Issue 13: Queer AF by Yes, Ma'am

May 2019

Welcome to Yes, Maâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;am Issue 13: Queer AF!

Here you will find stories of support, strength, confusion, resistance, desire, heartbreak, curiosity, and love as our contributors navigate gender and sexuality. To all our Queer readers, you are beautiful keep being yourself it gets better we love you.

Cover art: Projected Body Memories by Hannah Jeremiah 2

Contributors Destiny “Desy” Whitaker...........................................4 Marne Meisel............................................................5 Elle........................................................................6-8 Victoria Garcia-Zapata......................................10-12 Dee Words.......................................................13, 20 Linda Mota........................................................14-15 Priscilla Luera....................................................16-18 Meeni Levi.............................................................19 Joyous Windrider Jiménez.....................................21 Michi Fink.........................................................22-23 Surya Shékhar Biswas......................................24-25 Don Mathis........................................................26-27 Zoe Shulman.....................................................28-29 Maiya Fong-Lee.....................................................30 Lauren Lansford.....................................................31 Moriah Benton...................................................32-33 Anonmom..........................................................34-35 Ernest D. Hernandez..............................................36 Eriko Hattori............................................................37 Carter Weeks Maddox......................................38-42 Irmak Canevi..........................................................43 David Zamora Casas........................................44-45 Julia Feliz...............................................................46 Abi Mallick..............................................................47 3

The Beauty in Both Certainty and Mystique Destiny “Desy” Whitaker What do you call a girl who likes girls? Or a boy who likes boys? Or those who like both and everyone in between? What do you call those who fall hard or those who don’t fall at all? Those who express their love as the vast majority does or those who do not partake at all? Or pronouns and identities that differ from Western society? Or those who know exactly who they are while others’ journey of self discovery is continuous? There is not one right answer or term to assign to any of these questions, only a beautiful spectrum full of both clarity and mystique. Even more so when things intersect. It is often fluid and rarely set in stone. Different is not wrong nor is it bad to acknowledge, or difference and the power in expression and representation. There is always pride and whether there be a storm of perfect weather, there will always be a rainbow of all hues to cherish and recall - we are “we,” uniquely lovely and that will never change at all.

Dear Ira, I have this hope that what i’m writing won’t make any sense by the time you read it, but i know that’s probably not going to happen. The world doesn’t change that fast, i think. So while we’ve got some time before you’re born, let’s talk about gender. Your mom and i decided long before you were born that we were going to try, as much as humanly possible, to avoid gendering you until you gendered yourself. A lot went into that. We named you Ira, a name we saw as gender-neutral, to allow you to go whatever way you wanted without having to construct a new identity so completely. We didn’t want you to later find your name and your gender pulling in terribly different directions. Then there were the clothes: it’s kind of ridiculous that things as functional as infant clothing can be so clearly gendered, but we avoided what was. So that meant no “Daddy’s Little Princess” or “Momma’s Boy,” and no tutus or footballs when you couldn’t possibly take an interest in either yet. We even went with a color palette that’s more greens and greys than blues or pinks, though blues and pinks are still in there. We were hoping to set you up so that a stranger couldn’t see you in your cart at the grocery store and immediately imagine that they know not only what’s in your diaper but who you are as a person. This isn’t easily understandable to most of the world, or even to most of your family. So many people find such glee in diving headfirst into stereotyping children before they’ve even left the womb, and those people don’t much appreciate having that taken away from them. They’ll ask, “have you found out what sex they are?” and then a minute later choke on being asked to consciously refer to you as “they.” I worry that once these family members see the mark on your birth certificate, it’s gonna be nothing but trucks and sports from them. Or they’ll change your diaper and suddenly decide you need a new pink wardrobe. We’ll figure this out, of course. We’ll know much better by the time you read this. In all honesty though, i do often wonder if we’re going through all this effort unnecessarily. These kind of things aren’t very easily 6

measured, but most estimates say less than 1 in 100 Americans is trans. I can’t even find any reasonable guess at how many, like me, have genders that dance somewhere between the poles but don’t quite feel home at “trans.” Whatever the numbers are, a reasonable person could expect that you’re going to grow up and find that your body lines up pretty well with who society expects you to be, with maybe a few minor variations. And that’d be fine! It’d be easy on you, easy on us, and easy on the family who can’t see anything between black and white. So why the hell are we bothering with all this? The most obvious (and i think unimpeachable) reason is that, with all the clearly gendered signals you’re going to pick up from the outside world, we don’t want to be one of the reasons a possibility is closed to you. You can be a roughhousing, adventurous little boy, just don’t think that’s somehow incompatible with a love for baking or cuddling small animals. Right now, most of liberal society seems like it’s only intellectually caught up with us on this point. They’ll say anyone can do anything, but even those open-minded people still have visceral, vestigial feelings about who ought to sew, who enjoys shooting guns, who likes ponies, and who likes dinosaurs. The inarguable truth though is that everybody loves dinosaurs, and every adult ought to be able to at least do some rudimentary sewing. We’re raising you genderneutral so you won’t have to figure out if something is for boys or for girls before you can figure out if you like it. Another reason is that both your parents got fucked by gender. Just like your mom’s round cheeks and the little lumps all over my body, this is something we kind of expect might get passed on. I knew something was wrong as a kid but couldn’t put words to it, so it got sublimated in weird ways. I told myself stories at night of being a shapeshifter. I played with hulking action figures like other boys, but my favorite was always the svelte little ninja turtle with the crop top. When my friend showed me an anime, i was fascinated with this purple-lipped, genital-less lizard person. 7

It took me well into my adolescence to even start playing with anything close to straying from the gender rut i was assigned, and each tiny step beyond it feels like such a relief and such a burden. In high school, my makeup was something to hide from my parents. When they paid me to stop wearing it, i just started carrying facial wipes to school to clean off before i got home. Later as a student teacher in college, i forgot to take it off once, and my mentor teacher quietly tried to have me removed from the program. By the time I went into social work, i started with my eyes matted from day one, but then i was cautioned that lipstick would be a step too far. Liberal society isn’t that liberal. I’ve wondered: if i’d gone up to everyone with who i was from the start, would that have changed things? Maybe people can accept someone who already is, not someone who’s becoming. Maybe i can’t even stand to see myself in that middle area, becoming. I will never look right to myself in a dress, however i feel. I see the stubble on my cheeks and close a door i desperately want to head right through. My impression of myself is too fixed now. I can imagine who i might’ve been, but getting there seems impossible now. So our gift to you is all the time you need to become who you’re going to be. Love, Dad

No one can define you but yourself. 9 <3 s00z

Growing Up Queer in Texas Victoria Garcia-Zapata

I remember as a young girl, I hated the color pink. I refused to wear it or decorate my room with it. I didn’t know why, I just knew I had a deep seeded desire to be different. What I realize now is that I just wasn’t like all the other girls. I never accepted gender roles being placed upon me. I wanted to lay brick, like my dad, read books and drive a big truck. I was always the first to raise my hand in the classroom, when the teacher would ask for two boys to volunteer to move desks around or lift and carry heavy items. I would argue that girls were just as capable. My dad never allowed me to lay brick alongside him, but that was only cause he was a perfectionist and takes his art very seriously. He let me be his helper instead, carry bricks or mix mortar. One of my favorite memories is that he would ask me to take the wheel every morning on the way to school, while he brushed his hair. He taught me how to drive when I was eleven. Once I had my first set of wheels, he taught me how to change the oil, check the fluids, basic maintenance. He taught me how to change a flat tire as well. My grandpa, his father, who was all about traditional gender roles, let me skin a deer after one of his hunting trips. He always let me shoot aluminum cans with his BB guns alongside my brother Alex and my boy cousins. I was not forced to wear pink or to play with dolls. In fact my nickname as a toddler was Tweety, (after the male Loony Tunes character Tweety Bird,) because of my scarce hair and big eyes. By the time I was five I knew I was attracted to women. My first celebrity crushes were Catherine Bach/ Daisy Duke and Linda Carter/ Wonder Woman. The year we lived in Victoria, TX, I was five. I remember kissing and holding hands with a girl my age named Leslie. She was my forbidden friend. In fact we got caught playing doctor and I never saw her again. At six, while in first grade, I became mesmerized with Lizette’s golden tanned legs. She was a cool, rebellious Eighth grader. She’d wear a black bra under her white uniform blouse, with rolled up sleeves. She wore her royal blue and green plaid skirt well above her 10

knees. I’d stare at her legs with lust every day as she kicked her legs up on our school bus ride home. Like many girls in the 80s I also became obsessed with Madonna. I didn’t just want to be like her, I wanted to kiss her. I made every effort to see every photo of her including those artsy nudes in Playboy’s September 1985 issue. Once I hit puberty I became infatuated with super model Paulina Porizkova, not just her looks but her brilliant mind as well. She was my dream girl. Yet all these thoughts I kept to myself. I met my first GBF Sevi my senior year. He radiated beauty and was comfortable enough to come out to me. I finally gave myself permission to openly find women attractive. Thing is I was conditioned by society, my family, my peers, and by my religion to be with only men. I didn’t have my first real girlfriend, along with my first orgasm until after I’d had my first child at age 20. I was in love with Mary Grace. I would have married her too, but I was too scared to lose my family. I thought I’d be estranged from my parents and siblings and couldn’t bear the thought. I was young and naive and let her go. Since she was serious and ready to settle down. She moved on rather quickly, which was understandable. I then had a string of girlfriends. I knew by then that I I preferred women over men. Thing is most of these women were young as I was and weren’t sure what they liked or who they were. It was frustrating that I finally felt like I knew what I wanted. Yet the ladies I’d chosen to be with were either still in love with their ex or weren’t quite ready to admit they were into women at least not openly. I ended up falling in love with a man named Adam. It was strange to me because at that point in my life I didn’t think I’d ever be with a man again. He opened up that possibility all over again. After he broke my heart, I realized that I could not despise men ever again. I could not hate a person based on their gender. I couldn’t lump men in the same category. I also realized that for my own health and well being, I couldn’t carry anymore hate in my heart, not for my uncle who sexually abused me, nor for my first husband who verbally, emotionally and physically abused me, not for anyone. I became very open and honest about my bi- sexuality. 11

Then when I least expected, I fell madly in love with and married a man who I honestly believed was going to make a great dad to my five year old son Paco, (now 24). This man accepted me for everything that I was, including being queer. Thing is I was back in the closet to his half of our family. His family didn’t know I was queer and wouldn’t have accepted me as queer. (They never accepted me in the first place. So what did it matter? I never considered that back then). That is all in my past now. It’s been over two years now that I broke free of what became an abusive marriage. I have my two beautiful teenagers, Aléxandra and Jimmy, as the best miracles to survive that unholy union. I always told them while growing up, “When your dad dies, if I ever marry again, I’m going to marry a woman.” Even though he is not physically dead, he is metaphorically dead in my heart. My love for him is gone. I have purged the pain in large doses. I am slowly rediscovering my own happiness in my own way. Being 100% out and proud makes me happy. I no longer hate the color pink. In fact, I have an affinity for it since I’ve fully accepted my queerness. I was reintroduced to the color pink by one of my most influential mentors, Sandra Cisneros. She described it as a merging of a woman’s period blood and Mother’s milk, the red and white mixing to create the color pink. She also said that in color therapy, pink was associated with happiness. As a then 20 yr old young woman I began to recognize that the hotter the pink, the happier it made me. In fact fuchsia is one of my favorite colors now. Cobalt blue remains my favorite color to this day, but pink, pink makes me happy. Being queer makes me happy!

in this skin Thumbs and fingers roll over folds of soft skin, Tracing contours, gripping bits and pieces, clutching to hold onto the last of reality slipping away. I cannot hide this anymore: your love, your touch, You. But you, you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if the label fits-all you know is that you feel something and you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really know what that is. And all I know is that nothing feels like you touching me or me touching you and I wish you felt as comfortable as I feel in this skin.

Dee Words

Tears For Queers Priscilla Luera Pt. I I woke up to my mom yelling “ew, xochi is bleeding lock her up before all the male dogs try and rape her Que cochina, sangrando everywhere Is that what you like? No me digas que te gusta tocar Bloody, dirty vaginas Que asco. I already told you what you need is Jesus Ándale Flip your hat around Actually just take it off Go to your room and put on makeup I bought you a new dress, How come you haven’t tried it on? Let me set you up with a nice boy from church Because sodomy is an abomination It’s not that I hate you, only the sin you’ve become Ya te dije que no eres un vato, mija I’m not going to let a diamond turn to dust” Pt. II Another time my mom compared being gay to having sex with my dad I threw a fork across the room and slammed the door I remembered why I hated coming home Hands behind my head, I looked up at the stars and said, I know who I Am And I don’t wish i were dead, At least not anymore... And I this is what I said, I don’t give a fuck about your god They made me this way So now it’s your problem Just let me run away, 16

Run away from your judgment and lies It hurts that you’re my own mother; But sometimes you have to kill your own family to get peace of mind. You say god has a purpose You say god has a plan But maybe god is zero and I am infinite Have you ever thought of that? It took me five years to validate the girl in the mirror Now I wake up everyday saying your the best perSUN You say Jesus hates the sin but loves the sinner Well guess what? I love pu$$y and god I do love sinning Because I’m queer til I die Stop telling me how to live my life Maybe one day these tears will dry Because I’m queer til I die Pt. III And when the tears keep pouring because I realized my mother’s generational trauma mapped out the blueprint to all my other relationships involving women I systematically found myself in another girls’ closets, Whispering the courage for them to come out, Wishing they didn’t have boyfriends, And accepted a role as their secret part-time lover, Because all I wanted was my mother’s love. Even though a man initially instilled the hate in my mom, Pretending to be queer is also a homophobic fear, Just be true to yourself and time will tell And that’s when I could finally accept myself. Despite my mother’s tears, I proudly button up my polos to the top, Show off my hairy legs And got a short haircut on the day of pride To finally reflect who I truly was on the inside 17

Pt. IV for all the queers who have shed a tear bc ppl judge you, make fun of you, enduring constant micro aggressions and violence daily. familia harassing you about your novia/novio knowing you gay, so you can stay hidden bc if you’re found you fear them shutting you out, quite personally I’m afraid to wear this tear shirt without getting kicked out. to all my non binaries who don’t fit the gender norm, called an ugly butch one day but when you femme presenting make them fuckbois do a double take just to tell em you ain’t straight. All my trans, lgbtqia plus who are looking for acceptance in the mirror. This is for you. From the unconditional love in my heart to the tears i wipe off your cheek. To all my freaks. may your tears fill up your cup so you can see the glass half full and know that ppl love you. Take off your mask and let your colors shine through. Tears for Queers, there’s a rainbow waiting for you.

Female blackbirds Aren’t black at all And I look more like my mother Than my father Although I share my sister’s voice If we both close our eyes A female blackbird Tells me it is a black bird And I believe it And we both close our eyes A female blackbird Perches on my sister’s shoulder And screams so loudly I don’t recognize her I can call myself a blackbird But cannot fly Even if you believe i If I close my eyes and scream Maybe I won’t Recognize myself Meeni Levi

sanctified. you ask, â&#x20AC;&#x153;what is closer to god than a face buried deep into the insides of woman, from which sprung eternal life? what is more hallowed than our vulnerability, captured in the moments of backs arched high as the heavens above?â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; oh lord forgive us, if this is sacrilegious, this speaking in tongues of gentles circles and varying pressures, this prayer that it never ends, and our faith in the strength of our two hearts, the power of our touch, and the blessing of our love.

Dee Words

Queer Michi Fink I do not fit into societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s box I do not fit into any box I roam free I am to be seen but not to stand out I am Queer Like the River is water Like the Wind is air Like the Sun is fire Queer is my element, not my entirety When I melt into another womyns mouth, I am Queer When I am emotionally, physically, spiritually connected to another womyns being, I am Queer When another womyns body and I are so close that we are not against but with, become each other, we are Queer Queer is not a scientific term Queer is not a governmental term Queer is our identity that we claim for ourselves that one day will be all of those things knowing we made it, this will always be our identity and we are making it Queers, we have made it! Look around, we are existing We just got to keep knowing that we are not a belief, we are a truth This is beyond believing 22

Rights are not to be seen as sexuality Rights are to be seen by all That is real Equality Queer is in my pores Queer is my hair The wind tells me that I am true I am not the gender that is assigned by another I am who I say I am from who I feel I am from who I know I am Queer is who one is There is no look There is no rules Queer is an identity about not structuring yrself to live up to any image or closed box labels Homosexual or straight Lady or man Queer for some is neither of anything and or both of everything It is not a just It is not a nothing It is different from Queer to Queer And can change from time to time Queer is my identity Queer is my core I am not in a box I roam free The Earth is me I am Queer

Silent Sounds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; by Don Mathis The sound of fog drifting across the bar sometime after midnight. The sound of a glance with a hint of a smile off to my right. The sound of bourbon in a water glass with a cube of ice. The sound of hope mixed with uncertainty and a touch of promise. The sound of a table as space grows between it and a chair. The sound of two people standing and a departure into the late night air. The sound of keys touching the door of a reliable car.

The sound of anticipation, the sound of the sky, the moon, my lucky star. The sound of a carpeted stair unhurriedly awaiting steps of four anxious feet. The sound of breathing, deafened by the sound of someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heartbeat. The sound of a lightbulb as it becomes dark, the sound of a sigh. The sound of clothes falling to the floor, the sound of a closing eye. The sound of a mouth as it opens to another. The sound of a kiss. The sound of arms and legs akimbo. The sound of bliss.

Real Love & All the Other Things I Haven’t Found Yet Maiya Fong-Lee She graced the room with a light that dimmed the sun. I, naively, watched and waited until she was no more. Why do we wait until it’s too late? Don’t we know our whole lives are made up of encounters? ...Even the bad ones? I do not wish to see “eye to eye”. I wish to see soul to soul. This is what I would’ve told you. That my body is not what makes me. I am not bound by what you see, rather by what I make you feel. I wanted you to know this, but now I fear it’s too late.

HADAL ZONE Lauren Lansford

He told me sometimes when boys urinate there is â&#x20AC;&#x153;splashbackâ&#x20AC;? and they walk around knowing the punishing and obvious dampness on their knees was not spilled in conviviality, but rather an act of blatant carelessness, of forgetting to pay attention to things that support you. Meanwhile she, cranewings wide: an oil slick capping deep, upwelling currents burns away in cleanup; exposing my surface to vacuous sky. But still I have trenches unfathomable to man.

My 11-year old daughter once asked me how she would know whether she was straight or gay because she thought so many of her friends were pretty -- she loved her friends, but she especially loved one in particular. Instead of pulling something out of a hat, I asked her if it mattered to her whether she was one or the other as long as she loved and was loved and was happy. She asked me to be serious. So, I said, seriously, only she had the answer to her question. Only she could answer based on her wants and that she was going to go through so many changes in her life maybe there would be more than one answer. She about spit at me. She was being called “Gay” and “Dyke.” She was not so much worried about what others thought (which I could tell was a lie), but more importantly, she was afraid of losing her special friend because of what was being said about her. Told her that some people suck and learn to hate from home. She asked if we should beat them up? I told her if we could beat the hate out of people then all of us would have baseball bats. I told her that there was a chance that hate could hurt her friendship and she wept.

I held her tight - not letting her go while she cried her angry tears and emptied out the fears. When she was seventeen she announced, to me, that she was definitely straight, as if I had been waiting six-years for her answer: I hugged her and told her I loved her and that it was great. I did not ask how she came to find her answer. Then she asked me if I were a lesbian because I hated men and many of my close, beloved friends are not straight. I asked her if me being gay would change the way she loves me. She said, “No. I love you Momma, I always will no matter what.” “Good,” I replied. “But are you?” “No. I thought about it. Tried it… once or twice, but if I had not opened my heart, then I would not have ever known myself.” She hugged me as if she would never let me go.

-Anonmom

Insufficient Data Sometimes I wonder if my uncle hadn’t molested me would I think differently about men. If my father hadn’t ravaged the life, the hope, the spark out of my mother; if my brother “a Junior” hadn’t belittled me “the nothing,” would I be able to rest my love, my emotions anywhere other than the embrace of a woman. As a man, I ask. As a child I dreamed of a wedding: what flowers I’d like, where to honey moon, what dress and how she might wear her hair, who to invite. As a youth I was jealous that women had all the best clothes, the pretty clothes. Why couldn’t I be flowing? Why couldn’t I wear Spring polka dots dancing in the breeze? My best bet- a fancy tie and dress slacks. As an adult the preacher said “men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti” in that with women everything is connected. I knew, I knew...I was so fettuccini, boxy on the outside but still everything was connected. However, I never felt sexual about a man. I do recognize beauty where it presents in any gender and have felt deep admiration such that I question myself further but no...never sex. Well, there was a time I asked a waiter if I could kiss his cheek. Unfortunately, I was in a state of psychosis. This leads me to further questioning. Is there another dimension to myself locked away? Is there something blocked or blacked out, something that my consciousness cannot bare to remember or dare to tap in to? Is there a place for me in this world...in anybody else’s? I know that the greater part of me longs to nurture rather than initiate. I know that through intuition I develop solutions that only science can explain. I know that I connect to the world through empathy. Not so much like a man. But this is an inquiry...because the answers I already have are insufficient. Ernest D. Hernandez 36

an olfactive history of myself at 30 to check in with when i’m 60 a visit to grandma’s house when i was a kid meant a self-mandated covert operation: first i’d wait until the adults got bundled in conversation, then i’d sneak into her room and douse myself with the clinique aromatics elixir she kept on her vanity before returning to the group and acting like i’d never even left. i thought none of them knew i did it, but in hindsight there’s no way they couldn’t have known—unless they couldn’t smell, which i know isn’t the case. sat on a base of smoky patchouli and vetiver and oakmoss, bodied with indolic jasmine and honeyed, lemony rose and minty-green verbena, crowned with the most radiant synthetic aldehydes of any perfume outside of chanel no5, aromatics elixir is a divisive, screeching chypre that demands attention. when estèe lauder launched it in 1975, she marketed it as a sort of proto-aromatherapy and touted it as a natural (lol) perfume as a means of capitalizing on the olfactive desires of aging hippies who used patchouli oil to cover the dank smell of cheap, seedy pot that soaked into their clothes and hair and avocado green-carpeted homes and who, now in their late 20s and early 30s and armed with disposable income from predictable office jobs, could afford a luxury self-care product like perfume. especially then, before inky, radiant oakmoss was mostly regulated out of the market and public spaces were so full of cigarette smoke you’d need a perfume that yells to be heard at all, just one spray of the stuff could fog up an entire city block. by the cigaretteless mid-90s, when i was stealing spritzes, its formula wasn’t quite as strong anymore, but no iteration of aromatics elixir has ever not been loud. it’s an old broad in a bottle. my parents probably gagged smelling me on the car rides back home during those humid east texas summers, but they never clocked me for it. at least not verbally. i thought i was sneaky when i wore mom’s halston, too—but again, they had to have known. halston, built on a synthetic molecule called ISO E Super that practically shoots off the skin of (but, illogically, can barely be detected by) its wearer, was designed to be applied liberally by the kind of glamorous woman with big hair who wore sequined gowns and frequented studio 54 and wanted to be seen. maybe i wore mom’s halston back then because i wanted to be seen. still, my parents never said anything about it. i don’t know why they let me do this but they did. my other grandmother must have known i liked fragrances—and maybe (i’ve wondered if she was conscious of this) she wanted to set me str8. for my birthday when i couldn’t have been anymore than 10 or 11, she gave me a bottle of nautica, one of many 90s- era colognes for men structured around a garish synthetic molecule called calone that’s responsible for

the sanitized stainless steel texture and watery citrus-melon smell of your least favorite, least adventuresome ex-boyfriend. it was also loud but i hated it. i remember pretending i needed to poop (so i could lock the bathroom door) and spraying it into the toilet until i counted to 100, then flushing it away. they must have smelled that, too. i apologize. the shit was—is—noxious. the first person to ever catch me stealing perfume was my older cousin, who asked if i liked the clinique happy she smelled on me. i was mortified but she laughed and agreed—it was good stuff. she also wore GAP grass, which she kept in her jeep and would let me use when she took me to the movies or the mall. by then i’d started wearing AXE, abercrombie fierce and other early 2000s-era products targeted at teenage boys that i wouldn’t put on my body now if you paid me but that, then, allowed me to pass at school. in those years, i’d only steal mom’s halston at night, when going to my room to sniff my arm meant still being able to enjoy it without fear of being called a fag for doing so. clinique released a version of happy for men in 1999, and my cousin gave me a bottle of it for christmas. it became a fine, happy medium for the time being. i nursed it, slowly, throughout junior high and high school. i brought the final dregs of that bottle with me when i moved to college, and within the first week of adult freedom there i bought my first bottle of halston (i’m now on my fourth) with the money i’d made from working at jason’s deli and selling weed and percocet over the summer. the money ran out within a few months and so did the halston. eventually, so did the happy. then, partially out of necessity (no money) and partially because i began taking myself very seriously—something most every english student does, i think, to regrettable levels—i became one of those hippies who wouldn’t wear anything but health food store-bought patchouli essential oil. i also began to enjoy the physical sensations my body could offer, became a slut and, occasionally, would sell myself for sex to men who’d request i didn’t even wear deodorant when we hooked up. i’d oblige because i was getting paid. then i internalized it. then i didn’t wear any fragrance for a few years.

eventually, maybe by 21 or so, i added lavender and texas cedarwood essentials to my rotation. at that point i was so convinced gay men shouldn’t and didn’t wear fragrance —because we revel in ourselves and don’t cover our bodies up, especially with womanly things like perfume because we’re men—that i’d barely apply a drop without feeling self-conscious. scent retained its private nature and became something i only enjoyed when i was 39

alone. and even then, only when shame-riddled and insecure and looking for myself. i only let myself enjoy it just so much, then i was back on the sexual marketplace, scentless except for the catpiss-and-sautéed-onion stink of my pits. on a bike ride with a short-term boyfriend during a balmy central texas spring’s cedar bloom during one of those years, when i was in grad school, wearing the tiniest bit of lavender oil, i noticed that lavender and cedar, together, smell like fruit loops. i got a job at a software firm after grad school and started wearing nice shoes i had cut just for my small feet from a small cobbler in portugal and eventually returned to smell when i added store-bought orange and vetiver essential oils to my medicine cabinet. i didn’t use them on my skin much. mostly, i stayed fragrance-less and burned a lot of incense and poured drops of the essentials into an air diffuser. a few years into the job i bought a bottle of lalique’s cheap (yet incredible) encre noire. it’s a masterful office- and conference hall-friendly cypress-and-vetiver bomb that smells as crisp and clean as a starched oxford shirt and couldn’t offend anyone if it tried. when i was 25 i met someone who changed the course of my life. there’s no use going into details about him, as he doesn’t deserve the narrative, but it’s important to know i moved to florida to be with him and it didn’t work out. lol. it’s also important to know he was the first gay man—and indeed, the first man—i ever knew who wore perfume, too. he loved it. he wore aveda’s tragically discontinued yatra, which smells the way a rose would smell if a rose were a gong, and comme des garçons kyoto, a woody-ambery incense with immortelle flower and coffee bean that now just smells like a trigger. we first connected over sex in a hotel room and eventually we connected over perfume. we bought the web property for cosmia.com and said we’d start our own line. one of his friends— patrick—had just started a line and was finding moderate success at it. he had a feature (looking back, was it an advertorial? i’m not sure) in vogue. if patrick could do it, we could do it. but we didn’t work out. neither did cosmia. he left his perfumes at my house: prada infusion d’vetiver, yatra, kyoto. i tried wearing kyoto as exposure therapy for about a year. for a moment i was able to do it without getting the spins. then the bottle ran out. two years or so passed. a few months ago, i ordered a sample of it to see if the effect had worn off. i watered the papers at my desk the whole day i wore it and that night i poured the remaining half-milliliter left in the sample vial into the

toilet and flushed it. cosmia.com lapsed. twice. then a third time. the april before last when i got the latest notification email about renewing the URL ownership, i asked him if he still wanted to make a perfume line together. i eventually put the URL up for auction and sold it. the easy answer was no. the harder answer, the one i gave myself, was to keep going. i was in florida and i was alone. but it had taken me almost 30 years to be okay with loving perfume and to find love with someone else who did and to become someone who wears perfume and loves it. eventually, perfume taught me that it was okay to be noticed. before i was gay, before i knew that i was gay, before i was called gay, i loved perfume. my first love—that thing i sought out from the get-go and eventually suppressed in order to get by, and then learned i need to admit i love if i’m to be true to myself—has always been, will always be, perfume. i began sourcing materials and learning about perfume on my own. it was a way to take up all the alone time. i started collecting real essential oils—not the store-bought 4% dilutions cut with jojoba i’d been buying— from sri lanka and iran and morocco and spain and italy and argentina and cambodia and elsewhere. i learned about synthetics and how they’re safer because they pose fewer allergenic risks, about how they’re less environmentally taxing because they can be synthesized in labs versus countless hectares, about how perfume for the masses only came into being because of synthetics, about how perfume relies on the careful balance of naturals and synthetics in order to sing. natural oils—the good kind, the expensive ones perfumers source from little-heard-of countries that survive, still, in large part because of their production of pure essential oils, and not the diluted crap you can buy at a store but the ones those stores mix with jojoba and olive oil—on their own smell flat. 100% distilled bulgarian rose oil smells like pickles. add a drop of the molecules called damascone beta and linalool with a touch of lemon essential oil to it, and that’s when it actually begins to smell like a living rose in the flesh. the distillation process kills the real-life smell. rose oil needs synthetics and other essentials to bring it back to life. from an olfactive standpoint, outside of its shrub, rose has to be first degraded and then added to before it can be made real. i collected almost 180 materials. in my little house where i live alone in florida, in my little second bedroom i started calling my studio, i started

making my own perfume. it’s been about a year and a half since i started. i’ve got three in the works that i’m hoping to launch as my own line soon. my parents visited me in florida for the first time in three years a few weeks ago, and they sat by me in my studio and directed me as i made perfumes for them. dad wanted something that smells like hay and a barbecue pit, so i used a hay essential from france with some bitter green and ozonic synthetics to achieve the first part of his ask, and benzoin, coffee bean, birch tar and an overdose of poivrol—a synthetic that in low- dosage use smells like campfire—to achieve the second. he rubbed it into his wrists and sprayed it on his neck and shirt and said he smelled like a smokin’ pork butt and that if he could smell like smokin’ pork butt all day, he’d be happy. mom wanted something that smells light and fresh and floral but not too floral, mostly just clean. i overshot her ask on purpose. she’s worn estèe lauder pleasures—a white musk fragrance with a crown of pink pepper that basically smells like nothing after 10 minutes of wear—for about a decade now. i know because i pay attention to these things. when i visit home for the holidays, i still sneak into her bathroom and steal her perfume. the perfume i blended for her rests on ISO E Super and another synthetic called hedoine and egyptian carnation and ylang-ylang and a single drop of oakmoss (something i can still use because i’m not in the market yet) with an accord—a blend of multiple materials that smell like something else altogether, aesthetically akin to a chord in music, the cedar-lavender fruit loop mix—i’d been working on that approximates the smell of a new leather purse. mom sprayed the blend onto her wrist and sniffed it. the first thing she said was “this smells like grandma’s aromatics, but from a distance.” she smelled it again. “halston?” then she looked up from her wrist and said something else, something i realize now i’ve been waiting my whole life to hear. she said “it smells like you.”

Carter Weeks Maddox

A Valentine to a demi-god -- Poem for La Chicanidad David Zamora Casas

Love is Love ... and sometimes life CAN SOMETIMES BE hell: Burning in the fires of hell would be worth my time and yours IF you were the Perfect Lover and I was THE DEVIL himself, But I’m NOT. I’ve had some hot times, SSZZZZZZELLING, SCORCHING Hot, Nuclear Meltdown Hot times. I’LL fight FOR LOVE! Hell, yeah! I’ll fight the BIG CHINGASOS, claw, scratch and protest to acquire our basic human rights: THE RIGHT TO LOVE. THE RIGHT TO MARRY. Spiritual Unions between Same Sex couples have existed UNDERNEATH invisible veils AND IN PLAIN SIGHT FOREVER. two human beings nurturing and emotionally supporting each other with MIND AND soul exploding into an organic, cosmic connection. Non-binary LIP locked on Non-binary LIP --Mouth LOVINGLY On MOUTH. Two pounding, beating hearts exploding INTO ONE. EMOTIONAL MAGNETIC PULL drawing two LIVES to one existence. JEZZZUS loves YOU AND Jesus LOVES ME, TOO. AND That Is Cool BUT WHAT could be cooler than Jezzzus? The Virgen of Guadalupe, OF COURSE, SHE, COATLICUE, TONANTZIN, SHIVA, PACHAMAMA COULD BE COOLER. LA VIRGEN MORENA IS BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE LA VIRGEN MORENA REFLECTS the INTENSITY of OUR Culture and traditions. SHE OF THE SERPENT SKIRT From the Milky Way IS LOVE. Being in love would be worth my time if there was a perfect Lover. A PASSIONATE PHANTOM STRONG ENOUGH TO BREAK A BED IN TWO DURING AN INTIMATE NIGHT OF SWEAT AND SALIVA: SCHOLARLY-GODDESS, 44

BELOVED TORMENTOR, BOW-TIE-WEARING BUTCH, CULTURAL WORKER OF MEXICAN ORIGIN, PUERTO RICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER any combination of two genderQueer people would be delicious like a popular dish from a favorite Vietnamese restaurant. ONE DAY en San Antonio, the cultural worker of Mexican Origin was overheard saying “NEVER marry a Puerto Rican Portrait Painter.” I WISH I would have been with them in New York City to WITNESS the matrimony of two Men and rejoice as I heard the words “Rolando, you may now kiss Angel, YOU may Now Kiss YOUR SPOUSE” and to watch the Mexican American cultural worker kiss his PUERTO RICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER as husband and husband. YOU may NOW Kiss the Lovely Joanne, Maria Salazar! Yes, “Boycott Arizona!” BRAD, YOU MAY NOW KISS MIKE. Anel OF THE FLOWERS, kiss THE petals of your sweet blossoming Erica. u may now kiss ur spouse Tomás Ybarra Frausto, kiss your life-long partner, Dudley Brooks, with the lips of Eternity. 50+ years of commitment, sex and romance tinting your dark pubic hair gray, turning it silver in the glory of your golden years. LONG LIVE LOVE! ¡Que Viva el Amor! Love IS Love Amor de Siempre nosotros los casamos si queremos. We have the Right to Marry. To Love. SPIRITUAL UNIONS BY SAME SEX GENDER QUEER COUPLES HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME And little by little, IN GARGANTUAN STRIDES, we lift the veils. LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE. 45

A Sea of Queerness by Julia Feliz

My mind is currently submerged in a sea of queerness filled with internal calm that, like a tropical hurricane that arises at any moment over the reef, may give rise to raging waves of sorrow for an internalized denial forced into my being by culture and society. I sometimes say that I am lost at sea, but if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m honest, mermaids, especially those born from the ocean, could never get lost where they were meant to find themselves. I have never felt so free to fully admit loud and proud that queerness is part of me and always has been. I have found myself in the sea of queerness that I started out feeling I was lost in. So many years lost in the process of self-discovery? No, actually, so much acquired, such as the strength to stand proudly and say that even though I only just spoke those words out loud...even though I have only come to terms with what society shamed me into hiding for more than half my life, I have always been queer - queer AF.