightly coat your lashes from underneath. Eyes closed so you don’t blink and you don’t twitch. “That’s it,” I tell her We can’t stand the pressure of the curler. The way it feels like it will tear the our lashes right off and leave the lids naked. I am proud of the night I show her how to curl our long, Italian eyelashes with practiced motions of a barbed wand. I am proud because this feels familiar. This is what mothers and daughters are supposed to do. We can share makeup and clothes, and I can teach you, and you can teach me, all contained in this tiny box we can both cram ourselves into no bigger than a lipstick case. I am proud because I can still fit inside it. I am proud because I’m teaching her how to contort into this small dark space beside me, where there is room enough for both of us. Before I began modeling how to fish the stray strands of mascara as thick and inky as eel sauce out of the bottom of my eye, I refused to brush my hair. I wailed at the sight of a comb. The ache of dragging bristles through the tawny, tangled sea Poseidon abandoned sent me into hysterics. It curled almost to my waist and crashed into waves of snarled frizz. When I was twelve, my locks scattered around me in wet, brown chunks. I didn’t realize how heavy hair could be until it was gone. In pictures from those days, my brother and I are two of a kind. Two little boys with lopsided grins and the same brown curls. I thought other girls were stupid for keeping their hair long. I didn’t belong with them and everyone still lumped us in the same category. It set me on fire. I wasn’t like girls who wore short skirts and long dresses, and winged their eyes. It was wrong to judge other women, but when I was eleven and furious, I didn’t care that it was wrong. I felt too wrong inside to care. In my middle school uniformed years, I built myself in opposition to who they were. My war with the beautiful girls was, in my head, as fierce and legendary as the Romans army. As Caesar built walls to keep the Gauls in on one side and out on the other, I built myself to keep them contained, to keep the blonde and smiling girls out. Who I became was as an act of violence, a siege around them. Day by day, brick by brick, I constructed a personality that trapped them inside me. That starved them
until they surrendered. I’m sure during the years I spent brutally defining myself as their adversary, they thought we were friends. Before I knew I was gay, I knew I was angry. Angry there was something inside me barring me from becoming the real girl I was promised I would grow into. I failed being a daughter, a girlfriend, a wife, a mother. I could still occupy those spaces. But they would be complicated. They would involve conversations. The kind best not spoken of on Christmases with other politics when Grandparents stayed for the winter. I was so young and volatile, so war-hungry because I knew I failed who I supposed to be. I knew there were already casualties of promised futures that would die undelivered. When I was thirteen, my Grandmother sat on my bed and cried without hitching her breath, tears leaked down her face like a water bottle with a loose cap, and said she wanted me to have an authentic life. There is no room in her definition of authenticity that covers changing in the corner of the locker-room because there was something uncomfortable and strange and familiar about seeing and being seen. Real girls didn’t look at me the way I looked at them. Real girls didn’t look like me. But I could look like them. And I wanted to. I was at war for four years. I was tired of fighting. Tired of being different. I wasn’t proud of being weird anymore. My hair grew out past my shoulders. I learned to walk in high heels and not limp when I bled into my shoes. I shaved my legs and arms and the top of my lip. I wore short skirts and long dresses, and winged my eyes. When people are surprised when they find out I’m gay, there is a part of me that’s proud. Proud I’ve passed for authentic so well they couldn’t tell the difference. Proud that when they think of what a lesbian looks like, they don’t think of me. And ashamed that I’ve walled up the girl inside me who they do think of. Ashamed that I don’t feel like a real lesbian either. When I demonstrate for my mother how to hook the mascara wand under her lashes, I tell her never to buy the brand I’m putting on. “It’s a waste,” I tell her. It drips. It smudges. It ruins your concealer. You don’t want the war inside you smeared down your face when you’re not sure who you’re fighting anymore.
5
Forest Fires Allison Williams
Drop
Drip
I once wrote that you were a forest fire, And I, the careless match in the underbrush. You won all our friends in the accident, But for years after, they whispered to me How bright you burn, and how cold. Our relationship lasted nine months, Long enough to give birth to years of regrets. I forgot the saplings we grew and the thorns They drove into us, but I remember Every rock we hit on the way down. The avalanche started when I said I loved you And you replied I am in love with you, And I paused. I didn’t understand the difference. I didn’t understand why I had no interest In seeing you shirtless. I figured maybe I should have stuck to kissing boys. I thought there was something wrong with me Because I didn’t know how to make new friends To replace all the ones I’d cut down. I must have written you a hundred letters. I thought that if I was lost in the blaze, I at least wanted to leave my words behind, So you’d know why I lit the match. When I finally asked if I could read one, you said, “No. It’s okay, we were just children.” It’s not okay. The inked words of my journals changed over the years, From I miss you to I hate you to I’m sorry, But I always thought I should’ve spent more time Calling you beautiful.
Tiara Urena
I can’t promise this is the last letter I’ll write to you But I’ve pulled all the thorns out. My wounds don’t hurt anymore. Some days, you are a ghost over my shoulder, But most days, I don’t think about you. I used to dream that we’d run into each other In our 30s and slot the pieces of ourselves Together again, like so many paper bags Turned into pulp, turned into new letters. I know now that I will never see you again. I’m okay with that. I’ll tell your story to strangers. I still don’t know what the difference between I love you And I am in love with you is. But I know what I felt for you.
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I
am
Hollen Star Carissa Garde
There was once a girl, fair and smart,
Her name meant Dear and she was loved by all, but herself loved not. She imagined a peaceful, secluded cottage, where she was not she or Dear And one night, wished she was there with all her might. On a day, many sunsets later a Being, Of neither gender nor age nor race, with a jaded mind and stilted grace Walked forth from the peaceful, secluded cottage, And no one paid any notice, to its smart mind and its fair face. I am Hollen Starr. You’ve never heard of me. You might’ve heard of someone that looks like me, but with darker hair and a prettier face and a bigger chest, but she is mostly dead and only Hollen exists now. Almost. It is 6:00 am and the sun is beginning to bleed fat golden veins on the trees, rivulets of caramel on the decadently dark trunks. Sometimes I pretend the trees are made of Twix and the caramel just oozes out, curling around the chunky bars and sugar-spun foliage into her mouth, a whole forest of her favorite chocolate bar- but she is not I and I am Hollen, who doesn’t eat chocolate bars. Hollen only eats the food grown in their own backyard, and the occasional rabbit or deer they shoot, and once in a while, bread and cheese from the town crouched, half-swallowed in the outskirts of the forest. Today is one of the town-visit days. I am gazing out the window ripe with condensation, drenched in beaded silence as I deftly slice an orange with my best knife and place the dripping quarter-spheres on a cantankerous pale blue plate that wobbles sideways with the slightest touch. After I finish, I wipe off the knife with a clean rag and use it to smear raspberry jelly on my last chunk of stale bread. It is wheat bread, the whole grain kind I’ll get again when I go to town today, and when I go I know I will pause and gaze at the cinnamon swirl loaves a shelf below the whole grain, but then I will grab the whole grain anyways because she ate cinnamon bread, not Hollen. Hollen is healthy, and Hollen is strong. After I finish the meal, I wipe off the knife again and slip it in my pocket. It’s 6:15. I’m already dressed, in a long-sleeved gray shirt and my cleanest dark blue jeans and the
mahogany-brown pair of boots, only vaguely scuffed, that I save for visits like today’s. I bend down and tighten the laces, because earlier I had trouble tying them as my tremors ripped through my wrists and fingers, like every morning. The only annoying part is that she wouldn’t’ve had to tie them twice, because the tremors were buried deep inside her, but not Hollen. On Hollen they are just beneath the surface. Second time around, my hands don’t shake so bad and the boots fit snug and I have my knife and the battered wallet of cash that’s always tucked in my waistband and the pack I stitched together myself, with reeds by the lake a couple yards south of my cabin. I’m ready to go. The arc of the front door is silent and smooth as I step outside. I grease the hinges every week, and sweep the floors and chop firewood and other various tasks. She hated cleaning, but Hollen doesn’t mind it, as long as the object needing cleaning is necessary for survival and not a waste of a good rag and fresh water. She pouted at first, but after I deprived her of my attention she wasted away and no longer had the strength to oppose me in my daily scourings of my living space. It’s not that I am obsessed with cleanliness- rather, I take pride in the daily regimen of my life- without the comforts of electricity and wi-fi and other frivolities that she indulged in, simplicity has become my pleasure. I live life to live life, not to drown in the excesses of everyone else’s. Outside the door winds a kinked ribbon of dirt that smells like moss and humidity and decay, a thick, calming air. Five and a half miles down this path I stroll, gazing at the subtly twinkling canopy of newly sprouted green and the early spring growth of weeds trying to overtake my way. She remembers being told that the journey away from home is always quicker than the journey coming back, because leaving is more exciting than returning. I don’t think that. I think that the journey away seems longer than the return, because everything is new and ripe for savoring the first time I pass it, and by the second time it is lost its sheen and my only thought is of hurrying back to the comfort of what I know. And by my thirty-fourth journey, the times bleed together and smear across my forehead like mud and sap until they mean nothing anymore. Three quarters of the way there, I stop and drink from the battered jug lounging in my pack, and then I start up again, immersing myself in the last shreds of peace that chirp in the flashing autumn colors crinkling above my head. Then, quite abruptly, the ambience of traffic and pollution and tangled threads of humanity whip wildly in front of my face. I’d never been to Durango, Colorado until my Element ran out of gas on the outskirts of the hardy town nine years ago.
7
I’d been going nowhere, running from nothing, so I sold the car for a thousand dollars, the only money I’ve ever received, and I’ll make it last as long as possible. I bought some tools, trekked into the forest and plunked down in a sodden clearing that even the government couldn’t be bothered to claim. Little did I know about survival outside of the vain and bloated network of human civilization, mostly due to her lack of intuition and her persistence in refusing to be dead. That first year, I ventured to town even less than I do now, and winter was soon upon me. With preciously few provisions, I almost died with her. My senseless human fears, which I still grapple with to this day, had kept me away from the town and warmth and shelter. I was too frightened that someone would recognize me, that there’s be an awkward pause as they stared at me, thinking, “Are you her?” And I’d say, “No, I’m Hollen. Hollen Starr. The person you ask about is gone. I don’t know her.” But they’d still wonder. At least if I had died, then I would’ve known for sure that she was gone too. I stop at the Exxon gas station and grab some bread and a new water filter, one of the few modern items I allow myself. I turn away from the television mounted on the wall. All this time with only the blessedly real images of nature and the screens become painfully bright, or maybe my eyesight is just getting worse and she isn’t there to stop it. I would rather become blind, though, than view the world through her hopeful, innocent gaze. Rolling my shoulders back, I’m debating whether to buy a lighter now or just use up the last matchbox in my cupboard, when a woman pawing through the candy bars a few sections to my left glances my way. I freeze, my knuckles stuttering in betrayal. Her eyes seem to bluster through me, seeping through the Hollen I’ve sculpted until they find that one spot, the not-quite-dead pulse of her, and my life is a charade and the game is up and I’m nothing, to me I’m not her and to them I’m not Hollen, shit… But she isn’t looking at me, just at the tv behind me. Red rushes from my neck, straining my chest. I try to silence the odd choking sound that escapes my lungs every time I gasp in air. “...Sir?... Are you alright?” She’s talking to me. My tongue swells as I try to remember the words. At least she said sir, that’s good, they wouldn’t have called her that…Hollen rushes to reason. Hollen, yes that’s me. Hollen Starr. And I answer, “Yes, I’m fine, just…had a bit of coughing, that’s all” . “Oh, sorry, I just thought you were injured or something…sir.” I nod, and say that I’m fine, and she turns away. I can breathe again. Then she looks at me, for real this time. My heart begins fluttering again. “It’s such a shame, isn’t it? That poor girl that went missing” she says. The fluttering crescendos. I glance wildly around, as if the woman has somehow notified
the world that she is here and they come now to drag her back out of me. She’s staring at the tv screen again, and the small talk she made suddenly clicks into place. The soundtrack is muted, but I can just hear the story being played, of the ninth anniversary of a well-known young woman’s disappearance. “Hardly anyone I talk to remembers her until they play this story on the news. In a couple more generations, no one will remember her at all, except as just another tragic mystery never solved. What a shame, she was such an intelligent person, really well-rounded, for a celebrity.” Her last word is meant to be playful, but in my ears it rings oil and varnish and a knife dipped in molasses. I swallow my tremors and answer politely, “Maybe it’s best to be forgotten. There are plenty of famous people in the world, it would seem, and half of them aren’t particularly brilliant.” “Brilliant or not, what I would give to be one of them!” she snorts obtrusively. “Poor girl, to lose all of that!” She shakes her head. And I think, “What I gave to be anything but them.” Now that the woman has given up on conversing with me, I stride calmly to check out and hand the cashier my purchases. He stares at me as he rings up the items, and as the news story cuts to a Twix commercial, I can imagine the thoughts running through his head as he watches me while simultaneously ringing up my water filter, “Is that…? But her hair was brown, not blond, and her eyes were pale instead of dark, and she was curvier and prettier and unjaded and unscarred…” The store flashes red and blurry for a second. But he only says “Hello, what do you go by?” A common question for people like Hollen who seem halfway in between the majorities. With a dash of relief, I say “I go by they, and their. But you can call me Hollen. Hollen Starr.” And he says, “Nice to meet you, Hollen” without a pause, or any indication he thought otherwise. I pay with cash and walk away. Once outside the store, I sag, exhausted, against the closest gas pump. But the exhaustion is tinged with peace, and a sort of settling that is only felt when the perceptions of both the consciousness and the crowd align. I’ve found that the journey home always seems to be a lot quicker than the journey away. Today, however, that is not the case. I take my time hiking through the forest, dancing through mist and the orange haze of an autumn sunset. For there is ecstasy in knowing there is a place for me in the world, a place that was frighteningly occupied for an intruder for so long. I glimpse to the side of my path a jagged boulder arched forward over a small pond where light splays around the tree trunks, and dissipates to darkness in the water. I dash off the pathway to leap upon it. Waving my arms like a magnificent king and a wily jester, I turn my face to the drowning sun and let it settle like molten promise into the cracks of my shattered mind. And the girl I once was finally died.
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TRIGGER WARNING: PROFANITY & SLURS
The Things They Said Light in the loafers fruit When it would be better if you had never been born I hope you know that you are loved and accepted by many people, including us, no matter what I depraved fudge packer was thank you for sharing your story i’d kill myself you’re going to hell anal assassin maricon fairy know that you will always be loved by me silent cock gobbler bent you’re driving off a cliff girl your Matt has been in hell for 856 days pansy degenerate it’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve sod words flit anal astronaut sissy uphill gardener flamer reprobate I love and admire you and think you are very courageous had God hates fags pussy You can count on us to be there for you pedophile power what can separate us from the love of our God??? homo that’s gay pillow biter ass bandit sausage jockey but throw another fag on the fire trade molly you will always have my support when death penalty for fags abomination queen faggot I nancy queer limp wrist it would be better if you were dead poo pusher are you sure? bugger named love the sinner, hate the sin Please know there is nothing but love & respect for you in our home debauched sodomite turd burglar myself effeminate you’re ruining your life don’t do this lacy poof it’s a plumbing problem fag I would fucking kill myself mary butt pirate cock sucker femme no homo began We love you and care about you and enjoy you and appreciate you, period twink to gaylord pole smoker sinner SSA deviant I am so sorry that you have been in such a dark place know ring raider God didn’t make you this way We love you just the way you are, Mat bone smuggler fart knocker sick love.
--Mat Wenzel
9
Sam Caldwell
Bottles
Clouds
Cam Gilbert
10
To the Man I Followed to the Grave it is the brass howl when he runs thunder footed through the grass and rubble and building and grass again dead eyed crows watching, noble voice of a dying god screaming don’t run don’t run don’t run as he passes. /how sick am i, to watch the pantomime/ it is the shriek of a man dying or not dying, but so close to death
Postcard5 Zack Linge
he might put his hands out and cup deathface against his and bite and kiss and hiss cursing the church in these woods he screams don’t touch don’t touch don’t touch as i advance. /how heartsick am i, to watch the pantomime/ it is the sound of two close bodies, laying on their backs in the dirt, bleeding and bruising and burning and waiting to look the emptiness of the world dead in it’s unforgiving eyes and we scream don’t care don’t care don’t care as we pass. /how lovesick am i, to join you here/
--Miles Cox 11
Precious Moments Melanie Raybon
The image that presents itself is one of space. Blackness, wholly and resolutely empty, with no sound, no movement, not a single penetration to disturb the nothingness that surrounds you in all directions, for all time. The presence of silence is crushing and unbroken, and you continue to exist in apathy. And then, without reason, a sudden stirring. The slightest wisp of light glimmering somewhere nearby, but from what or where it is impossible to tell. The blackness dissipates as the glow grows brighter, warmer, stronger with each inhalation of breath. The implosion occurs swiftly, and all at once you are conscious of the presence of everything, there, around you and within you. It has filled you up and covered your body, leaving you without a single trace of darkness. And you can never return to the state of being you once knew. And so, I had fallen in love with Jasmine. The feeling had presented itself to me, unwarranted and unwanted, and I had no hope of resisting it, although I did try. It was that damn bikini that started it all – neon yellow, with little rhinestones glimmering around the edges. Early in the last summer of my teenage youth, Jas and I had spent the day lounging by her pool and she’d lain there sunning herself, the tiny top barely concealing her considerable chest. I’d ogled her with what I supposed was envy, and blamed the unusual tug in my stomach on the cheap sushi we’d eaten for lunch. Later, when I’d dreamt about her in that bikini and I’d woken up confused and sweaty, I told myself it was normal to have an uncontrollable subconscious desire. Over and over again throughout those three sweltering summer months, I’d swallowed my emotion, convinced myself that it wasn’t actually attraction I felt. This was real life, not one of those Hallmark, I-fell-in-love-with-my-lesbian-best-friend tropes. No “happily ever after” existed here, this I knew. But I couldn’t help it; she had become my universe. We spent our days lazy and carefree, strolling along the decaying dock behind her house that skirted St. John’s River, sneaking in through the back door of the movie theater where I worked to rewatch The Conjuring, rolling joints in the parking lot of the 24-hour diner on Wonderwood Drive. It was almost a crime, how quickly my mother believed me when I made up some new excuse as to why I wouldn’t be home that night. “Hey, ma, I told you about the youth group lock-in tonight, right?” I sat down on her king-sized bed, much too large for her tiny frame, perpetually half-rumpled on her side and half-made for the day my father would come back to her. “Pastor Jonathan will be there, and they’re giving the girls and boys separate rooms to sleep in.” She moved her head toward me, not bothering to
disturb her body from beneath its collection of blankets. “Yes, Eva, that’s fine. Did you eat?” She winced at the soft light filtering in through the curtains on the other side of the bedroom. “They’re getting pizza for us. I’ll text you when I’m on my way home tomorrow, okay?” But she had already closed her eyes and turned her face away, returning to the only place where her life was still perfect. Her afternoon naps had become a daily occurrence in recent years, and she was never so easily swayed as when she was half-asleep. I won’t say I didn’t know what I was doing when I took advantage of my mother’s obvious depression. 17-year old me was smart enough to manipulate the circumstances in my favor. But I lied to her because she left me no other choice. Mom had never been a fan of Jas, thought her trashy, wild, damnable, and after one of the other PTA moms informed her that Jas was “one of those lesbian types,” she’d forbade me to hang out with her. Something about negative influence on your lifestyle choices. Apparently, according to my mother, hanging out with a homosexual was a punishable offense in God’s eyes. So I’d tell her I was going to youth group at our church or picking up an extra shift at the movie theater, and then off I would go, three houses down to sleep over at Jasmine’s. It seemed harmless at the time. One unseasonably breezy July evening, my mother called to tell me she’d be late at work. They’d asked her to stay behind with the students for after-care when one of the other teachers had to leave for an emergency, which meant she wouldn’t be home until well past 7. A night at home without mom there was rare, so I invited Jasmine over to keep me company. I knew something was wrong when I opened the front door to find her pulling at her light blonde ponytail, the way she always did when she was nervous. We made our way upstairs to my room, a particular lack of conversation echoing throughout the house. I flicked my TV on, picking out an episode of Friends, as Jas sat down on my frayed carpet and patted the floor beside her. I took to the floor, crossing my legs yoga-style. “What’s going on, dude? You’re, like, super quiet right now.” A half-hearted laugh escaped my lips, too concerned to lighten the mood as I’d intended. She looked at me, her chest heaving as though she couldn’t quite fill her lungs. “Eves, I’m moving. To Seattle.” When I failed to react, she continued, looking past me to the wall as she spoke. Her dad’s job had relocated him, and as much as she wanted to spend her senior year in Jacksonville, she didn’t have a choice. In a few weeks’ time, she would be
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on the opposite side of the country, facing an entirely different ocean than I was. “Trust me, I begged him to let me and mom stay in town. But the fucking pricks won’t even consider it. Said we need to do these things as a family.” She rolled her eyes and let out a frustrated huff, finally bringing her darkened eyes back to my face. “Are you okay?” My face had yet to move even a fraction of an inch. The thought of losing the girl who I’d spent practically every day with for the past three years had left me physically paralyzed, my stomach a twisting mass of heat inside me. For a moment, I was sure I would vomit. But rather than bile bubbling up out of my mouth, words came pouring out instead. I told her everything – well, almost everything. In my stumbling moment of confession, I failed to mention how her smile rearranged all the light in the room until she’d become the sun, how her hazel eyes turned the most amazing shade of dark green when it rained, how the touch of her long pale fingers against my tan skin gave me chills every time. But I told her enough. “I know I should’ve told you.” I was blubbering like a depressed seal, barely able to understand my own words. “I wanted to, but I didn’t want to ruin – I didn’t know if you – I just –” And that’s when she’d laughed. My heart stopped. Everything I’d said had sounded like a joke to her. My feelings were ridiculous, even to my own ears; after all this time, how could I have imagined that she might actually feel the same? I let out a honking sound like some demented giraffe. “Yeah, no, I was just fucking around!” My voice must have been a good three decibels too loud. I turned my face away, unable to stop the pricking just behind my eyes. “Totally had you going there, ha.” Then suddenly, her hand was on my cheek, wiping it clean. She put both hands on either side of my face and leaned in until I could feel her breath. “Eva. Shut the fuck up.” Before I had even closed my eyes, a spasm of heat and vanilla-flavored Chapstick enveloped my lips. I felt a burst of blood redden my cheeks as Jasmine curled her fingers up into the thick curly hair tickling the back of my neck. My eyes locked onto the episode of Friends playing from the TV behind her, illuminating our bodies in dark blues and greens, before I let them close. I stretched out my lean body, sighing into her, feeling the curve of her breasts against mine. The old shag carpet bristling against the backs of my calves, Joey Tribbiani’s “how you doin?” making us both giggle into each other’s mouths, her fingernails leaving trails of goosebumps all along my inner thighs – it was nothing like what I’d pictured and a million times better, a fantasy I only knew was real because of the weight of her body against mine. My inexperienced imagination had been incapable of fathoming what it would feel like to finally be with her, that way. For the next moment, nothing existed outside of our bodies,
nothing mattered besides the feel of her skin against mine. I couldn’t imagine how everybody wasn’t doing this 100 percent of the time. I would’ve been content to spend the rest of my days there, intertwined on my bedroom floor like that. My heart pounded so loudly, it was enough to drown out the faint sound of a mechanical garage door closing. Suddenly, as though we hadn’t just begun acting out our own personal porno, Jas was standing upright above me, adjusting her lacy bralette to better cover her chest. “Get up. Now,” she said, handing me my jeans – the very same jeans she’d unbuttoned less than a minute ago. “Wait, I’m sorry,” I managed to stutter. I pulled my pants back on, blushing at how exposed I’d just been. “Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry, I don’t really know how–” “Your mom’s home. I need to leave.” Even as she said the words, I could hear rustling coming from the kitchen downstairs, my mother’s voice indistinctly murmuring to someone on the phone. She was home an hour early, an occurrence so unlikely it hadn’t even registered to my ears until it was too late to do anything about it. Maybe God was punishing me after all. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered, hurriedly smoothing my fingers over what must’ve been obvious sex hair. Jasmine crawled about my room, simultaneously pulling at her socks and sliding into her shorts, as I rushed over to my floor length mirror to check my neck for hickeys. Behind me, Jas reached for my dresser to steady her balance while she stood up, fiddling with her sneaker. I turned from the reflection, realizing too late what was about to happen. “Don’t!” Then she was on the floor again, this time with a shelf full of broken Precious Moments covering her body. “Eva?” My mother flew into the bedroom within seconds. If she hadn’t been such a staunch hater of witchcraft, I would’ve sworn she’d used a broomstick to get up the stairs that fast. She stood there now, open-mouthed and perspiring, a cloth bag full of school supplies falling off her shoulder. Jasmine scrambled out from beneath the toppled dresser shelf, brushing bits of porcelain out from her bra. Precious Moments figurines littered my carpet, a 17-year collection that had begun at my birth decimated in a single movement. For a distracted second, I found myself a little relieved – I had always despised the tiny figures, watching me with their soft, sad faces, perpetually disappointed. I fixed my eyes on the top half of one that held the inscription, “Baptized in His Name,” the solemn eyes of the pastel-painted baby girl barely visible above the jagged edge of the shattered ceramic. My face was hot. From beneath my lowered lashes, I could see my mom’s mouth fold into a taught line. Her cheeks deepened in color as she very softly said, “Go home, Jasmine.” I should’ve said something, should’ve come to Jas’ aid and made up some brilliant excuse as to why she was half naked in my
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room with no one else home. But my mother was wide awake this time, and this fucking ceramic baby wouldn’t stop staring at me like I’d just killed its entire family. It wasn’t me, asshole. Jas picked herself up off the floor, scrambling to pull on her pink crop top and zip up her shorts. “Ms. Perry, please don’t be mad, I swear to God, it’s not what you think. We were just –” “I know exactly what you were doing. Go. Home. Jasmine.” The restraint in her voice was fading fast. The longer Jas stood there like a helpless puppy, the redder my mom’s face got. I could almost see the thoughts flickering behind her eyes: My daughter is a liar. My daughter is a sinner. My daughter is going to hell. As Jas scooped up her other shoe, I felt her glance in my direction, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze. I had bent down close to the mess of shattered porcelain, far too busy trying to communicate telepathically with an inanimate object to acknowledge her. She stood there for another beat, and when I didn’t take the second chance, she sighed. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she made her way toward the door, pulling her shirt over her shoulders. As she walked out, her hand just barely grazed my mother’s. My mom flinched and retracted her hand as though she’d been burned, melodramatic as ever. I couldn’t help but notice that her face was still bright red, just like mine. I’d always hated how easily my face could turn on me, mottled with pink at the slightest emotional turmoil. I must have gotten that from her.
We stood there like that, my mother and I, unspeaking, separated by nothing more than a pile of broken Precious Moments. It felt as though an entire century passed before she spoke, though it must have been less than a minute, really. “How long,” she murmured, her voice shaky. I was finally forced to glance up from the figurine that had so captured my attention. Tears pushed their way past my eyelashes, rolling single file down my cheek as my eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Mom?” “How long has this been going on?” She was much more assured this time, ready to face my misdeeds. “Tell me, Eva. Tell me how long.” I wasn’t sure how she wanted me to answer. Did she want to know how long Jas had been here? How long I had been lying to her? How long I’d known I was gay? “I don’t know. Does it really matter?” I watched as my mother’s nostrils flared and the muscles in her clenched jaw twitched. She took three deliberate steps forward, moving directly into the spot of shattered ceramic on the floor, until she was standing within inches of my face. I shut my eyes tight, preparing for the sting of her fingers against my cheek. Instead, I heard a low growling noise escape her throat, and a warm, wet substance assaulted my face. I touched my hand to it, stunned, unwilling to believe what it was. As I opened my eyes, I wiped the saliva off with the sleeve of my shirt. She had already walked away.
We Beat With One Pulse
Andy Costa
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Queerstory Daughters
of
Bilitis
Founded in 1955 by lesbian couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was the first national lesbian organization. The organization’s name is a subtle tribute to French poet Pierre Louys’ “Songs of Bilitis” which describes Billitis as a queer woman on the Isle of Lesbos. In 1956, DOB started a monthly magazine titled The Ladder, the first nationally distributed magazine for queer women. The Ladder initially encouraged assimilation instead of revolution. However, lesbian-feminist leaders Rita Laporte, Barbara Grier and Barbara Gittings radicalized DOB and The Ladder in the mid-1960s to mobilize the LGBTQ+ movement. The radicalization of DOB divided its assimilationist members--and founders--from its newly revolutionary members. This divide, along with the prevalent homophobia within the feminist movement and the sexism within the LGBTQ+ movement, led to the eventual downfall of the national chapter of the DOB. The Ladder published its final issue in 1972 and the last chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis closed in 1995.
Pride Student Union Pride Student Union emerged in 1969 as the People’s Coalition For Gay Rights in response to the Stonewall Riots, known by many as the catalyst of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The People’s Coalition For Gay Rights changed its name several times throughout the 1970s-2000s, finally becoming Pride Student Union in 2005. Under its many names, Pride has advocated for LGBTQ+ rights on campus and in the local community for nearly 50 years. During those 50 years, Pride has convinced campus officials to include sexual orientation and gender identity in FSU’s non-discrimination policies, and won the fight for the creation of All Gender Restrooms on campus. Additionally, Pride has long worked with legislators to advance LGBTQ+ equality at the local, state and national level. Today, Pride continues working towards LGBTQ+ equality and provides programming for students to get involved with the LGBTQ+ community.
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Queer Me Out
Something unexpected I’ve realized since coming out is struggling with where I fit in the gay community. In all the years I remained a closeted gay man, I couldn’t wait to unleash this massive secret of mine and come out to the world. What I didn’t realize is what would happen once I self identified as gay towards other gay men. Gays judge, and I don’t just mean from head to toe! If you are too “masculine,” you are judged. If you are too “feminine,” you are judged. If you are an older gay, you are judged. See where I’m going? We are a community that has to fight for our rights, defend our love for one another, combat stereotypes and ignorance on a daily basis. It’s time that we stop judging each other, and start loving each other if we truly want to see continuous change within OUR community! -Alex Carmona
I think the most unexpected outcome of coming out is that every time I mention to someone that I am bisexual, my belief in myself is strengthened and my personal values are reaffirmed. Talking about it lessens the anxiety that plagued me during my earlier years as someone who grew up Catholic and in a right-wing household. I have a broader understanding of the fluid spectrums of gender and sexuality and a more personal understanding of struggle. I am able to be reassured because of myself as a whole, not in spite of my sexuality. I am more confident, more accepting, more loving, and much more proud of myself; and although I couldn’t have truly imagined these things years ago: I now know that I am normal and worthy. -KLD
My experience coming out was weird. I expected my mom to be more, I don’t know, weird about it. I accidentally came out to her in freshman year of high school, but since then we never talked about it. It’s odd since it only comes up once in a while. Since then I kinda make it a point to affirm to friends just how gay I am. Hella gay and not straight! Another thing: Ya never come out at once. With every new group of people that you encounter, you will have to come out again. It may not be as grand or accidental as it might’ve been the first time, or you might even find fun creative ways to say just how not straight you are like a subtle, “yea this is my [insert preferred gender here] friend” or even literal gay jokes! *laughs in gay* -Isis Moore-Williams
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Lavender List
Victoria Dinham wanted nothing more than to be a professional dancer and to recover from the trauma from the car crash that killed her father. Then she meets this girl (in her dreams) named Ashlinn, who helps her recover from her trauma, as well as figure out her sexuality: Victoria is gay and asexual. Victoria then needs Ashlinn’s help outside of the realm of dreams. But leaving the dream realm has consequences-- consequences for all of humanity.
Sixteen-year-old Simon Spier has a role in the school play, has friends he loves and trusts, has parents who love him and treat him well, but something still feels wrong. Simon is a closeted gay teen, unwilling to tell anyone about his true sexuality. When Martin Addison, the class clown, finds out Simon is chatting with a boy online, Simon is forced into an uncomfortable position: either reveal his sexuality to his entire school and the whole world, or convince his friend Abby Martin is the boy for her.
No one would suspect Kristin Lattimer wasn’t like everyone. A track scholarship in hurdling and a boyfriend she’s madly in love with seem like common high school problems. After Kristin tries to have sex with her boyfriend for the first time, things change. A quick visit to the doctor and she discovers she has androgen insensitivity syndrome, and that while she may appear female, her chromosomes mean that she’s intersex. When Kristin’s school finds out, she struggles to make sense of this new change in her identity with judgement all around her.
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National LGBTQ+ Resources: Health
resources: TransLine: Transgender Medical Consultation Service https://transline.zendesk.com/hc/en-us HIV/Testing Information: 1-800-232-4636 Mental Health Information: https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm
GLBT National Help Center:
National Hotline: 1-888-843-4564 Mon-Fri, 4pm-12am EST Sat, 12pm-5pm EST Youth Hotline: 1-800-246-PRIDE (7743) Mon-Fri, 4pm-12am EST Sat, 12pm-5pm EST Online Peer-Support Chat: https://www.glbthotline.org/peer-chat.html Mon-Fri, 4pm-12am EST Sat, 12pm-5pm EST
Crisis/Suicide
prevention:
Trevor Project: Call: 1-866-488-7386 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year Text: “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200 Mon-Fri, 3pm-10pm EST Chat: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help-now/
7 days a week, 3pm-10pm EST
Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860 7 days a week, 11am-5am
National Domestic Violence Hotline:
Call: 1-800-799-7233 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year Chat: http://www.thehotline.org/ 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year
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Joi Belle
The
artists
Sam Caldwell
Andy Costa
Carissa Garde
Zach Linge
Cam Gilbert
Lucy Miree
Miles Cox
Rose Helsinger
Melanie Raybon
Morgan Wegner
Allison Williams
Mat Wenzel
Not Pictured: Tiara Urena Mia S. Willis
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The Staff
Editors in Chief Niki Overley-Matheus Denzel Pierre
Design
Writers
Lead Designers: Niki Overley-Matheus Lead Writers: Pat Shafer Denzel Pierre Jay Daniels Jamie Todd Designers: Jay Daniels Mari Patrice Crawford Jamie Todd
Writers: Chelsea Magee Niki Overley-Matheus
Queer Me Out Zine Committee Heads of Committee: Pat Shafer Denzel Pierre Members:
Briana Campbell Mari Patrice Crawford Jay Daniels Kristian Diaz Lauren Haber Julia Hecht Devon Ledbetter Chelsea Magee Niki Overley-Matheus Jamie Todd
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Queer Me Out Queer Me Out Queer Me Out Queer Me Out The first issue