#YHZ – Small Town Homo

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(Originally posted on May 12, 2013 at I Dig Your Girlfriend.)

I grew up in a tiny hamlet in rural Nova Scotia. Our backyard was big enough to play baseball in, and we lost more than a few fly balls in the woods behind it. My grandparents lived across the road from us, and aunts, uncles, and cousins were within walking distance. Flowers and blueberries grew wild, and on summer evenings the air sounded like crickets.

The beach was less than a ten-minute drive away. I would spend whole days there with my cousins, braving the cold water and painfully stumbling over uneven rocks to get to the wavy sand that waited for us waist or chest deep. We walked along the shore looking for shells, wearing our towels as skirts and letting the sun dry us. We chatted on damp picnic blankets, crunching slightly sandy potato chips and wishing the juice boxes had stayed cold.

Cable TV didn’t become available until I was seven or eight. Sugar cereals (beyond Alpha-Bits and Honeycombs) were almost exotic… we had to go all the way to “town” for those. Strangers weren’t really a thing – on any given Sunday drive, Mom and Dad could tell me who lived in every single house we passed. Whenever we needed a babysitter, my folks had dozens to choose from.

People knew whose kid you were just by looking at you. If you were getting into mischief in the afternoon, your parents knew about it by the time you came home for supper. For better or worse, you really felt like the whole village was raising you. Continue reading “#YHZ – Small Town Homo” →

Family

Published on by Sharon3 Comments

The streets of New Orleans are bent with the memory of water.

If you know anything about us at all, you know that ten years ago the city suffered the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. When you drive through the streets today, you can see the dents left by the water and the turmoil. Potholes and sink holes are still cropping up across town, and in some areas when new rain falls, it collects in the center of the streets, which appear to have nearly bent in half under the weight of all the water they carried.

I wasn’t here during The Storm. I was away in California, where fires sometimes consume the mountains, but things are rebuilt and life goes on.

But I do know what it means to be bent under a weight, to carry memories that change the shape of your foundation. Continue reading “Family” →

Losing My Religion

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(Originally posted on September 23, 2012 at I Dig Your Girlfriend.)

I was brought up Catholic in a small, white hamlet in mainland Nova Scotia. This was pretty much the norm for kids raised in small, white hamlets in mainland Nova Scotia.

I was a very obedient child right up until I was a very obedient adolescent. I went to church every Saturday night until I joined the youth choir and started going every Sunday morning instead.  Week to week, I was there in both body and spirit.

My elementary school was not a Catholic school, but it was situated in an overwhelmingly Catholic community. As such, we had religion classes during school hours.

Whenever religion class was about to start, the one girl in my grade who wasn’t Catholic would be ushered to another classroom. I think she spent the time colouring in a colouring book or something. I was never really sure. The fact that she would get sent to another room always felt strange to me. I wondered how it made her feel to be sent away for not belonging.

This was the first crack in my Catholic shell. Continue reading “Losing My Religion” →

The Bad Low

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Kate has Type 1 Diabetes. Before getting to know her, the only “info” I had about this disease came from my extensive childhood reading of Babysitters Club books. Either diabetes has changed significantly since the early nineties, or Ann M. Martin didn’t have all her facts straight. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

My mother has had Type 2 Diabetes since I was a teenager. At first, she managed it with pills and diet and regular visits to a diabetic clinic. Some time after I left home, she was switched to an insulin regime. These days, she injects herself twice daily, with the same prescribed dose each time. Before Mom was put on this treatment plan, I hadn’t been aware that people with Type 2 could need insulin injections. It’s not exactly common knowledge. And as little as I had known about Type 2, I knew even less about Type 1. Continue reading “The Bad Low” →

Bisexual Monogamy

Published on by Kate2 Comments

(Originally posted on May 7, 2013 at I Dig Your Girlfriend.)

I’ve noticed something since coming out, and I’m not sure if I should be bothered by it or not. I can’t say it’s a trend – can two people be a trend? – but coupled with other bisexual experiences I’ve read about, it seems to be a thing I can’t escape by the very nature of my sexual orientation.

I have officially dated two people since coming out, both of them have been men. Both of them knew I am bisexual, both of them knew my experience with women is limited, and both of them kept insisting I should explore my sexuality by dating women on the side.

I suppose now is a good time to clarify that I am very much a monogamous person. I can’t even casually go on a date with one person one week and a different person the next, unless I’ve completely ruled out the first person. I think I make this clear, as a general rule, to those I get beyond the point of casual dating with. I can’t focus on more than one person at a time to that degree; trying to maintain and further intimate relationships with multiple people would exhaust me.

Yet since coming out, the men I’ve dated have insisted I should carry on with what are essentially – in my mind – affairs! There have been arguments about it, like these straight men know what’s best for me as a bisexual woman and I’m obviously deluded about how bisexuality works. Neither of them wanted a free pass to also date women on the side, and neither seemed bothered by the idea of me forming intimate physical and emotional relationships with women. Continue reading “Bisexual Monogamy” →

My Differently-Sexed Choice

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Guest post by PhebeAnn.

In her post “The Same-Sex Choice,” Kate posted this quotation from Robyn Ochs:

“Many lesbians and gay men believe that bisexuals have less commitment to ‘the community’, and that whatever a lesbian or gay man might have to offer to their bisexual partner will not be enough to outweigh the external benefits offered to those who are in heterosexual relationships. […] What gets lost in the fear is the fact that same-sex relationships also offer benefits not available in heterosexual relationships: the absence of scripted gender roles, freedom from unwanted pregnancy, the ease of being with someone with more similar social conditioning, and so on.”

I can relate to Ochs’ and Kate’s appreciation of the benefits offered by a same-gender relationship.

I am a bisexual woman who is primarily attracted to other women. From the age of 17 to the age of 21, I identified as a lesbian. I’ve never been particularly interested in dating men. This lack of interest is less because I’m more physically attracted to women of all gender presentations than because of the things Ochs talks about above, and that Kate talked about in her piece. Women tend to be socialized to be more communicative, empathetic and emotionally open. Women tend to be less easily offended when their femininity is threatened than men do when their masculinity is threatened. Two women by default must negotiate relationship roles apart from how these would arbitrarily be designated by gender.

Because of all these appealing elements of a same-gender relationship, paired with my strong sexual attraction to women, I always thought I’d end up in a monogamous or monogamish relationship with a woman. When my first long term relationship of six years ended – a polyamourous relationship with a woman – I had no plans to date men. When I felt ready to date again, I put up profiles on dating sites where I sought to date only women. But before long I was in a monogamish relationship with my best friend/neighbour Jon, a straight cisgender man. Continue reading “My Differently-Sexed Choice” →

#YEG – Pride and Joy

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(Originally posted on June 9, 2013 at I Dig Your Girlfriend.)

Yesterday may have been the best day of my life.

Pride (or Gay Christmas, as some call it) is a magical day. The city is cloaked in vibrant colours, and it pulses with unabashed joy from dawn to well after dusk. There is no other day of the year when I feel so completely embraced by everyone around me.

There’s usually a moment or two throughout the day when I’m struck by the fact that everything will go back to “normal” tomorrow. At these times, I wish everyday could be just like Pride – tens of thousands of smiling queers and allies strutting around downtown, radiating love at friends and strangers alike. Of course, Gay Christmas comes but once a year.  But I’m confident that the feeling I had when I finally dragged my gay ass home last night (a.k.a. this morning) won’t be wearing off anytime soon. Continue reading “#YEG – Pride and Joy” →

#ORD – One Of The Boys

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Guest post by Kristi.

Let’s just get this out of the way: my college experience consisted of three different colleges in three different regions of America with several gaps in between. I was basically the poster child for the idea that not everyone should go to college immediately after high school.

One of those three stints happened to be located in Chicago, Illinois; a hot, humid mess of cultures/culture shock that gave me some of the best and worst experiences of my life. Having grown up near a mid-sized city in the San Joaquin Valley of California–think “almond orchards and farmers everywhere, dotted with the occasional Confederate Flag waving off an old flatbed”–I knew nothing about living in an actual city, much less one as complex as Chicago. In some parts of the city, entire streets “belonged” to a culture: Division Street was Polish; Devon Avenue phased between Russian Jewish and Indian in an utterly fascinating way. Despite the prevalence of cultural diversity in the Chicago landscape, however, racial segregation is recognized as being alive and well.

Those of you who read “almond orchards and farmers everywhere” and thought “conservative” are right, which is why living in Chicago was also very much my first immersion in queer culture. Of course, when I was in high school I had a few gay friends (almost exclusively cisgender men), but none was out like the boys of Chicago’s East Lakeview neighborhood–affectionately nicknamed “Boystown.” Continue reading “#ORD – One Of The Boys” →

Telling Mom

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(Originally posted on May 11, 2012 at I Dig Your Girlfriend.)

I love my mother.

I came out to her eight years ago, in an email, with practically the whole nation of Canada between us. I had only come out to a few people by then; people whose reactions I could more or less predict with confidence. But telling Mom was proving to be a challenge. Months earlier I had tried to do it in person but chickened out.

I was genuinely unsure of what she would say. She grew up Catholic in a tiny east coast community where gays might as well have been mythical creatures. It’s only now that I can look back and realize that I grew up that way, too.

There was nothing special about the day I decided to tell her. I guess I just felt ready. But I wasn’t brave enough for a phone conversation, so I laid it all out in an email. I reread it a few times, and then I hit “send.” I tried (unsuccessfully) to get a good night’s sleep. Continue reading “Telling Mom” →

Let’s Get Physical!

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I’ve never liked going to the doctor. Growing up, I had no problem visiting the dentist, or the orthodontist, or the optometrist (even though those three conspired to make me a glasses and braces nerd for most of junior high). But seeing a GP was different.

I spent two stints in the hospital at an early age. I don’t remember much about that, aside from how strange it felt to be somewhere without my parents, and how startled people were that a six-year-old could spell the word pneumonia.

The hospital was a thirty minute drive for us. We only went there for major problems. For the rest, we had a local clinic, much closer to home. When my siblings and I needed things like booster shots (vaccinate your kids!) and antibiotics (bacterial infections only!), Mom would haul us to the little building by the school. The waiting room was small, with a handful of chairs and a play area for the kids. Continue reading “Let’s Get Physical!” →