DPC and DPL. Dead People’s Clothes and Dead People’s Leather.
Their toys, their paintings of half naked, naked, screwing men. The statues. The leather. The sling. The posters. The … all of it.
We’d literally Straighten homes. Depending. Some families knew and were fine. Or more ok. But pictures of other guys on phones was the least of it.
I have… leather that’s been passed through three or four men who’ve died before getting to me. They’re the heirlooms now, passed down chosen families.
Sometimes there were crews. We’d show up as soon as possible, as a unit. We’d hit the bedrooms first. Clear out closets, under beds, bedsides. We’d donate, throw out, take mementos. Pass on. Secret lives and secret, us only treasures.
Then we’d leave. For some family’s you never talked about it. They never knew. It was better all around.
I have vests, gloves. A belt. Arm bands. Paintings. T-shirts. Photos, undeveloped film that’d I’m still somewhat terrified to try to get developed (lol). We live on in the living rooms of others.
This is. A very important message for the younger generations of queers.
We still have so much father to go, but y'all. Don’t let our past be forgotten.
Transcription: So back in the late 80s and early 90s, when I was 20 and there was another friend dying of AIDS like every three weeks. Yeah, seriously those days were terrible. Young gay men now will just never know what it was like. But when a friend would die we would ALL know exactly what to do. We’d get to their houses as fast as possible (most of us already had a key) and we would know EXACTLY where the smut was, we would know EXACTLY where the stuff they didn’t want their family to find. We would get it and we would destroy it. OR we would keep it for ourselves if it was cool, or we would donate it to…something. I dunno. It’s kind of a messed up memory, but uh, back then we all just had to have each other’s backs and uuh, yeah. This video just reminded me of that.
Caption: [So, I’m autistic and something really exciting happened today that I need to share with everyone that is very very pertinent to my special interest and my being very gay and trans. So Avanti West Coast trains ran a competition recently where they were like, “Hey do you know someone who’d like to get married on a train?”.
And I responded to this competition, being like, “Oh yeah sure. Why would I like to get married on a train? Well, I’m autistic and I really fucking love trains. Trains are my special interest. I absolutely love trains. Also I spent the last like year and a half trying to get my gender recognition certificate done so that I could marry my wife in a big gay wedding. And we can get married as wives. Please can I get married on your train?”.
And amazingly today I got an email from the train company. I’m getting an all-expenses paid wedding on a train. I love trains! I’ve been bouncing all day, I just ahhh!]
Picture of the WEDDING! (From Laura’s Twitter)
Also go check out Laura’s stuff such as
GENDER EUPHORIA, positive experiences with gender from non-cis people.
Cover illustration for Catherynne M. Valente’s short story The Lily and The Horn. Part of Lightspeed Magazine’s Queers Destroy Fantasy special issue. You can find it here. I highly recommend you read this wonderful story. And check out that marvelous cover by my friend Priscilla Kim.
