what a time to be bisexual and alive

because being queer any other time in history would have been a lot worse

When I was a child I told my mom I was gonna marry a girl when I grow up. Maybe I will! My thoughts on marriage change a lot.

My mom dated a woman when I was a kid. My grandmother was gay. Queerness is in my DNA.

I’ve always been fascinated by my grandma Evelyn. Her birthday is the day after mine, I was born February 25th, 1994. Evelyn was born February 26th, 1926. She went to school at Cornell where she met my grandfather, Duncan. She was the Captain of her college basketball team. (*cough* gay)

This photo was taken around 1945-46. After Cornell she and Duncan moved to Ann Arbor and lived on 5th street in what is now called the Old West Side. As she got older, her alcoholism got much worse. I’m sure it didn’t help to have 9 children (Catholic), to be in an abusive marriage, and to be a closeted lesbian.
She got a divorce from my grandfather which was uncommon back then and started presenting more butch, wearing men’s clothes and smoking and hanging out with her mostly male friends. She worked at the St Vincent De Paul thrift store in Ann Arbor and I was told that she once gave a homeless man new clothing in exchange for a few hours of work in the shop.
She died of multiple myeloma 10 years before I was born, she was only 58 years old. Her ashes were spread illegally in the yard of the 5th street house.

I was feeling inspired by her so I candidly texted my mom:

And this is what my mom said:

The second message made me cry when I read it.

I’m SO glad the first time I saw a same sex couple it was my mother and they were holding one another.

I think about Evelyn a lot as I get older, living life as a nonbinary bisexual person that doesn’t have to hide their identity. Queerness informs so much of my work, my photography is all about queer connection. My tattoos are even getting gayer! (See previous post.)

My grandma couldn’t live her truth, and through expressing my queerness I honor the queerness of my grandmother.
By loving my queerness, I give love to the generations that came before me that couldn’t or weren’t able to love their queerness.

<3

I’ve felt flickers of internalized homophobia when I’ve dated women. I’ve felt like I was missing something when I’ve dated men. I sometimes have feelings of discomfort regarding my gender identity; maybe I inherited some of the shame my mom felt about Evelyn being so different from the other moms. (I wonder if she would have identified as trans or nonbinary had she been born today.)
Growing up, my mom had a lot of homoerotic art in our house. There were these decorative plates hanging in the hallway that had an image of two naked women chasing each other through a tropical little landscape, and the other plate had a woman with large breasts lounging against a tree. I remember taking them off the wall and hiding them before my high school boyfriend came over because I was embarrassed that my mom had them. I currently have a painting of three dicks going into a butthole in my living room; if I had a child I would be a million times more embarrassing than my mom was to me.

Most of my friends are gay and trans. I’m immersed in gay culture. I suck n fuck all genders and body parts. I’m still navigating my own queerness and desires and I’m so grateful I have the ability to do so without being ostracized by the community.
I would never pick another time to be alive then right now. I love you grandma.

happy pride xox