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Insecure

Cold always found its way—creeping up through a hairline crack, a splintered board; coursing silently as it filled the space—curling around my breath, expulsed from dreamscapes, as the frayed comforter rose and fell.

Overhead, the handmade address sign from my grandparents’ house swung slightly as another lodger vacated in the quiet early morning hours, their rig rumbling over dusty gravel and worn speed bumps, vibrating me awake.

Fully emerged from my blanketed cocoon, I descended from the bunk and felt the Reflectix panels’ outfacing sides against the windows—to assess the angle of the warming sun and decide if it was time to remove the panels and switch off the heater, to capitalize on solar gain.

Outside, as another rig drove by, I examined the leavings of my carefully tended tomato plants: their late fruit dangling, stems and leaves with chlorophyll-exploded veins—the listing masses liquefied in the rising sun. I wrested away the tomatoes and tossed them into a small bowl. Later, I’d crack open the green skins, scoop out the seeds, and dry them for next year’s planting. Though late this year, the fruit would enable me to try again under a different sun.

Feral cats skittered along the coyote fence’s uneven top, leering down as I nudged wind-jostled insulation board back into place along Bertie’s underside. I imagined if I looked underneath, I’d find a number of critters hunkered down there, escaping the morning’s below freezing temperatures.

Ensnared within the same crucible, we creatures had a way of striking an amenable symbiosis.  

***

Shattered eggshells lay in the sink next to a weeping nectarine pit as the heater sputtered welcoming warmth—animating the leaves of the avocado tree leaning in its pot atop the table. JoJo draped herself over the dinette bench’s cushioned back and dozed into the morning sun spilling through the windows. I pulled from my steaming mug of tea, reviewed my weekend to-do list, and eyed the pair of vent caps I had to replace.  

Scaling the ladder to the roof, I slung my supplies upward as my new neighbor tottered behind his rig. A few rungs from the top, I swiveled my head as he hollered up.

“SECURE YOURSELF!”

I smiled quizzically and kept going, at which point he yelled again, revealing from his pant pocket a gleaming pistol—aiming it at the ground. With just enough time to duck haphazardly behind my roof-mounted storage unit, I flinched as the bullet seared into leaf-littered earth. Soon thereafter, as I sealed a vent flange, he staggered drunkenly to the same spot and took a piss, as if to acknowledge a job well done. 

***

As I rounded the bend where asphalt gave way to gravel, I shifted the grocery bag to my other shoulder and eyed a familiar landmark. Brittle plastic sheeting flapped against the trolley’s split, calving side panels—translucent fragments glittering in the beating sun against the rusting behemoth. Ahead, a freed sheet cartwheeled across the gravel road; bits and pieces catapulted into the surrounding bramble and lay still: inviting decay in an apocalyptic nightmarescape, our waking reality.

I nudged open the rusted chain-link gate leading into the park, and noticed one of the groundskeepers mending a section of the coyote fence. I looked around at the barren landscape and smiled to myself.

Years from now, as economies collapse and governments fracture, we’ll laugh at such absurd things as fences. Because nothing can keep out the inevitable. 

Water seeps through, warping; the sun bakes, bending. And, ultimately, time splinters each of us: bones fragmenting into earth, toiled up by worms, arachnids—keepers of the dead. 

Our sense of security: an insidious ruse.

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Burning Stars

Oil lamps glowed beneath creaking branches, and shadows danced across the Avion’s dented metallic shell.

Re-packing their bowls, the men laughed into the darkness—each taking a heavy pull, blowing smoke into the star-studded sky. One ruminated about environmental collapse and AI takeover, as the other quietly considered the works of Marx and opined about the ease with which he could put a bullet through his head: both lost in thought, their whispers fading into the night.

Rabbits flattened themselves beneath towering junipers, and three kittens scurried through a gap in the fence line. Overhead, resident owls debuted beneath a new moon.

***

A large watermelon wedge sweated across the countertop as JoJo clamored atop the dinette for an unobstructed view. I drove the cold spoon down through the peak, the juice spritzing nearby canisters. With the night’s heat settled fully, the fruit’s cool, smooth body dissolved across my tongue as sweat beaded along my brow.

JoJo set to her bowl in ravenous fashion, sourcing the translucent blob I plunked amid her kibble. Lights twinkled along the turquoise cabinet fronts, an ethereal haze illuminating my bed. A network of fans sputtered loyally—churning the heat upward, out through the roof vents.

Outside, the occasional cloud fractured the moonlight, allowing the night to swallow up everything within view; and out from it, nocturnal creatures laid claim to their domain.

***

My fingers traced constellations across his back, and glided over the gentle twists of muscled flesh. His eyes bored into mine; the subtle curves around his mouth testaments to deep, expulsed laughter.

There I lay, unconvinced that I wasn’t dreaming—feeling an eruptive, welcomed mental shift: an enlivening jolt.

I smiled and buried my face into his—recognizing that the unexpected could still happen beneath the same stars that bore witness to life and death and heartache and resurrection as they burned into oblivion.

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Expect Rain

Heat from the asphalt curled over my worn sandals as rain spritzed my face and I sidestepped a disintegrating Vienna sausage. Overhead, lightning pulsed inside swollen clouds. Cars screamed down the road, and buses eased up to stops, their worn brakes shrieking—emptying weary passengers with laden bags and drooping eyelids.

I reached up to my earphones and turned up the volume. The world was too loud.

With my hand shoved into a butter-stained bakery bag, my fingers dissected fresh brownies—the melted chocolate caking beneath my nails as I smashed the chunks into my mouth.

The deluge intensified.

Face uplifted, I stopped mid-stride. I could feel the tears coming, roiling up from my gut; I swallowed halfheartedly.

Lean into it.

***

On the patio, soil-bloated canvas planters listed from the intense sun, their green charges an oasis amid the surrounding, heat-rippling gravel and asphalt.

Cracked cherry gold tomatoes dripped from mature vines clinging to Bertie’s roof ladder—the plant’s generic green container nudged by dry, infrequent wind as flies danced across the caving fruit. Pepper plants sprinkled amongst purple delphinium bowed to the heat as I emptied gallons of yellow-tinged water around their bases—corroded pipe flecks swirling at the bottom of the jug. Lavender erupted upward from a misshapen terra cotta pot, and delicate yellow flowers bloomed along the cucumber and Hillbilly tomato stems; nearby, garlic cloves from Seattle resurged: fresh green strands erected sentry-like.

Gnats hovered around my homemade compost bin, converging as I tipped the lid and turned the moist, heated matter—worms wriggling beneath rotting nectarine pits and shattered eggshells.

Hours before, after a Tinder match ghosted me, my new-old car’s Check Engine light flickered on as my temporary tag fluttered in the breeze—reminding me that I was still very much a visitor.

The desert often takes more than it replenishes.

***

Inside Bertie, fans sputtered and JoJo heaved against my side, collapsing into me with labored pants and darting whale-eyes.

She’d yet to acclimate to evening storms.

I rubbed between her ears until her breaths slowed, her tongue inching out: a harbinger of reserved contentment.

Sliding open the dinette window, I exhaled into the curtain-rustling breeze, as the wet air wicked through my curls.

This is a hard, beautiful place.

With my mind far afield, considering all the sudden shifts, I let my eyes swim in the sky’s pink hues as they melted into darkening gray—birthing a storm with symphonic accompaniment.

Punctuated pops.

Carousing cracks.

Jubilant rolls of distant thunder: an expectation of rain.

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departure

The soil was red, thick – bloody. I found myself sinking into it; my heels dipping below the surface – balance thrown, I caught myself before tumbling headlong into the arroyo. With lips parched, breaking open, I flared my nostrils: raw, scarlet rims.

Here, I felt different – life tugging the corners of my eyes, hanging heavy in the heat, as the arid wind contoured my forehead: rippling, wrinkling waves undulating up into my bouncy, graying flop of curls.

Blues and pinks and deep, primal hues ripped across the sky and into my heart – reminding me to look up at the wide-open world as another day decayed and left with grace, the bursting stars emerging as perennial mourners.

For weeks, I’d felt like a worm slopping onto a heated sidewalk: slowly tanning, draining – feeling the immediacy of life-changing context, recognizing how quickly an untimely end can dawn.

Gravel crunched underfoot as I approached my tiny home, slipping off my mud-caked sandals and tossing them into the door-side bin. I heaved the woven bag from my shoulder onto the counter and caught rogue vegetables as they tumbled out – corralling them into misshapen, chipped earthen bowls. Scanning the compact kitchen, my gaze tripped over worn, hardy containers dotting the scuffed counter top.

The time for fragile, delicate things had passed.

***

“She either takes you in or spits you out,” Joy, my Lyft driver, said authoritatively, glancing back into the rear-view. “And if she takes you in, we call it the Land of Entrapment. Because she’ll always pull you back no matter where you go. So I’d say if you found a job and a place to live, she’s got you.”

Nudging her purple-threaded woven hat, she mused about how she’d left New Mexico years ago and then, one day, found herself driving back.

Sun beamed through the dirt-speckled windshield, warming my face as I took a deep breath and Joy steered to the curb.

“Here we are.”

We pulled up to a stucco building with weathered, sagging blue corbels – the façade cracked but strong.

“And here’s to the first day,” I chuckled anxiously.

“Good luck. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again. This is a small town.”

I waved Joy on, pushed back my shoulders and stepped toward a new beginning – a destabilizing departure.

***

Weeks prior in Seattle, the apartment door slammed louder than I expected – echoing back into the emptiness of the place I’d called home, the keys resting on the counter top. With that, the closest thing to a home I had was Bertie – a rusty, aged RV sitting in a parking lot a city away.

My bus passed by JoJo’s boarding facility and hurtled toward the light rail.

“Wish me luck, sweet baby bean,” I murmured, imagining JoJo inside – curled ball-like atop her bed, wondering what in the hell was happening.

Shortly thereafter, as the rail car door slid shut, I watched graffiti-adorned warehouses whiz by – the airport’s control towers rising in the distance. My heart raced as I shifted my backpack into my lap, double-checking that I had everything I needed for the desperation-fueled flight to my future home state – where a few job interviews awaited.

I loathed flying. But as a tumbleweed, fully unmoored – somersaulting haphazardly toward an unknown roost – the most I could do was buckle my seat belt as the flight attendants advised, burrow my fingernails into the armrest, and brace for liftoff.

I had no job, no apartment, and only a schematic – idealistic and naïve – plan to start over in New Mexico behind the wheel of a machine I’d bought through an app from a complete stranger, and that’d spent more time in repair garages than under my care.

Rolling my eyes closed as children shrieked behind me and the plane lifted skyward, I began laughing uncontrollably.

Certainty was a luxury I’d chucked far afield over the preceding week – as I left my job and watched every cent of my savings hemorrhage into repair shops’ coffers.

Survival, front of mind, was my only recourse.

“Peanuts?” the flight attendant chirped.

“PLEASE!” I bellowed – ears popping, the turbulence growing.

***

A week later, JoJo panted anxiously as I pushed the overfilled box of pottery, tapestries, movies, and a wooden macaw onto the thrift store’s concrete loading pad. I stood back and considered the hodgepodge collection, recalling each item’s origin story before clamoring back into the driver’s seat and wrestling with the faulty seat belt.

Only hours before, I’d stared, slack-jawed, inside the packed RV – nestled between a mold-covered moving van and a wrecked Volvo rusting into oblivion. As I’d worked to settle JoJo inside our new home, I entered full-fledged panic mode – where the racing thought of “WHY DID I THINK ALL OF THIS COULD FIT INTO 150 SQUARE FEET?” left no mental space for me to consider how or what sparked joy. I chucked armfuls of mementos into boxes and shoved them out onto the pavement.

Buckling myself in, I tousled JoJo’s ears – and glanced into the side-view mirror at the pile: the last bits of a former life, things I never imagined I’d part with.

“Thanks for the memories,” I murmured, wiggling the scratched key into the ignition. The engine revved, the frame shook; we began inching away from everything we knew.

***

With my ass hanging out of my pants as I wrangled two hoses from a side compartment, my muttering suddenly melded with a stranger’s voice.

“What a beaver!”

I whipped around, the hoses clattering to the ground.

“EXCUSE ME?”

The bearded man’s faded green eyes peeked out from beneath a weathered baseball cap – twinkly orbs deeply set within wrinkly caverns.

“Your rig. It’s a Beaver, right?”

“OH! Right, yes. It’s a ’77.”

“I figured. We had a bet goin’ that it was older than ours,” he cackled, nodding over to his wife Connie and son Cody, who emerged from the opposite side – their eyes scanning over the details. “I’m Morris.”

Scarred and gnarled, Morris’ hands look like they’d been shoved through a meat grinder; and when his grip tightened, I realized he was missing a thumb. We chatted about our respective rigs – theirs, dubbed Daisy, slightly younger, but very much a work-in-progress: bungee cord-bundled repair accouterments hanging off the back Clampett-style.

“What about yours? Got a name?”

“Bertie.”

I withheld that Bertie’s namesake was a character from one of my favorite, deliciously horrible romantic comedies.

“It’s just gotten so damn expensive around here, y’know? There’s no way we could afford to live in an apartment, much less a house, even down near Spokane,” Morris rasped. “So Daisy’s it. At least we got the basics, and don’t have to scrape by as much.”

I agreed, thinking back to my spiraling debt a year before – and then the very fresh memories of selling all of my stuff to buy Bertie. The trio shifted and huddled around the side door, peeking in and comparing our respective layouts.

Later, after I waved them on, I dusted off one of the hoses I’d dropped, and looked around at the other rigs.

“Well, I guess this is for the water.” I shrugged up toward JoJo, who sat perched atop her favorite chair, just inside the window.

Once I attached it to my campsite’s spigot, and crammed the other end into what I’d hoped was my fresh water tank’s intake port, I opened the valve and raced inside – fully expecting to see water gushing across the floor. Instead, with my head crammed inside a kitchen cabinet, I watched the water trickle through the port into an opaque, dust-covered tank. As it filled, I stepped outside and unscrewed the generator housing’s door – the handle destroyed long ago. I probed around the inside and began unspooling a mass of thick cabling, eyeing the pronged plug at the end – quickly recognizing that it didn’t fit the socket on the shore power post leaning several yards away. I pivoted, turned off the spigot, and began throwing open all of the compartments – eventually uncovering the necessary adapter beneath a ball of papers inside the glove box. With shore power connected, I scurried inside and flipped the switch on the water pump. A mechanical purr issued from beneath the sink, and water trickled from the faucet. I squealed.

We had power. We had water. It was all coming to life.

An hour later, as I walked my copper kettle to the shared kitchen lean-to, I waved to Morris; he stood over Cody, shaving down his shoulder-length hair: clumps dropping into the leaf litter below the picnic table.

Back in Bertie, I poured the boiling water into the cup of noodles, watching the strands unfurl slowly, the steam dissipating up through the vents. JoJo pitter-pattered across the worn linoleum as she revolved through a series of new sentry posts. Refusing to dirty utensils, I slurped out the noodles, and sized up the splintered bed base a few feet away: my final project for the day. I took a breath, and heaved my weight down onto the screwdriver, barely loosening the base’s over-tightened screws. Slowly, haphazardly, I pulled apart the homemade contraption – doing my best not to rip out a chunk of the floor in the process.

As I propelled the last L-shaped two-by-four section outside, I finally felt some sense of accomplishment.

With the space hog gone, I began carving up a beloved area rug to fit the compartmentalized living space, and cover the aged linoleum. Fibers fluttered to the floor and dust motes filled the air. Within the hour, I’d transformed the entire living space.

JoJo nuzzled the familiar carpet, burying her face into the shag until she started wheezing. I smiled down at her.

“Maybe we can do this after all.”

***

Days later, as I dug my fingernails into Bertie’s steering wheel, I stared into an impenetrable white mass and pleaded to the semi ahead not to disappear, not to leave me. But moments later, it was gone. Alone in the void, I careened through snow-packed passes – accelerating downhill just enough to gain the requisite momentum to crest the next peak, barely maintaining traction on the ice-covered road. Bertie’s innards rattled violently; something shattered. JoJo buried herself inside her blanket-packed crate, and I angled the heater’s sputtering vents toward her.

Tiny living YouTube videos didn’t prepare me for this!

A malevolent chill permeated everything, and I felt as though if I stopped – even if somehow I managed to find a turnout that wasn’t buried in snow – we’d die in Utah’s mountains.

Snow crashed down, and the windshield wipers barely kept pace. I wanted to scream and cry, but couldn’t muster the energy. My neck ached from straining forward to see the road – to guide Bertie’s tires along the slushy, navigable tracks that migrated from my lane into the center of the road, as snow accreted alongside the shoulders and spilled over into the lanes’ outer edges.

And so I continued into the blizzard’s gaping maw, willing my gas gauge not to plummet any closer to “E” and downshifting to my lowest gear to creep up each successively steeper incline.

Forty minutes later, I glimpsed a speck of blue through the heavy gray veil hanging overhead. I focused on it – my North Star – breathed deeply, and pressed forward. Rain drizzled down, and the roadways’ ice began to thaw. And then the shroud that’d haunted me through the passes slowly fell away – acquiescing to clearer skies and the burnt desert floor, with its rocky pinnacles and tumbled, red earth.

I flexed my hands – whitened knuckles suddenly flushed with blood: revived. JoJo poked her nose out from her cocoon, and I lifted my foot from the accelerator as I guided Bertie into the first gas station for nearly 100 miles.

I shoved open the door and hollered, stretching my legs.

A few scraggly shrubs bordered the pothole-pocked, crumbling lot; but with my adrenaline pumping, it felt as though I were looking at the Grand Canyon. I gulped in the cool air; a motorcyclist at the next pump farted.

Walking JoJo over to some ground cover, I looked back at Bertie – dripping wet from the melting ice, lenses of packed snow crashing from the roof onto the hood.

Ahead, the sky over Moab was open, welcoming.

I exhaled.

Forward.

***

Two days later, I cooed into Bertie’s dash as we bucked uphill from Albuquerque.

“Please, please. Just a little further.”

But then, with one last shudder, we drifted to the side of the road, as cars, semis, and amply fortified RVs flew past. This was it: a nightmarish realization I’d managed to relegate to the back of my mind for over 1,400 miles. My home was broken – tilting along a narrow shoulder, just 15 miles south of our final destination in Santa Fe.

“Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!”

Four hours later, a wrecker arrived – the young driver, Jonas, nodding for me to clamor up into his extended truck cab where his wife and toddler sat.

“Just knock on the window and they’ll let you in.”

As I shifted JoJo’s crate beneath my arm and lightly rapped the window, I noticed a thin stream of antifreeze trickling down from the engine block onto the wrecker bed – the neon green reminiscent of the wounded alien in Predator.

If it bleeds, you can kill it. 

Jonas pulled coupled chains from a side panel and lashed them around Bertie’s undercarriage, before flipping a series of winch levers with unexpected delicacy. The wrecker heaved with every successive inch the winch hoisted Bertie forward. We lurched back, and I expected us to tumble down the hillside.

“WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN THERE ANYWAY?” Jonas yelled up, through the wind.

“JUST MY LIFE.”

He threw his head back and laughed, and throttled two levers until Bertie’s bumper touched the cab.

“Alright, where’re we headed again?” he asked, propelling himself into the driver’s seat.

I plugged in the directions while fielding calls from my inept insurance company.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled into an abandoned lot abutting the RV park.

“I’m gonna have to let it off here, ‘cause I don’t think I can get down there,” Jonas mused, nodding toward the narrow entrance corridor.

“That’s fine.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jonas sighed, visibly annoyed.

“It’s just not wanting to come off.”

It was like watching an automotive rendition of Titanic – starring the wrecker as frigid Leo, and Bertie as tenacious Kate. As much as Bertie wanted to hold on, it was clear the only way to survive would be to let go.

“AND SORRY, BUT THE TOW HITCH IS GONNA HAVE TO SCRAPE,” Jonas screamed through the wrecker’s mechanical crunching.

Almost immediately, Bertie’s tow hitch drilled into the asphalt; chunks catapulted in all directions. I shielded JoJo’s face.

“This is fine. It’s. All. Fine.”

And then, without any fanfare, Bertie rolled off.

I waved on Jonas and his family, stowed JoJo, and retrieved my spot assignment from the office.

The sun was beginning to set, and I willed my battered home to gain enough centripetal force to make it to the weedy stretch of gravel at the other end of the park.

“Let’s get it, B!”

We coasted downhill, gained too much speed, and took a hard turn around a curve – and began inching back uphill. A few feet past my spot, Bertie stopped.

Welp, this is it.

Other RVers stared as I popped it in reverse – clearly too close to back in sufficiently. But thanks largely to gravity, after a four-point turn and multiple screams from me, Bertie settled into the space with just enough room for me to reach shore power.

I went inside, released JoJo from her crate, and collapsed onto the floor.

“Holy fuck. We actually made it.”

***

A month later, I gazed across the gravel drive as the large, glistening motorhome lurched into sudden stillness. Clicks and pops followed, and the expansive side panels extended slowly. Each time such a rig puttered into the park and got settled, it was like watching a preview for a Transformers sequel.

With a dented, overused water jug in-hand, I inched past JoJo and out the screen door – scurrying around the side to open the water spigot. Shortly after arriving, I’d accidentally burned out my overtaxed water pump. So I had to revert to Camping 101 and draw water directly from the spigot and filter it through my Brita.

As I made my way back around, JoJo jumped up along the window, her tongue inching out. Plumes of dust kicked up from the newly arrived RV as my temporary neighbors worked to level it – gaseous exultations from firing pistons melting into the heavy wind.

I glanced back at Bertie’s weathered, chipped exterior – tracing the rust-dusted 70s motif along the passenger door down to the cracked gray water tank, out from which oozed a stalactite of cooking oil and dishwater. Sagged to one side, Bertie made it clear to any seasoned RVer that everyone inside was far from level.

I set the jug on the counter, grabbed my keys, and threw open the driver’s side door. Turning the ignition, I pumped the accelerator until Bertie churned to life – clouds of exhaust billowing out from beneath the housing, courtesy of a massive crack in the exhaust system.

“You’re one cranky beast.”

Two passersby scuttled past, smirking at Bertie’s clattering chassis. I leaned in, revved the engine, and rested my head on the steering wheel.

“And I love every imperfect inch of you.”

Fat snowflakes filtered down from the startlingly blue sky, and obliterated instantly against the gravel. I turned off the engine, and slammed the door behind me. Across the fence behind Bertie, children raced after an ice cream truck – a rogue Chihuahua duo nipping at their heels.

I tilted my head back and opened my mouth – aiming for a few snowflakes. As the first icy clump hit my tongue and dissolved , I closed my eyes – the wind billowing through my hair, ruffling my shirt.

With the right amount of pressure, stress, and tenacity, past lives slough away like wallpaper from wettened walls – and you find yourself somewhere different, living out a day you never could’ve imagined.

A few feet away, the door of my neighbors’ massive rig swung open, revealing a hefty man with a ruddy nose and thick glasses.

He threw two camping chairs out the door and waved me over.

“Hey! C’mon over for a beer. I bet you have some stories to tell.”

I laughed, knocked a few lingering flakes from my sleeves, and stepped toward him.

“That I do.”

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Where We’ll Go

He wore a wry smile like an ill-fitting, itchy sweater. I could tell he was nervous—as if he was expecting me to take a knee and propose, kick-starting a flash mob. But this wasn’t a romantic comedy, just a lunch break. And all I wanted to do was give him my wedding ring.

Two minutes later, that symbol of fidelity and matrimony and love vanished with him into a growing, teeming crowd outside. My phone vibrated from a text alert:

“You have $90.25 pending transfer.”

I darkened the screen, and walked across the street to my office to look at spreadsheets outlining events I wouldn’t attend, logistics I wouldn’t field. With four years’ worth of the Pacific Northwest beneath my belt, and the continued rise in the cost of living, I decided it was time to go—to upend the proverbial hourglass, and craft an endgame before the last grain of sand trickled through.

Out my pigeon poop-speckled window, the Great Wheel slowly turned above Elliot Bay, and I swiveled in my chair to begin emptying file folders.

Round and around we go.

***

As I lay on the floor, the shag carpet’s frayed orange fibers illuminated by a camping lantern—its glow amplified by the snow falling outside—I felt something shift inside me. Looking around at the vacant space as Wolf Mother’s “Vagabond” hummed nearby, I recognized that my life would never be the same.

We’re often told that insanity is defined as doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results. And for most of my adult life, I’d done exactly that: dragged around the same objects; expended inordinate amounts of time convincing myself that this was the job; and worked to feel connected, part of a community. I’d work proactively to stitch everything together, to write a fresh life chapter that felt more compelling. But then, after a time, it’d trend into the realm of fiction—and I’d wake to the reality that my beautiful things continued to gather dust in cluttered, temporary lodgings that the climbing cost of living would wrest away. And I’d, once again, begin to float, unmoored—navigating the smoothest currents to the closest, safest shoreline where I’d start the cycle anew.

And so, months before that snowy evening, I recognized that changing a little meant staying and steeping in the sameness that’d cajoled me into apathy, into aligning with the status quo. But as I stared into the mostly darkened room—my back against clustered pillows, my head resting against the legs of my only remaining chair—I felt as though my exhausted heart had been lowered into a deep well of hope: the weathered bucket filling, refreshing the atrophied organ.

Self-selecting into tiny living was similar to filing for divorce—suddenly recognizing that I no longer wanted to be comfortable in my discomfort. But as empowering a decision as it was to make, I knew it’d also be one of the hardest to see through to fruition; after all, it required me leaving a life I’d been conditioned to believe was normal, responsible—even successful. There’d be so much uncertainty and fear. But I knew that if I remained confined in the monotonous cycle in which I was stuck, I’d continue to wither; my selfhood would die. And I couldn’t allow that to happen, for there’s so much to do and see and wonder about.

***

Crusts at my eyes’ edges roughened my fingertips as I slowly rose, grinding away a dream’s haze with sleep-strengthened fists. A deep, insatiable taste for the sunrise broiled in my gut; I knew I had to see it: a primal reminder of rebirth.

From her blanket-plumped bed, JoJo blinked confusedly, watching me shuffle over to the windows with my lukewarm coffee, a mason jar of cool water, and the last square of chocolate from the previous night’s decimated dessert.

And then, I waited—framed by neon geranium tendrils poised to gulp in the same light. Coffee washed over the chocolate, dissolving it across my tongue, as my mouth flexed, the corners liberated from the night’s tacked-on drool.

I eyed the distant mountains, their pink halo expanding—stretching across neighboring peaks. Outside, the empty streets gleamed with frost, and bloated seagulls dipped and weaved above the low-slung industrial buildings abutting my apartment, and then settled atop a few telephone poles; their feathered necks angled in the same direction I looked.

Fall seven times, get up eight.

This Japanese proverb blipped into my morning messages from a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I took a deep breath, keeping my eyes firmly affixed to the horizon. My strength rallied, mingling with a burning desire for the sun; the fear that’d been sown over the past week wasn’t gone, but its growth had been stymied by this dormant cultivar. Each will grow, wither, and arc—but ultimately I must decide which to tend.

I took another sip. And then, through a small hole in the cloud bank, a slat of brilliant light burst forth. Moments later, the tip of the sun pushed above the remaining clouds—dousing the windowsill, the geranium, and me with its brilliance. I pulled a breath up from my toe tips, and exhaled into the windowpane.

JoJo nuzzled my leg, and I folded myself down onto the floor. Her tongue inched out of her mouth as I rubbed between her ears, her tiny head pressing into my knee. I smiled.

 …get up eight.

***

Lately, with the litany of RV repairs and growing bills cluttering every corner of my mental frame as I hemorrhage savings and creep up on my last days of work, I feel wholly depleted—as if there’s no thread of a shred of hope that this endeavor will pan out. But I’ve tried to channel the optimism I felt the first night I sat in my RV alone.

Scanning the space, I knew there were plenty of things to be done, and that gave me pause. Even still, I felt a bizarre sense of calm, and remembered thinking: I have a home now. Bertie was an imperfect block that needed ample work, but Bertie was mine, and would go wherever I went. I imagined the journeys we’d take together and smiled.

I reached into my backpack and removed my grandmother’s rag-wrapped music box, and cranked the small key, listening as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” slowly chimed into the darkness. I ran my hand along Bertie’s weathered dash, and over two puffy, faded Troll stickers.

“And just where will we go?” I murmured.

I rested my head against the back of the leather captain’s chair and closed my eyes. And in the dark, the aged chimes’ hammer fell gracefully.

Some…

…where.

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A Hole in the Desert

Sliding through predawn darkness, my car fishtailed toward a snowbank along the canyon’s edge as a semi listed sideways, bearing down in my askew rearview mirror—the oncoming lanes choked by a pileup.

Amid my brain’s cacophonous, contradictory flight-and-fight mental directives, I attempted to maintain some semblance of composure—feeling a momentary sense of relief that I’d remembered to tell my parents where JoJo was being boarded. She might not appreciate Alabama’s humidity, but she’d enjoy my parents’ cozy fireplace—quickly forgetting that curly-haired man who’d so selfishly taken time for himself, and subsequently hurtled down a mountainous gorge.

But before my car’s back bumper skated into the snowbank and over the side, I regained control and slid further along the obscured canyon pass turned bobsled chute. Decelerating, I put “Heroes” on a loop, straightened my mirror, and refused to exceed 10 mph until the road revealed itself beneath the thickening layer of ice and snow. Behind me, the semi pulled off, leaving me and a rust-speckled Tercel shuddering down the corridor alone.


Eyes trained on a strip of blue sky bursting through the snowy veil, and knuckles clenched over the steering wheel, I cautiously reached for my nearly cooled coffee as my salt- and snow-caked rental sedan’s wheels finally reunited with hole-pocked asphalt.

Sun glanced across the snow-smeared windshield. And as I watched the behemoth monuments rising from the landscape—their jagged, brownish-red formations stark against the snow—I took a long, deep pull on the lukewarm dark roast and melted into the music.

“We can be heroes just for one day.”

Image description: taken from far away, the shot features an expansive blue sky with a few white clouds. A few brownish-red peaks are visible above the snowfall on the ground; the bases of the peaks are covered in snow and sage brush.
Image description: taken from far away, the shot features an expansive blue sky with a few white clouds. A few brownish-red peaks are visible above the snowfall on the ground; the bases of the peaks are covered in snow and sage brush.

***
Naivety bookends travel, and travel infantalizes us: everything is new, awe-inspiring; we’re jellyfish floating in an expansive sensorial sea, drifting into and longing to experience its deepest depths.

 

Two days before my foray into the canyon, I locked my apartment and felt a mantle of anxiety lift from my shoulders. I had a very schematic outline of what I intended to see and do over the ensuing 3,200 mile road trip, but left most of it open to chance. As my windshield defrosted, I familiarized myself with the rental car’s most vital functions, and slipped my crowbar beneath the driver’s seat.

 

Hours later, I passed quietly through southeastern Washington’s green, amoeba-shaped agriculture fields and wine vineyards with aged, woody plants wrapped tightly around cracked pergolas. Manicured stretches along the horizon gave way to broken, upturned trunks and tilled fields. Treed oases shrouded weathered clapboard houses and trailers with glowing porch lights: tiny beacons welcoming a new day. The rising sun bathed the fields in a lavender glow, and outlined the snow-flecked, rolling hills against the steeply rising mountains far into the distance. 

 

With an impatient produce hauler tailgating me, I eased into an abandoned convenience store parking lot to snap a few photos of an array of midcentury chairs encircling a fire pit. Across the road, coyotes perched atop the hills, keenly attuned to the hoards of bloated finches gliding down over felled, shattered trees. Down a produce farm’s cottage-lined gravel road, a school bus rumbled out with its charges: tiny bodies clamoring over the seats, lowering the fogged windows—shrieks of laughter and curious, wide eyes as they passed me: the stranger regarding the entire spectacle.
 
I lingered out in the chill, taking in a panoramic view, listening as the sounds of the morning crept into the air. Hairs pricked on the back of my neck, cajoling me back into the car’s encapsulating warmth. Sections of the sky remained forebodingly dark. And as my sedan glided through northeast Oregon and across Idaho’s wide, empty fields, I felt an encroaching storm stalking me.

 

Having finally arrived in Salt Lake City, I scanned my phone screen with heavy, drooping eyelids, and then screamed. The clerk inside the gas station raised their head, momentarily scanning the dark parking lot for the source before returning to their newspaper. Through a combination of exhaustion and ineptitude on my part, and clever subterfuge by a third-party hotel room reservation platform, I’d unwittingly blown most of my lodging budget in my first night. Once I abandoned my futile attempts to find loopholes in the cancellation policy, I pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, wandered into the brilliantly gleaming, gilded and colonnaded lobby, and asked for my room keys. An apartment-sized suite appointed with an uncomfortable bed and mint green accents in its superfluous living room area all but greeted me with, “Welcome, sucker.”

 

I lay prone on the king-sized bed, willing my anxiety to dispel and enthusiasm to surge. 

 

It’s ok. Everyone fucks up. It’s a learning moment. EVERYTHING’S FINE.

 

It was nearing 8pm, and my residual anger combined with overwhelming hunger fueled a speedy restaurant reconnaissance walk. I inched up to the stoop of a highly rated sushi bar on my list, opened the door, and faced a wall of hard, accusatory stares from hipsterish poseurs and wannabe influencers taking selfies and rapping out captions—most of which undoubtedly included #YOLO.

 

As I turned to exit, I cut a sideways glance at two bouffant-capped tweens in acid-washed mom jeans and Carhartt jackets—clothing reminiscent of my earliest field clothes as an archaeologist.

 

Silly Salt Lake City children. You won’t out-hipster me. I’m from fucking Seattle.

 

Twenty minutes later, I took a deep breath, straightened my brilliantly vibrant sweater, flecked my conditioned curls, and charged back inside—bulldozing my way through the hipster gauntlet to the host’s stand.

 

“Name for the waitlist, Matt. Seat for one.”

 

I flicked off my generic gloves with an air of decided disinterest in the entirety of the belabored, attention-seeking social positioning unfolding around me, shoved a crumpled jacket toward its owner, and seated myself at the end of a crowded waiting bench. I smiled into my phone’s dark screen, and turned it over. Looking up at the ostentatious light fixtures, I closed my eyes and rested my head against a bank of planters.

 

It’s all a performance. Just keep dancing.

 

***

 

With the canyon and Salt Lake City behind me, I parked at a rest stop to soak in the sun and massage my tense shoulders. Albeit brief, my visit to Utah’s capital had been remarkably uneventful, bland. Everywhere I went, I sensed an air of subtle surveillance, which only amplified my desire to leave quickly.

 

Overhead, open, blue skies streaked with pillowy clouds entreated me to keep moving forward; I felt more at home there, at a rest stop, than I had in the entire city.

 

Back on the highway, as the air whipped my hair, I hollered into the vastness—whooping at the arching rocks, the stoic cliff faces, until my lungs felt like tattered rags.    

Image description: taken uphill, the shot focuses on an arched geological formation dusted with snow. Sage brush grows in the foreground.
Image description: taken uphill, the shot focuses on an arched geological formation dusted with snow. Sage brush grows in the foreground.

Hours later, as I stooped in thigh-high snow to capture a few shots of a mural stretching along an abandoned storefront, a man pulled up in his Bronco. Immediately, my shields went up, and I angled toward my car; he called after me.

 

“Hey, you trying to get Horsehead?”

 

Unsure if this was a local proposition, I stared, vacuously cow-eyed.

 

“Up there, just near that triangle of trees,” he continued, angling over his seat and pointing far uphill, toward a mountainous stretch.

 

I aligned myself with his outstretched arm.

 

“Oh! Yep, I see it.”

 

He leaned back and smiled.

 

“So, you’re from Washington, huh?” he said, adjusting his cap and nodding toward my license plate. “What part?”

 

“Seattle.”

 

“OH, Seattle,” he crooned nostalgically. “My wife and I go up there once a year. We moved here to be closer to her family. I’m from there. But it’s so expensive now.”

 

“Yep, it is. I’m sort of on a mission to get out of there myself,” I replied. “On my way to Santa Fe.”

 

“Welp, yeah, you got a ways to go, but it’s nice.”

 

He finished by reciting a complex roadmap for reaching Horsehead Canyon. I knew it wasn’t on my way, but waited until he was done, thanked him, and waved him on.

 

Placing my camera on the passenger seat, I chuckled to myself.

 

Of course I encountered one of the most open, friendly people from Seattle in New Mexico.

 

That night, as I drove along streets sprinkled with adobe buildings bedecked with bright tiles, porch arches glutted with hanging chiles, mammoth Cottonwood trees towering overhead, and low, Gaudi-esque walls outlining succulent-peppered greenways, I exhaled.

 

This feels better.

Image description: an adobe facade with an entry gate, which is made of wood and metal. There are colorful tile mosaics flanking the gate; urns sit atop pedestals on either side of the gate.
Image description: an adobe facade with an entry gate, which is made of wood and metal. There are colorful tile mosaics flanking the gate; urns sit atop pedestals on either side of the gate.

***

 

Fueled with multiple helpings of scrambled eggs slathered in green and red chiles, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began traipsing around Santa Fe.

 

Within the first hour, I found myself near tears in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. While her art has always been inspiring to me, what continued to swirl in the back of my mind was how she described her affinity to New Mexico—the landscape, the beauty of natural forms—and how much of a foil it was to her life in New York City. Blocks away, in the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, I became even more overwhelmed by the place-based narratives on Native life and traditions, and the destruction wrought through colonialism, and its modern day avatars—all reflected through generations of artists.

 

Exiting the museum, I ran into droves of people leaving the main square—pink hat-wearing Womxn’s March participants, most of whom were coupled and white and clearly satisfied with their annual contribution to democracy. I scanned the area, landing on the pavilion where Native speakers continued addressing the rapidly dwindling crowd, calling for Indigenous rights to be recognized, honored, and protected. Scattered applause from the crowd faded, melding into the rising conversations from nearby cafe diners and shoppers. Methodic drumming began onstage, rising as the bells from the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi intoned. 

 

Everywhere, this country’s violent history collides.

 

***

 

Over the ensuing days, I explored the city center, and ventured out to the periphery—always observing, contemplating, absorbing everything: spiced drinking chocolate; green and red chile; cheese-slathered enchiladas; honey-sopped sopapilla; lime-infused caramels; baskets of bloated bags of homemade red pepper flakes; soft lavender soap; and dark piñon coffee.

 

The strong, arid air that sucks the moisture right from your skin while refreshing your lungs with its deep, cool gusts. Passersby who acknowledge you and smile.

 

And, of course, I forced myself to face the downsides: I’d have to buy a car, and I’d probably have to wave goodbye to any hope of a romantic life—but I could probably rustle up a few LGBTQ+ retirees to commiserate with.

 

On my last night, after a whirlwind jaunt to Albuquerque and dinner in Española, I watched the blood moon rise. A formidable, massive orb, it hadn’t yet flushed red; from my vantage point, it hovered between two shadowed peaks. Its massiveness in the desert’s vast emptiness made it one of the most beautiful moonrises I’d ever witnessed. 

 

Everywhere here, there is natural beauty.

 

***

With my sights set on Taos, I made a short detour to Abiquiú, again marveling at the richness of the landscape. Soon thereafter, I crisscrossed winding roads, and felt my excitement build as I began noting the amorphous, small hills dotting the Greater World Community: earthships. Walking through the model earthship was like stepping into the future—or, more appropriately, how the present should be. Experiencing an off-grid, sustainable building constructed with recycled materials—tires, plastic bottles, cans—was indescribably inspiring. 

About a mile down the road, I crossed the Rio Grande gorge, and spotted my last lodging in New Mexico, spread along the Taos Mesa: a hotel of vintage travel trailers arranged next to a brewery.

Image description: two vintage green and turquoise trailers with a connecting deck, taken an an oblique angle. Snow is on the ground.
Image description: two vintage green and turquoise trailers with a connecting deck, taken an an oblique angle. Snow is on the ground.

Once I stuffed myself with sweet potato fries and tofu tacos, I settled into my small trailer, and peered out at the sprawling, snow-covered mesa. Approximately 15 feet, the trailer had everything I needed: a functional heater, bathroom, bed, and kitchen—as well as ample storage. Given my desire for a more mobile, longer-term living situation, I’d wanted to experience this, in all its imperfect glory. And while the space was expectedly small, it felt effortlessly comfortable.

I gazed out the windows as snow fluttered down, and the heater kicked on.

I think I could do this. 

Image description: me wearing a bright sweater, laying across the trailer's bed, and looking out the window.
Image description: me wearing a bright sweater, laying across the trailer’s bed, and looking out the window.

My eyes drifted to the empty storage shelves and cubbies, and I mentally populated them with my belongings from home.

Wind from a snowstorm began buffeting the sides, and the heater continued humming; I stretched over the bed, dipped beneath the covers, and slowly fell asleep.

***

Steam writhed inside the rim of my tin coffee mug and a snowy haze glowed outside; it felt like the entire world was asleep.

As I rubbed the night’s sleep from my eyes, I marveled at the trailer’s beautiful simplicity—having the necessities within reach, allowing you to melt into being present in the moment.

I looked around and couldn’t help but think: I could give up the rest of what I have to make my own version of this. After all, at the heart of it, the beautiful remaining pieces I possessed weren’t really any different than the built-in table, small shelf by the door, or ample bed with ruffled sheets: all bits of wood and metal and fabric pulled together into a workable shelter. And, as such, their faults could be sanded, repainted, darned, and mended: a patchwork tapestry encouraging growth and change, propelling me into life rather than suffocating my desires or intrigue with a burdensome mortgage, inescapable debt, or a string of unnecessary belongings.

Over my third cup of coffee, I fleshed out a scheme to steward a small parcel of land just north of the earthships. There, I could move a small trailer while methodically building an earthship hut: which, to most, would resemble nothing more than a hole in the desert. But in my mind, it’d be the manifestation of so many personal goals: a base from which I could live a more sustainable, debt-free life.

A few hours later, I made one final pass through the trailer, and then headed to my car. Soon thereafter, I punched in latitude-longitude coordinates for various parcels I’d been stalking online. Snow began cascading down, icy veins of it blowing across the road. Cautiously, I pulled off at the mouth of one of the dirt roads leading to a slew of my target acreage. With little reception and no cars in sight, I decided not to chance it.

Instead, I stood against the wind and snapped a few blurry photos. And questioned my mental state.

What a wildly absurd idea, right? I mean, this is sort of mad. 

I took in one last gulp of frigid air and exhaled.

But living is all about exploring the madness.  

***

Whether or not I can translate my musings to reality—be they maddened dreams or viable alternatives—remains to be seen.

But if I don’t try, I’m not living.

So, I plan to continue dreaming of a day when, somewhere out in the desert, I’ll dig a hole, and shape it into a home. Where I’ll feel the warmth of the earth around me, and admire the small place I’ve made for myself—embracing the cracks and fissures that’ve formed in my life along the way, whilst acknowledging that I haven’t let the most vital parts of who I am cleave away.

Like the ancient land around me, I’ll weather on—bathing in the starlight, reflecting all of the character and subtle gifts from the myriad turns of the sun and moon.

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A Space Apart

A curious feeling swept over me when I realized the Trader Joe’s cashier scanning my tempeh once sat on my toilet and fucked in my bedroom.

Like most new tenants, I’d spent the first week in my apartment receiving former residents’ mail—briefly scanning their names, shuffling the junk into overflowing recycling bins, and nosily assessing the heft of more serious parcels before shoving them back into the outgoing mail slot. Her name was one of four I’d come to know in my very brief tenure as an addressee reviewer. And then, quite suddenly, here she was: the person matching the standardized black-and-white typeface printed across coupon packets.

Her nametag was chipped at the edges and hanging askew. She smiled, waiting patiently as I wrestled from my laden basket a burrito and box of chocolate.

“Nothing like stress eating after signing a new lease,” I chuckled, waiting for the card reader to cooperate.

“Oh, where’d you move?” she asked, mechanically disinterested.

“Just across the street.”

“It’s a pretty good complex,” she said, her tone changing slightly as she ferried my groceries across the scanner. “I’m moving a few floors down, into another unit with my boyfriend.”

Where I’m from in Alabama, this would’ve been a revelatory exchange, a gateway encounter to a budding friendship. But in Seattle, I already knew there’d be no neighborly invitation to get to know one another tacked on as a conversational addendum. It was a simple, matter-of-fact observation.

“Small world,” I said, smiling back.

“Yep. Have a nice day.”

Days later, when my bathroom sink and shower drains began backing up, I imagined it was her long blonde hair contorted into amorphous, matted blobs that clogged the pipes.

***

My apartment was dark, save some light from the blue television screen—the conclusion of “Annihilation.” Around me, plants listed lethargically, while others hurtled into an even more obvious state of unstoppable decay—my beloved, mammoth African violets rotted shades of what they’d been back at Gay Gardens. Even my most prized geranium—once over six feet tall—shrunk markedly, its tendrils browning, its sinewy body stiffening and breaking down. As each floral charge withered despite my best efforts, I mentally reframed their demise as altruistic entropy—unburdening me of their care, pushing me onward. Even as they diminished, a sense of resilience continued to grow inside of me. I scanned the apartment, regarding it more for the necessary aspects it afforded—shelter, security—than its ebbing decorative vitality. Naked brass screw-ends pocked the wall, free of their framed charges, and corners sat shadowed, devoid of their previously appointed furniture.

“I’m pretty sure it’ll fit right there along the back,” I said, arcing my arm across the pickup’s deep bed, whilst watching the foreboding sky, willing it not to open up.

Moments later, the sideboard I’d lovingly restored a decade before on the stoop of my first apartment shuddered down the road—its heavy, beveled mirror angled upward, reflecting the graying sky.

The day prior, I’d bid farewell to my beloved Mission-style dish cabinet as it made its way to a farm in Oregon. When I walked back into the apartment, I followed the cabinet’s vestigial trail of white paint flecks to a bag of fresh produce and herbs—the bartered portion of the cabinet’s cost.

A few nights later, my eyes watered as I gently, methodically, set down the basket of remaining Fiestaware into the woman’s cigarette smoke-saturated car. As I nudged one additional bag into the floorboard, I recalled the rush of adrenaline I’d felt over a decade before when I ripped off the tightly wrapped, yellowed newspaper to reveal the brilliant turquoise plates and saucers—the striking colors gleaming in the scarce, dusty light of my parents’ attic.

Memories are much lighter than things, which can easily transform into beautiful traps.

***

We’re all renters—of life, space, objects. And yet, through social conditioning and mental self-subterfuge, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time convincing ourselves it’s entirely normal to expend our lives paying off debts incurred by attempting to own something we never will.

Downsizing my life over the past six months was an exercise in self-care and disciplined boundary-making. I pushed myself further than I ever thought I could—both in terms of acknowledging how little I needed to thrive, and the extent to which I could, with nearly surgical precision, emplace necessary boundaries to maintain my emotional and physical health. And through it all, I strived to acknowledge the privileges I carried in being able to do so.

For me, self-care has involved introspective reflection, study, and understanding of my place in the world: how I got to where I am, by which I mean what oppressive systems have I benefitted from over the course of my life, and what steps I can take each day to dismantle those same institutions and systems and restructure them to be equitable and sustainable. And in so doing, I’ve had to remind myself that I will always be a student—learning, failing, and working harder to get it right the next time.

Never did I expect a year to make such a difference—to be in a place where I’d have enough mental clarity to better understand the intersections of my interests in social justice, ecological sustainability, and health and wellbeing.

***

Adjusting my glasses, I perused the tiny panes of potential matches—assessing perceived flaws, swiping on the ones I thought would be incompatible, and jotting down notes. Each had its merits, but I knew what I wanted; I could wait for the right one. Good bones were a must, and any hint of faulty undercarriage was grounds for an outright dismissal: slipping transmission, pervasive rust, overtaxed motor. Unlike airbrush-happy Tinder users, buses had very little ability to hide their blemishes.

Thoroughly unimpressed, I darkened my phone screen and set it on my bedside table, and then reviewed my latest musings. Across the worn, tattered pages, I reread the plan I began devising in the Olympic Peninsula’s mist-covered woods months ago—to convert a school bus into a tiny home. I’ve dubbed it, “Not the worst plan.”

Feeling the rising anxiety and doubt, I took a breath.

You can do something this monumental. You already have. 

Selling nearly everything I had of value helped free me from crushing credit card debt, untether me from the strangling grasp of materialism, and add a modest contribution to a long-empty savings account.

In downsizing even further over the coming year and a half, I intend to push myself into uncomfortably uncharted territory as I prepare to live within a much tinier, more mobile footprint. My goal is to live as efficiently and sustainably as possible, have a home that is mine and not the bank’s, and mobilize it so I can move wherever, like a hermit crab. Ultimately, I want to operate on the periphery of this hyper-consumerist, capitalistic system as much as possible, to live more freely.

The hardest parts are yet to come, but I’m tired of paying exorbitant rent for a place I don’t like and that isn’t reflective of me, that limits my creativity. And as thrilling as it can be to live in a thrumming city, I’ve grown weary of being surrounded by the droves of closed-off shell people scuttling to and fro, heads angled down—their entire worlds seemingly confined to their phone screen. I want to look up, toward the tree-lined horizon, whenever possible.

My plan is a wholly different re-imagining of what I thought my life would look like by my mid-thirties. And while I never expected to become an increasingly tattooed gay with a penchant for wearing loud sweaters living in a skoolie alongside an overly anxious Chihuahua, I’m learning to love the idea.

There are so many steps in between the here-and-now and the there-and-done. But having my atypical goal post set far afield from traditional expectations, I feel more empowered than I have in a while.

Because I want freedom from the surrounding monotony; to drift into wide open spaces, rove through forgotten places, and embrace the changing scenery—the glamor and tarnish: a space apart.

Posted on

The Weight of Things

Leaning against the front door and eyeing the cabinet’s dusty outline on the chipped, white-painted floor, I felt an unexpected weight lift; my mind was slightly clearer. Outside, rain drizzled down, and I hoped the man had made it down the hillside and back to the bridge without too much trouble.

I thought about the glass-fronted Art Deco cabinet in the back of his homemade hauling trailer—draped in a burlap shroud, like the recently deceased in a western: being slowly removed from home, taken far, far away. I recalled staring at myself in the glass door’s reflection the night I’d planned to kill myself a decade earlier.

We map so much emotional weight onto things.

I reached inside my jacket pocket and removed the crumpled bills, counting them out before folding them into the growing roll hidden inside a tin in my bedroom. Little by little, as pieces I’d cherished for well over a decade left me, I quieted my exhausted, fretting mind by reminding myself that I was doing this for all the right reasons: to work towards financial solvency, and improved health. And to experience a long-overdue catharsis.

The next day, I watched the sun slowly rise, bleeding through the opaque glass sliding doors separating the bedroom from the rest of my new apartment. The light warming my arms, the rumpled sheets washing wave-like over me.

I slipped into a favorite pair of worn jeans, threw on a holy tee shirt, and took JoJo out to welcome a new morning: the first day of a new beginning.

***

Before I reached the summit, I paused and looked out over the mossy canopy—a primeval, forested canvas. Rain dripped down from the tightly knitted fronds and branches, dappling my camera and sleeves with refreshing moisture. As I shifted my backpack and headed uphill, my bear bell clanged lowly—a metronomic reminder of my vulnerable place in the natural order.

A few feet later, I peered over the falls, absorbed the soothing sounds of fresh water flowing over weathered rocks—churning pools disappearing underground and re-surging downslope. I took a few deep breaths, exhaled, and soaked in the view, expecting to feel a crushing weight lifted off my shoulders.

But I felt nothing, except a needling question creeping into the back of my mind.

What in the fuck am I doing here?

Somewhere along the line, I’d convinced myself that I had to travel far stretches, overcome amazing feats, cross the country or the world to be rewarded with life-changing clarity. But my short foray into the Olympic Peninsula’s woods only reaffirmed what I already knew—what I recognized each evening as I slowly drifted off into a fitful night’s sleep in my tent with a writing pad, bear bell, knife, and canteen within arm’s reach, the solar-powered lantern hanging overhead: we need so very little to thrive.

We surround ourselves with so much superfluous stuff to blunt the simple reality that the more we have, the less we actually live.

***

The apartment was blissfully still—overburdened fans and the sound machine retired for a brief reprieve. Sunlight warmed the worn leather on the love seat, and dripped over the heat-racked, withering tendrils listing out of chipped terra cotta pots. Seattle was experiencing a protracted, more intense summer than usual—and prized plants that weathered Gay Gardens’ drafty chill had succumbed to the inescapable, stagnate heat.

JoJo braced herself against the gracile legs of the Art Deco buffet turned TV stand, and leered into the beating sun—her tongue gradually inching out as she lapsed into deeper sleep. I, too, felt the heat climbing—sweat beading across my brow, dripping down my nose.

I’d just hit the six month mark on my apartment lease, and it felt as though I’d been living here for ages. Albeit a glorified studio with few furnishings, there were chairs I never sat in, things I didn’t use—so much space allocated to stylized tableaus that were wholly unnecessary. Everywhere I looked, charmless sterility stared back—no uneven angles, no roughened edges, just cool, muted cream walls and dark grey carpeting, particle board cabinets, and an overly massive bathroom. I began to regard it as a charmless easy bake oven in which I felt suffocatingly uninspired.

Weeks later, just before midnight, I scanned the room—soft light from the only remaining lamp illuminating a smattering of plants, cascading over a haphazard assortment of empty pots and stickered surfaces. I hugged the brownie-packed Cathrineholm casserole to my chest with one hand, and used the other to wield my fork—shoving it into the cakey middle and boring out a hole. As Ghost’s end credits rolled, “Unchained Melody” reverberated throughout the apartment. I felt like crying out of sheer exhaustion, but I didn’t want to saturate my brownies. JoJo rustled in her crate and let out an exasperated sigh; I was up far too late and making a ruckus. I tucked the DVD back into its case and slid it into the “Keep” pile.

Hours before, from the overstocked Fiction section, I watched the bookshop’s buyer assess my bags of DVDs and books. As he thumbed through the thick, leather-bound art book I’d toted around for years—but rarely opened—he called back to his partner, “Yeah, we’ll make an offer on this lot.”

I circled back through the shop to give them time, and sidestepped into the Social Sciences section for amusement. A few of my previously sold books—including one of the referential cruxes of my anthropology Master’s thesis—sat on the shelf gathering dust. I flipped through it, chuckled at my margin notes and dogears, and slid it back into the uneven line of bindings; the symbolism was laughable. Shortly thereafter, I found myself back at the counter.

All told, my haul garnered $16.25.

I sighed dejectedly. “Sold.”

The clerk who’d reviewed my pile sidled up to me.

“Hey, you know, it’s a bummer. But take a look at that back wall.”

He pointed behind the counter to a far wall partly obscured by mounded boxes of DVDs.

“I think I’m going to have to start pricing their resale at five cents apiece. But hey, this book, it’s so weird.”

He touched the large volume with unexpected gentleness. “I have no idea what it is, but it’s going to look great on someone’s bookshelf.”

I laughed.

“But at least it’ll stay in circulation. We’ll keep its story going.”

I smiled, patted the pile, collected my receipt, and walked away.

***

Days later, JoJo struggled against my snug hold. She was more interested in our coiffed visitor than being sandwiched against my sweat-saturated shirt. I couldn’t blame her.

The woman rapped her bejeweled press-on nails across the weathered dining table as she surveyed a pile of studio art pottery, and lifted up small mid century cache pots pocked with struggling succulents. She extended her index finger, the polished nail tip squaring dead-center on the glazed pot behind me—one that friends from North Carolina had gifted me right before I moved to Raleigh. Out from it grew a large Pilea peperomioides—what I’d come to dub as one of many “hipster plant necessities.”

“How much?”

I’d already told her that I hadn’t yet priced many items in the apartment, that I hadn’t anticipated having any buyers over. Still, I tried to reframe the whole situation as an opportunity.

I quoted a price, and then she motioned toward a small cluster of pots lining a corner table.

“And those four?”

As if sensing my growing irritation, JoJo sighed in my arms and descended into full-on fainting goat, her tiny form sagging as she exercised her greatest anti-holding technique: dead weight.

“All together, forty-five,” I blurted, setting JoJo down.

The minute the “five” rolled off my tongue, I cringed. Albeit a painfully low price, the plants needed to go.

Exceedingly pleased, the woman began doling her cash onto the table. Seconds later, she upended her purse entirely, counting quarters into one-dollar piles as her bangled bracelets clattered together in metallic applause.

JoJo sniffed around the woman’s pristine suit pant cuffs, and I snapped at her to back off. She glared back, wandered over to the spot vacated by the large planter I’d dragged over to the woman’s pile, and proceeded to roll around in the sun.

Touche.

“I have thirty-one dollars,” the woman said confidently, adding, “This is my laundry money.” As if that somehow justified the low-ball counteroffer.

I sighed.

“Fine.”

“So, you do this for a living?” she asked, apparently forgetting she’d already posed the same question thirty minutes prior, as I helped her load six large plants into her oversized, battered Ford pickup.

“Nope. But I’ve thought about it.”

“You really should. You have a lot of nice things.”

That line gets me every single time. It’s a kind sentiment to express, and it’s certainly a prospect I’ve explored. But I remind myself about how stressed I get when I’m surrounded by those same “nice things”—and the associated, incessant drive to collect more and then immediately shed the bulk. It’s bulimic materialism, one of the waste behaviors we’re taught is normal. Because, from an early age, people in America are conditioned to believe that the Norman Rockwell-esque “American Dream” is the pinnacle of success: two kids, a spouse, a generously-sized house with a new car parked in the driveway, and Scraps the dog running through a perfectly manicured green lawn out front. But that same dream has always been rooted in white supremacy and white privilege, racist policies, and a tarted up version of Manifest Destiny—move to the West and take what is rightfully yours; a hallmark of this country’s deep-seated taproot springing from genocide and slavery. This problematic mirage is perpetuated through hyperconsumerism, capitalism’s key driver: the notion that, with “hard won success” and a “can-do attitude,” comes the ability—nay, necessity—to conspicuously consume the right house, car, wardrobe, and on-trend decor. And we all fall for it; I certainly did.

Only after I finally got out of debt, and through ample self-reflection, was I able to acknowledge that I don’t want or need most of the elements of that force-fed image of success. More than ever, I now crave physical and mental space to breathe—to be free of things. I intend to wholeheartedly embrace this mentality while I’m young, rather than burying myself in baubles or committing myself to an unhealthy, toxic relationship in the short term, and then spending my precious golden years fretting about how to escape. So much of this next chapter is unwritten. But those parts I’m beginning to author are all about self care, and putting boundaries in place. Of cherishing what little I need, and letting the rest go—keeping only that which helps catapult me into my next phase. No matter where I end up, I’ll continue to map on my sense of personal beauty through the experiences and company I keep.

I slammed the truck’s heavy tailgate, and nodded to the woman. After I crossed the road back to my complex, she drove by slowly and rolled down her window.

“And let me know when you, uh, leave for good. What you want to do with the rest of your items. I have sort of a buying problem. HAHA!”

I waved her on, and assured her that I would. But I knew I’d never see her again.

***

As a high school senior, I was assigned a 10-page paper—a dreaded semester-long project, the tales of which resonated through my predecessors’ ranks. It’d be a literary rite of passage, a hurdle to clear. Each student chose a word, and that was the singular focus of their paper—its etymology, symbolism, and its evolving usages throughout history and through the works we’d read. It required calculated introspection.

I chose “growth.”

Decades later, I find myself in a far-flung corner of the country, away from everything and everyone I know. Moving here was a decision made as part of a joint life being cultivated; two years ago, it became a solo journey. I stayed and forced myself to root, to grow into my surroundings. I rehabbed Gay Gardens; I lost myself there. It became my Eden, from which I begrudgingly acknowledged I needed to fall. And I did.

I evolved, adapted.

Whenever I think of growth—as I did all of those years ago—the most common reflection is something new, generative: intimating some greater experience—a building of momentum, toward a logical conclusion or form. But the personal growth I’ve experienced here has been antithetical to how I assumed my life would develop: that it’d grow in a defined, understood direction. That’s not the case.

My anticipated “beginning” in Seattle is no longer dependent on when I find someone, or the “right” job, or encounter some fortuitous windfall, or even accomplish long-held dreams. It’s suddenly so painfully obvious, and within my ability to kick-start. I just have to lean into it, allow myself to grow into this new mindset, and stop pretending as though I know what my life is supposed to be like. Because none of us knows. We’re all pretending like we do, but we’re really just here for the ride.

We’re all growing into journeys we never thought we’d take. And that’s the messy beauty of it all.

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Kinky Boots

At nearly thirty-four, I’m inching into a neoprene harness behind a sex shop’s three-quarter changing room wall.

I glance to my left, expecting to see this failed experiment reflected in a cracked, distorted mirror. But instead, I look out onto the shop floor and make disturbingly prolonged eye contact with a man holding up a black shirt that features a “1” outlined in dripping yellow.

With one arm tucked awkwardly beneath two straps, I duck out of view and commence muttering to myself.

How the fuck does this thing work?

Is there a front?

This is so disempowering.

Moments later, the overly attentive clerk sidles up to the wall, and peers over.

“Is that the right size for you?”

Crouched Gollum-like in the corner whilst fumbling with the clasps, I know my stricken expression will belie any hints of knowledgeable enthusiasm I can possibly muster.

“OH, YEP. EVERYTHING’S FINE. HAHAHA. YEP. JUST FINE.”

Unfazed, he pivots left—walking over to the discount shirt section where two twenty-somethings banter back and forth about their options.

“Oooh, we can really slut this up in time for Pride. And look, there’s even an otter on it for you!”

“Wait, you think I’m an otter?”

“Of course you’re a fucking otter. Jesus, Todd.”

With arms twisted in opposite directions and my neck arched like an arabesque origami crane, I feel like Pinocchio’s uncoordinated gay brother, Parker—and consider re-shelving the entire getup. But as I unwind myself, I lean into the fearful discomfort burbling in my mind, and push past it—reaching for the potential I know lies just beyond.

I slide the dressing room’s daisy duke jean short drape to one side, and notice the chatty twink rolling his eyes at Todd, who’s holding up a shirt that reads “Bad Puppy.”

“Goddammit, Todd! It’s like you’re not even trying.”

Opposite them, in a mirror-lined alcove, two forty-something Microsofties debate the flogging merits of elk leather over cowhide.

“I dunno, Jason. You know how welted my skin can get,” she says, running her hand along the flogger’s coarse underside, her French tips glinting brilliantly beneath the track lighting.

Jason nods his agreement, and adjusts his wide-rimmed glasses.

I skirt around them, trip over a cock ring display, and knock into a wall, causing upright dildos on the shelves above to jiggle like dashboard bobble heads. For a moment, I watch them sway, thinking about how lively this place would be during an earthquake.

At the counter, an older man scans my items like they’re produce, and slides them into a generic paper bag.

“Do you need any lube?”

That definitely beats a shopper savings readout. 

“Nope, I’m good.”

As the card processes, I think back to my first solo sex shop foray—working up the courage to cross the threshold after passing by the storefront twice. But the moment I walked in, the friendly staffer wholly disarmed me with his kindness and tact, so much so that I gutted up enough confidence to flirt with him, but promptly tripped and fell into a lube display—bottles sliding across the floor and into the door. I didn’t get his number.

After the card reader beeps, the man pushes the bag over to me.

“Thanks for coming in.”

I wait to see if there’s a punchline, but he turns to help the Microsofties, who’ve decided to go with the elk leather. So I gather my bag and inch past Todd, who’s migrated over to mesh tops—the same display I careened into when I scurried in, a pair of assless chaps swatting me across the face as the clerks welcomed me.

Back in the car, I cram the bag into the floorboard as paranoia-fueled story-lines mentally unfold frame by frame: whilst feeling empowered and driving along, I neglect to see a dog crossing the road; I swerve to avoid it, and crash into a sidewalk bollard; in slow motion, I half-consciously watch as the merchandise hurtles out through the shattered windshield; and, as I fully come to, I hear bystanders whispering conspiratorially to one another, “Claudia, is that what I think it is?”

When I get home, I try everything again without the pressure of prying eyes, and feel totally free—sexy, desirable, and completely unencumbered by societal expectations.

There’s power in exploring such desires—in reveling in the delicious ambiguity of budding selfhood and self-reflection, of finding a new, albeit distantly familiar, rhythm to life. Especially when it’s for you, and no one else.

***

Glass crunches underfoot as I teeter off the backhoe’s caked tracks and firmly plant my sneakers onto the cottage’s shattered, listing porch.

Several months before, during an afternoon walk with JoJo, I’d stumbled upon the abandoned cottage. Sited on a manicured stretch of Craftsman bungalows and 1940s cottages, it sat far back on a deep, overgrown corner lot. As I often do with dilapidated structures, I dreamed of what I’d do to it if it were mine—making use of the front yard for raised vegetable beds and beehives, slowly transforming the modest house from an eyesore into a home. But in subsequent weeks, I’d been noticing a surge of activity around it: the boards covering the windows had been removed, the lawn was mowed—subtle hints of impending change. And then the backhoe arrived.

I angle myself through the collapsed doorway and let adrenaline fuel my tour —acknowledging at every turn that this was once someone’s home, treating it with respect. There’s something sacred about mapping one final experience onto a place that’s soon to be wiped from the earth.

Just inside the kitchen, I step over a small mailbox sign reading “Anderson” and peer into open cupboards where purple glass tumblers stand aligned—soldiers soon to face an unwieldy adversary. Beneath the sink, a bright red kettle sits alongside a small computer monitor, its cord neatly wrapped nearby.

Condemned homes replete with personal items have such a haunting quality; it’s as though life inside is still unfolding. I snap a few photos, and then scamper out.

Late the next evening, as JoJo and I crest the hill, the cottage is gone. There’s no pile of splintered wood—only a broken picket fence gate propped along the massive hole, the air perfumed by a shattered evergreen laying across the upended lot. We dogleg into the alley, past a gaggle of neighbors clucking about “what’s coming,”  and sidestep a swath of pavement sprinkled with purple glass and computer bits.

Every ruin, every life, can be an homage to decadent waste.

***

My phone pulses from a push notification; more bad news about the state of our country—more chaos sown, more lives thrown into limbo. Everything feels substantially heavier.

The weight of it makes my privileged skin feel unbearable—that if I wait a second longer, I’ll rip it off. I flick the power button on my battered iPod Shuffle as the elevator door opens. Moments later, I’m running.

As I gasp for breath between sprints, I try and think about the last time I ran this hard. I was a block away from Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, racing away from an encroaching truth.

Turning a corner, I bound to the left to avoid colliding with an oblivious, scooter-riding child.

Through my ear buds, Dolores O’Riordan croons the haunting lyrics to “Zombie.”

“But, you see it’s not me
It’s not my family
In your head, in your head
They are fighting

With their tanks and their bombs
And their bombs and their guns
In your head in your head they are crying
In your head
In your head…”

 

I run faster, sidestep a dead raven rotting on the sidewalk, and wind along a row of character-rich single-story cottages being prepped for demolition—to be replaced by the charmless, squared facades being overbuilt by the block-full. We’re stripping away so much for the sake of the here and now; we’ll regret it.

Every single day it feels as though this nation is dying; here and there we disappear—generations lost to violence, a layer of our collective history ripped away. And when we reach back for who and what went missing, we can only grasp at random photos, a few yellowed pages packed away in library stacks, hum a string of lyrics to remind ourselves that we were once here together.

Bowie’s “Heroes” queues up.

“…I will be King
And you, you will be Queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be heroes just for one day
We can be us just for one day
…
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh, we can beat them, forever and ever
Then we could be heroes just for one day…”

I hurtle downhill—my legs expanding outward, arms catching the breeze: willing me to take flight.

***

A block ahead, Pride thumps through the streets. Amid the glittered, sweaty revelry, signs of solidarity are raised aloft, clutched by rainbow-painted fists.

Screams inch into the back of my throat; I let the music pulse through me—my body easing into the thrumming crowd: a community of fellow “others.” Living loudly is the best revenge to take against a force that’d see everyone white-washed and straightened out.

An hour later, I take a side street and head downhill—but not before I look back and scan the crowd: a kaleidescope of blending color; the world as it should be.

Sun streaks across my shades as the sidewalk grade steepens. I give in to gravity, and lean into the decline; before I know it, I’m running again.

Air rushes by as my slip-ons clack against the pavement: the intervals widening, my body feeling lighter.

Reminding me of the thrill of piloting a life that embraces unknowns, hardship, and intense longing—using it to catalyze changes for a better future, a time when we all can fly.

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For Whom the Belle Tolls

Each of us holds and wields power, which is inextricably tied to privilege. Not all of us recognize it, often succumbing to apathy or, worse yet, defaulting to socially conditioned behaviors of perpetuating horrid, patently false social narratives and stereotypes about members of marginalized communities— especially people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA people, and women.

But even folks who are digging deep—have started enrolling in trainings, are learning more about oppression and its avatars—still default and commit microaggressions. We’re human, and we trip up. And I’m no exception. Still, we have a responsibility to acknowledge when we do trip up, and work to mitigate the effects these microaggressions can have on our relationships.

Before I dive in, let me start by acknowledging the power I carry. I’m a cis, white, able-bodied gay man whose first language is English. In the U.S., five of those six characteristics afford me access to services and a veritable cornucopia of resources, and their primacy is reified through codified legislation—that all too frequently perpetuates and undergirds institutional vehicles of oppression targeting people of color, immigrants, trans* people, people with disabilities, and women.

So, to recap, I have an insane amount of privilege. And whenever possible, I attempt to leverage it in intentional, intersectional ways to help uplift or amplify oppressed voices.

That being said, I want to touch on the other component of my personhood that kicks me out of the proverbial privilege clubhouse. I’m gay, and have been out for about 13 years.

I’m incredibly fortunate to live in one of the most liberal states on the Left Coast, in one of its most liberal cities. Working in the nonprofit sphere, I rub shoulders with a lot of people who think they’re much more progressive than they are; and since I work in King County, the vast majority of these folks are white, middle to upper class—which means something completely different socioeconomically than where I grew up in small-town Alabama—and most were or are affiliated with either Microsoft or Amazon. Because I’m swaddled in this politically blue cocoon, it’s all the more jarring when someone allows their privilege to cloud their judgement, leading them to say or do something wholly offensive.

The other day, I was chatting with some folks, and I concluded a story with some allusion to where I grew up—to which a straight, white, cis man responded by calling me a “southern belle.”

His flippant comment completely blindsided me. And even though I’m a blunt, direct person, all I could do in the moment was sigh, roll my eyes, and say something to dismiss the entire thing. Because, by that point, I was in escape mode; I had to get away.

He walked away, completely clueless of what he’d triggered in me.

It goes without saying that men in this country are steeped in a cauldron of toxic masculinity at an early age—conditioned to believe that becoming a seasoned, successful man requires constant competition, as well as leveraging violent, forceful methods to physically and emotionally dominate women and “submissive” men. It’s why, as a boy, I gradually recognized that it was unacceptable to hug or show affection for my male friends; our play quickly graduated from playful hugs and rolls to jabs, sneers, and competitive strength games.

By calling me a “southern belle,” he tapped into all of that—using two words to perform three actions: first, “southern” throws a geographic wedge between me and him, which is the easiest way for him to convey my “otherness,” that I don’t belong; second, by following with “belle” he sought to undercut my “manhood,” or his perception of my masculinity, by perpetuating an arcane, homophobic trope of gay men not being “real men”—they’re “fairies,” they’re “light in their loafers,” they’re “not us”; and third, by using “belle” he reaffirmed his conditioned misogyny—selecting a moniker that, historically, is tied to a southern woman who follows “traditional” values and performs “as a dutiful wife and woman should” (meaning all that “barefoot and pregnant” horse shit).

While I’m not noodling around in his noggin, I’m fairly certain none of this registered as he walked away. Straight guys often fail to even fathom the extent to which gay men have to grapple with and reframe all of that conditioned behavior to forge meaningful relationships. And he probably had no idea that those two words completely derailed my entire afternoon—and triggered a flood of emotions and painful memories: every single time I’ve been called a “fag”; being nearly run off the road repeatedly because I had pride stickers on my car; being accosted on the street; being discriminated against in a workplace; being told that I should be killed; and being threatened with physical violence because I walked out of a gay club.

But, most importantly, it reminded me of how important it is to educate people.

So, straight folks, here’s a non-exhaustive list of how to check your privilege, at least around gay men.

Let’s start with a few things that I’m not:

  • Your accessory. Please don’t broach a friendship or work relationship with the expectation that I’ll be your gay best friend (GBF).
  • Your parroting validator. Tied to the above, don’t expect me to constantly comment on how wonderful your outfits are, or how healthy your hair looks. Forcing compliments and expecting them is juvenile, Mean Girls-style bullshit. Adult the fuck up, and take responsibility for your own sense of self.
  • Your token gay friend. If I’m your only gay friend, I’m going to be hella skeptical of your intentions, and definitely dodge your repeated brunch requests.
  • Your drama coach. I loathe drama. I don’t need yours. That’s why there’re therapists.

Exercise common sense:

  • No, I don’t know every other gay person in the world. Not even your friend Stan who “Lives in Georgia, which is near Alabama!”
  • No, I don’t speak for all gay people, much less the entire LGBTQIA community.
  • No, the LGBTQIA community is not an actual, cohesive, tangible entity based near Palm Springs. Unfortunately, the community is very much fragmented by nested racism, sexism, and internalized transphobia and homophobia. But when we flex our muscles, we can and do effect change.
  • Every single gay guy does not enjoy shopping, dancing, clothes, interior design, making cocktails, or going to the gym. You’ve watched way too much cable and/or Queer as Folk. I mean, I can design the shit out of your house, but that’s not because I’m gay. I just have good taste.

If you’re straight, don’t ever:

  • Call me hunty, gurl, girlfriend, fabulous, sensitive, delicate, artsy, fruity, flamboyant, or, of course, homo, queer, or fag.
  • Bust up in an LGBTQIA-owned/operated club/establishment like you own the place. You can go ANYWHERE ELSE and do that and get away with it because you’re straight. So please stop hosting your bachelorette parties at gay clubs; it’s so annoying and disrespectful and, to be honest, you’re gonna get a lot of side-eye and watered-down drinks. Even if you’re not a drinker (like me!), clubs have always played a very important roll as safe havens for LGBTQIA people— which is why atrocities committed in them strike very significant nerves (e.g., PULSE, and the UpStairs lounge arson). Be respectful of history, and let us have our space.
  • Try to imitate me, because even if you’re a fucking linguistics expert, it’ll be completely offensive. Because, without fail, your voice will suddenly rise five octaves and get hella nasally.
  • Ask two gay men, “So, who’s the woman?” Not only is that comment crafted through a misogynistic lens that conflates “woman” with “feminine” with “submissive”, but my sex life is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. I swear, sometimes I think straight men think about gay sex more than gay men.
  • Ask me to explain how gay sex works. Jesus, just Google that shit.
  • Ask me to explain every single subgroup within gay male subculture. If I offer, sure. But I rarely offer.
  • Assume I’m a touchy-feely person. If I know you, I’ll hug you. But if I don’t, I’m a very I WILL MACE YOU IN THE FACE person. Respect my space.

And recognize:

  • A LOT of LGBTQIA people don’t feel safe with PDA. So if you’re in A GAYBORHOOD, don’t be dry-humping your boy/girlfriend. Not only is it tacky in general, but it’s incredibly disrespectful. I can count on one hand—and not even a full hand—the number of times I ever held my ex-husband’s hand in public, because almost every situation elicited raised eyebrows, straight ogling, or slurs.
  • DOMA was repealed in 2013. 2-0-1-3. Before then, gays couldn’t get married. So try to recognize that many folks uprooted their lives and moved JUST SO THEY COULD GET LEGALLY FUCKING MARRIED. (Not that I’m projecting.)
  • And it wasn’t until 2015 with Obergefell v. Hodges that LGBTQs could legally marry nationwide. 2-0-1-5. 

So please, take strides toward recognizing your privilege, and be proactive about learning from your missteps so that you don’t have someone writing a blog post about you.