Lyfe

I was the first child born to Donny and Sherrie, March 23, 1985. What better way for an Aries to enter the world than being the first born. 

*pause*

As I am writing this I feel an opportunity to reimagine where I came from - a  where that can’t be affiliated with a bloodline or family resemblance. 

I come from beings that are difficult to name, or better yet, beings that have many names - fool, priest/priestess, jester, trickster, healer, fag, queer, sissy. I love these creatures. These are names of creatures that I have written in my baby book, I wrote them. 

The misunderstood, the unrecognizable, the beings that come from the earth and stars and water and fire - or maybe none of those things - maybe I come from the spaces and edges in between those things.

maybe

It’s quite alchemic, isn’t it?

I was born on the third evening of Aries in the year 1985…7:09pm to be exact. Aries sun, Libra rising, Taurus moon. My love for the night time is supported by my evening birth time. I like to think of it as the most anti-capitalist time of the day. This time when everyone is asleep offers me a sense of safety that helps me to exist in magical and mysterious formations. 

I was born in Orlando Florida but my adolescence was spent in West Tennessee. A very small town called Milan…yes…like the city in Italy, but pronounced MY-lan. My mother and father were 24 years old when I was born. I often think about what their life was like at 24 years old in 1985 and having their first child. 

1985-

The president of the US was Ronlad Reagan. AIDS had climbed to all new infection levels and Reagan had still not made any significant choices regarding the crisis.

I wonder a lot about my mother and father during this time. I wonder what they thought about AIDS and the president and queerness. I wonder if they knew any queer people. I wonder if they thought their first child would be queer.  

I grew up in a Roman Catholic Church…it actually wasn’t a church - it was a mission. Rural West Tennessee isn’t known for its large Catholic population - but there they were. My mother grew up in a Southern Baptist tradition in Hollow Rock Tennessee and converted to Catholicism, my father grew up in a Roman Catholic tradition in Florida, spending most of his schooling in Catholic schools.

Water infused with misogyny and racism and homophobia was poured onto my head in a ritualistic fashion when I was an infant. I was made to eat and drink bread and wine that came from the same recipe. I was made to sign contracts that would ensure that FEAR was my motivating force and mode of existence. Fear of everyone including myself.

One of the practices which was being waged in a violent way was that of repetition. Every Sunday at 8am and most Wednesday evenings not only was I reminded that I wasn’t enough but I was taught to wage war against the part of me that I loved the most and that would set me free. They couldn't clip my wings but they were being bound and tied and strangled.