Chicago IRL #4

a queer chicago collaboration of culture & class(lessness)

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Chicago Irl #4, Summer 2012 Topher McCulloch, editor-in-chief / designer Joseph Varisco, creative director info@chicagoirl.com http://www.chicagoirl.com Follow us on Twitter and Facebook: @chicagoirl | facebook.com/ChicagoIRL All models are age 18 or older. All images and writings ©2012 their respective contributors. All rights reserved. v4.1

OUR Contributors Billy Tony Breed Craig Calhoun Drui Combs Cody Cranch Eric Docé Eric Dresner A.J. Durand PETER FIREWORKS Hadley Ford Zack Frazier Joey Grant Jacquelyn Guerrero Kris Harzinski Will Haughery

Annalissia-Kiana “KeeKey” Itson Jeff Johnson Kiam Marcelo Junio KOKUMO KINETIC Rebecca Kling Drew Linne Simon M. Jonathan Mathias Melian h. melt James Murray ellie navidson Michael Peirson Marissa Perel

Oli Rodriguez Andy Siharath Jeremy Sorese Kevin Sparrow Sissy Spastik Janie Stamm Lailaw Taherzadeh Kyle Turner Casey Vange Jakob VanLammeren emanuel vinson

Cover Photography: Jonathan Mathias Cover Models: Jacquelyn Guerrero, Kiam Marcelo Junio, KOKUMO KINETIC, Wes Perry

Dear readers, collaborators, co-conspirators, and siblings, It has been a year since we released our first issue. We began with a desire to document the incredible and challenging works our friends and community members were creating. We felt the pulse of something wonderful and stood in awe of the gathering momentum in Chicago. We have run the gamut of accomplishments and missteps. Seeing our first issue come to life was an astounding symbol of our love for the arts and literary creations of our culture. We blundered financially; making choices that limited our ability to give back to our readers and contributors. Now, with the support of our Kickstarter, friends, colleagues, fans, contributors and family members we are anxious to utilize these resources effectively and create an even better issue, while honoring where we came from. In this special double issue, we feature work from over forty talented and diverse creators, blowing the number of contributions in previous issues out of the water. In one year and four issues, we’ve had the immense opportunity to work with and publish over 100 individuals from Chicago and abroad, featuring their interviews and illustrations, poems and photography, essays and exposés, and more. We always seek to expand the spectrum of voices we could bring together in a bound artifact. We will make mistakes, but we believe in transformation. We hope you will continue to join us in this endeavor, perhaps as a readers or contributors, collaborators or critics, financiers or friends. The work in these pages are but small glimpses of amazing bodies of work, and we urge you to read the bios and, if you’re in Chicago, attend the events listed in the back of this issue to find out more. In documenting Chicago’s queer creative life the past year, we have seen many beautiful folk come and go from our city. We have witnessed the departure of family, some to return, some not. We hope to create opportunities and open doors, windows, bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens to those looking for a way in or out. If we have learned nothing else it is that we have barely skimmed the surface of all the artistic and literary works yet for us to explore and find. Thank you for coming along on this journey with us. Year two here we come! With love and peace, ToJo

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Photo by Jonathan Mathias

KOKUMO KINETIC

Interview by Joseph Varisco KOKUMO KINETIC is the CEO and founder of KOKUMOMEDIA and works with the Broadway Youth Center as the Program Design Specialist as well as Youth Scholar with Affinity Community Services. KOKUMO is currently working on a myriad of projects including her second play, an album, and a poetry collection. She is the creator of the Transgender Gender NonConforming Intersex Freedom (T.G.I.F.) festival. I sat down with Ms. KINETIC to find out more about what keeps her fierce machine running and the revolutionary power behind T.G.I.F. JOE VARISCO: I was reading through your resume and…oh my god you do a lot of work. You do a lot of amazing things. I’m curious as to what it was that got you involved or has inspired you to. So much of the work you have done is voluntary, spending time and energy at an excess. What was it that motivated you to get involved with this kind of work? KOKUMO KINETIC: In the immortal words of Steven Simmons, one of my favorite musicians, “I came to change, you can be sure.” Meaning, like, I grew up on the South Side of Chicago and I come from incest, and I come from a father who was a crack addict, and a mother who was an alcoholic, and I come from relatives who ended up despising and actually brutalizing my father because they thought he molested me. You know, because my mother told them, told everybody he did it and nobody understood I’m trans*. So feminine, so gender non-conforming, so funny as they put it, so gay. There was so much sugar in my pants because I was transgender, and I feel like had that knowledge been asked as prevalent as the negative stuff that people hear, my father wouldn’t have had to be abused, and I wouldn’t have had to have that horrible childhood, and I could have been loved. And so in short, I do this work for the next generation. It is so cliché, but I honestly do it for that reason. I want to create that space that wasn’t created for me, and I’m also doing it out of vengeance. That same group of people who hurt my father, who hurt me, they told me that I would just get AIDS and die. So I do this work because I have something to prove and every day I do that. That is power. You have done a variety of different work—performance, activist, educational. Out of all of these different ways you are experiencing a way of creating change to bring that sense of retribution to your life is there any one that rises to the top that brings you a greater sense of power, a great sense of accomplishment? summer

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KOKUMOMEDIA, my multi-media production company, was founded off the need to create positive spaces in the media for trans* people of color, for gender non-conforming people, intersex people. I’m an artist. I am a musician. I am an actress and I am a filmmaker and a writer. For me it wasn’t enough to make art that I kept to myself and only make art that only those in my inner circle knew. I wanted to make art that spoke truth and dismissed those stereotypes that society held about people like me because so often when trans* women are murdered, when black trans* women are murdered and our lives are just cut short, it is because of the fact that someone saw Jerry Springer, somebody saw Maury. You know somebody saw a bad comedy that only placed women like me as the butt of jokes and did not show us as businesswomen and didn’t show us as mothers, as sex workers, as lovers, as human beings, and therefore I have to create art and therefore KOKUMOMEDIA creates art that shows us for who we are and it’s my life’s work and I look forward to KOKUMOMEDIA becoming a viable entity. What do you think of shows like Maury and Jerry Springer paying LGBTQIAA people of color experiencing homelessness to come on the show to play out these stereotypes? Make your money, definitely, but in honesty I think it would be so much more powerful if the youth or us as this targeted demographic created our own mediums. You know, where we created our own talk shows, our own television shows, our own movies, our own plays, our own mediums that speak of who we are in a robust manner. Because simply put these talk shows only speak of us on the most minute scale. It is not about who we are. It is about sound bytes, it is about entertainment value or how we survived. It is not about how we created chosen family. It is not about how we graduated from college. It’s not about who molested us. It’s not about how we want to go back to school. It’s not about how we want to have our dreams come true. They are not about that and so by all means necessary make your money, but always I think that when you make one move, you make another one. So while I invite those people to start to create their own media after you get the money with that check, what are you going to do with it? For your community, for yourself. In your resume I read that you had spent some time with the Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP). How does the experience you had with them inform your work now and your future work? I love YWEP. They taught me about the frameworks of social justice. I learned harm reduction. I learned transformative justice; reproductive justice, economic justice and so on and I would say there is nothing really different for me about YWEP except for the fact that it was the impetus for me. It is what taught me everything I needed to know. It is what prepared me in so many different ways for the work that I do now at the Broadway Youth Center, Affinity Community Services, The Night Ministry and KOKUMOMEDIA.

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How did T.G.I.F. get started? T.G.I.F., Trans, Gender Non-Conforming Intersex Freedom, is Chicago’s first trans pride, but it is not so much a ‘pride’ as it is a festival. It is a celebration of all of our identities. I finished undergraduate school last spring, and I was ready to celebrate. I finished undergraduate school with a Bachelor’s in Psychology and Individualized Curriculum in spring. Then in summer came Pride and there was this big part of me that wanted to go to Pride, but there was also a part that realized my body is not always welcome at Pride. And simply put I said, “That’s got to change.” I can’t change Pride, but once again, in the vein of KOKUMOMEDIA, it is about creating our own spaces and that’s where T.G.I.F. came from. You know, I wanted to create a space in the city of Chicago, which is the United States of America’s third largest city, which criminally does not have any large public trans celebration and I said, “I need to be the one to bring that.” So this is something you grew from a seedling into a full event. That is a lot of time gardening. I’m just getting started. KOKUMOMEDIA is all about this work. We are actually working on our next play after the debut KOKUMOMEDIA presents: The Faggot Who Could Fly, which is about surviving sexual abuse and domestic violence to realize trans womanhood. Our next play is Beauty Is My Revenge, which is an all trans choreopoem about the trans sex trade experience and the trans experience in general. So it will be starring all black and brown trans women of color and it will be youth lead and it will be by KOKUMOMEDIA coming next fall. Ooof! That is all kinds of powerful work. Playtime is over. What is one of your larger goals with T.G.I.F.? I want everyone in the Midwest to come. That’s my goal. You know, eventually I want it to become an international thing because, like I said, it’s a festival and it’s not simply a Pride. In all honesty I feel like Prides are somewhat superfluous because what do people do other than show up, get drunk and have sex with random people, which is all beautiful, but that is not what I want T.G.I.F. to be. You can do all of those things, but I also want you to hear this keynote address. I also want you to hear, you know, revolutionary queer musicians of color. That’s what I want. In summation I’d say that I want people to take away from T.G.I.F. that if you want to create a change all you got to do is start because that is all I did. That’s all I ever do. When I see a need and I see that I can provide for that need, I’m there. What are some publications you would give your seal of approval to or encourage other youth, those struggling with various life challenges as a transgender individual, a gender non-conforming individual, an intersex individual, an individual who has experienced abuse?

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Julia Serano is a revolutionary, and she really did equip me with a mental and an artistic arsenal when I read Whipping Girl, a study on trans misogyny. Because, you know, we will always talk about misogyny, but no one ever talks about trans misogyny and the fact that it is a different form of sexism that is directed toward trans individuals, namely trans feminine individuals. For me as an artist when I was coming up in Chicago there wasn’t a space for me as a trans artist. As a writer when I would go to open mic sets, queer open mic sets, I would get called the wrong pronoun. When I told people that I identify as a woman there would be gasps. There would be giggles and people who didn’t understand. So I always came up in this place of people understanding their plight, you know, gay people understanding how homophobia is wrong, but nobody knew anything about trans misogyny. When I read Serano she put everything in a basket and gave it to me, and I was just like, “Thank you so much.” I would definitely recommend that book to anybody who’s trying to get a grasp on why the world hates you oh so much. It’s because the world hates femininity. The world hates feminine beings. It’s not always about hating a woman. It is about hating femininity as well as hating a woman. Another book I would recommend is The Fabulous Sylvester. That book just was revelatory because I had already heard of Sylvester being this luminary, but to read their life story it just made everything so tangible and I was there. I saw Sylvester fighting record labels. I saw Sylvester captivating entire continents and I was inspired. I was assured that I could do that same thing. Who are some of the performers and speakers at T.G.I.F.? Kylar Broadus, the founder of T.P.O.C.C. (Trans People of Color Coalition), which is the only national black, people of color, trans organization that works with trans people in the judicial system, that advocates for trans individuals of color. He has been so gracious to come and deliver our keynote address because each year, each T.G.I.F. will have a different mantra. The mantra of this year is “enterprising from the margins.” We wanted to talk about what it looked like for the down trodden to come up, not only morally, but financially. What does that look like for us to gain money and subsequently power? So Kylar Broadus will be there. Then, you know, we’ll be having Kris De La Rash, a beautiful spoken word artist and rapper. El Rey a Latino drag king and showgirl Mercedes Bonet will be coming. We’ll be having the Youth Empowerment Performance Project (Y.E.P.P.). About Face Youth Theater will be in the house doing some excerpts from their brand new play What’s The T? and the Queer Choir and I’ll be singing with them. We’ve got a really nice number for you all. We got great black trans man being our DJ. You know, playtime is over! Playtime is over! To find out more about KOKUMO KINETIC and/or the works of KOKUMOMEDIA you can stay tuned for the dropping of her multiple productions in process. You should definitely find the time to hear KOKUMO KINETIC’s works performed live if you can.

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Reacquainted With Life KOKUMO KINETIC

wade through rocks punch fist through earth reach for the moon as if it were a life preserver climb out one limb at a time spit out worms wipe eyes of tears and dirt gnaw mold from fingertips massage throat cinch torso and awaken voice allow fatigue and find pride in where I lay wounded but alive

Moments of Sanity KOKUMO KINETIC

scream in hand cry at reflection forget that I’m ugly keep dancing eat far beyond full drink enough to flush out yesterday tuck my penis wish I was skinny, light-skinned, and a real woman sit on toilet yell at small child posing as stomach to make way for six-pack look out window wish someone would hold my hand in public watch tv imagine myself somebody masturbate repeat compliments I don’t believe contemplate suicide pace survive hurt create binge dream

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Simon m. A Kid Again

you doze & i watch television Jakob VanLammeren

You doze & I watch some television. It’s not easy to admit that I find comfort in this, but I’m working on it. One of my favorite things is morning — how I wash the dishes & you want your cigarette even before the coffee has been made. Now is when we reveal our mulberry chests. We ripen & we are sweet in the laurels of this apartment which has become like a cabin in the woods. I often wonder if this is still Chicago, & there is seduction in this questioning. It used to be a Bonnie & Clyde kind of life. Now we make our own ink, we try new recipes for bread. I trust that I have seen both shoes carefully land on the mat in the entry & nothing will fall for a while.

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Jeremy sorese

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Dj Swaguerilla

Interview with Trandroid Oh hello Chicago IRL – I’m Trandroid, we’re not strangers. I want to take a moment to introduce you to one of my favorite folks making magic in Chicago proper. DJ Swaguerrilla and I teamed up with resident photographer Zack Frazier to give you the skinny on this brilliant person. Armed with electrical tape, LED realness and my favorite photographer friend, I marched to Swaguerilla’s door and told him he couldn’t take no for an answer. This is what ensued... Name: Justin Ignatius Mitchell Age: 26 Location: Here Who is Swaguerrilla? What is the origin of your DJ moniker? Swaguerrilla is a mercenary of funk in the war against dancefloor listlessness. The biggest source of inspiration for the Swaguerrilla moniker was M.I.A. She has this really global sound that had been adapted from all over the world. Baile funk in Brazil, Baltimore club music from Baltimore, Reggaeton from the Caribbean, Bollywood soundtracks from India, so on so forth. All of those thing appeal to my background as a listener and apply to me as a DJ. MCs are always self promoting, for some it’s “I’m so fly, blah blah blah” and for her it’s “no one on the corner has swagger like us”. I just thought it was sick. Granted I think swagger has run its course in the same way as “fly,” “dope,” or “phat.” But that just sets me up for the my next incarnation. Well, you are certainly on of the most creative new talents in the DJ scene. I remember the very first time I heard your work at Hot Pants and without hesitation, told the friend with whom I was dancing that you were the best I’d ever heard. Tell me about your personal style and what inspires your process. For starters, my tastes are informed by a number of things. Pop culture, nostalgia, globalism, multiculturalism, and queerness, to name a few. The idea for me is to bridge the gaps between generations, and social groups. I think social divisions are inherent in the music people listen to. But there are bridges that exist. You know how everyone loves “Poison” by Bel Biv Devoe or anything Motown. The idea is to use music to connect something unfamiliar to a larger context/community on the dance floor (and in the world). You and I have recently joined forces for Nuts & Bolts: a DIY dance party. Tell the kids out there, in your own words, about the N&B experience. Queer spaces are on the rise. One of the Chances Dances founders, Latham Zearfoss, characterized queer spaces as something liminal and temporary. Nuts & Bolts follows 18

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that model, but enhances the formula by injecting this element of on-site creativity that really fosters a communal spirit. The first one was one big glitter family shit show. Also one of the things Nuts & Bolts is trying to transform is the notion of performance. In what way, I’m not quite sure yet. We recently did a photoshoot with Zack Frazier where I dressed you up in Trandroid’s clothing. How did it feel to dress like a gender ambivalent robot? I have to admit to being initially ambivalent (pun intended) about Photo by assuming Trandroid’s Zack Frazier threads. It was like being assimilated by the Borg (from Star Trek). They (Trandroid) have a very fierce aesthetic and I didn’t want my swag to be outdone. Also, in regard to gender ambivalence, most of the time I wear a very specific gender. It’s a nice little blend that I’ve crafted over the years, and inhabiting someone else’s gender or genderlessness take some adjustment for me. In the end it was a great experience, and I got to include some of my own artifacts for the shoot. There was no loss of swag during this shoot. You are also the resident DJ for Salonathon at Beauty Bar where Trandroid presents Shits & Giggles: a Queer Cabaret. What do you think about theemerging underground art and performance work being presented in the bar scene? This city is ripe with talent. I think that the more spaces for artist to showcase and develop, the better. Salons are great spaces for performers to engage new works or refine old works. With regards to Salonathon at Beauty Bar... It’s been running for almost a year now and I’ve seen the roster of artist develop to the point that we’re getting really refined performances week after week. For me as a DJ, it’s a space that I can experiment and grow. summer

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Photo by Zack Frazier

You are also quite a mover and a shaker on the dance floor as well. You’ve collaborated with several performers throughout the city including Jyldo, DAAN, and Big Dipper. As a super sexy queer celebrity of sorts how do you handle the paparazzi and all the groupies?

Haha. Well done Trandroid. You’ve done your research! One of the biggest laments about being behind the DJ booth is that I can’t be on the dance floor. I love dancing. It’s one of the strongest motivations for me to DJ. If it gets me to dance, I’m pretty sure other people will want to dance too. As for handling a positive response (i.e. groupies and paparazzi), it registers as validation, which in turn keeps me doing the things I do. Anything you’d like the readers of Chicago IRL to know? I want folks to know how grateful and proud I am to be a part of what is happening now, at this time, in this place. Lastly, most importantly, how do you bed a Swaguerrilla? I’d like to think that there are a broad range of identities and bodies that appeal to me. Outside of that, I tend to favor partners who engage my competitive nature intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Something about being a Libra really makes balance a priority. So lets fight and then fuck.

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Tony Breed

Contra Mundum Drui Combs

James slowly made his way home, autumn leaves of brown and yellow, crunching loudly beneath the unforgiving soles of his shoes. His shift at the café had recently ended, and all he could think of was his bed and the thick, eiderdown quilt, sent by his mother from their hometown, in the south. Pausing at the intersection of two, very familiar streets, he looked out across the sun-bleached cement, and shuddered at the sight of five, small boys, rough-housing under the careless supervision of a trio of middle-aged women. Two against three, quickly became one against three, after the smallest was thrown to the ground. James didn’t realize that he was touching the large scar on his right shoulder. Exhaling, he looked away and smiled at the sight of a gathering of spruces, spread about a lawn, overgrown with all manner of wild plants and flowers. Sunlight, of a pale, golden hue, streamed through the towering branches. Leaves fell slowly to the ground. A pretty diversion. James made a left at the crossing, continuing his stroll, until he reached the austere, courtyard complex at Number 12. He pushed open a black, wrought-iron gate and walked along the cobblestone path, in the shade of a dilapidated cloister. Entering the building, through a heavy, wooden door, he paused in the vestibule. With one click of a tiny, brass key, he opened his mailbox and withdrew a bundle of envelopes, shoving them inside his back pocket as he let loose a yawn that would have shamed a full-grown lion. Head bowed, he sauntered onto the elevator and rode it to the fifth floor. Upon entering his unit, he let the wind that blustered through the wide-thrown windows slam the door shut and undressed as he moved down the hall. When he reached his bedroom, the only articles of clothing that had not been cast off were a ragged, dark, gray t-shirt, and a pair of boxer briefs. James collapsed onto his bed and scrambled underneath his mother’s quilt. He fell into a deep sleep, just moments after burying his head beneath a pillow. Collin darted through the shelves like a man on the run. When he reached the break room, he pulled a cellular phone from his back pocket and quickly scrolled through the long list of names in the contact list, before selecting “James-o.” Collin couldn’t help smiling as he raised the phone to his ear. He didn’t expect an answer, as it was just after twelve, and James was sure to be asleep. The call went straight to James’s answering machine. Collin rammed his thumb down on the “end” button. He never left voice messages; that’s what Caller ID was for. No matter, his shift at the bookstore was almost over. He would go to James’s immediately after. James’s bedroom sported little more than his bachelor’s cot and a fragile nightstand surmounted by a lamp without a shade. The crisp, autumn wind fluttered the dustspeckled blinds, whistling as it filled the barren room. Like an infant, rising in the dead of night, James stirred beneath the heavy, eiderdown blanket. His eyes creaked open 22

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against the pale, afternoon light that shone through the open window and spread itself out at the foot of his bed. He got up and threw on a pair of mesh shorts. James’s lips curled into a smile of contentment as he stepped from his bedroom, into the hallway. The sun, no longer clinging to its high noon perch, now beamed down upon the western side of his apartment. His body absorbed the warm air and he caught the wafting scent of fresh food as he moved down the hall, toward the kitchen. He could hear the faint buzzing of the tiny, white television set on the kitchen counter. Looking from room to room, he noticed that the windows, once receptive to the dry, autumn air and the sounds that fill a residential street, were shut tight. He paused in the doorway to the kitchen. “When are you going to learn to use the bell, Collin?” he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “When you learn to answer your phone,” Collin replied. “I was sleeping,” James laughed. “What have you got there?” Collin wore his warmest smile. “Gifts.” The rickety, wooden table that dominated James’s kitchen was laden with styrofoam containers, each holding breakfast delicacies in generous portions. There were croissants, plump and hot, as though just pulled from the depths of an oven, and muffins, whose tops bulged decadently over the rims of the crinkled, paper cups in which they had been baked. There was sliced cantaloupe and honeydew, accompanied by sprigs of grapes, a tiny mound of dried figs, sliced avocado, hard boiled eggs, ham off the bone, and thinly sliced, fried potatoes. Looking down at the feast spread out before him, James exhaled happily. He pulled open a drawer, near the kitchen sink, and had to jump back as the rectangular pieces of wood that comprised it fell apart, sending a motley collection of silverware crashing loudly to the floor. Collin remarked sarcastically about the state of the apartment, while James retrieved a rather large fork, rubbed it against his shirt, and plunged it into the heap of fried potatoes. They ate ravenously, pausing, here and there, to acknowledge one another, or the stone-faced anchorman who reported the afternoon news from the little television set. They drank heavily of orange juice, passing the carton back and forth, until it ran dry. Like siblings, they fought over the last slice of ham, before Collin, not too grudgingly, surrendered. When the meal was finished, Collin turned to James and said, “Well, did it come?” James remembered carelessly shoving the bundle of letters into the back pocket of his jeans. “Holy shit!” he said, in barely a whisper. How could he have forgotten now? For nearly three months, he had been unable to think of anything but that damned letter. “Well?” Collin persisted. summer

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Without responding, James leapt from his seat and dashed into the hall. He snatched up his rumpled jeans and shook free the envelopes. Frantically, he searched through them. One from the electric company – he tossed it aside without a second glance. Two from the bank – he discarded them before the first had sufficient time to reach the floor. One from the phone company – it suffered the same fate as the first three. In the kitchen, Collin turned off the television. He entered the hall in time to see three envelopes fluttering to the floor, where they joined half a dozen more surrounding James’s feet. James stood motionless, his legs slightly parted, his head bent toward the last envelope that he now held with both hands. Collin remained silent as James tore open the envelope. He could see the distinctive coat of arms in the upper left hand corner. It was he who had pushed James to apply and he, who labored for days in an attempt to edit James’s atrocious personal statement. If that letter revealed anything less than an invitation to attend one of the finest universities in the country, Collin would feel like the worst of failures: those who do not come through for their friends. Collin could feel a subtle draft, creeping out from underneath the door to James’s bedroom. It slithered up the back of his shirt, awakening clusters of gooseflesh all over his body. James was unfolding the letter now. Collin watched his eyes. Dark and reflective, they, as of late, contained all the world’s joy. Collin feared the contents of the letter might be the death of their newfound luminescence. But, as James’s eyes danced along the upper portion of the thrice folded sheet of white paper, the light behind them intensified. Without a word, he turned and ran from the apartment. The letter fell from his hands and drifted slowly to the wooden floor. Collin grabbed the letter and went after James. In the hall, he caught a glimpse of mesh shorts and a pair of hairy calves, disappearing through a stairway exit. He paused to read the letter. “Dear Mr. Moor, It is my pleasure to inform you . . .” Collin’s mouth opened and a series of hearty, boyish notes spilled forth, resounding in the empty hallway. He nearly collapsed to the floor from happiness and relief. He started down the hall, determined to find James, but decided against it, realizing his friend was probably out on the fire escape or hiding in the laundry room, choking back tears. Collin went back inside the apartment. In the kitchen, he threw away the styrofoam containers and wiped the table with a damp cloth. He gathered the assortment of silverware from the floor, tossing it, in handfuls, into the kitchen sink. It would have to be washed now. Happily, he thought of the acceptance letter and the new world that would open its arms to James. Then, quite unexpectedly, he felt a twinge in his 24

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chest. In that moment he realized that James, his taciturn, bookish, messy James, would be moving halfway across the country – without him. Sitting out on the fire escape, with his legs dangling over the edge of the raised ladder, James laughed quietly as he wiped a single tear from his cheek. He had never thought of himself as college material. But, ever since he became friends with the looney tune, who was probably cleaning his kitchen at the moment, he had begun to feel as if he could do anything. James touched the large scar on his right shoulder. The minuscule marks, on either side, where the stitches once were, were still visible. It was his first battle wound and he wore it with pride. He had gotten it the day he met Collin for the first time, the day he dispensed with his usual practice of minding his own affairs and decided to defend a perfect stranger from a small band of attackers. Badly injured and, consequently, confined to the depths of his subconscious for the following two months, the stranger knew nothing of James. But, when he awoke, a nurse happily told Collin the story of the boy who fought off the attackers, the boy who had been visiting him in the hospital nearly everyday, since he had been admitted. James rose to his feet, nearly petrified by the very idea of what he was about to do. “No agenda. No looking back,” he said aloud. Collin had taught him that. “Approach it all head-on,” he liked to say. “Confront the consequences later.” He walked along the raised ladder, back toward the window, through which he had reached the fire escape, envisioning how it would be. Collin would be at the kitchen sink, sponge in hand, laboring with that awful pile of silverware, the parting gifts of an unknown number of former tenants. James would insist that Collin cease his cleaning, sit down, and, for once, listen. They could worry about the acceptance letter tomorrow. But, James was never able to reveal his feelings to his dearest friend and the man who had probably loved him since the earliest days of their acquaintance. The fire escape’s folded ladder gave in under his weight and he fell, five stories, to the cold concrete beneath.

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Jesse, June 2011

RaRa, Matthew, JaJa and Jesse, June 2011

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JaJa, January 2010 jonathan mathias From “Alternate Masculinity� Alternative Masculinity is a portrait project exploring masculinity in the present day. I photograph friends and people around me, sometimes set up beforehand, but often in a spontaneous moment. The series only grows as I get older and I meet new friends and community members. summer

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Kris Harzinski & Will Haughery All Balls

Billy

Postcard From Granville & Kenmore July 19, 2011 H. melt

In Edgewater long alleyways & concrete gardens are well-lit during the early morning hours tomorrow tonight white flashlights search for black bodies, lit blocked by red not yellow tape a white neighbor turned around, remarking i’m glad they’re shooting at each other instead of us maybe if they shot at us someone would pay attention i walked a new route to the red line my life line home a whiter shade of blues.

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Pillows

Craig Calhoun Theory — what follows below is just provisional. I believe that existence is based on difference and that change is the only constant. As such, I don’t create in order to capture. I create to constantly shift. I consider what I make to be neither personal (mere instances of self-expression), nor universal (transcendent generalizations); but hopefully pillow #5, 2003 some, if not many, will find the work applicable to their experiences Used male underwear, fiber fill (whatever those experiences are). approx. 19˝ × 17 1/2˝ × 12 1/2˝ Following Integrationism [see http://www.royharrisonline.com for a brief introduction], I don’t believe that meaning is inherent. “... [I]n the communicational process, signs do not ‘have meanings’ but are ‘made to mean’.” - Roy Harris & Christopher Hutton, Definition in Theory and Practice (p. 223) Arguably then, viewers create meaning for the work as they integrate it with their activities (meaning isn’t dictated by me, or anyone else for that matter, in advance).

pillow #8, 2003 Used male underwear, fiber fill, button approx. 24 3/4˝ × 23 1/2˝ × 13 3/4˝ 32

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That stated (also keeping in mind that I don’t value intent as the end-all-be-all when it comes to interpretation), I will write that I currently think of these pillows as an attempt to engage an objectness that is not (necessarily) a form of objectification. An object-ness that is not a reduction to the physical, but possibly an affirmation of the physical. To engage an object-ness that is excessive and monstrous.

pillow #11, 2003 Used male underwear, fiber fill approx. 25˝ × 17 1/2˝ × 18 3/4˝

Monstrosity in this instance considered as a process of becoming that is not pathological. Why pillows? — An interest in playing with notions of use/functionality and a rejection of what I consider to be the false dualism of fine art and craft. Why used male underwear? – At the time I first starting using it (along with suits, socks, white dress shirts, etc.) in the early 1990s I was interested in critiquing American masculine stereotypes as perpetuated through menswear. By the time I started working on the pillows in 1999, however, I was less interested in an overt critique of masculinity as I was in the interplay of touch and tact and presence and absence in relation to (homoerotic) intimacy.

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why cant i love you Emanuel Vinson

what does a dark hallway become when it is you and me and what i could do to you i have never gone to juke parties i went to homecoming when i was fifteen and everyone was juking grabbing people getting grabbed by people i thought it was awful i wanted to fit in female friends of mine juked me when i asked them i wanted to have sex with them i wanted to fit in. i wanted to tell them to turn around and stop. i cannot talk dirty i am quiet when i was in a relationship my sex was in a cage when i am in a room with a female friend and my sex is a cage the room is a cage how ugly both of us feel what does a dark hallway become when it is you and me and what i could do to you i like hanging out with women more than men most of my friends are female i want to have sex with most of them i generally don’t think about wanting to have sex with my male friends before i tried to kiss her we talked about feeling very close

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even though we never got to hang out much this semester would be different she said she could guide me she later would i tried to kiss her because i thought she wanted me to she later would tell me she was disappointed we later would have a friendship made of cliffhangers i know, things changed i am a feminist i am not a feminist i am just someone in a room that wants to be trusted i am just someone in a room that wants to take your body from you for me i am a voice and a body type and everything that has been done to you i really think you are beautiful maybe i can show you why can’t i love you?

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Kyle Turner Cammin’

Kiam Marcelo junio Eskinol, 2012

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Faygala Manifesto Eric Dresner

so this is the faygala manifesto or something a lot less dom-sounding. not that i don’t have my dom moments, but that was definitely not the case when i had my hand deep in my grandmother’s candy cabinet rummaging through kosher for passover fruit slices, goobers from ‘88 (to think anything could be that old…), better-maid chips and a few dead ants. i was a willing sub to the comfortable disrepair and frequent code-switching in the bea and arthur faber residence. to this day, yidlish is my first language. “shayna punim, watch your keppe” “gay cocken offen yam” (which means absolutely nothing about gay cocks, sad face emoticon) “go tell your schmendrick teacher to ‘kiss mere und tuches a rhein’” “whatever happened to that faygala you used to know susan, did he move to new york or sagachik or what?” i knew the word gay really early on (my mom, a designer who passed up a job to work at halston in the late 70s in order to date my dad, was quite the fag hag in the detroit disco scene) and to a certain lesser extent I knew the word faggot and that it was not a really pretty term when said by old straight people. now, as a twenty-something i also know that faygala is the yiddish equivalent of faggot and that it is supposed to hold similar weight. so, i know what you are thinking: this is going to be some piece about appropriating a term of hate against yourself in an effort to be rebellious or sarcastic or cheeky or just stupid. but not really; this is more about the way words can actually, genuinely, have a meaning or connotation that is wholly unique to one person or family or community. my grandmother was such a jewish grandmother in the way that she said what she meant unapologetically, even if she was being overtly crass. she used words that made me cringe and say, “grandma that is definitely not politically correct” (i grew up in the nineties, duh). the word faygala, though, had absolutely no outside meaning to me; nobody else i knew used that term and its not like i was hanging out with other altacockers (another term that has nothing to do with cocks). i did have another jewish grandmother on my dad’s side, but she spoke (and still speaks) “beauty salon and social climbing” instead of yidlish. so, hearing my grandmother talk about all her and my mother’s faygala friends and how much she loved them and admired them and deeply mourned their deaths from aids (ok, sorry i just went there) made me not only grow up with a deep admiration and respect for the (see: fellow) homosexuals of the world but also forged a deeply positive connection to the word faygala. it also didn’t help that i constantly connoted the term with the name for a particular fried bagel treat, the fragel, endemic to southeastern michigan that could possibly lead to early onset heart clogging, although that is completely besides the point of this whole “queer theory and usage of terms” tip i am tying to go on here. my point is this: faygala is one of the most beautiful words to me; it reminds me of my grandmother’s deep love and empathy (regardless of her use of word), of her irreverent sweetness and the sweetness of the almost-John-Watersesque decrepitude that was her sugar stash and the times i would gravitate towards it with her yidlish filling the ethers around me. to those who say, “well, aren’t you 38

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just perpetuating the use of a hateful term?”, i retort, with the highest amount of love and respect, “fuck off.” respect my right to interpret and use words however i see fit. (oops, might have just came off a bit agit-queer.) if you know me or if you don’t, next time you see me please call me a faygala. thank you.

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Truth in verbs ellie navidson

i’d had an incredibly vivid dream in which everything in my life was exactly as it is now, save one thing. Rather than being the queer, trans* feminine person i am, i was a trans* man. Upon hearing about this, someone i know giggled and remarked, “It’s almost like your transness is more central to your identity than your femininity.” All humor aside — and this is rife with humor — this struck me as true. This is not to say that my femininity is not important to me or central to my identity; it absolutely is. My femininity is a shining gem that i hold outstretched in cupped hands for all the world to see. But to me, the noun is less important here than the verb. It is in the act of crossing, of transgressing our violently normative binary, that is most precious to me. It is in the active moments of this process that i have gained insight and compassion, that i have learned to be and to love. The becoming itself gained a meaning that i never could have anticipated. My transition — and i have to apologize here, because i hate that destination-based word, but don’t have another — has given me a unique opportunity to learn about myself and the about the world. This ongoing process of growth and determination feels so much closer to my heart than my gender ever could be. My transness has also allowed me to come into a gender that is completely my own. i used to try to fit into the binary gender system. i very consciously hid my queerness behind a perfectly practiced masculine mask, and i used to conceive of a future that entailed a complete and archetypal femininity. The latter never really came to pass. At this point, i can’t imagine fitting into the gender binary or being normative in that way. i revel in the fact that i get up every day and am consciously true to myself. On many days that absolutely means being really femme, but on as many others it means something else, something less immediately discernible. Again, here the significance lies in the verb. This searching, this becoming, this being is about being able to walk unencumbered in the world. Gender can be so heavy. Gender can define actions and responses faster than neurons can fire. But in being true to myself, instead of trying to achieve some sense of normative gender, i have shed a lot of predispositions that i may have not otherwise even been aware of. In breaking it down, in crossing, i’ve found a capacity to shed so much of that baggage and feel that, in this way at least, i’m not as weighed down as i once was. This verb, this trans*-as-action is far more important to my sense of self than any sort of gendered directionality. The fact that i feel invisible when someone calls me “sir,” instead of being rendered invisible by a “ma’am,” seems so much less significant than the fact that i am rendered invisible at all, frequently even. i’m not trying to equate 40

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all trans* and genderqueer experience here, it’s as variant as anything. i’m merely saying that being different runs deeper than the details of that difference. And it’s a difference i’ve learned from and grown with; a difference to which i’ve grown incredibly fond.

We Play the Father Jakob VanLammeren

We play the father. One who wakes & kisses, one who drapes the blanket back around the shoulders, one who does not disappear. We are fathers without the shame of our failures — no stolen money in our pockets from the purses of our wives, no children to ask us questions that will always feel impossible; or the proof of our leaving — the bus ticket, the keys to the station wagon. No. We pretend a father who holds hands. When we’re both Daddy things get rough. Our arms are large & we measure our cocks, argue over territory. If you are Daddy I let my shame take me to the edge of the bed. I want to utter desires too unfit, so my tongue hangs limp & my body flatters your will. I like that. If I am Daddy I let you beg me until you’re wet & then I promise never to leave you & I promise that you can be both my wife & my daughter. Sometimes we live in a room of fathers. We are always good girls, the most beautiful girls in the world. We are always daughters.

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I Understand Now hadley ford I understand now. I understand what people mean when they say they want More from their partner, or when they just want More partners. I understand what it means to be Satisfied and Ruined at the same time. Where ruined=Never feeling this much pleasure from anyone else. (Ever Again?) And I Should not be with you. But I knew you then— 11 years ago Clumsy, traditional, leaving flowers at my doorstep when my ankle was broken; Shattered— rendering me dependent. Is that why I rejected it? Were the gestures too kind? Was there just not enough Pain to warrant interest? But I feel it now, I Feel it Now, 42

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now, now. Now, since this is wrong and We are wrong. Now, I am perpetually wet. You could do anything to me. Take another, Bring another, I would even Sleep with you, Really sleep with you-In your bed. Heavy on your chest, feeling the weight and the heat of your body that is so much Taller than mine, Darker and hairier and sweatier and all those things that make me feel like A woman To your Man. What was once unthinkable Is now here, a cliché maybe but to me feels natural, is unavoidable. A tractor pull. This really happened, this happened to me. I did this and I let This happen— even Made this happen. And I am needing this, You are sustenance for me To feed from. I feel more than I cared to I want more than just the fuck. Even though I still want more and I can’t

Turn it off, tone it down Stop thinking about Them, Her Her Her Him Him Him

mother softly slept, Fucking while my stepfather vacuumed the hallway outside my door; Greedily rewinding girl porn from those shamefully large VHS boxes; That first rush of that first orgasm in my mouth; That first perfect kiss laid on that first perfect pussy.)

(The 25 year old Joan Jett lookalike that has eluded me for years when all I want is to go down on her until she screams; That hipster bartender in the grey t-shirt dress that hugged her ass like so much wrapping on an exquisite present; The aesthetician and her painful wax, and her lubed-up rubber glove petting me so gently afterward, shivering from the touch as it brushed over me; The kilt-clad bouncer with his black industrial boots and handcuffs on his belt who is in an open relationship; My therapist with his big long braid, bending me over his worn leather couch; and The *most* forbidden one, who I always hug just a little too long so I can feel his taut chest against mine even though he is “family”.)

I suppress, suppress, suppress for so long and This is what happens. I tie it down but It just Spills Out Like what’s left of you inside me. Taking risks, not being careful enough, not knowing which version of me is me anymore But I can’t stop, I can’t stop, I can’t turn it off or tone it down.

Or even just That (Grinding on Jacuzzi jets since before I knew why it felt so good; Dryfucking my best junior high friend in front of a roomful of girls; Losing it on the carpet at 12 in a red bra and unshaved armpits; Licking photos in Victoria’s Secret catalogs on the futon of my high school bedroom; Fucking in cars down the street while my

And I don’t want you to stop, Just give in to me and Give It to me Until I can feel it drip down my legs. I understand now.

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Queerlike

Kevin Sparrow I want to be queer like a fire eater, glimmering and daring, that act you aspire to but keep buried. I want to be queer like a Munch painting, uncanny, vivid, captivate your eye though you try to resist it. I cannot fluff pillows and make the bed for assimilation, for societal decay. I’m not looking to fit in— I’m required to stand out. I abut that yawning and heavy-lidded façade, a rogue sequin in the poly-cotton blend. Equal rights is not simultaneous similarity; it reflects poorly on both of us if half-me— fractions of me—is taken as equal to you. My quartered self, a Jeopardy answer, carries more weight than your whole, seen as whole. I absorb looks—glares, glances and stares; you blend in alabaster on eggshell. I want to be queer like the impulse to jump in every mud puddle I see because it’s dirty and grungy but it’s human, and we all have the same right to dirty, off-kilter, strange, the smile it brings. I want to be queer like humming in darkness, unsettling, unannounced but pleasing, desired. Allowed. I want you to follow with somnambulant arms, your eyes adjusting, no matter how slowly.

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Michael peirson Holy Sonnets

Lailaw Taherzadeh Aliens in America Seasoned with hostility, borders regress and segregating walls are heightened. All eyes are on the skins that do not fit the part. In regions with closed fists, distinguished identities are lost. Move quickly to avoid conflict. The fastest sprinters slip away.

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Lailaw Taherzadeh Subtle A pair’s subtle affection elevates impressionability. summer

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Collaborative project with photographer Enzo Moscarella

Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero Interview by Joseph Varisco

Jackie Vajaqueque Guerrero is a student of theatrical expression and utilizes performance werk as a method of resisting gender and sexual norms in radical ways and presents alternative discourses on race identity. Jackie embraces a celebratory and honor-based framework in her approach to relating and engaging with a queer community. I sat down at my kitchen table recently to destroy a turkey sandwich, trade sequin love and seek out what elements contribute to her performance work and her personal life. Jackie recently applied for a grant to continue and expand her work as an artist and a queer body in Chicago. Joe Varisco: So you are originally from Miami? Jackie Brown: That’s right. What were you doing in Miami prior to coming to Chicago? What was it that brought you here? Well, I knew that I did not want to go to college in Miami or in Florida, and I probably in fact wanted to get as far away from there as possible. I applied to University of Miami, NYU, and Northwestern. Those were the only three schools I applied to, and I actually don’t remember applying to Northwestern, but I got in so I went. I didn’t get into NYU. What did you study at Northwestern? I went to study theater, and I ended up going for a minor—a dance minor and a film and media studies minor. Neither of which I completed, but I took full advantage of taking classes that I could take including a lot of technique classes and stuff. You mentioned that you just wanted to do whatever you could to just get out of Miami. Why was it that you wanted to get away? I had just come out as bisexual. My parents weren’t into that. They didn’t kick me out or whatever, but they were not into that and I think I just wanted to start my own life out somewhere. A lot of my friends or people that I know from Miami and went to school there ended up staying there and living there, and I knew I didn’t want to live there in Miami. How long have you lived in Chicago? I graduated two years ago, so I have been here for about six years. It’s crazy to think about. So you do so many different kinds of things in Chicago on a regular basis like all of these different performance events and former work with Vaudezilla. What is it that draws you that kind of work in the first place? When I was at Northwestern I was doing acting and dance and a lot of design, but I knew that I didn’t want to do straight theater per se. It doesn’t really interest me, summer

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but I did know that I liked performing. When I was still in school, I started working with Vaudezilla. I worked with them for about three years and I was exposed to burlesque. I really liked the people and the environment, and I liked that it was liberating for audiences and for performers. I didn’t really do my own solo work when I was a part of Vaudezilla because I felt it was too straight or like I didn’t feel comfortable exploring that part of myself publicly for that particular audience. Then after I graduated and I moved into Chicago proper I started getting on the queer scene. Mainly started going to all of the dance parties. I love dancing and going out and I was very into parties. I had a really good time meeting people and I went to like every single one. I went to all of them for a long time, which is how I ended up meeting all of the people, all of my friends now and seeing these different kind of performance styles. That is when I started to really seriously think, well you know, I need to put something together. I saw Trandroid perform and after that I contacted A.J. to see if I could perform at Shits & Giggles, which I had never been to, but I knew what it was. So it was at Shits & Giggles this past February, which was the first time I did a solo performance. That’s what happens with a lot of these events you do one thing and then the momentum just takes off and skyrockets and then it is just mad, mad busy time. Yea, yea. Actually I lied. The first time I did a solo performance was at The 411, which is Justin [Mitchell’s] queer hip hop party, so credit where credit is due. From observing your performance work it seems like a lot of intentionality is put into how you appear and how you express your identity. One of the things I’ve definitely noticed is how you relate to your hair in different ways. Could you talk a little bit about that, how your hair plays a roll in your performance work or in your everyday identity? Totally, I love that question. Well, I’ll talk about the hair on my head first because that is what a lot of people see first, right? The hair on my head a lot of times gets me the question, “What are you? What’s your ethnicity? What’s your race or whatever?,” which I find in the Midwest people find me to be mixed, like black and white. I’m Cuban and Puerto Rican and coming from Miami people would either get that or think that I was Dominican. Sometimes people would think that I was black and obviously there is some African and native roots in the Cuban and Puerto Rican side, but it is just interesting cause automatically people are like analyzing my body and trying to figure out what I am. So for different pieces, the one that is Miami based, which for all intents and purposes I call Hustlin’ Maren@ since it is two different songs, is about queering my Miami roots and queering that kind of gangster thug street life. I try to do cornrows whenever I perform that piece just because I think that it adds authenticity and style and I like for things to be very stylized. Then my mustache, which when I started performing I thought it was going to be drag, which it kind of is, but I would never call myself a drag king ever. I’ve heard people say that it is really subversive because it is really subtle, but it looks really natural and I feel really comfortable wearing it because it fits and I love it. Then my body hair, I don’t shave 50

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Photo by Zack Frazier

or rarely groom like I used to. I just kind of stopped, which is empowering for me and is just like a lifestyle choice right now so I don’t really care if people care. You mention that you have these influences about queering the culture from Miami. What other elements are influenced in your performance work or in your life that come from your Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage? How does that inform some of the ways that you interact with the world? When I was living in Miami I was not into being Cuban or Puerto Rican. I wanted to be white and I think that is part of the reason that I didn’t want to live in Miami when I was living there. I’ve been to Puerto Rico, but I haven’t been to Cuba though I would really love to go. It’s really beautiful, it really changed the way I was thinking about my heritage especially after I moved away from Miami and came to Chicago. I started to really want to connect with that because it is something that I don’t really have in common with a lot of people here. So my performance is kind of a way for me to publicly reclaim a part of that identity that I rejected and my ethnicity that I rejected when I was younger and to explore that and embrace that, also to be comfortable with it. In every culture there is a lot of misogyny and racism and in Latin history political strife and homophobia, transphobia, but there is also this really rich tradition of drag and queer performance so I want to honor that and honor those queer traditions and talk about them and talk about stereotypes and challenge stereotypes and challenge machismo and things like that through my work. I get the sense in some of your performance work, particularly when you’re wearing the alligator necklace, something about that resonates on a spiritual level. I am curious what kind of spiritual identity you have and what you are exploring since it seems to appear in your work how do you translate that? summer

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Yea, I think that I have like a queer spirituality in that I seek to celebrate and honor and worship queerness and love, queer love in life. I would say that is my religion. The gator head is totally a piece that is definitely influenced by Santeria, that aspect of my roots. There are members of my family that practice Santeria and so it is just like a talisman. There is something magical about it. I see the performance and dancing as an act of worship and an act of celebration to honor the queerness around me and queer histories and the present moment. It is also about sharing what I have inside and bringing it out to share with other people so other people experience sort of what is going on inside. I am really fascinated by rituals and that aspect of religion has always spoken to me and I think that there are definitely rituals in my life and in the lives of other queer performers, like putting on the mustache whenever I go out to something queer and putting on certain things. I put a glitter mark on my forehead and putting glitter on other things that are just like rituals that work to empower me. I feel touched and kind of really empowered that way. I think that when I have the gator head and the altar and I am bringing that to the audience it is a way for me to share little acts that empower me. It’s really interesting because Santeria is a like a fusion of Catholicism and African religions where when slaves were brought to Cuba and to different parts of the Caribbean they weren’t allowed to practice their religion so they kind of masked it. They kind of took their deities and gave them corresponding Catholic deities, but still had the elements of their other religions. I see what I do as an attempt to reject oppressive forces and kind of break through. For me the act of reclaiming my power to transform my body or present my body in whatever way I want for people to see and kind of fucking with what they think I am is really powerful. As a female-bodied person my body is constantly under examination without me even knowing it, which I forget, but is totally true. When I present one way and then completely transform in a performance it is like me taking control of how people are thinking about my body in a way that I think is an act of resistance to a straight cis-gendered worldview. Are there currently any songs that really get you moving that you want to use in performances? I have about five different performance pieces that have been marinating that I have wanted to do for a long time and it is just a matter of like, well, I like to use a lot of props and costuming is really important to me and that it is quality and tangible and that there is texture and lights. A lot of times if I want to buy sequin fabric, which is like $30 a yard, so it is hard to produce a piece. Right now, this is kind of unrelated, but my friend Anthony Carasa, Tito Bonito, did this piece at Berlin for Pride to “Where Have You Been” by Rihanna and that’s been playing at very high volume in my head. I’m not going to do anything to that, but it has just been so epic. There is a Mariah Carey song that I’ve really wanted to do for a piece for a while. My roommates for my birthday made me these tassels, these pasties that have 8” of curly extensions as the tassel. That is something that I really want to do, I hope I didn’t just ruin it for everybody. It reminds me of Mark [Aguhar]. It is a way for me to channel her. Sometimes in my Miami piece, in the altar I have pictures of 52

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different queer people that are in my life and whatever and there is definitely a little picture of Mark on there. We’ll just leave it at that, but I really want to honor people in our community really intentionally. Intentional body positivity and just love in general.

Photo by Oomphotography

You work mostly at night so when you wake up in the morning what does that look like? What do the first few hours of your day look like? I have the luxury of getting out of bed when I feel like getting out of bed. When I was working at Steppenwolf and also working at the bar and also performing, my days were: Get up at 7:30am, work, werk, werq, you know what I mean. Then go to sleep get up at 7:30am and work, werk, werq. So now I lay in bed for a little bit, not a lot. I’ll get up and make myself a breakfast. I try to eat really good things. I try to wash the glitter out of my life cause literally I was sitting on the floor [earlier] talking to Jesus [Plaza], and I look down and am like, “Oh, that is all from my bed.” If I had a computer, which I am getting one soon, but if I had one I would be on the internet for a little bit. My life now is really different just because I have time. I am still working, but I have time to do what I want to do. Usually, I’ll have things to do during the day like today I’m meeting up with you and the other day we did that photo shoot, the pool party photo shoot. I’ll try to meet up and hang out with people. I really want to be intentional about spending daytimes with my community and people in my community. It is really different. I feel that there is a general desire for sober community building. The last time I saw you perform was Go-Go Gothic dancing over at Northern Lights. I saw you standing outside and embrace the heat. I watched you walking down the sidewalk by yourself and it feels like there is this really intentional centering or rooting that is going on. Is that part of your mental/ physical preparation prior to getting on a stage? summer

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It can be overwhelming sometimes. That particular day we had the photo shoot and then I had brunch with people from a different show and then I worked and then I finished my grant application and then I came to Northern Lights to dance. I love seeing people and obviously I wouldn’t be there if I didn’t love being around people, but I definitely do need to take a moment before I’m putting myself out there in Photo by front of people to feel my Zack Frazier body alone and have time that I am intentionally stepping away from people and re-centering before I perform. There has to be a time when I am sitting in the basement of whatever space with my music and listening to the song at least three times so that I can really be as specific as possible. Trying to get it together. For the most part I have been really happy with my performance experiences. I don’t know that I necessarily get really nervous or get any stage anxiety, but I know there are people that there are people I know and care about watching me so I want to do the best that I can. A lot of times in the performances I have developed I really haven’t had the time to go through every minute. A lot of times half of it is choreographed or there is a really specific moments that I hit throughout the piece, but I would definitely say there isn’t a piece that is entirely choreographed all the way through. A lot of the time it is me going through the possibilities of what I can do in those moments or what I want to do in those moments. Really listening to the music in those moments. If I take a walk around by myself it is just reconnecting with my queer spirituality or that feeling of light or lightness or openness and to try and access that to bring into the space. To hear or see more about Jackie Vajaqueque Guerrero you can check her out at Nuts & Bolts conducting the Runway Walk portion of the evening or keep your eyes peeled for her next performance at one of the upcoming queer dance parties in Chicago. Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero, performing under the name Vajaqueque Brown, is a queer AfroCubaRican performance artist originally from Miami. Their preferred gender pronoun is JB. JB is interested in exploring expressions of physical love, as well as their personal and cultural queer and Latin@ histories through their performance werq. 54

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Eric DocĂŠ Satan Is My Little Lamb, 2011

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Simon m. A Kid Again

James Murray Drawings for The Thief’s Journal, Jean Genet: The Portraits These drawings are part of an ongoing series that looks to take the works of homosexual authors and reconstruct them through contemporary communication practices prevalent in online BDSM communities. By employing “BDSM shorthand,” “Handkerchief Code,” and the largely outdated “Bear Code” as a starting point, this series of drawings function as “translations” for Jean Genet’s seminal text, The Thief’s Journal. These drawings explore ideas relating to how desire is constructed through language in contemporary queer culture by using the works of, and thus in contrast to, the authors like Genet, Phil Andros & others. summer

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Rejection Jeff Johnson

NO was the first word that Tommy Davis learned. It’s a simple concept really. Perhaps the simplest word in anyone’s vocabulary. NO kept Tommy from getting burned when he was near the hot stove top. NO kept Tommy from getting too close to the edge of the swimming pool as well as from tumbling down the basement stairs. As Tommy’s vocabulary grew with his age, no was replaced with reason. “If you touch a hot pan, you’ll burn your hand and that will hurt.” Tommy only wished to explore the world around him and discovering the world or any environment for that matter, came with occasional consequences. Running too fast caused skinned knees. Turning the corner too quickly caused him to fall from his bicycle. Playing in the abandoned lot put him in contact with poison ivy. This is the nature of children, but there were always consequences for little Tommy when something bad happened, even when that something bad was nothing more than what occurred from being a child. Skinned knees became a reason for Tommy’s mother to not allow him to go to the corner drug store to buy candy and a rash from poison ivy became a reason to keep him from playing with the neighborhood kids. As Tommy grew older and learned to navigate the world in which he lived, at first with his bicycle and later with the bus pass provided by his school, he discovered so many things that were never available to him near his home. He discovered interesting people and interesting places and his sense of curiosity grew. The more he learned the more he wanted to learn, though Tommy also learned what not to talk about when he arrived home each day, as defined by the time the street lights came on. It was better for Tommy not to tell his mother about his bike ride to the lake shore because she would have thought it was too far from home for him to wander. It was better for Tommy not to tell his mother that he had gone to the band shell one afternoon to hear the orchestra play. These were places that Tommy loved because they were places where NO didn’t seem to exist. There were other things that Tommy didn’t tell his mother as he got older. Tommy didn’t tell his mother that he couldn’t take his eyes off of the two brothers who owned the construction business in the neighborhood. Tommy didn’t tell his mother that he liked talking to Mr. Richards while he was washing his car, shirtless, every week. He also didn’t tell his mother that he bought his baseball cards at the convenience store on the other side of town because he was captivated by the clerk’s thick, dark chest hair that was visible through the open collar of his red uniform shirt. While he didn’t know why he being around these men, Tommy did know that there would have been consequences for speaking about these things.

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To his high school prom Tommy asked the quiet simple girl to be his date. He knew she’d say yes because she was neither homely nor popular. Had he asked whom he truly wanted to be with him, the robust and well-built boy from the wrestling team, his request would have been met with rejection and consequences. He and Tommy had been pals for years. They had skipped classes together, gone to movies together, and had slept over at each other’s houses. They shared their secrets with one another, all except for one. By the time Tommy, now known as Thomas, moved away from home, or shortly thereafter, he became aware that he loved men. That he loved the company of men and that he desired the company of another man more so than he desired the company of women and he became aware that this was not something to talk about openly with anyone. Talking about it would only be another cause for rejection and another reason to have the word NO included in a sentence. Soon enough Thomas began to meet other men who had the same feelings and he discovered that there were specific places where these men could be found on any given day or night. By day these men could be found along the river front, under the bridge that connected two distinct parts of the city and by night they could be found in windowless bars near the railroad tracks that separated the city. It was interesting to the curious nature of Thomas that these men that were like himself could be found in locations that were separations in and of themselves. If the other side of the tracks represented the separation of two types of the population, then the space immediately adjacent became a no-man’s land. If a bridge connected people, then what was the space under a bridge? Sometimes at one of these windowless bars adjacent to the railroad tracks Thomas would attempt to strike up a conversation with a handsome man and found that the handsome man wasn’t interested in anything beyond a simple greeting. When he went down to the river, beneath the bridge that connected the two parts of the city, Thomas discovered that when he took off his shirt he attracted the attention of other men. When he took off his pants, as many of the other men did under the bridge, and sported an erection and worked it up and down with his hand he attracted even more. Often a crowd, but from this crowd never came a single word. Why, he thought, was this population of men so silent. Why, he wondered, was it that few, if any of them were willing to talk to him, to have a conversation with him, or to even utter a word publicly. An occasional hand might touch his erect penis. Sometimes a set of lips, but never a caress, never a set of fingers that ran through his curly hair. Never a gentle kiss on the forehead. Between the bars and the riverfront there seemed to emerge a new unspoken language of NO and eventually Thomas re-learned this language. This unspoken language appeared to be the norm wherever men like Thomas socialized. These places, these bars and eventually cafes seemed to be more of gathering places than summer

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places for socializing. Regardless of location and from city to city, the temperament of these establishments was exactly the same. Through rare circumstances Thomas did find an occasional a friendly soul. Someone who might return a smile, strike up a conversation and sometimes even, invite Thomas over to their house but because these men met in establishments only after dark an invitation to someone’s home almost always meant an invitation for sex. Add to this the inhibitions that come from alcohol and sex became inevitable. These invitations offered some sense of hope. Yes, they may have begun with a friendly smile and a cheerful conversation. Yes, they may have led to the entanglement of flesh upon flesh and even the gentle kiss, but these invitations did not seem to lead to anything more than hope. Hope for an exchange of telephone numbers. Hope for a chance to spend an actual day together or hope for anything beyond a first name. In any city, and certainly the city where Thomas lived it was common to run into these night-time men during the day-time hours. In shops and in offices, in elevators and along the street, at the library and at the bus stop, their eyes would meet yet there would be no sense of acknowledgment that the two men knew of one another. If one were to smile at another during the day-time hours, if one dared do that, the other would avert his eyes, this despite the fact that the two men may have, only a week before, extracted semen from one another. Hope led Thomas back to the same establishments time and time again. Hope that he could meet someone to love and love him in return. Desperate, at times for that feeling, but never it seemed did it turn into anything other than men seeking the desire of flesh. NO became something from which he could not flee. Thomas found that some of his friends, true time-tested friends, meant more to him than he expected. These friendship weren’t rooted in physical pleasures or plays of passion, but rather in general pursuits of everyday life. Discussions about careers and homes, goals and dreams, of shared intellect and cultural dimensions. With these friends Thomas hoped that he’d find something beyond the superficial and something more permanent, though he feared asking. Don’t ask them, he thought, because it could mean an end to an engaging friendship. Don’t let on that you’re in love with him, he’d say to himself. He had learned to impose the vocabulary of NO onto himself. Thomas carried on with life. He learned to not feel lonely but to understand the idea of being alone though he hated the fact that his night-time world was devoid of companionship. He became used to being alone but hated waking up alone in the home he’d created. He understood that he wasn’t the recipient of affection, but loathed its absence. He longed for the touch of another human. He continued on despite the notion that NO was still apart of his life.

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Andy Siharath

Eric DocĂŠ Self-Portrait Against Portraiture, 2011

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Peter Fireworks INTERGALACTIC GAY FANTASY PORTRAITURE IN THESE PIECES, IMPOSSIBLY HAIRY MUSCLE DADDIES FROLIC IN FIELDS OF FLUORESCENT POT PLANTS WHILE BLOBS OF INTERGALACTIC GOO HOVER IN THE AIR. THE WORK DIGESTS THE KIND OF STEREOTYPICAL PORTRAYALS OF GAY MEN I ALWAYS SEE IN GAY MAGAZINES AND THE SCENE HERE IN BERLIN AND AMPLIFIES THE ARTIFICE WITH CYBERNETIC EMBELLISHMENTS. THE RESULTING PORTRAITS ARE A CELEBRATION OF AIR BRUSHING, COSMETIC ENHANCEMENT AND OVERLY MUSCULAR BODIES. IN “INTERGALACTIC GAY FANTASY PORTRAITURE” A DOOR WAY TO AN ALTERNATE GAY UNIVERSE IS OPENED, SO BE CAREFUL WHEN CHECKING IT OUT THAT YOU DON’T GET SUCKED INTO THIS FUTURISTIC ORGY OF GAYNESS.

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Janie stamm Flesh Beasts

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Power Publisher Joey Grant Edited by Erin O’Neal

Culture and our development of society has mostly been attributed to our complex system of communications. There are of course other biological factors like opposable thumbs and a cranium that can hold a larger brain, but communication is one of our most valued. Recently, with the explosion of social media and the advancement of technology, most humans have the ability to be a publisher. In our continuing evolution and communication, we are able to share ideas, feelings and culture at accelerated rates that were inconceivable less than 50 years ago. With the invention and mass implementation of the internet, many now have access to positions historically held by a select few, publisher. Simple words like tweet, post, create post sit in front of us illuminated on the screen, while the invisible power remains dim. We share media, we create it, and we must own it. As simple as sharing a poignant article on social justice, to a Parks and Rec meme, to a Yelle music video we are publishers. Our emotions leap off the keyboard and onto the screen for thousands and even sometimes millions to see. We create these dialogues online and off, without always understanding the impact. This isn’t a matter for a greater good or to our detriment, it just simply is. I have dedicated a good amount of my time to publishing. A year ago, I cofounded TheQu.co and everyday we put out content as a platform for an LGBTQ perspective. We use “Qu” as an example of Queer, as an umbrella term, not minimizing the political association, nor focusing on it. Using our values as a guide, we attempt to create a safe media space for all people in our community. Our goal is to be a pillar of multiple communities offering a robust multi-media online network of series created by Queer people. We are far from perfect and our voices need to grow and develop and strive for stronger visibility and inclusivity. This forum is meant to create dialogue, not dictate it. When we learn, we grow. We are always changing. The Qu is meant for everyone. A place created with an absence of hate, body shaming, transphobia, divisiveness, with a strong desire to build bridges between communities. This is no easy task, as most of us know there is no making, “everyone happy” and even less, “all the time”. The Qu doesn’t need to exist for voices to be broadcast. We all have this power and we are already using it. The internet is a powerful tool, be thoughtful and try to avoid complete dependence on it when sharing your voice. In person conversations, voices, looks and tones is something the internet will seldom if ever convey. I encourage the use of and sharing Queer and independent media. It validates our efforts. It lets us know you’re listening. It lets you know we’re listening. We are all listening to each other. Sometimes we listen to sadness, happiness, obnoxiousness, fleeting thoughts, problematic statements, hate speech, confessions, comedy, all very fluid and affective, yet sometimes they end up in a dead end. I wish that publishing could transcend into life to create richer conversations from difficult 68

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ideas to giggle inducing silliness. A world that combines modern technology with the beautifulness that is personal community, but some things cannot be replicated and only lost in zeros and ones. We are publishers, we are media, we are the future.

Portrait by Cody Cranch

H. melt Queer American Gothic

city icarus Melian

this is the boy of expedient smiles: dark metropolis genius teenage star guru always looking up caught in the hot bead of that wax melt pushing past pedestrians like umbrages: billowing tree shade / close cloud \ rised watermark he hates

the labyrinth / maker: father \ architect genius

true as a mirror-edge all eyes eyes uncoupled as reflection and mirror-object a/stigmatic unfocused \ bleeding from his little wounds little artifice of attention icarus sprints his father’s knowledge besets him on all sides patient as blown candles the buildings rise

buoyant upon the asphalt nowhere

to go but up one hundred flights of stairs bearing his crosswoved wings folded over a secret unconscionable mounts till he’s roofborne succinct as metal / pinioned \ king of his own creation embracing the sun always looking up leaping surging squalling

icarus icarus icarus was it sacrifice statement belief inelegant suicide

escape from those mazing eyes saw

you plummet a torn veil

but you can’t undo what is did

story the past

see the waters stilled

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For a long time, all I could do was surrender. Marissa Perel and Oliverio Rodriguez

Mouth open, arms out, fist in. This is a moment where pleasure is the primary and the ability for other experience is unfathomable. Except physical, primary is the physical. The moment of fucking doesn’t ever recede. It’s expansive in its pompous space. It has an inability to communicate. It dominates and doesn’t finish until it is done. Another 8 year old self, engaged in Ken and Barbie roleplay. Always a Ken kind of a guy. I wanted to be him actually, just with a penis and not just underwear. Locked out of the house, smashed together between the door and the screen door, slight inches that could include our small boyish frames. Our thighs enthralled together. Our hands busy with the dolls making out. My stomach reacting and a feeling, coming. Do you feel that in your stomach, in the bottom of your body? In the inquiry, I smash ken’s face into mine, his head becomes part of my teeth, my mouth, my tongue. Our making out. I feel it, he says. His foot nudging into the bottom of my torso, my stomach contracting. Swallowing back the food of yesterday in my throat. Do you feel it on the inside and the outside? 72

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Breathe in and hold while I read Masquerading – in and out – becoming – mostly become – traveling – speaking as – speaking for - soliciting – mimicking – mocking – fake – proxy – standing in place of – secret – act – serve – memory- to slip on – hide – fantasy – gaze – object – gift – give up – map – bury – myth – false – own – split – sever – wear – pretend – try on – switch – steal – lie – nobody – unname – undo – portray – evoke – enact – call forth. Disbody: flatten, pull up, doubt. The multiple. Felt completely around the chest and thighs between stages. The choice to be a fantasy – taking a shape beyond what is given for the event. What gives cause to press, shove, manipulate. Or strangle. The erotic turn of asphyxiation. A blissful impact, punishment with abandon, we’re both lost. Begging to be noticed, touched, loved, turning from nurture to beast – the consuming, the horrible, the pre-erotic scalding and vanishing and then guilt. It will happen again. How do I know I’m me with you? Asking strangers for force. As source of play, pinned down in private irony. Salacious fingering, or what else you would, seemingly equal because we formed a skin. The way we live. Anterior to the way I soak through. And more and many forbidden pockets deep within ecstasy that open that open into mouthless voids. All the hands hurt themselves in me, discipline for the correct binding of fissures.

Stand up and walk to the chair, sit down and put your head on my left knee Riding the bar of his bike. He perched on the seat his arms encircling my small boyish frame. His chin resting into the crown of my head. The wind through us, his arms and face holding me fast into the metal. Amidst the forest of green as their backdrop. Wandering around and around on foot, aching for him and metal. Watching the cigarette that wasn’t pass between their lips, similar to their penises that would slip in out, as I watched from the bench amidst the forest of green. It was behind trees, acted upon on concrete piers, green hills of fucking movements. Our relationship was selective. Both of us primarily interested in our intersection but unable to give into one another. He motivated by desire, the random, excitement, fun, the temporary. I, a son, permanent, incorporated into fun, but not random, temporary or fleeting. He was my desire, my strife. Seeking permanence in desire, I embodied his own conquests. summer

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There is a selfishness to our relationship. I seeking, wanting yet denied. Similar to my last boyfriend. Living and exploring each other through our own conquests. Our inability to share with one another, ourselves. Seeking pleasure in any form I could. Allowing for discontent and in the belief that there would be imminent change. A break that would coincide with together. We were apart of each other without giving to one another. It mirrored the furtive glances into the green forested backdrop of the casual hook up sex spots my papi and I inhabited. I just wanted to ride bikes with feeling the metal between us. To be protected by his transparent arms.

Walk to the wall and start dancing Jaded behavior, white knuckles, drinking, anger, the desire to shut out the world and control the moments. . Your hair, shirt, cuff links, pants, shoes, jackets Waiting to turn your age and as you, walk the length of my solitude from Montreal to Providence. Your body as antimony in the dawn where I wake up sweating. I fell into the water and knew I could not get out. It was the end. You would watch me drown. Bubbles floating up at the ends of my blonde hair. Never meant to grow apart. In the body of a woman. The weight of our desire swallowed by the elements. You freeze there, all luster and smug resolve.

Be my pet Oftentimes better when he is motionless, silent, unwilling, wooden, still as tongues flicker over him and orifices are filled. The funerals were close and in a rapid succession. Age 8, 9, 10, sequential. A progression of loss. Innumerable and unmentionable. Fathomable in a neighborhood dictated by divisions of wars. Invisible boundaries of turfs. Brother’s friends lost. Peers early death. Children ended. The AIDS epidemic taking my men. Brother stolen away. Thus, a fixation in the power of the struggling loss of death. A domination of the sexual. 74

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A signifier of the erotic. A way of comprehension of grief. His mouth agape against the floor while I rock his body hard into the wood slates of the floor. My knees against his knees. My hand against his belly, moving over the head of his penis. My hand against his hardness, taking his come to my mouth, I swallow. Again, I repeat. Moaning, wanting, swallowing. My hips rhythmic against his ass, thighs, behind his knees. My body forming into his own, mirroring his flesh. I hold him hard beneath my body. Cradling, wood softening against our knees. Still hard above him, I swallow his smile, his life, his movement, his consent. He has returned to life. A power of confrontation. An outlet of the emotional into the physical. Lie down, motionless. No sound, no breath, no movement, you are not a being. Move my tongue over your imagined nonexistent body heat. His arms flaccid, penis erect. My mouth performing a blowjob of nonresponse. My tongue into anus, forceful muscle opening him. Mounting, moving legs apart. I fuck his live, dead body. A corpse of consent. Fucking stillness in repetition. Again and again I feel him inside. Resistant, consenting.

Right palm up, left fist in mouth, face the audience I was shattered in the pure moment by a desire I could not bear and could not control. It had to do with a raw urge deep in that vacuous area where my uterus sits. The severe cheekbones, teary eyes and tender, shaved head made me ache as she ached. It was quiet, she was obviously scared, in pain, scared to come, and really scared to come before she had permission. It took a few lashings, in my mind it’s 3 slow-motion lashings that send her over the edge. It was a desire for no order. It had to do with pain, and the constant orderliness that pain demands. Like Bob Flanagan. How he would beat himself off while strung up to the closet door of his childhood bedroom. The rush of blood to the skin was better than pain medication. I whipped my breasts until they were swollen, and ripe for more clothespins. I unraveled black latex tape around my chest and eyes. I laid still, letting the pain, restriction and sensory deprivation take hold. Her cunt was glistening. As the heat rises up through her legs, into her chest, her body rocks, she moans, summer

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and she becomes serene. She breaks from all of that pain and for a minute reaches the top of the excruciating ordeal. I fucked myself with the handle of the whip. I started spanking my clitoris rhythmically. My hip was too stiff to open, so I kept it still while slowly removing the clothespins. By the time I had removed the clothespin from my left nipple, I howled and came in a rush.

Dance with me with your arms behind your back Another aria in reference to the aids epidemic. Philadelphia as with Tom Hanks. Patti Smith’s Just Kids as she heard of Robert Mapplethorpe’s death. I think of you as part of this, a sexual landscape. I hold you and want to hurt you at the same time. You are a reminder of death in the way that I want to exploit you as such. I want to turn you over and not think of consent as I fuck you hard and dry. I want your face beneath me buried and I want nothing of consent. You as boy and penetrate you fully until I come. I want your body to embody what I cannot and stand in for what I want: hard into you and no comment. You are all the men I have loved but haven’t had. They hurt and you feel me in comfort. Our dialogue lost in itself, words of nonexistence. Our dialogue apparent and transparent, however silent but negotiating. Consent as a metaphor or consent actualized. Consent as a catharsis of healing. I want you to actualize. I want permission. Essentially, consent as an idea of us with you as metaphor. You are the death I can understand. The death I can penetrate. I want to use you bodily the way I can succumb to you. I am yours in the way that you will let me. I am what you can let me be.

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Move like that again but with eyes closed and move the way I would move In the thick room. Our faces locked and buried. You are a shape that gathers force beneath my skin. You are all teeth. I can be something else in collision, I can bite back. I can steal you into me with breath. How do you want it? What? It. Has no one asked you how you want it? I don’t say anything. I take it. I take what I want then. We are deliberate in our suffocation. Let death come into the picture into the room into the small space of heat you keep empty. You occupy my dark surge, there is no refuge in surrender. Lightening in thigh crease and armpit, the wall goes blue then green. Your arm below me keeps me open in the face of the worst things. A hurt that means twist, burn, press. Your mouth open in strangle, our fists our elbows pinned. You pull back our skins, little destroyer. You withhold. Turned away from me in the tunnel. If the tunnel means belonging, I am a self-forgotten transient. If the water means belonging, we ask to be dissolved. Sucking you inside the gape and howl, it’s that thrust we fantasize. My tongue acts as agile dick, as top. You can’t give in you can’t let go. Exhale. I can remember pulling myself tight and growing and tightening. I’ll call out to nothing stretched to the point of night sick. Stretch the parts of us that have been cut away. The method of abandon and renewal. A lateral trip over form, your slice, my heave, the mountain, the matrix of fuck. One consent times two forms multiplies the danger of collapse. You are my upheaval. Boom. We signal trespass from our plots, then fire and fall.

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drew linne Me and Kim on the Blue Line

Journals

Annalissia-Kiana “KeeKey” Itson She’s telling you color her beautiful NOT with red white and blue but with her cultures With the races that pace through her blood The red-white-black-green combination She is Mexico Connected to America Reaching out to Africa Squeezing through a skylight of forged hope and departed dreams Her hips move to Cumbia, Bachata, Salsa, Reggae And then she prays Blood, unbended knees, unsure of herself Her future day Suffering in silence? Is this for what she is made? Her spoken word loves poetry She locks her noise away in journals She locks her noise away in journals She locks her noise away in Soy la jefa futura de Chicago Ya veo, no quieren nada conmigo Bailando from Cumbia to the Heeltoe Yeah, this chica may be emo, Pero es solamente my stilo Fuck with me, you’ll be missing like Nemo I’m on the comeup with flows you cant toma Soy la princesa Mira a mi corona Sexy is my swagger but No you can’t know her Coming at me but this ain’t no pinche broma Escuchame Hablo de la verdad You’re enimigo No tengas amistad 80

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EncenderÊ el fuego No vengas a mi ciudad Soy beyeza Recuerda mi nombre Step up, don’t care if you a mujer o hombre Y ya lo sabes que hablando sobre.

H. melt Bathroom Signs

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Storms Beneath Her Skin Rebecca Kling

My body is a weather system, complete with bright spring growth, warm summer days, pounding autumn rains, and frigid winters’ nights. An entire world, enough to give climatologists years of data, dissertations worth of study. Yet my seasons have nothing to do with a changing calendar, they are unheralded by the phase of the moon or the tilt of the earth. My course is altered by mood and emotion, shifting slowly over years or changing drastically within a single, brief instant. The Spring of my body causes my roots to begin to flex and contract. I sprout flowers from the tips of my fingers. The grass that is my skin begins comes to life once again. I am alight with budding leaves and the constant sound of birdsong. A warm wave of air blows across my skin, causing my hair to stand on end and cool ice-melt streams to run down the crevasses of my body. My body shifts through its equinox and my days lengthen. Every fiber of my being grows toward the rising sun. The Summer of my body is flush with life, my blood pumping and lungs full of air. My body is made of chlorophyll, converting every moment into pure joy. The wind plays through my hair, and my toes dig into the living earth. My face is a flower, turning toward love and happiness as if following the sun. The days of my body are long in summer, insatiably hungry for sensation, to touch and to feel. I ache for sex, for skin on skin. I cum like lightning cracking in a summer storm, and the rain pours down. The Autumn of my body finds me melancholy, my body slowing down and turning into itself. My leaves begin to color, rich reds and yellows, before falling to carpet the floor. I pace a lot during the fall, unsure what to do or where to go, unable to direct my energy. Projects are begun and abandoned, ideas had and left by the wayside. There are moments of frost at night, when I seem to stop altogether. A part of me migrates south, searching for warmer climes. The Winter of my body is stillness, an absence of some I-don’t-know-what. There is life, but it is below the surface. Winter finds me crying without knowing why, or knowing why, or not knowing one minute and knowing the next and suddenly laughing only to fall silent. Winds blow across my skin leaving ice crystals in their wake. My heart aches in winter, unable to find the momentum to take another beat. Winter is knives of cold, cutting through me so that blades don’t have to. Across all seasons I am filled with energy: electrical energy, heat energy, potential energy waiting to be released. In the height of summer, the energy bursts forth like a raging river, careening against canyon walls. In the depths of winter, the energy lays in wait, pausing to collect itself. At times, lightening plays across my muscles, flickering as they expand and contract. Rain collects in my eye sockets and spills down my cheeks. Wind blows, first hot and then cold across my breasts. Vines crawl up one leg, circle around my waist, and travel back down the other. I dip my toes

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into the waters of myself and watch as my ripples spread out. Then the water breaks with waves and I am tossed beneath the surface, only to come up again far away. There are rivers in my veins. There are vast prairies on the soles of my feet. There are storms beneath my skin.

Disclaimer Rebecca Kling

Please be advised: The viewpoints of this artist do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of other transgender, transsexual, trans, genderqueer, or otherwise non-normatively gendered individuals. In addition, there is no hierarchy of gender. Any individual who places one’s gendered experience above another’s should be viewed with skepticism. Common hierarchies include but are not limited to (in ascending order) fetish cross dresser, social cross dresser, private drag performer, public drag performer, closeted transgender individual, out transgender individual not planning to have surgery or hormone replacement therapy, out transgender individual on hormone replacement therapy, out transgender individual planning to have surgery, out transgender individual who has had surgery, or (in descending order) androgynous and gender fluid individuals, non-operative transgender individuals, drag performers, cross dressers of all types, and post-operative transgender individuals. Side effects may include a wider world view, more inclusive attitude, questioning of self-identification, and erectile dysfunction. In the event of a contradiction, please allow each individual to self-identify and self-define their life experience and their own identity. Please consult any such individuals in your life before applying to them the viewpoints of this artist.

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Sissy Spastik Photo by Casey Vange

Sissy Spastik An interview

Can you describe when you began playing with makeup, costumes, etc.? I’ve been playing with makeup since I was a child. I used to prance around in my mother’s dresses and pumps. I also of course loved painting myself like a clown with her pink blush and lipstick. She was a plain Jane, thus all the makeup I could ever really play with...until I was able to do drag as an adult. I started drag in NYC when I went to Parsons for fashion in 2007. I started doing gender bender drag and it led into a more female drag queen character persona when I moved back to Chicago in 2008. I’ve been doing drag in Chicago for 3 years. How would you describe your gender expression in drag vs. out of drag? In AND out of drag I always remind people to always be themselves. Whatever that may be... be you, do you... and do it WELL! When I’m not out on the town in face as my alter ego, “Sissy Spastik,” people will walk right past me not knowing it’s me out of drag and that is funny to me. I get a happy laugh out of it. My expression in drag is to always paint for the back row. Many things that inspire my drag are: fashion, vintage and couture, Grace Jones, sequins, leather, high stilettos, jumpsuits, fitted dresses, big hats inspired by Philip Treacy and my drag icons Divine and Jackie Beat. What is Sissy’s mission in Chicago? My mission has always been to spread the art of drag and the art of transformation. I love to transform myself into various looks and characters for pure enjoyment for others. I love performing and singing live, which is something I’m doing a lot more of these days. What does 3am or 4am look like to you on a performance night? At 3 or 4am I’m with friends closing a bar down and heading to a diner to inhale chicken tenders with a side of bbq and ranch sauce. Are you working on any major projects outside or inside the world of drag? Yes. I go to school full-time at Harold Washington College right now, looking to transfer to Columbia in the fall/spring to finish my Bachelor of Arts degree in Fashion. How has Sissy grown and changed in the time you’ve been doing drag? Sissy has grown an incredible amount; not just in the aspects of my makeup and wardrobe, but in the aspects of my performances and in my self-confidence as a whole. I have grown to accept myself and to love the person I am in and out of drag. It didn’t happen overnight of course, nothing does. It helps to have positive, optimistic, uplifting friends around you. Sometimes you have to cut people out of your life, especially if they are ones that don’t want to see you grow and become summer

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more successful. They really aren’t your friend if they are jealous. As RuPaul once said, “What other people think of me is none of my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn’t change what I decide to do. I don’t choose projects so people don’t see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system.” I wholeheartedly agree. You have to do what makes you happy, regardless of what other people may say or think; because in the end, you only have yourself to blame for your unhappiness. Happiness is a choice. Success is a choice. Failure is NOT. In what ways do you continue to reference or channel the actress which your drag name is derived from? So, as you may assume and you are correct, I created my name from one of my favorite movies of all time, “Carrie” starring actress Sissy Spacek. I chose to recreate a drag name in her honor because I myself can relate to Sissy Spacek’s character in Carrie. I was tormented in grade school all the way up to high school... so much in fact it got so unbearable I ended up not finishing high school and got my GED instead. Another reason why I do drag is that it’s a punch in the face to all those people that taunted me and said I’d never amount to anything. My message to young LGBT out there is to always be yourself no matter what. Let your haters be your motivators!

Ruby Dee Ruby Dee is an artist using herself as a canvas, expressing her anger, her love, and her passion for life and all that comes with it. A California girl but loves living here in Chicago and as an all around entertainer and performer she loves her craft and working on it all around the clock. XXX Ruby Dee XXX You could see her out on the town at night spots like Queen @ smart bar, House of Santana @ Berlin, Hydrate & Y Bar Contact makeupbyrubenjr@gmail.com

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Ruby Dee

Photo by Casey Vange

Acknowledgements We’d like to thank our real life friends and lovers and our internet crushes whom have helped behind the scenes in the haphazard creation, slipshod editing, and shameless promotion of our fourth issue. Once again Chicago IRL owes an extra special thank you to Erik Roldan and Suzy Rocco Granite of Northern Lights and Parlour on Clark for hosting our third issue’s release party and to Leon Andrew Hensley of A/S/L Media for photographing the event and being a real swell fellow. We’d also like to thank The Qu, Wes Perry, and The Annoyance theater for making DON’T ACT LIKE A QUEER, the Post-Pride event we co-hosted a raging success.

kickstarter backers ~*~Michelle Branch~*~ Anonymous Scott Allen Chris Arsenault Bendi Barrett Anthony Begnoche Kelsey Borrowman Vincent Chevalier chrisafer Lee E. Brandon Eaker eggis Ryan Fitzgibbon Ian Franklin Amanda Inderbitzen (in memory of Matthew Shephard) Bill Jenkins

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Maria Johnson Kevin Graham Kolbeins Alison Kuczwara Trouble Laforest Jermaine Landon Brandi Leder Joey Lindsey Joshua Mahn ginny maki Mirecatt Matt Morris Johnny Murdoc Marc Nielsen Bridget Noonan Patrick! John Lambtime Pearson Tim Peddycord

Michael Perez Allen Ratliff Kris Ray Franklin Reyes Bud Rodecker Dean Sameshima Alex Snell Brian J. Solem Janie Stamm Erin Thomas Kyle Turner Dave Valeza Michael Wills Jerome York

Editors Editor-in-Chief/Designer Topher McCulloch has never operated a lawn mower and was once described by TimeOut Chicago as a “champion of the internet.” Topher tries to make something awful every day. tophermcculloch.com | myrthco.com | msaed.tumblr.com

Creative Director Joseph Varisco is sort of like an otter with a switchblade and eyeshadow. He has a cat named Samson. He lives online at deputyjoev.tumblr.com. View his Queer Culture & Social Media Study at qcsms.tumblr.com.

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Quimby’s Bookstore 1854 W. North Ave 773-342-0910 quimbys.com

Quimby’s Bookstore 1854 W. North Ave 773-342-0910 quimbys.com

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CONTRIBUTORS Billy is a 30-something zinester who spent a decade living and breathing in Chicago. He writes the zine “Proof I Exist” and rides a tall bike. He has invented a board game about graffiti and a card game about zines. www.iknowbilly.com

Tony Breed is the man behind the Ignatz-nominated web comic Finn and Charlie Are Hitched (hitchedcomic.com). The slice-of-life comic tells the story of a married gay couple and their friends. In addition to making comics, Tony is a founding member of Chicago’s CHIRP Radio (chirpradio.org), where he’s a DJ and is on the board of directors. Tony lives in Chicago with his husband and makes good pie.

cjrc24@yahoo.com

Craig J Calhoun was born and raised in upstate New York. He attended S.U.N.Y. New Paltz from the Fall of 1989 to the Fall of 1994, graduating with a BFA in metal smithing. He attended The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (thanks to a full tuition scholarship) from the Fall of 1996 to the Spring of 1998, graduating with an MFA in fiber. He currently lives and works in Chicago. craigcalhoun.com Drui Combs is 23 and a native of Chicago’s South Side. He writes primarily for children. Every now and then, he likes to dabble in more adult themes. Drui writes on the basis of his fantasies, with a dash of realism for balance. contramundumpress.tumblr.com

Cody Cranch is a portrait artist and illustrator. His subjects are real: the face of a dear friend, the body of a lover, or the blurred impression of some stranger passing on the street. Through kinetic line and organic ink wash, Cranch captures, on the flatness of paper, the unique dimensions of each individual. codycranch.com

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Eric Docé is a musician, artist, and philosopher from New York, currently residing in Portland, Oregon with his boyfriend Caleb. He independently released an album called “My Deceased Twin Crafts My Ribcage Into a Riverboat” under the name Pleasant Heaven in June of 2012. He hopes to work on some theory combining the work of Judith Butler, Benedict de Spinoza, and Jacques Derrida as he pursues his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He was born in 1990 to a single teenage mother, and his favorite film is The Reflecting Skin. analontology.tumblr.com | pleasantheaven.bandcamp.com Eric Dresner is a Detroit-born, Chicago-based publicist, performer, gamelaner and lusophile. He is rarely, if ever, seen in the presence of olives.

Trandroid is a gender ambivalent robot born from the mind of A.J. Durand. Beyond Trandroid’s affinity for ceramic cats and electrical tape, you can spot Trandroid throughout the city at various performance oriented events. Nuts & Bolts: a DIY dance party is Logan sQueers premier event for strong LQQKS and a body positive dancefloor and Shits & Giggles: a Queer cabaret is Trandroid’s pride and joy featuring professional and amateur performers from the queer community and creating an entertainment space that specifically speaks to gender variant folks. PETER FIREWORKS was born on the 4th of July in the swamps of Florida. He was raised by alligators and raccoons on the west side of Jacksonville. His upbringing instilled in him a mystic reverence for all things back woods and a sassy disdain for anything boring. He loves Chicago but refuses to stop putting ketchup on his hotdogs or call ATMs cash machines. He’s queer as hell and making lots of weirdo art for the folks up here to enjoy. peterfireworks.carbonmade.com Hadley Ford is a librarian by trade and a Libra by birth. She enjoys cooking and eating vegetables, drinking strong cocktails, dancing like a fool, and singing in rooms with great acoustics. She can often be found not posting on the following sites: nondivisi.wordpress.com nondivisi.tumblr.com

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Zack Frazier is a web developer, photographer, designer who lives in Logan Square. He hails from Kentucky but moved to Chicago for graduate studies in fine arts. He is inspired by the noise of modern life and enjoys bright colors, sleeveless shirts, pencils, hot tubs, and ridiculousness. facebook.com/zackLF Joey Grant, a Chicago native, is the co-founder of TheQu a multimedia site that offers a platform for all queer people. The site features LGBTQ artists, videos, and original web programming. He is a progressive that believes in Equality for all and spends a good amount of time about these causes. thequ.co Artists Kris Harzinski and Will Haughery collaborate in an ongoing dissection and critique of masculinity through queer deconstructions of heteronormativeideologies. Recent works include(en)noble (de)base, a video in six sequences relating body actions to dominant and submissive functions of manliness, and Monuments to Trouble Laforest and Sandy Westridge where Harzinski and Haughery pay tribute to their unrealized personalities. willhaughery.com | krisharzinski.com

Annalissia-Kiana “KeeKey” Itson grew up on the South Side of Chicago, discovering poetry as a positive outlet in 7th grade. She quickly developed a passion for writing and performance and participated in Louder Than a Bomb in 2004. Her first publication soon followed in an anthology entitled, Hands On Stanzas. After experiencing several Kuumba Lynx performances, she joined the Hip-Hop theatre ensemble in 2006. She has shared stages with Kanye West, KRS One, Lupe Fiasco, Angela Davis, Saul Williams, Marc Bamuti Joseph, Danny Hoch, Kevin Coval, Patricia Smith, Poppin’ Chuck, Chicago FootworKINGz, and Rebel Diaz just to name a few. twitter: @keekeyestreyita | soundcloud.com/ann-r-key

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Jeff Johnson resides in Chicago. A recent transplant from Ohio, he has lived throughout the country, on both coasts as well as in Europe. He began writing in 1983 for a neighborhood newspaper in Minneapolis. This is his first fictional work. UrbanInFill.wordpress.com

Kiam Marcelo Junio is a multimedia artist living in Chicago, IL. His works investigate interactivity between the artist, the work, and the viewer. His multidisciplinary practice includes explorations in photography, video, sculpture, and performance art. Kiam served seven years in the US Navy and is also a certified respiratory therapist and a registered Yoga teacher. He is currently a 3rd-year Bachelor of Fine Arts candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kiam was born in the Philippines and has lived in the US, Japan, and Spain. He speaks English, Tagalog, and Spanish. www.iamKiam.com KOKUMO KINETIC is the CEO and Founder of KOKUMOMEDIA and works with the Broadway Youth Center as the Program Design Specialist as well as Youth Scholar with Affinity Community Services. KOKUMO is currently working on a myriad of works including her second play, an album, a poetry collection and the creator of the Transgender Gender Non-conforming Intersex Freedom (T.G.I.F.) festival. facebook.com/kokumomedia Rebecca Kling is a Chicago-based artist interested in exploring the performance of identity. Her multi-media productions question gender, self-expression, and what it means to be at home in one’s own body. She has performed throughout the Midwest, earning praise from the Chicago Tribune, TimeOut Chicago, Newcity Stage, Centerstage Chicago, and more. Visit her online at RebeccaKling.com, @rebeccakling, and facebook.com/rebeccaklingchicago

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Drew Linne is a young artist from Oak Park, Illinois. After two years of enrollment, he is currently taking time off from studying animation at the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri, planning to return in the fall of 2013. In his free time he enjoys cycling, watching a lot of television, and contemplating the mysteries of the universe. drewlinnedrawslines.tumblr.com vimeo.com/drewfrancislinne | theravenandthesun.tumblr.com Simon M. lives in Paris and studies queer expressions of rage at Paris 8 University. He gives a ton of thanks to Kate, a fabulous person who works at Women and Children First Books who suggested that he buy David Wojnarowicz’s memoir Close to the Knives 3 years ago and who remembers Simon even though he only comes in twice per year. Simon is currently trying to take up queer space in Chicago, New York, and Paris. temporarilyeuropean.tumblr.com Jonathan Mathias is a photographer and Chicago native with a love of gender-benders and status queerers. He holds a BFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago and resides in Logan Square. Jonathan works as a resident photographer at Paris Club and wants to one day corner the gay wedding photography niche. jonathanmathias.com | jonathan.mathias@gmail.com Melian is a 21-year-old insurrectionary anarchist trans girl who hates social justice almost as much as she hates prisons. When she’s not busy reciting Sylvia Plath or shedding no tears for dead rapists, she enjoys playing The Legend of Zelda and drafting a vengeful negative disability theory. She wants you to take her out for milkshakes (unless you’re one of those queers who thinks violence solves nothing or who would rather play identity politics than destroy everything). h. melt is a transqueer poet and artist who was born in chicago. their creative work explores the relationships between race, gender, sexuality, class and religion. h. melt’s work has been featured in queer chicago spaces such as homolatte, wolfram manor collective, and woman made gallery. cuntfessions: transqueer poems is their most recently published zine. they are pursuing an mfa @ the school of the art institute of chicago. find them here: hmelt.tumblr.com facebook.com/hmelt | hannahismelton@gmail.com 94

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James Murray is a Chicago based visual artist, musician and electronics designer with a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston & Tufts University & an MFA from SAIC. His art practice explores themes including the ideologies of emancipation in both club music and queer BDSM culture, drawings and videos focusing on the writings of Jean Genet, Brion Gysin and Phil Andros, as well as endurance-based performance art and video in the aftermath of the submersion of the AIDS crisis to conservative gay politics. www.intermediatetexts.com | twitter.com/basilionichols ellie navidson is a radical tranny faggot. She lives in Chicago and does written explorations of gender, normativity, and radical visibility. Ze works to incorporate vulnerability and non-violence into his life while they strive for social justice. e’s all about empowerment, brave honesty, and growth. Her blog can be found at invisiblyqueer.tumblr.com. Michael Peirson discovered that language makes you gay. Michael Peirson is a good person. Marissa Perel is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of the performance column, “Gimme Shelter” on the Art21 Blog, and is co-editor of the on-line journal, Critical Correspondence. She was co-curator of the Movement Research Spring Festival 2012, and is curator of the artist discussion series, Lobby TALKS at New York Live Arts. B.F.A Naropa University 2008, MFA SAIC 2010. www.marissaperel.com Oli Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, photography and performance. A Chicago native, his projects often conceptually intersect and dialogue within consent, queerness, childhood and sexuality. Oli has screened, performed, lectured and exhibited internationally and nationally. Currently, he is faculty in the Photography Department at SAIC. In the Fall his show, The Great Refusal: Taking on New Queer Aesthetics, will be opening at SAIC in the Sullivan Galleries. olirodriguez.com

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Andy Siharath is a photographer living and working in Chicago, IL. His recent work explores the line between gender and its representation in society through clothing and fashion. He is also currently exploring different mediums in art including fabrics and found objects. Check out his work at andysiharath.com and loveontopknot.tumblr.com. Jeremy Sorese is an illustrator born and bred in Virginia, who was educated in Georgia before spending two lovely years in Chicago trying to make somebody, anybody proud. Soon he’ll be moving to France for a nearly year long residency in the town of Angouleme to work on his forthcoming graphic novel. He hopes France will be as kind as the Windy City has been. See more of his work online at www.jeremysorese.com. Kevin Sparrow is a Chicago writer interested in queerness as both a favorite subject and pastime. His education in movies-writing has proved that he is adept at powering up computers and elementary keyboard use. His short stories, poetry and essays have appeared in Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly and LIES/ISLE as well as on websites In Our Words, Go Over the Rainbow, and Be Yr Own Queero. If you want to see more of Kevin (really, more) he is also a burlesque performer under the guise Dirty Devlin. dirtydevlin.com Sissy Spastik is Chicago’s premier high-fashion, avantgarde, gender-bender. If you know Sissy, you know that iconic artists such as Divine, Annie Lennox and Grace Jones are her main inspirations for her alter ego. Androgynous is her middle name. Sissy, Miss Spastik if you’re nasty! facebook.com/sissyspastik | twitter.com/sissyspastik sissyspastik.tumblr.com When Janie Stamm was growing up in Florida she believed that she had the power to control the weather. After witnessing her neighbor’s palm tree get hit by lightning and then explode, she realized that perhaps weather control was not her strong suit. Now (16 years post weather goddess phase) she lives in Chicago and is a printmaker at Black Shamrock Press. Janie enjoys spending her time drawing beasts, drinking gin and tonics, and trying to make her ass clap. janiestamm.com | puppiesandbabies.tumblr.com | janiestamm@gmail.com 96

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Lailaw Taherzadeh is an Iranian-American artist best known for colorful illustrations of iconic comic heroines. Themes of love and politics are borrowed from content found in mass media, random observations and personal reflections. Lailaw’s message is ultimately one of love, acceptance and compassion for ourselves and others. She believes deep inside us all, our souls are searching for this inner peace. lailaw.us Kyle Turner is a biologist who sometimes pretends he can do art. He lives in Toronto but has a big crush on Chicago and many boys who live there. He likes food, sleep, porn, and the internet. See his internetting here: kyol.tumblr.com

Casey Vange endeavors to bridge the gap between fashion photography and fine art, between pop culture and high art, between female and male; it’s all one in the same. Her style has been called raw, gritty, dark, bright, glossy, glamorous, and garish. It has been widely joked about that she loves to “bedazzle” things. She has an affinity for metallics, fluorescents, heavy makeup, androgyny, costume jewelry, glitter, studs and disco balls; she thrives when working with extremes. Casey currently resides in Chicago. vangephoto.com | facebook.com/vangephoto Jakob VanLammeren earned his MFA in poetry from Bennington College, and currently lives in Chicago, Illinois where he facilitates a creative writing group for LGBTQA youth experiencing poverty and/or homelessness and is currently enrolled in Dominican University’s Master of Library and Information Science program. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in burntdistrict, diode, Explosion Proof Magazine, Gigantic Sequins, Hanging Loose magazine, Pebble Lake Review, and queerzinelit.com. He is a Libra. jakobrvanlammeren.tumblr.com. emanuel vinson is a writing rapper from the south side of Chicago. He is working on his twelfth album, “can emanuel vinson save the world,” third mixtape, “mother unfucker,” and third collection of poetry, “wife.” A census would call him queer, black, and twenty-one years old. He’s happy to be here! emanuelvinson.bandcamp.com fuckyeahemanuelsurine.tumblr.com summer

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Chicago Queer Events Listings Salonathon Beauty Bar Chicago @ 1444 W. Chicago Every Monday 8pm – 2am

Chances at the Hideout The Hideout @ 1354 W. Wabansia First Saturday of Every Month 12am – 3am

Every Monday Jane Beachy and friends bring to life works that defy traditional genres, from dance pieces crafted in basements to puppet shows put together in attics to stories written on the CTA to the side projects of local legends. As always, no cover and gender neutral bathrooms. Salonathon strives to support the creation of new, emerging and underground art in Chicago and beyond. do312.com/salonathon

Chances at the Hideout is an extension of the Hideout’s popular Saturday Night Dance Party with Chances Dances DJs curating performances and keeping the beats popping all night. This night benefits the Critical Fierceness Grant. chancesdances.org

Nuts & Bolts: A DIY Dance Party Township @ 2200 N. California Ave. First Tuesday of Every Month 8pm – 3am Trandroid presents: Nuts & Bolts: a DIY dance party! Logan sQueer’s premier event for strong looks and funky jams! Featuring a DIY runway with prizes, and a body-positive dance celebration! Formerly Known As (F.K.A.) Big Chicks @ 5024 N. Sheridan Rd. First Thursday of Every Month 9pm – 2am Former producers of TRANSMISSION and HEARTLESS B!TCH ENTERTAINMENT are teaming up to bring you the most inclusive / insouciant / indecent dance party to ever hit the north side! For trans men and trans women, queers and allies, movers and/or shakers. facebook.com/FKAdance 98

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House of Santana Berlin Nightclub @ 954 W. Belmont First & Third Saturday of Every Month 9pm – 11:30pm Join The House of Santana Show, featuring Anastasia Santana, Miztress Vana, Tori Sass, & hosted by Trannika Rex! Off Chances Danny’s @ 1959 W. Dickens Ave. Second Tuesday of Every Month 10pm – 2am Off Chances is a laid back, dive-style, dance optional LGBTIQ safe space hosted by Chances DJs and friends. Chances The Subterranean @ 2011 W. North Ave. Third Monday of Every Month 10pm – 2am Chances attempts to bring together the factionalized LGBTIQ communities, cliques, or otherwise grouped-apart queers of Chicago.

Chicago Queer Events Listings HOT PANTS The Charleston @ 2076 N. Hoyne Ave. Third Tuesday of Every Month 10pm – 2am

CULT Berlin Nightclub @ 954 W. Belmont Ave. Last Thursday of Every Month 10pm – 2am

The Hot Pants Crew (DJ Gonzo Bonkers, Swaguerilla, QOTU, and Country Club) host an underground dance party. Queer kids and handsome heteros come and sweat to an endless stream of space disco booty bass.

Still after two years we’re bringing you up and coming artists from around the world highlighting local talent and DJ sets from the underground’s finest. Letting you have it! JUKE/RAVE/ ACID/ R&B /BASSLINE/VOGUE/ TRIBAL/DIPSET ♡ CLUB LQQKS RECOMMENDED! ♡

The 411: A Hip Hop Night Parlour on Clark @ 6431 N Clark St Third Saturday of Every Month 10pm – 3am A celebration of queerness and hip hop. FEEL MAGIC The Charleston @ 2076 N. Hoyne Ave. Last Tuesday of Every Month 10pm – 2am DJ Gonzo, Bonkers presents a night of weird sounds, stoned beats, and sleazy soundtrack cuts with a special guest DJ. It’s a good opportunity to chat up and booze up with other fey audiophiles while listening to tunes you wouldn’t hear anywhere else out in Chicago. MAKING OUT with Wes Perry and Friends Upstairs Gallery @ 5219 N. Clark St. Last Wednesday of Every Month 8pm – 10pm

Queerer Park Last Fridays Queer artists and allies team up to throw another queer dance party into the Chicago mix focusing on non-stop hot music for shakin’, bumpin’ and gettin’ down. Enrolled in this effort: Barbara & Barbara Gallery / The Law Office of Beaver Sweater & Sons. facebook.com/QDanceP Northern Lights Parlour on Clark @ 6341 N Clark St Last Saturday of Every Month 10pm – 3am Where queers, beers and rears get together for the city’s northern-most queer performance and dance party! Northern Lights is committed to showcasing every body type and gender expression through the performance series and Go-Go Gothic Dancers.

A low-key evening of comedy, music, and heavy-petting. Wes Perry loves his friends so much, he wants to share them! summer

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SUBMIT TO chicago irl!

We like you. Maybe you like us too? We are always open to submissions for consideration for future issues. Drawings, photographs, performances, events, stories about your lesbian aunt, artist profiles, collaborations, fierce theory or manifestos and more are welcome. Contact info@chicagoirl.com or visit chicagoirl.com to learn more.