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Reminders of Why I Strive and What I Strive For
- Reminders of Why I Strive and What I Strive For -
Being a personal journey of mine, from some of the early stages of my life to those that came after.
So, you may well ask when it began for me... the realization that I had changed, become something a great deal different than I used to be. Was it when I was sixteen years old and had to deal with the loss of the first girl I ever loved, Andrea? Maybe. Or perhaps it was following the eight years in which I did spend a great, tremendous amount of time trying to figure out who I was, and what was left of me, after the abuses and terrors I suffered at the hands of someone who should have loved me but did not. I never think that the years from 2004 to 2011 were wasted... I went places, did things, saw things, experienced things, and became something at the end of it all. One day, I looked in the mirror and realized that I just could not longer stand looking at my face... it was the face of a victim, of a person who had been hurt to the breaking point, and pushed beyond that breaking point. What did I do? I changed that face, or at the least I tried to change it as much as I could without surgery. I became someone else, someone new, and in that moment I died and was reborn. Like a phoenix rising up from the ashes of a world gone straight to Hell. And still I felt imperfect, flawed, not quite right. I made a promise, a vow, to be strong. To be a kind of strong that I was not before... strong enough to protect the ones I love henceforth. A lock on my door and nails in my windows kept me from saving my beloved's life all those years ago. Now, no lock and no nails would ever stop me again! But the nails in my heart would be there forever, bleeding into my very soul. And there would always be a lock in a secret place in my heart, a place that I realize now belongs to Andrea alone... no matter who I love or who loves me, there will always be that place. That is just how it is when you love someone. You reserve a place for them within yourself. When they die, if you truly ever did love them... then that place remains. I have added spaces within me for others long since, for those I met and fell in love with since. They are all equal, those places in my heart. There is no favoritism, unlike in politics and even in family most times. Ah, 2011! The first year in which I did leave my house and go out to town dressed truly as me. As myself. Even Andrea never saw this version of me, though being gender nonconforming herself she would have understood it completely. When I was a teenager, I saw the world through a black and white view, but over time I realized more and more that we live in a gray world. A world so gray that you have to add your own color to it. For me, 2011, it was the beginning of my attempts to bring color to a bleak world. I knew it had to be sincere, it had to be a full commitment. My ideals, my ideas, were fully formed by that year, and all I needed to do was to believe in them enough to act on them. I have never stopped acting on them, and so have become them.
My grandmother once told me the tragic story of a sweet young girl who was murdered in the town I grew up in... her death happened way before I was even born, but whenever I heard my grandmother's words trying to spin the story as if it was the girl's fault that she was killed, I truthfully just wanted to smack my ugly grandmother's face for talking like that. No girl deserves to die so horribly! I refuse to say what the girl's last name was... let her family know peace, I say, without it being dredged up like a zombie from a grave. I will just mention the name everyone in town knew her by, the name was Cindy. Cindy Lou. As American sounding of a name as you can get. She was a very American kind of girl, by all accounts. She just wanted to find someone to fall in love with, she just wanted a normal life and out of it what pretty much most girls in America want. But she did not get it! Instead, she met a group of very sick, twisted, perverse boys who raped her and killed her. To hear my grandmother tell it, she led them on and “deserved what she got”. But I researched her story, and learned that was not true. She just wanted someone to love... and trusted the wrong people. She was not the whore my grandmother called her, she was just a bright young girl who deserved only to be happy. They tortured her before they at the last snuffed out her light. Those wretched boys... devils all of them! No one deserves to die like she did.
I will never understand the conservative mindset, in which people like my grandmother can side with the perpetrators of a truly sadistic crime and make excuses for them! Yet, when I broke a window when I was a teenager... and I had good reason to finally break that particular window... no one made so much as a single excuse for me. For breaking a stupid window, I was arrested, arraigned, and had to endure a year on probation that was annoying to say the least. But no one said I was in the right, even though I was in the right. I broke the window that my family had nailed shut... the one that had prevented me at one time from leaving the house to save Andrea's life. That is why the world is unjust! The boys who had killed Cindy Lou... they did not all go to jail, they did not all get punished for their crime. At least one or two of them went without being convicted, and went unpunished. Where was the justice, I often wondered over the years of my life, for Cindy? At least for Andrea, there was justice. Her father ended up deported, tried, and incarcerated or executed... I know not which... for what he did. He had done the unthinkable, the unforgivable! He had killed his own daughter and her little sister. Rumor had it that he killed their mother too. They were not American citizens... hence, why the man got deported to face the sort of justice that awaited him back in Romania. I can take solace in knowing that back there, he at the least faced a more harsh and fitting justice than anything the American justice system could have ever dished out to him. But that did not change the anger, the rage, that seethed within me. I wanted to find him, and break his disgusting neck with my bare hands, to shove my thumbs into his eyes and gouge the man's orbs of sight from their very sockets. In revenge, for my beloved Andrea! I wondered often why it was that no one felt like that about Cindy... and it was because no one loved her the way that I felt love for Andrea. At least not that I, or anyone, ever heard about. I met her ghost once at the local park. Cindy that is... her ghost. Twice, actually. Once whilst I was lost in the woods... her ghost came up out of the ground, in the guise of a corpse green with putrefaction, and warned me that I was going down a dark path that I would never be able to turn away from. I took it literally, but ignored her words and kept on through the woods that day. And it was a long, long time before I got home again. The second time I did meet Cindy was one foggy October when the fog and mist rolled down from the mountain and settled like a thick gray cloud one night over the fields that were just outside of the park. I got lost in the fog... and maybe something drew me into it so that what followed would happen. Fate is strange sometimes. All I knew was, I could heard the tapping of shoes on the pavement of the road that ran past the park. The fog covered the road too! I lost all sense of direction, and ended up in one of the fields. There, I could hear a young girl screaming, shrieking, and crying. I could see her shape coming towards me, it was Cindy Lou just as she looked that time when I saw her in the woods. She stopped in front of me... smiled, and then ran away as fast as she could. She sensed the gentleness in my heart, my compassion, my kindness... and it eased her tormented soul for a moment in time. It was probably the kindest thing that anyone had ever done for her. And it was all I could ever hope to do for her. But... it was enough.
The town I grew up in was in a sorry state back prior to the early to mid 2000's. When I was a kid, it was mostly abandoned. The factories that brought in the town's main income all closed down, the train no longer ran through, and the tracks were abandoned too. Small businesses no longer stayed long, and for the most part the town was on the verge of becoming forgotten or so it seemed to me. The gangs all took over, the police did nothing for anyone, and the lousy... and very dirty... cops, spent more wasted time harassing juveniles who were not involved in gangs and not making trouble. I guess it was just for them easier to harass us than to go after the gangs who were the real menace. Twice, I faced down the gangs. Both times... I escaped with my life, no thanks to the police, who did nothing. One gang, I made afraid of me. Made them think I was crazy, made them pause for a moment so I could escape. And after that... that gang never bothered me again. The other tried to kill my mother and I, but we got away and my grandfather after that put the fear of God in them and that was the end of that for them bothering us.
The gang that I made think I was crazy, one of my cousins belonged to. His brother got that gang to go after me, which is how I ended up encountering them at all. Needless to say of the whole affair, my cousin... the one who was in that gang... he was not pleased with his brother for doing that to me. So, he put a stop to it, and warned his brother that yes indeed I really am crazy and not someone to mess with. And, you don't get your gang after your own family, your own flesh and blood. That was how it was, in those days, the days before they cleaned up my home town. It was at its' most corrupt, that town, under the selectmen who ran it before they started electing mayors. Before the town became a city. Ironically, once it became a city the gangs stopped running amok and things changed. Organized crime groups set up shop... at least one restaurant was owned by Casa Nostra. Another, by an Asian crime syndicate. But you knew who they were, and so it was easy to avoid any situations that could prove troublesome. How bad is a place when things get better once organized crime sets up shop? But let me tell you a secret! Organized crime has a sense of honor however twisted it might seem to some. But gangs have only one rule... if you're strong, you survive. If you're weak, you die. My time in a military program taught me to be strong, to survive in life no matter what. My grandmother often told me stories about her days back in New Jersey, and all about her Casa Nostra landlord and the Italian culture she grew up with. Pretty much the culture my family was steeped in. I mean sure, my family was a mix of German, Dutch, and Native American on my grandmother's side... and English and Irish on my grandfather's side. But then there was the matter of my biological father. I never knew the man, only that he was not someone to be messed with or to mess with. My mother said he was “The Devil” himself. And it was easier for many years for her to lie and pretend that her first husband was my actual father. But he was not. Not only did I look nothing like him, but he even outright stated that I was no child of his and he abused me for that when I was still a baby. I should not remember that, but I do! He refused any paternity test during my mother's divorce from him, and did so on the grounds that I was not his child. But my father... my real father... he did make his presence known when I was twelve and then thirteen years old. Those two odd years. My mother was married to husband number three back then, and every so often an Italian man... who never said his name... would call the house to ask if my mother and I were alright and if her third husband had hurt us in any way. “Because if that bastard did, he's dead! Do you understand me? If he laid even a finger on either of you in violence... he's dead.” Sometimes, the Italian man... whom I very much believe was actually my true father... would send a van to the house where some very large, very strong looking Italian gentlemen would pull up in the vehicle to keep on eye on the house. Even after my mother divorced her third husband... my father still sent the van to the house on occasion and call to check up on us, to see how we were doing. To make sure no one else had hurt us. There were a few odd, vague rumors that my father was part Italian... mostly Italian... and part Asian. My mother used to joke that he was part something else too. Alien, demon, whatever. Sometimes, she would say it seriously, as if some part of that was true to a degree. Tragically, my mother's death from diabetes back in 2005 kept it so I would never find out, either. And by the time my grandmother died, she had dementia and could not remember the truth any longer to talk about it. It was hard, as much as I hated her sometimes, to see the way my grandmother went so quickly into decline. These days, I am the last one left of my family... I do not count my brother. He betrayed me several times in my life, and being a person of honor I never count those who betray me as family. I grew up in a household steeped in Italian culture, and one thing I did inherited from that upbringing is a sense of honor. Which I added to when I taught myself the sort of morals, ethics, and beliefs that I wanted to live by in life. I took only the good from my family, and I left the bad behind me. That is just what you have to do sometimes, when the world is fucked up to the extent that the world we live in is. You have to play by your own rules, even if that means breaking the rules most people live by in order to do so. When society has failed, it is up to the individual to rise up and stand for something. That... was how I came to be able to look myself in the mirror and be content.
Back in New Jersey, my grandfather's family had a mutton pie business and my grandmother's family had a deli that served tailor's ham as one of its' specialties. Sometimes celebrities would stop by to the deli to buy things. People like Frank Sinatra, and Lou Costello. My grandmother met them all in person and in particular she said Lou Costello was a genuinely nice guy. She knew a lot about Casa Nostra, a lot about how they operated. She told me once how she'd watch her landlord... at the place that she and my grandfather rented, as one of their first places together... and that she'd sometimes see him put on a trench coat and fedora, pack a gun into a holster at his belt, and drive out to New York City on what he called business trips. He never talked to anyone, not even his own wife, about what that business really entailed. Sometimes, my grandmother said, she'd see him pull up in the morning and that his hands had what looked like bloodstains on them. “That was how I knew he had either messed someone up or very possible even killed someone.” But she said he was always nice to her, gave her fresh tomatoes straight from his garden, and aside from occasionally making passed at her he never gave her any trouble. Once, she even joked that she should have become his mistress and maybe if she had she'd have had it better than she had things with my grandfather. These were they kinds of stories I grew up with, and they had quite an impact on me from a very young age onward. One thing I realized out of all of it was, you can never judge a person by what they do for a living or what kind of crew they run with. I have known the most law abiding people, and they were some of the most narrow minded and cruel people in the world. Yet, I have known people... people like Camilla Flores for instance... who walked more shadow paths, and yet who genuinely were decent people. I have written elsewhere about the sort of group it was that Camilla is involved with, and that I sometimes have dealings with. They stick to the shadows, they do their dealings in the dark, and there are some who consider them to be evil. But Camilla has always, to be truthful, done right by me, and we both love each other deeply. I do not see her as often as I once did but I realize that in her line of work, in her variety of business, you sometimes just do not have time for frivolities as much as you might like. I suppose that is why when I do hear from it, it feels so special. It is just that she and I are two old flames... and sometimes the candle ignites brightly indeed between us. Two candles that both burn in the darkness, and thrive in it more than in the light. There is poetry in it!
If there is one thing that I have learned over the years it is this... if you want to get things done in life, if you want any real justice, you cannot leave the matter to the police. Probably why I have preferred to solve all of my own problems without them, as much as is possible. I remember this one time, back in 2012, when my brother got in some kind of trouble with a skinhead gang from a neighboring city. We all knew it involved drugs... and drugs were a big no-no in our family. Now sure, he swore he did not, but then one day when they pulled up in a white van and started shooting at us just outside city hall... it was pretty obvious the kid has seriously screwed up big time. That was one of the occasions when he actually betrayed me. He literally took off on his bike as soon as they showed up, saying: “Sorry, sister! You're on your own.” I was living fully as a woman at the time, this was before I realized that I was in actuality non-binary and gender fluid, and the little prick just left me there to fucking die whilst he rode off and hightailed it like a coward. Needless to say... they kept shooting at me, and I had to get to safety pretty quick. Bear in mind, the police station was just across from city hall, and all this was going on in broad daylight right there. And no one did a thing about it! I rushed for the nearby small park that was across the main parking lot from city hall and managed to lose my attackers that way. When I got home, my grandmother called the police and of course they said there was nothing they could do. “You'd need to have seen the van's license plates.” they said. To which I got on the phone and said: “Alright! So, just how was I supposed to view them while I was running for my life and being shot at?” And do not even remotely tell me nobody looked out a single window or drove past or walked past or ran past and thus witnessed it. Of course there were witnesses! All afraid to do anything about it. All of them... cowards.
I never felt the same way about my brother after that. It was worse when my grandmother got put in a psychiatric facility for several months when she first got really bad with dementia. I am unable to work normal jobs due to psychiatric reasons, so at the time I was still living at home and relying quite a bit on my grandmother's social security to get by. My mother and grandfather were both dead by then, and it was just me and my grandmother living at home. My brother was living with his father... my mother's fourth and final husband... in another town. The state took the lion's share of my grandmother's social security to pay for her stay in the facility, and before long the food was running out. This happened back in early 2013, starting in January of that year. Every single day, my brother would come over and make me cook him a meal, knowing full well that the food was running out. Him and his father never once offered to buy any food to replace it either, never once offered to help me in any way, shape, or form. I still remember the day my brother's old man said to me: “Sorry, but you just have to grow up and take care of things on your own.” The night we were down to one last pork chop in the whole house, I asked my brother... as he ate it right in front of me: “What am I supposed to do now?” And she said to me, in a laughing, mocking tone of voice: “You've just got to do whatever you're good at, sister! And we both know what that is... being a whore.” That was how he viewed me living as a woman. It was not enough that he had left me to die that one time, but now he mocked me, and acted like me living as a woman somehow made me a whore. And pretty much acted like my only option was to become a prostitute in order to survive. He walked out the door, and that very night I broke down and cried, realizing finally that my own brother was truly an enemy in life and only out for himself. To be fair, my grandmother did warn me that he was always plotting against me, but that was proof. My despair turned to anger, and the next night I went out to the bad end of town and started working the streets as a prostitute for the very first time. I will not discuss what the next several months were like. I was abused, tortured sometimes, treated like garbage, and sometimes the men... and women... paid me and sometimes they refused to on the grounds that, because I was born intersex and have fully functioning male genitalia, that somehow made me worth less than if I was born fully female and only female. I made, on average, one hundred dollars a night and that only because I did not stop until I got that much from my clients. If one did not pay me, I immediately found another that would pay me. Most of the money I made had to go on food and keeping my grandmother's bills paid. And having money left over to visit her at the hospital. That left me very little to put into savings for myself. I did not have a bank account, so I had to keep any of the money I earned at home on a small table next to my bed. Eventually, I managed to be able to keep five hundred dollars for myself. My life was one horror after the next... one day, I had to take a cab to visit my grandmother at the hospital and the cab driver molested me on the way against my will. He then handed me ten dollars and told me not to tell anyone about it. I tried to contact the owner of the cab company, and it turned out he was the owner. I knew it was useless to go to the police about it since it was a known prostitute's word against the owner of a cab company. And the police had been honestly harassing me enough as it was thanks to what I now had to do for a living. One time they tried to pick me up and said it was because I looked like someone they were looking for. I asked them who it was, and they said they could not say. I told my grandmother about that, and she contacted the police and told them to knock it off, which they did after that. But I knew it was only a matter of time before they made up some pretext or nonsensical reason to harass me further. They once said I was not welcome in town, and that I should move to the neighboring city of Northampton where LGBTQIA+ people were known to be more welcome and accepted there. Things were getting worse and worse, and to be very honest I was lucky I never got a disease of any kind doing the kinds of activities I was doing for money. In the meantime, I joined a transgender dating site and that was where I met a man named Joe, who was actually a closeted transgender woman also known as Zoey. We fell in love, and he decided to move out to be with me by that august. Despite interference form his family, who kept trying to break us both up.
By the time august of 2013 came around, my grandmother was home from the hospitals and from the psychiatric facility, and they said her dementia was getting better enough that she could come home. It meant her social security was back to normal again, and since Zoey was moving out to be with me that month I decided it was the perfect time to quite my work as a prostitute and stay home. One day, by bad luck and ill chance, my grandmother walked past my room when the door was open and noticed that I had money on the table next to my bed. She freaked out, ran in, grabbed the money off the table, and said to me that she was taking it, that it was hers. I demanded she give it back, told her I had earned it. And she laughed at me, said: “Doing what? Laying on your back and being a whore for it... sucking all kind of dicks for it... letting men screw you in your ass for it? You're a filthy whore! You don't deserve this money... you deserve to get raped, is what you deserve.” Then, she picked up a beautiful goddess state I had in my room and smashed it on the floor. She then called me a fat ass... never mind that I was unhealthily skinny at the time from lack of eating right... and I never did see that money ever again. By the time the month was over, Zoey moved in with me and my whole life changed after that. But as good as things have progressed since 2013, I never forget my struggles... I never forget where I came from, or how cruel my family was to me more often than not. I saw all the true ugliness of life, the true face that some people hide beneath their masks of civility and purported refinement. Some people are monsters, clear and simple! And as much as I tried to love her, my grandmother was a monster. I often tell people, that out of everyone in my family I was the most decent and good. That is absolutely the truth, too. We do not live in a world where good and evil can be defined in simple terms. I have had to do some very regrettable things just to survive, just to keep living another day. And I have seen things to horrific that it scarred me for life. The biggest horror of it all though, is the realization that we are all born innocent, that we all start out as children with all of a child's joy, wonder, hopes and dreams. Then life crushes a person's dreams sometimes, wears at their hope until it is too little to clutch at, and brings them near to darkness, madness, or both. I doubt my grandmother was born with her sick, twisted view on life, with her negative view of women especially. I think seeing her husband cheat on her, and her being abused by him, snapped her mind and made her hateful and distrustful of women. She only liked boys, from what my mother told me. She hated girls, and only hated girls. The fact that I decided to live fully as a woman, and was doing so right up long past even my grandmother's death, simply made me in her eyes an object to be hated and despised. Yet another woman for her to hate and be jealous of. And she was jealous of all women... a sin my mother inherited from her. Ironic! Both my grandmother and mother were... or claimed to be... highly religious people. A “good” Catholic in my mother's case... and in the case of my grandmother a Methodist reverend with a Catholic upbringing. Yet both were people who were so consumed by jealousy that it drove them to hateful acts. At least my mother apologized to me the year she died... the day before she died, in fact, whilst she took my brother and I on a walk with her. That was in August of 2005... a hard year to forget, because of all that. My grandmother never did, and died before ever realizing she had ever done anything wrong at all. Religion does not make you good in life, nor does any political affiliation or philosophy. What makes you good, is doing good things. Never allowing hatred, prejudice, or things like jealousy to drive you into evil thinking. I chose to be different from my family, to set myself apart from them and their views, and to be better for it. If a person who is a former prostitute can understand the value of love, compassion, honor, and dignity... there is no true excuse for others not to be able to do the same. It is by choice that people are hateful! Just as it was by choice that I decided not to be hateful in life. It is not always a case of how your are nurtured shaping a person's nature. If that were the case, then my nature would be horrid indeed! It is not, because one can rise above how they are nurtured, one can shape their own nature, and become better for it. Too often it is easier for people to give in to how they were raised, even when they are raised badly, and to in doing so compromise their principles and follow the crowd so to speak. I prefer to stand out, and be myself!
History has shown us what happens when people follow the crowd clear into the abyss when just like lemmings a frightful game of follow the leader leads to war, mass destruction, and genocide. Clear over a cliff, into darkness, into evil. Not all darkness begets evil, just like not all light begets good. With my own two eyes, I have seen people follow the light into true darkness wherein no light exists. And I have seen people on seemingly dark paths discovering the light within them that leads to true salvation. For in darkness, there can be a light more soothing than any other. This is why I keep my morals and ethics separate from my spiritual beliefs. Spiritual beliefs can change, but one's morals and ethics must stay steadfast so that no religion will lead them down evil or wicked paths. No hatred will blind them, and no zealots will turn them into mindless drones for a cause that is not right. Too many people choose to follow blindly leaders who promise this or that but who deliver only hatred and suffering. Love ends up forgotten, compassion is lost, and open-mindedness is closed because a person compromises all that is right and goodly in order to follow after an ideal that is false. I am not here to present an ideal. Rather, I am here to speak the truth, and to let that truth stand on its' own. Those who wish to follow it, they may and they can. Those who do not... it was never for them anyway. But I keep to what I know is right, no matter what. The truly great ones throughout history were individuals, never mindless drones brought under the will of collective foolishness. If people must come together, it should always be to make the world a better place, not a worse one, than the world was when they were brought into it. But for that to be, then each person but be unwavering in their goodness, honorable in all their doings, and of a mind that is open to new and different things. A mind open to change! Too often these days, I see leaders who promise change but who deliver damnation instead. And it reminds me of why I have no use for things like politics. My beliefs are too decent, for politics. I prefer to remain an individual... and to teach other people to be individuals... than to follow a single party or a single leader. I am liberal, and I am also in my spirit liberated. I refuse the shackles that others have tried to place upon me over the years, and I in turn would break the chains that ensnare others. I do not represent an ideal or an ideology, I represent a spirit and a vibe. Something that cannot be put down, that cannot be crushed under the heel of tyrants or dictators. That spirit is freedom, that vibe is liberty informed by love. And it is as eternal as existence is. If it must be considered an ideal or an ideology, it is one that has been forgotten in the haste to create a society where success seemed to be measured by the wrong things. One that I would see resurrected in a grander form than ever before! Love is the way, and understanding is the key. I have looked at what it is that society today is becoming, seen people's need for this, and that is why I write this today. So that those who read this whether tomorrow or decades from now will understand what it is I struggled for in my life, what it is I represent, and what it is I tried to do in this world. Where I came from, and how I so rose up from that, fought against the worst that was arrayed against me, and tried to do what was right. Even when it was not easy to make such a stand! I never wavered, never abandoned those who needed me, and never showed cowardice in the face of great tribulations. I am not perfect... and it is in fact my imperfections that have made me stronger than I would have been otherwise. Let me tell you a secret! Those like myself who are called outsiders, marginalized people, and at the worst those like myself who have been called “depraved” by conservative fools... we are not the ones who are truly depraved. Those who promote intolerance, those who call us by such words as that, they are the ones who are in the grip of depravity. For there is nothing more depraved than a person who hurts others yet aggrandizes their own self or their own agenda at the expense of others. I am happy to be the opposite of all such people hold dear! Those who would rob others of their rights... who would steal from children the right to be as their hearts, minds, spirits and souls guide them to be... those who would limit or restrict the rights and freedoms of others, are the ones who are truly depraved. I will continue to fight for what I know to be right... for the rights and freedoms and liberties of all, and for the children. No one should live in a society that is ensnared by totalitarian or dictatorial madness! True freedom must be for all... entirely.
The freedom to follow your dreams, to be what you want, and to live without restriction. If there is a single thing above all others that I have inherited form my father, it is that I do not care what the laws of this world, the laws of mankind say. I go by what I know to be right, by what my sense of honor guides me to know is right. By what my morals and ethics inform me is right. And I will never ever back down from any cause that I believe in strongly. I do not follow the causes of others... I follow my own, and in the moments when it aligns with others then I welcome them as a part of what I myself champion. And I recognize kindred spirits in those moments! There are many today who are fighting for the same rights and beliefs and things that I am fighting for. Their cause is my cause and vice versa. The world is going to change, sooner or later, and love will win out over all else. Love, freedom, and open-mindedness. In the world today, we are witnessing a struggle between those who understand this and those who do not. Between the truly enlightened and the truly narrow-minded. I have crawled up from the abyss of being a victim of others, ascended from the shadows of having to weep as I recovered from the traumas of a life in which I knew no end of suffering. Fought tooth and nail for every freedom I possess! And if we must fight for our freedoms still further, then we shall. I will! And, let is not be said of us that we ever faltered at the last. In many ways, we are in a bloodless war, but not a victimless one. We did not seek it, we did not want it, but we will not run from what we must do. It is time to stand up and be firm in all that you believe in if you value love and freedom. Defy the conservative worldview that has led to so much suffering all across this country for decades beyond counting! Fly rainbow flags from every place you can, if need be. But show those in power that we are going nowhere, that we are not going to be silenced, or subjugated. The time of oppression and repression is over... it is time for pride to shine. For the pride we hold so dear is a true pride, never a false one! We will bring color to this otherwise gray, gray world and replace the black and white worldview of the past with something more splendid and a lot more brilliant than anything anyone ever dreamed of previously. Such is the cause I champion, and others of similar nature as well. So that no child ever need fear that their families will treat them with as much cruelty as my family treated me... so that every child can be safe, loved, and cherished no matter what they choose to live as or become in life. And in these beliefs of mine, I shall never compromise, I shall never yield, and I shall never relent. There must be freedom to love as you will, freedom to be as you will, and freedom to live as you will, for all. Anything else is unacceptable. Anything less, would be to settle for less than what should be the birthright of all who exist. I have seen how greatly people have suffered thanks to compromises made that allowed for laws so inadequate that rights can be taken away by those who have the heartless mind to do so. There needs to be a permanent engraving of rights and freedoms into the very flesh and bone, into the very rock of American society... so that no one, can ever take them away. What kind of world is this, when people will not throw out a dog or a cat, because they say that would be inhumane... but they will still throw out their son if he dressed in girl's clothing, or their daughter if she is attracted to another girl instead of a to a boy? This is the sort of injustice that I find the be the most intolerable of all! And such injustice is caused by narrow-minded thinking born of conservative views and religious zealotry. Any religion that backs such injustice should be considered a wicked thing... and any political ideology that allows for such injustice should be considered also a vile and wicked thing in equal measure. They call us “woke” but it is better to be awake than slumbering in the grip of ignorance! They call us demonic, they call us an affront to their God... but their idea of God is a false one created by human beings in order to control others. And if we seem demonic to them, then good I say! For what is a demon if not a rebel angel? And it is time for all those who would not be held under the sway of such bigoted, patriarchal despots to stand up and rebel indeed. This is a time for true awakenings... for a true rainbow revolution... one that will ensure that things in society at last change for the better, and out of which will arise a society in which one may be as they desire to be, and never have to fear the wrath or prejudice of parents, leaders, or society itself. We must defy, so we may exist!
For we in the LGBTQIA+ community are fighting for exactly that! The right to exist. To exist without having to fear that we might suffer discrimination or worse at the hands of the very society... that should if it be a goodly one be there to protect us. I have seen the face of evil in this world, as we are not it! We are the rainbow, we are diversity, we are individuality and uniqueness made manifest. The moment that we let them take that from us, is a moment when we sell ourselves short of our true greatness. And so... that is the reason we must be unwavering and never compromise. We must stand, and fight if needed, to ensure our future and that of the children especially. I have heard people refer to the “Rainbow Mafia”, in a joking reference to how we in our troubled community can manage to come together to get things done, no matter what has to be done to ensure that things go as they should and must. How we do not let injustices done against us go unpunished. I say, then let us own that! Let us do indeed whatever must be done to safeguard our existences and that of the children. There is no evil in looking after one's own. And when the laws of this world fail, it falls to people of good character to act and do what must surely be done, for the sake of all. Such is what honor is all about, and given my roots it should not be all that surprising that I hold such a view. Let them call us a “Rainbow Mafia” if they must, for that means they fear us! Better to have one's enemies fear them, than to be victimized by one's enemies I say. And in the struggles we are engaged in today... our enemies, are nothing less than those who stand for tyranny, and for the eradication of our rights and the erasure of us as a people. I have told you about my family about how I rose above their pettiness to become something more, something better. How I rose from being a prostitute to being loved by someone with a good heart and soul. How I went from having nothing... to having every reason to go on living. My life mirrors the struggle of each and every people who exists in the LGBTQIA+ community! We have come up from nothing, from being treated like less than nothing, and we will not be sent back into nothingness ever again. I am, an intersex bisexual non-binary gender fluid Luciferian Gnostic Pagan. I am everything the conservative far right hates and despises! And I am proud to be me, proud to be everything that I am. It took me a long time to truly understand and also to embrace my identity, but I have and it has allowed me finally to be able to love myself. And that, has so also allowed me to love others even more greatly than ever before! I have been called a freak and worse than a freak... and yet, I am not the one who speaks hatefully. I speak of love, of change, and of honor... even as those who despise me talk of nothing but narrow-minded philosophies and hateful beliefs. They will try to say that they are crusading for the real America... but what they really mean is the America of old that they grew up with, the America in which people like us were not allowed to exist freely. It is in truth time... for a new America! One in which there is no more hatred, no more erasure of peoples who are different. It is time to embrace difference, to embrace what change truly means! It means the past's ugliness must be left in the past, though never forgotten so that it can never be repeated, and that a new kind of society exists in place of the one that allowed such ugliness to flourish in the first place. We are in need of a world in which no one is hated because of the color of their skin, the gender they present as to the world if any, their sexual preferences, or their most cherished beliefs. There is room enough in a whole world for all to flourish as they wish to! Those who would deny this essential truth, are the ones who are the problem, for they would deny that everyone has the right to exist and to be happy, and to so live in a way that will allow them to be happy. We have been victimized, and we have been blamed for being victimized! Just like poor Cindy Lou. It is time for society to stop blaming the victims, it is time to create a world in which everyone can be safe and free of pain. A world in which love is not limited or restricted or curtailed... a world in which when it comes to matters of love, it does not matter what your race, color, gender or age is. All are free to follow their hearts, and not just in matters of love but also in all things! But love must lead the way, and it must stand in defiance of hate. These are volatile times we are living in, dark and volatile times like never before. A true era of tribulation for our community! But we will prevail, and out of this period of conflict there will be a lasting peace that we can finally enjoy.
The state I live in right now has countless areas all filled with dying, decaying cities and accumulated filth, pollution in the air and pollution in the water. It is a red state, run by the conservative right, and I hate living here, I despise this state with all my heart and soul. It is a literal representation of everything that I am fighting against, everything I have been fighting against my whole life. Dead animals line the sides of the roads more often than not, and no one cleans them up, they are usually left to rot. There are vast numbers of homeless people, and crime is rampant on practically every street. I hear people scream outside my window on many days... and there is a lack of compassion and human decency in far, far too many hearts here. And to think! This is a part of the country that is filled with farms and corn fields, it is a part of the country that feeds a great deal of the nation. And it is filled with pollution and rot, it is filled with pain and suffering, it is filled with decay and death. This is what the far right would bring to the whole country if it could, this kind of rot and desolation. The earth out here is in pain, the very soil is poisoned, and the factories keep pumping dark black smoke into the air regardless. The smell from all the factories is disgusting... and nobody seems to care. They just go their church services, pretend to be good little Christians whilst everything around them goes to ruin. Cancer is prevalent out here, and when buildings fall into disrepair... those who run the cities in which those buildings exist do nothing, they just allow the rot to spread. You would not think that this would be the case in America's heartland but it is! In fact, this is the true face of America's heartland. It has become heartless due to religion and politics that enable hatred to flourish and rot to set in. I have seen this face, and I stand against it in all its' forms and manifestations. Just up the highway from here, there is a city that is on the verge of truly becoming an abandoned place. When businesses close there, no new ones open to take their place. So many move out because they can't stand how things are out in this part of the country! There is a stretch of woods out on the river that borders that city... and it is filled with the city's homeless population half the time. Drug addicts roam the streets out of their minds, shootings are commonplace, and murders are frequent. In the first apartment I lived in out here, our downstairs neighbor was a prostitute. I was happy to move from that place, since a man was shot to death in a drive by shooting just up the street from us. But I will not be happy until I have moved out of this state and back into a part of the country where the political climate is more liberal and the state of things is not so ruinous. The town I grew up in back out on the east coast may have nearly sunk into abandonment, but it saved itself from disaster not long prior to when I was forced to move away from there. It became a city where art and culture was valued, and where businesses came to flourish. A city with almost no homelessness, clean parks and nature areas... and no factories pumping pollutants into the environment. Cancer was rare there, and people never left dead animals to rot on its' streets. Nor people to rot on them either. It was in a blue state, a liberal one. They cleaned up the corruption there, and though there was a presence of organized crime in that city, it was not a cancerous presence. The troubles I had there were easy to forget as time went on, and now I am able to look back fondly on the city that was once the town I grew up in. During the seven years in which Zoey and I lived there after we first got together, we were happy and all was perfect. I cannot say the same for the hellholes that exist out here in the very middle of the entire country. This is the part of the country where Zoey grew up, where their family lives. It is a horrible place, and it seems as if all of the horribleness of this sort of environment fuels the nastiness in people out here. We are saving up and planning to move as soon as we can. We have seen the true face of the heartland of America, and we do not like it one bit! This is what we are fighting against... the sort of human rot that seeps into the very environment and pollutes all that it touches. I am reminded every day that I am here, of the truth of my cause and the validity and necessity of what I am fighting for. In my life, I have seen both the best and the worst that humanity has to offer. I can honestly say that since coming out to this part of the nation, I have seen the worst of the worst. And yet, I never allow it to taint me. I remain steadfast in my beliefs, in all that I know to be true and goodly. Even as I count the days, and think of better times yet to come.
Being a personal journey of mine, from some of the early stages of my life to those that came after.
So, you may well ask when it began for me... the realization that I had changed, become something a great deal different than I used to be. Was it when I was sixteen years old and had to deal with the loss of the first girl I ever loved, Andrea? Maybe. Or perhaps it was following the eight years in which I did spend a great, tremendous amount of time trying to figure out who I was, and what was left of me, after the abuses and terrors I suffered at the hands of someone who should have loved me but did not. I never think that the years from 2004 to 2011 were wasted... I went places, did things, saw things, experienced things, and became something at the end of it all. One day, I looked in the mirror and realized that I just could not longer stand looking at my face... it was the face of a victim, of a person who had been hurt to the breaking point, and pushed beyond that breaking point. What did I do? I changed that face, or at the least I tried to change it as much as I could without surgery. I became someone else, someone new, and in that moment I died and was reborn. Like a phoenix rising up from the ashes of a world gone straight to Hell. And still I felt imperfect, flawed, not quite right. I made a promise, a vow, to be strong. To be a kind of strong that I was not before... strong enough to protect the ones I love henceforth. A lock on my door and nails in my windows kept me from saving my beloved's life all those years ago. Now, no lock and no nails would ever stop me again! But the nails in my heart would be there forever, bleeding into my very soul. And there would always be a lock in a secret place in my heart, a place that I realize now belongs to Andrea alone... no matter who I love or who loves me, there will always be that place. That is just how it is when you love someone. You reserve a place for them within yourself. When they die, if you truly ever did love them... then that place remains. I have added spaces within me for others long since, for those I met and fell in love with since. They are all equal, those places in my heart. There is no favoritism, unlike in politics and even in family most times. Ah, 2011! The first year in which I did leave my house and go out to town dressed truly as me. As myself. Even Andrea never saw this version of me, though being gender nonconforming herself she would have understood it completely. When I was a teenager, I saw the world through a black and white view, but over time I realized more and more that we live in a gray world. A world so gray that you have to add your own color to it. For me, 2011, it was the beginning of my attempts to bring color to a bleak world. I knew it had to be sincere, it had to be a full commitment. My ideals, my ideas, were fully formed by that year, and all I needed to do was to believe in them enough to act on them. I have never stopped acting on them, and so have become them.
My grandmother once told me the tragic story of a sweet young girl who was murdered in the town I grew up in... her death happened way before I was even born, but whenever I heard my grandmother's words trying to spin the story as if it was the girl's fault that she was killed, I truthfully just wanted to smack my ugly grandmother's face for talking like that. No girl deserves to die so horribly! I refuse to say what the girl's last name was... let her family know peace, I say, without it being dredged up like a zombie from a grave. I will just mention the name everyone in town knew her by, the name was Cindy. Cindy Lou. As American sounding of a name as you can get. She was a very American kind of girl, by all accounts. She just wanted to find someone to fall in love with, she just wanted a normal life and out of it what pretty much most girls in America want. But she did not get it! Instead, she met a group of very sick, twisted, perverse boys who raped her and killed her. To hear my grandmother tell it, she led them on and “deserved what she got”. But I researched her story, and learned that was not true. She just wanted someone to love... and trusted the wrong people. She was not the whore my grandmother called her, she was just a bright young girl who deserved only to be happy. They tortured her before they at the last snuffed out her light. Those wretched boys... devils all of them! No one deserves to die like she did.
I will never understand the conservative mindset, in which people like my grandmother can side with the perpetrators of a truly sadistic crime and make excuses for them! Yet, when I broke a window when I was a teenager... and I had good reason to finally break that particular window... no one made so much as a single excuse for me. For breaking a stupid window, I was arrested, arraigned, and had to endure a year on probation that was annoying to say the least. But no one said I was in the right, even though I was in the right. I broke the window that my family had nailed shut... the one that had prevented me at one time from leaving the house to save Andrea's life. That is why the world is unjust! The boys who had killed Cindy Lou... they did not all go to jail, they did not all get punished for their crime. At least one or two of them went without being convicted, and went unpunished. Where was the justice, I often wondered over the years of my life, for Cindy? At least for Andrea, there was justice. Her father ended up deported, tried, and incarcerated or executed... I know not which... for what he did. He had done the unthinkable, the unforgivable! He had killed his own daughter and her little sister. Rumor had it that he killed their mother too. They were not American citizens... hence, why the man got deported to face the sort of justice that awaited him back in Romania. I can take solace in knowing that back there, he at the least faced a more harsh and fitting justice than anything the American justice system could have ever dished out to him. But that did not change the anger, the rage, that seethed within me. I wanted to find him, and break his disgusting neck with my bare hands, to shove my thumbs into his eyes and gouge the man's orbs of sight from their very sockets. In revenge, for my beloved Andrea! I wondered often why it was that no one felt like that about Cindy... and it was because no one loved her the way that I felt love for Andrea. At least not that I, or anyone, ever heard about. I met her ghost once at the local park. Cindy that is... her ghost. Twice, actually. Once whilst I was lost in the woods... her ghost came up out of the ground, in the guise of a corpse green with putrefaction, and warned me that I was going down a dark path that I would never be able to turn away from. I took it literally, but ignored her words and kept on through the woods that day. And it was a long, long time before I got home again. The second time I did meet Cindy was one foggy October when the fog and mist rolled down from the mountain and settled like a thick gray cloud one night over the fields that were just outside of the park. I got lost in the fog... and maybe something drew me into it so that what followed would happen. Fate is strange sometimes. All I knew was, I could heard the tapping of shoes on the pavement of the road that ran past the park. The fog covered the road too! I lost all sense of direction, and ended up in one of the fields. There, I could hear a young girl screaming, shrieking, and crying. I could see her shape coming towards me, it was Cindy Lou just as she looked that time when I saw her in the woods. She stopped in front of me... smiled, and then ran away as fast as she could. She sensed the gentleness in my heart, my compassion, my kindness... and it eased her tormented soul for a moment in time. It was probably the kindest thing that anyone had ever done for her. And it was all I could ever hope to do for her. But... it was enough.
The town I grew up in was in a sorry state back prior to the early to mid 2000's. When I was a kid, it was mostly abandoned. The factories that brought in the town's main income all closed down, the train no longer ran through, and the tracks were abandoned too. Small businesses no longer stayed long, and for the most part the town was on the verge of becoming forgotten or so it seemed to me. The gangs all took over, the police did nothing for anyone, and the lousy... and very dirty... cops, spent more wasted time harassing juveniles who were not involved in gangs and not making trouble. I guess it was just for them easier to harass us than to go after the gangs who were the real menace. Twice, I faced down the gangs. Both times... I escaped with my life, no thanks to the police, who did nothing. One gang, I made afraid of me. Made them think I was crazy, made them pause for a moment so I could escape. And after that... that gang never bothered me again. The other tried to kill my mother and I, but we got away and my grandfather after that put the fear of God in them and that was the end of that for them bothering us.
The gang that I made think I was crazy, one of my cousins belonged to. His brother got that gang to go after me, which is how I ended up encountering them at all. Needless to say of the whole affair, my cousin... the one who was in that gang... he was not pleased with his brother for doing that to me. So, he put a stop to it, and warned his brother that yes indeed I really am crazy and not someone to mess with. And, you don't get your gang after your own family, your own flesh and blood. That was how it was, in those days, the days before they cleaned up my home town. It was at its' most corrupt, that town, under the selectmen who ran it before they started electing mayors. Before the town became a city. Ironically, once it became a city the gangs stopped running amok and things changed. Organized crime groups set up shop... at least one restaurant was owned by Casa Nostra. Another, by an Asian crime syndicate. But you knew who they were, and so it was easy to avoid any situations that could prove troublesome. How bad is a place when things get better once organized crime sets up shop? But let me tell you a secret! Organized crime has a sense of honor however twisted it might seem to some. But gangs have only one rule... if you're strong, you survive. If you're weak, you die. My time in a military program taught me to be strong, to survive in life no matter what. My grandmother often told me stories about her days back in New Jersey, and all about her Casa Nostra landlord and the Italian culture she grew up with. Pretty much the culture my family was steeped in. I mean sure, my family was a mix of German, Dutch, and Native American on my grandmother's side... and English and Irish on my grandfather's side. But then there was the matter of my biological father. I never knew the man, only that he was not someone to be messed with or to mess with. My mother said he was “The Devil” himself. And it was easier for many years for her to lie and pretend that her first husband was my actual father. But he was not. Not only did I look nothing like him, but he even outright stated that I was no child of his and he abused me for that when I was still a baby. I should not remember that, but I do! He refused any paternity test during my mother's divorce from him, and did so on the grounds that I was not his child. But my father... my real father... he did make his presence known when I was twelve and then thirteen years old. Those two odd years. My mother was married to husband number three back then, and every so often an Italian man... who never said his name... would call the house to ask if my mother and I were alright and if her third husband had hurt us in any way. “Because if that bastard did, he's dead! Do you understand me? If he laid even a finger on either of you in violence... he's dead.” Sometimes, the Italian man... whom I very much believe was actually my true father... would send a van to the house where some very large, very strong looking Italian gentlemen would pull up in the vehicle to keep on eye on the house. Even after my mother divorced her third husband... my father still sent the van to the house on occasion and call to check up on us, to see how we were doing. To make sure no one else had hurt us. There were a few odd, vague rumors that my father was part Italian... mostly Italian... and part Asian. My mother used to joke that he was part something else too. Alien, demon, whatever. Sometimes, she would say it seriously, as if some part of that was true to a degree. Tragically, my mother's death from diabetes back in 2005 kept it so I would never find out, either. And by the time my grandmother died, she had dementia and could not remember the truth any longer to talk about it. It was hard, as much as I hated her sometimes, to see the way my grandmother went so quickly into decline. These days, I am the last one left of my family... I do not count my brother. He betrayed me several times in my life, and being a person of honor I never count those who betray me as family. I grew up in a household steeped in Italian culture, and one thing I did inherited from that upbringing is a sense of honor. Which I added to when I taught myself the sort of morals, ethics, and beliefs that I wanted to live by in life. I took only the good from my family, and I left the bad behind me. That is just what you have to do sometimes, when the world is fucked up to the extent that the world we live in is. You have to play by your own rules, even if that means breaking the rules most people live by in order to do so. When society has failed, it is up to the individual to rise up and stand for something. That... was how I came to be able to look myself in the mirror and be content.
Back in New Jersey, my grandfather's family had a mutton pie business and my grandmother's family had a deli that served tailor's ham as one of its' specialties. Sometimes celebrities would stop by to the deli to buy things. People like Frank Sinatra, and Lou Costello. My grandmother met them all in person and in particular she said Lou Costello was a genuinely nice guy. She knew a lot about Casa Nostra, a lot about how they operated. She told me once how she'd watch her landlord... at the place that she and my grandfather rented, as one of their first places together... and that she'd sometimes see him put on a trench coat and fedora, pack a gun into a holster at his belt, and drive out to New York City on what he called business trips. He never talked to anyone, not even his own wife, about what that business really entailed. Sometimes, my grandmother said, she'd see him pull up in the morning and that his hands had what looked like bloodstains on them. “That was how I knew he had either messed someone up or very possible even killed someone.” But she said he was always nice to her, gave her fresh tomatoes straight from his garden, and aside from occasionally making passed at her he never gave her any trouble. Once, she even joked that she should have become his mistress and maybe if she had she'd have had it better than she had things with my grandfather. These were they kinds of stories I grew up with, and they had quite an impact on me from a very young age onward. One thing I realized out of all of it was, you can never judge a person by what they do for a living or what kind of crew they run with. I have known the most law abiding people, and they were some of the most narrow minded and cruel people in the world. Yet, I have known people... people like Camilla Flores for instance... who walked more shadow paths, and yet who genuinely were decent people. I have written elsewhere about the sort of group it was that Camilla is involved with, and that I sometimes have dealings with. They stick to the shadows, they do their dealings in the dark, and there are some who consider them to be evil. But Camilla has always, to be truthful, done right by me, and we both love each other deeply. I do not see her as often as I once did but I realize that in her line of work, in her variety of business, you sometimes just do not have time for frivolities as much as you might like. I suppose that is why when I do hear from it, it feels so special. It is just that she and I are two old flames... and sometimes the candle ignites brightly indeed between us. Two candles that both burn in the darkness, and thrive in it more than in the light. There is poetry in it!
If there is one thing that I have learned over the years it is this... if you want to get things done in life, if you want any real justice, you cannot leave the matter to the police. Probably why I have preferred to solve all of my own problems without them, as much as is possible. I remember this one time, back in 2012, when my brother got in some kind of trouble with a skinhead gang from a neighboring city. We all knew it involved drugs... and drugs were a big no-no in our family. Now sure, he swore he did not, but then one day when they pulled up in a white van and started shooting at us just outside city hall... it was pretty obvious the kid has seriously screwed up big time. That was one of the occasions when he actually betrayed me. He literally took off on his bike as soon as they showed up, saying: “Sorry, sister! You're on your own.” I was living fully as a woman at the time, this was before I realized that I was in actuality non-binary and gender fluid, and the little prick just left me there to fucking die whilst he rode off and hightailed it like a coward. Needless to say... they kept shooting at me, and I had to get to safety pretty quick. Bear in mind, the police station was just across from city hall, and all this was going on in broad daylight right there. And no one did a thing about it! I rushed for the nearby small park that was across the main parking lot from city hall and managed to lose my attackers that way. When I got home, my grandmother called the police and of course they said there was nothing they could do. “You'd need to have seen the van's license plates.” they said. To which I got on the phone and said: “Alright! So, just how was I supposed to view them while I was running for my life and being shot at?” And do not even remotely tell me nobody looked out a single window or drove past or walked past or ran past and thus witnessed it. Of course there were witnesses! All afraid to do anything about it. All of them... cowards.
I never felt the same way about my brother after that. It was worse when my grandmother got put in a psychiatric facility for several months when she first got really bad with dementia. I am unable to work normal jobs due to psychiatric reasons, so at the time I was still living at home and relying quite a bit on my grandmother's social security to get by. My mother and grandfather were both dead by then, and it was just me and my grandmother living at home. My brother was living with his father... my mother's fourth and final husband... in another town. The state took the lion's share of my grandmother's social security to pay for her stay in the facility, and before long the food was running out. This happened back in early 2013, starting in January of that year. Every single day, my brother would come over and make me cook him a meal, knowing full well that the food was running out. Him and his father never once offered to buy any food to replace it either, never once offered to help me in any way, shape, or form. I still remember the day my brother's old man said to me: “Sorry, but you just have to grow up and take care of things on your own.” The night we were down to one last pork chop in the whole house, I asked my brother... as he ate it right in front of me: “What am I supposed to do now?” And she said to me, in a laughing, mocking tone of voice: “You've just got to do whatever you're good at, sister! And we both know what that is... being a whore.” That was how he viewed me living as a woman. It was not enough that he had left me to die that one time, but now he mocked me, and acted like me living as a woman somehow made me a whore. And pretty much acted like my only option was to become a prostitute in order to survive. He walked out the door, and that very night I broke down and cried, realizing finally that my own brother was truly an enemy in life and only out for himself. To be fair, my grandmother did warn me that he was always plotting against me, but that was proof. My despair turned to anger, and the next night I went out to the bad end of town and started working the streets as a prostitute for the very first time. I will not discuss what the next several months were like. I was abused, tortured sometimes, treated like garbage, and sometimes the men... and women... paid me and sometimes they refused to on the grounds that, because I was born intersex and have fully functioning male genitalia, that somehow made me worth less than if I was born fully female and only female. I made, on average, one hundred dollars a night and that only because I did not stop until I got that much from my clients. If one did not pay me, I immediately found another that would pay me. Most of the money I made had to go on food and keeping my grandmother's bills paid. And having money left over to visit her at the hospital. That left me very little to put into savings for myself. I did not have a bank account, so I had to keep any of the money I earned at home on a small table next to my bed. Eventually, I managed to be able to keep five hundred dollars for myself. My life was one horror after the next... one day, I had to take a cab to visit my grandmother at the hospital and the cab driver molested me on the way against my will. He then handed me ten dollars and told me not to tell anyone about it. I tried to contact the owner of the cab company, and it turned out he was the owner. I knew it was useless to go to the police about it since it was a known prostitute's word against the owner of a cab company. And the police had been honestly harassing me enough as it was thanks to what I now had to do for a living. One time they tried to pick me up and said it was because I looked like someone they were looking for. I asked them who it was, and they said they could not say. I told my grandmother about that, and she contacted the police and told them to knock it off, which they did after that. But I knew it was only a matter of time before they made up some pretext or nonsensical reason to harass me further. They once said I was not welcome in town, and that I should move to the neighboring city of Northampton where LGBTQIA+ people were known to be more welcome and accepted there. Things were getting worse and worse, and to be very honest I was lucky I never got a disease of any kind doing the kinds of activities I was doing for money. In the meantime, I joined a transgender dating site and that was where I met a man named Joe, who was actually a closeted transgender woman also known as Zoey. We fell in love, and he decided to move out to be with me by that august. Despite interference form his family, who kept trying to break us both up.
By the time august of 2013 came around, my grandmother was home from the hospitals and from the psychiatric facility, and they said her dementia was getting better enough that she could come home. It meant her social security was back to normal again, and since Zoey was moving out to be with me that month I decided it was the perfect time to quite my work as a prostitute and stay home. One day, by bad luck and ill chance, my grandmother walked past my room when the door was open and noticed that I had money on the table next to my bed. She freaked out, ran in, grabbed the money off the table, and said to me that she was taking it, that it was hers. I demanded she give it back, told her I had earned it. And she laughed at me, said: “Doing what? Laying on your back and being a whore for it... sucking all kind of dicks for it... letting men screw you in your ass for it? You're a filthy whore! You don't deserve this money... you deserve to get raped, is what you deserve.” Then, she picked up a beautiful goddess state I had in my room and smashed it on the floor. She then called me a fat ass... never mind that I was unhealthily skinny at the time from lack of eating right... and I never did see that money ever again. By the time the month was over, Zoey moved in with me and my whole life changed after that. But as good as things have progressed since 2013, I never forget my struggles... I never forget where I came from, or how cruel my family was to me more often than not. I saw all the true ugliness of life, the true face that some people hide beneath their masks of civility and purported refinement. Some people are monsters, clear and simple! And as much as I tried to love her, my grandmother was a monster. I often tell people, that out of everyone in my family I was the most decent and good. That is absolutely the truth, too. We do not live in a world where good and evil can be defined in simple terms. I have had to do some very regrettable things just to survive, just to keep living another day. And I have seen things to horrific that it scarred me for life. The biggest horror of it all though, is the realization that we are all born innocent, that we all start out as children with all of a child's joy, wonder, hopes and dreams. Then life crushes a person's dreams sometimes, wears at their hope until it is too little to clutch at, and brings them near to darkness, madness, or both. I doubt my grandmother was born with her sick, twisted view on life, with her negative view of women especially. I think seeing her husband cheat on her, and her being abused by him, snapped her mind and made her hateful and distrustful of women. She only liked boys, from what my mother told me. She hated girls, and only hated girls. The fact that I decided to live fully as a woman, and was doing so right up long past even my grandmother's death, simply made me in her eyes an object to be hated and despised. Yet another woman for her to hate and be jealous of. And she was jealous of all women... a sin my mother inherited from her. Ironic! Both my grandmother and mother were... or claimed to be... highly religious people. A “good” Catholic in my mother's case... and in the case of my grandmother a Methodist reverend with a Catholic upbringing. Yet both were people who were so consumed by jealousy that it drove them to hateful acts. At least my mother apologized to me the year she died... the day before she died, in fact, whilst she took my brother and I on a walk with her. That was in August of 2005... a hard year to forget, because of all that. My grandmother never did, and died before ever realizing she had ever done anything wrong at all. Religion does not make you good in life, nor does any political affiliation or philosophy. What makes you good, is doing good things. Never allowing hatred, prejudice, or things like jealousy to drive you into evil thinking. I chose to be different from my family, to set myself apart from them and their views, and to be better for it. If a person who is a former prostitute can understand the value of love, compassion, honor, and dignity... there is no true excuse for others not to be able to do the same. It is by choice that people are hateful! Just as it was by choice that I decided not to be hateful in life. It is not always a case of how your are nurtured shaping a person's nature. If that were the case, then my nature would be horrid indeed! It is not, because one can rise above how they are nurtured, one can shape their own nature, and become better for it. Too often it is easier for people to give in to how they were raised, even when they are raised badly, and to in doing so compromise their principles and follow the crowd so to speak. I prefer to stand out, and be myself!
History has shown us what happens when people follow the crowd clear into the abyss when just like lemmings a frightful game of follow the leader leads to war, mass destruction, and genocide. Clear over a cliff, into darkness, into evil. Not all darkness begets evil, just like not all light begets good. With my own two eyes, I have seen people follow the light into true darkness wherein no light exists. And I have seen people on seemingly dark paths discovering the light within them that leads to true salvation. For in darkness, there can be a light more soothing than any other. This is why I keep my morals and ethics separate from my spiritual beliefs. Spiritual beliefs can change, but one's morals and ethics must stay steadfast so that no religion will lead them down evil or wicked paths. No hatred will blind them, and no zealots will turn them into mindless drones for a cause that is not right. Too many people choose to follow blindly leaders who promise this or that but who deliver only hatred and suffering. Love ends up forgotten, compassion is lost, and open-mindedness is closed because a person compromises all that is right and goodly in order to follow after an ideal that is false. I am not here to present an ideal. Rather, I am here to speak the truth, and to let that truth stand on its' own. Those who wish to follow it, they may and they can. Those who do not... it was never for them anyway. But I keep to what I know is right, no matter what. The truly great ones throughout history were individuals, never mindless drones brought under the will of collective foolishness. If people must come together, it should always be to make the world a better place, not a worse one, than the world was when they were brought into it. But for that to be, then each person but be unwavering in their goodness, honorable in all their doings, and of a mind that is open to new and different things. A mind open to change! Too often these days, I see leaders who promise change but who deliver damnation instead. And it reminds me of why I have no use for things like politics. My beliefs are too decent, for politics. I prefer to remain an individual... and to teach other people to be individuals... than to follow a single party or a single leader. I am liberal, and I am also in my spirit liberated. I refuse the shackles that others have tried to place upon me over the years, and I in turn would break the chains that ensnare others. I do not represent an ideal or an ideology, I represent a spirit and a vibe. Something that cannot be put down, that cannot be crushed under the heel of tyrants or dictators. That spirit is freedom, that vibe is liberty informed by love. And it is as eternal as existence is. If it must be considered an ideal or an ideology, it is one that has been forgotten in the haste to create a society where success seemed to be measured by the wrong things. One that I would see resurrected in a grander form than ever before! Love is the way, and understanding is the key. I have looked at what it is that society today is becoming, seen people's need for this, and that is why I write this today. So that those who read this whether tomorrow or decades from now will understand what it is I struggled for in my life, what it is I represent, and what it is I tried to do in this world. Where I came from, and how I so rose up from that, fought against the worst that was arrayed against me, and tried to do what was right. Even when it was not easy to make such a stand! I never wavered, never abandoned those who needed me, and never showed cowardice in the face of great tribulations. I am not perfect... and it is in fact my imperfections that have made me stronger than I would have been otherwise. Let me tell you a secret! Those like myself who are called outsiders, marginalized people, and at the worst those like myself who have been called “depraved” by conservative fools... we are not the ones who are truly depraved. Those who promote intolerance, those who call us by such words as that, they are the ones who are in the grip of depravity. For there is nothing more depraved than a person who hurts others yet aggrandizes their own self or their own agenda at the expense of others. I am happy to be the opposite of all such people hold dear! Those who would rob others of their rights... who would steal from children the right to be as their hearts, minds, spirits and souls guide them to be... those who would limit or restrict the rights and freedoms of others, are the ones who are truly depraved. I will continue to fight for what I know to be right... for the rights and freedoms and liberties of all, and for the children. No one should live in a society that is ensnared by totalitarian or dictatorial madness! True freedom must be for all... entirely.
The freedom to follow your dreams, to be what you want, and to live without restriction. If there is a single thing above all others that I have inherited form my father, it is that I do not care what the laws of this world, the laws of mankind say. I go by what I know to be right, by what my sense of honor guides me to know is right. By what my morals and ethics inform me is right. And I will never ever back down from any cause that I believe in strongly. I do not follow the causes of others... I follow my own, and in the moments when it aligns with others then I welcome them as a part of what I myself champion. And I recognize kindred spirits in those moments! There are many today who are fighting for the same rights and beliefs and things that I am fighting for. Their cause is my cause and vice versa. The world is going to change, sooner or later, and love will win out over all else. Love, freedom, and open-mindedness. In the world today, we are witnessing a struggle between those who understand this and those who do not. Between the truly enlightened and the truly narrow-minded. I have crawled up from the abyss of being a victim of others, ascended from the shadows of having to weep as I recovered from the traumas of a life in which I knew no end of suffering. Fought tooth and nail for every freedom I possess! And if we must fight for our freedoms still further, then we shall. I will! And, let is not be said of us that we ever faltered at the last. In many ways, we are in a bloodless war, but not a victimless one. We did not seek it, we did not want it, but we will not run from what we must do. It is time to stand up and be firm in all that you believe in if you value love and freedom. Defy the conservative worldview that has led to so much suffering all across this country for decades beyond counting! Fly rainbow flags from every place you can, if need be. But show those in power that we are going nowhere, that we are not going to be silenced, or subjugated. The time of oppression and repression is over... it is time for pride to shine. For the pride we hold so dear is a true pride, never a false one! We will bring color to this otherwise gray, gray world and replace the black and white worldview of the past with something more splendid and a lot more brilliant than anything anyone ever dreamed of previously. Such is the cause I champion, and others of similar nature as well. So that no child ever need fear that their families will treat them with as much cruelty as my family treated me... so that every child can be safe, loved, and cherished no matter what they choose to live as or become in life. And in these beliefs of mine, I shall never compromise, I shall never yield, and I shall never relent. There must be freedom to love as you will, freedom to be as you will, and freedom to live as you will, for all. Anything else is unacceptable. Anything less, would be to settle for less than what should be the birthright of all who exist. I have seen how greatly people have suffered thanks to compromises made that allowed for laws so inadequate that rights can be taken away by those who have the heartless mind to do so. There needs to be a permanent engraving of rights and freedoms into the very flesh and bone, into the very rock of American society... so that no one, can ever take them away. What kind of world is this, when people will not throw out a dog or a cat, because they say that would be inhumane... but they will still throw out their son if he dressed in girl's clothing, or their daughter if she is attracted to another girl instead of a to a boy? This is the sort of injustice that I find the be the most intolerable of all! And such injustice is caused by narrow-minded thinking born of conservative views and religious zealotry. Any religion that backs such injustice should be considered a wicked thing... and any political ideology that allows for such injustice should be considered also a vile and wicked thing in equal measure. They call us “woke” but it is better to be awake than slumbering in the grip of ignorance! They call us demonic, they call us an affront to their God... but their idea of God is a false one created by human beings in order to control others. And if we seem demonic to them, then good I say! For what is a demon if not a rebel angel? And it is time for all those who would not be held under the sway of such bigoted, patriarchal despots to stand up and rebel indeed. This is a time for true awakenings... for a true rainbow revolution... one that will ensure that things in society at last change for the better, and out of which will arise a society in which one may be as they desire to be, and never have to fear the wrath or prejudice of parents, leaders, or society itself. We must defy, so we may exist!
For we in the LGBTQIA+ community are fighting for exactly that! The right to exist. To exist without having to fear that we might suffer discrimination or worse at the hands of the very society... that should if it be a goodly one be there to protect us. I have seen the face of evil in this world, as we are not it! We are the rainbow, we are diversity, we are individuality and uniqueness made manifest. The moment that we let them take that from us, is a moment when we sell ourselves short of our true greatness. And so... that is the reason we must be unwavering and never compromise. We must stand, and fight if needed, to ensure our future and that of the children especially. I have heard people refer to the “Rainbow Mafia”, in a joking reference to how we in our troubled community can manage to come together to get things done, no matter what has to be done to ensure that things go as they should and must. How we do not let injustices done against us go unpunished. I say, then let us own that! Let us do indeed whatever must be done to safeguard our existences and that of the children. There is no evil in looking after one's own. And when the laws of this world fail, it falls to people of good character to act and do what must surely be done, for the sake of all. Such is what honor is all about, and given my roots it should not be all that surprising that I hold such a view. Let them call us a “Rainbow Mafia” if they must, for that means they fear us! Better to have one's enemies fear them, than to be victimized by one's enemies I say. And in the struggles we are engaged in today... our enemies, are nothing less than those who stand for tyranny, and for the eradication of our rights and the erasure of us as a people. I have told you about my family about how I rose above their pettiness to become something more, something better. How I rose from being a prostitute to being loved by someone with a good heart and soul. How I went from having nothing... to having every reason to go on living. My life mirrors the struggle of each and every people who exists in the LGBTQIA+ community! We have come up from nothing, from being treated like less than nothing, and we will not be sent back into nothingness ever again. I am, an intersex bisexual non-binary gender fluid Luciferian Gnostic Pagan. I am everything the conservative far right hates and despises! And I am proud to be me, proud to be everything that I am. It took me a long time to truly understand and also to embrace my identity, but I have and it has allowed me finally to be able to love myself. And that, has so also allowed me to love others even more greatly than ever before! I have been called a freak and worse than a freak... and yet, I am not the one who speaks hatefully. I speak of love, of change, and of honor... even as those who despise me talk of nothing but narrow-minded philosophies and hateful beliefs. They will try to say that they are crusading for the real America... but what they really mean is the America of old that they grew up with, the America in which people like us were not allowed to exist freely. It is in truth time... for a new America! One in which there is no more hatred, no more erasure of peoples who are different. It is time to embrace difference, to embrace what change truly means! It means the past's ugliness must be left in the past, though never forgotten so that it can never be repeated, and that a new kind of society exists in place of the one that allowed such ugliness to flourish in the first place. We are in need of a world in which no one is hated because of the color of their skin, the gender they present as to the world if any, their sexual preferences, or their most cherished beliefs. There is room enough in a whole world for all to flourish as they wish to! Those who would deny this essential truth, are the ones who are the problem, for they would deny that everyone has the right to exist and to be happy, and to so live in a way that will allow them to be happy. We have been victimized, and we have been blamed for being victimized! Just like poor Cindy Lou. It is time for society to stop blaming the victims, it is time to create a world in which everyone can be safe and free of pain. A world in which love is not limited or restricted or curtailed... a world in which when it comes to matters of love, it does not matter what your race, color, gender or age is. All are free to follow their hearts, and not just in matters of love but also in all things! But love must lead the way, and it must stand in defiance of hate. These are volatile times we are living in, dark and volatile times like never before. A true era of tribulation for our community! But we will prevail, and out of this period of conflict there will be a lasting peace that we can finally enjoy.
The state I live in right now has countless areas all filled with dying, decaying cities and accumulated filth, pollution in the air and pollution in the water. It is a red state, run by the conservative right, and I hate living here, I despise this state with all my heart and soul. It is a literal representation of everything that I am fighting against, everything I have been fighting against my whole life. Dead animals line the sides of the roads more often than not, and no one cleans them up, they are usually left to rot. There are vast numbers of homeless people, and crime is rampant on practically every street. I hear people scream outside my window on many days... and there is a lack of compassion and human decency in far, far too many hearts here. And to think! This is a part of the country that is filled with farms and corn fields, it is a part of the country that feeds a great deal of the nation. And it is filled with pollution and rot, it is filled with pain and suffering, it is filled with decay and death. This is what the far right would bring to the whole country if it could, this kind of rot and desolation. The earth out here is in pain, the very soil is poisoned, and the factories keep pumping dark black smoke into the air regardless. The smell from all the factories is disgusting... and nobody seems to care. They just go their church services, pretend to be good little Christians whilst everything around them goes to ruin. Cancer is prevalent out here, and when buildings fall into disrepair... those who run the cities in which those buildings exist do nothing, they just allow the rot to spread. You would not think that this would be the case in America's heartland but it is! In fact, this is the true face of America's heartland. It has become heartless due to religion and politics that enable hatred to flourish and rot to set in. I have seen this face, and I stand against it in all its' forms and manifestations. Just up the highway from here, there is a city that is on the verge of truly becoming an abandoned place. When businesses close there, no new ones open to take their place. So many move out because they can't stand how things are out in this part of the country! There is a stretch of woods out on the river that borders that city... and it is filled with the city's homeless population half the time. Drug addicts roam the streets out of their minds, shootings are commonplace, and murders are frequent. In the first apartment I lived in out here, our downstairs neighbor was a prostitute. I was happy to move from that place, since a man was shot to death in a drive by shooting just up the street from us. But I will not be happy until I have moved out of this state and back into a part of the country where the political climate is more liberal and the state of things is not so ruinous. The town I grew up in back out on the east coast may have nearly sunk into abandonment, but it saved itself from disaster not long prior to when I was forced to move away from there. It became a city where art and culture was valued, and where businesses came to flourish. A city with almost no homelessness, clean parks and nature areas... and no factories pumping pollutants into the environment. Cancer was rare there, and people never left dead animals to rot on its' streets. Nor people to rot on them either. It was in a blue state, a liberal one. They cleaned up the corruption there, and though there was a presence of organized crime in that city, it was not a cancerous presence. The troubles I had there were easy to forget as time went on, and now I am able to look back fondly on the city that was once the town I grew up in. During the seven years in which Zoey and I lived there after we first got together, we were happy and all was perfect. I cannot say the same for the hellholes that exist out here in the very middle of the entire country. This is the part of the country where Zoey grew up, where their family lives. It is a horrible place, and it seems as if all of the horribleness of this sort of environment fuels the nastiness in people out here. We are saving up and planning to move as soon as we can. We have seen the true face of the heartland of America, and we do not like it one bit! This is what we are fighting against... the sort of human rot that seeps into the very environment and pollutes all that it touches. I am reminded every day that I am here, of the truth of my cause and the validity and necessity of what I am fighting for. In my life, I have seen both the best and the worst that humanity has to offer. I can honestly say that since coming out to this part of the nation, I have seen the worst of the worst. And yet, I never allow it to taint me. I remain steadfast in my beliefs, in all that I know to be true and goodly. Even as I count the days, and think of better times yet to come.
Published 8th Aug 2023
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