Courage, Dear Hearts

Trigger Warning

For many queer people, coming out is not a one-time thing. There is the coming out to friends, the coming out to family, the coming out to coworkers and classmates, the coming out to strangers in the grocery store and the person on the customer service line—the list goes on. Then, there is the coming out again when or if your identity changes.

Rainbow Pride flag

I first came out as “I think I might possibly be a bisexual” in my teens to my parents and shit really hit the fan. I did not really have words for what I was—that was a word I had recently discovered online—and for some reason I thought all those qualifiers might help when they confronted me. They had discovered I had been making out with my best friend through a program called Spector that they had installed on our family computer. It recorded everything, including keystrokes. Instead of telling me it was normal to have a crush on your best friend, that she might eventually see me as the person she had a deep relationship with and stop dating other people, or anything else you might say to a kid, they started screaming and yelling and telling me it was perverse. I eventually escaped to my makeshift bedroom with no doors in the dining room and called her and frantically told her what was going on. She immediately came over with her mom. Her mom tried to calm my parents down by explaining that it was normal for teenagers to experiment, but my parents would not stop yelling, so my best friend took me outside. We kissed and came back inside as her mom was threatening to take me because it did not seem like a safe environment for me. Nothing came of it. The next day my parents told me I was not going to be allowed to be around anyone without strict supervision and sent me to my Christian therapist. Upon hearing the story, my Christian therapist told me there was nothing she could do for me unless I told her I was suicidal and that I had a plan of action to commit suicide and told her that plan for her to write down. I was not suicidal yet and explained this and that I just needed to get away, but when she told me there was nothing she could do to help, I eventually read her a quote from Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation about how she imagined committing suicide in a bathtub. She accepted this and sent me in an ambulance to 72-hour watch where the psychiatrist there theorized that I had anxiety and depression and wanted me to take a trip to see my online friends out East. Unfortunately, as I was handed to mental healthcare instead of a social worker, I was released into the custody of my parents and returned into the same situation. It was then that I tried to kill myself. I took a bottle of pills and vodka and slit my wrists straight up and lay down until I thought my heart stopped beating. When I woke up the next day, I felt like a failure, then sick, then just went about my day and felt really alive. No one found out. It was the last time I tried to kill myself.

Quote by Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation

Several months later, over Christmas, I would come out again—this time as a lesbian with a girlfriend—and I would be kicked out of the family. My then girlfriend’s family took me in over the holidays, but I had no home to return to as I had been kicked out of my freshman dorms at Bethel University because I had a girlfriend, even though I was still a high school student. Luckily, there was a small, secret LGBT group on campus, and I was able to couch hop or rotate spare rooms between juniors and seniors for the rest of spring semester.

Finding a community can be essential to survival. I held the identity of “lesbian” for over ten years before coming out as trans.

The first label I found for myself as a transgender person was “bigender.” I was alone. I saw an image of a person with a brief description in a NATGEO magazine I selected from a pharmacy rack. It seemed to make sense. Obviously, I was both genders. It was a spiritual thing. I came out online. I updated my pronouns and gender across platforms to reflect this change. When I started coming out in person, I experienced a lot of resistance: unemployment, houselessness, and eventually, after I had stabilized my situation, a civil commitment.

Cover of National Geographic: Special Issue, January 2017

It was not until I was released that I started receiving gender-affirming care and started learning correct terminology from queer community resources. I started my physical and legal transition and came out again as a trans male shortly thereafter, and I am constantly coming out.

Gene on his way to his reading at Quatrefoil Library in his 'pretty boy' dad hat with his book Bodies in Transition in his lap. He is doing the 'lesbian' sign in ASL. Oops. He should be doing the 'father' or 'cigarette' sign. Wait, he is not a dad, and he only smokes cigars and pipe.

You may be curious why I am sharing this very personal information besides the obvious fact that it is National Coming Out Day. For queer and trans people who do not have a good support system, coming out or being discovered can be very dangerous. We put our homes, our livelihoods, our freedom, and our lives at risk. While I think it is worth it and would not change being able to live genuinely and authentically as myself, I encourage you to consider whatever is best for you, your safety, and your situation, and if your choice is to hide: know there is no shame in it, and if you are discovered, know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m proud of you.

Queer Coded Covers

It’s the 1950s and you walk into a gas station or pharmacy and nose through their paperbacks, and you are looking for something in particular. You are looking for those scantily clad ladies in erotic positions on covers. You are looking for queer coded covers.

I remember the first queer coded covers I read in text: Ann Bannon’s 1950s Odd Girl Out and I Am a Woman from the Beebo Brinker Chronicles. I was a college student in Florida and a professor recommended them to me as pulp classics. In my life growing up, I had not really had access to queer literature nor a wealth of knowledge about it. These texts delivered a complicated and nuanced picture of queer identities and relationships.

To think that we might go back to the 1950s under Project 2025 and have to code queer texts by their covers—worse, that in states like Florida they are already being likened to pornography and banned and removed from libraries. Could it really be possible that educators and librarians who practice inclusivity become registered as sex offenders? It sounds dystopic.

I think of my own books—one with its queer subtext, the other very clearly dealing with transition and identity—and reflect upon the very nature of seeking a publisher for the latter, even after receiving a mention in the John Rezmerski Memorial Manuscript Competition. Due to it being an election year and the over 1200 anti-trans bills introduced between 2023-2024 so far, I could not wait for a publisher to decide now was the time for my book Bodies in Transition. Now was the time for the fierce urgency of the now, as Dr. King once said.

I (still) struggled with publishing through Amazon KDP due to the hierarchies in academia but reminded myself that self-publishing has often been the outlet for the marginalized—a place to foster more radical work.

I am a transsexual

I am a transsexual. It’s kind of an outdated word, and really only a word that should be used by a transsexual person, but it is what I am now. A transsexual is a person who undergoes a physical transition and now receives medical recognition of a change in sex. I also receive legal recognition of my change in sex. Very soon, I will have my sex assigned at birth amended.

Aug. 6th - I made it through surgery!

There is no way I could have imagined this as possible in my teens and early twenties. I was not equipped with the language, let alone representation of my experience with an upbringing in rural, white America. There were only 60something out gay people in my town. In my twenties, I saw trans people as part of another people and culture, as something foreign to me, though came to understand that queer people in these cultures often have a very special role in their communities and families as extra caretakers, providers, and wise people on spiritual paths.

In my brother’s attic while out West, just before I truly learned what it means to be transgender, I learned one great spiritual truth about God and some great spiritual truths about myself while meditating: I am bold, like many truth seekers that have come before me. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. God is a Creator and laughs that we have named Her. There is power in naming, and God is limitless. These truths have guided my journey.

Rumi once said that masculinity does not necessarily come from maleness. Similarly, I would argue, femininity or feminine energy does not necessarily come from being female. These exist outside the binary construction of the sexes.

For me, like many (trans) men, physically transitioning has opened more options for fluidity in gender expression without the automatic assumption that I am female because I am wearing a kilt or eyeliner.

A couple of years ago I asked my mom for some eye makeup because when I was socialized as female I learned the art of eye makeup very well, and I wanted to figure out how to incorporate it into my style. She seemed very pleased. We also shopped in the men’s section during that visit. It was a time of exploration of gender expression for me. I did not continue with the eye makeup beyond briefly putting it on, and I wonder if I was held back by constantly being bullied by people I dated telling me what men do and do not do—despite seeing other trans people wear eye makeup, despite knowing boys can wear eye makeup, too.

Bell hooks discusses in The Will to Change how men and young boys are often socialized out of their alternate masculinities by their sexist peers. I hope this does not continue to be the case. Likewise, I do not want to be forced into femininity.

My friend Colorful is good at encouraging me to be exactly the type of man I am when I talk about bulking up: the sensitive, skinny writer type. Recovering from chest reconstruction with her and her spouse was absolutely wonderful as I felt constantly encouraged in my manhood.

Colorful came with me to the surgery itself. During my first days of recovery, she sat at my bedside and read to me essays from Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family and Themselves until I was well enough to read on my own. She cooked deliciously healthy meals for me, emptied my drains, and changed my wraps. Her partner often accompanied me outside for my cigar breaks. Still, they kept me company when I was well enough to pour a glass of water from a Brita pitcher and were quick to leap from working if any action caused pangs in my chest. By the time the estimated two weeks of recovery time for my no-nipple surgery was up, I had finished reading the Afrofuturistic graphic novel The Eightfold Path by Steven Barnes and Dr. Charles Johnson, finished prepping to start working the fall semester, and we were planning another thru-hike.

One of the first times I got to see what my chest looked like

I actually had a surprisingly large amount of support during recovery. Everyone I asked to do something did, even my parents. Initially, my parents had been resistant to help because they are still struggling with the change, but my mom made two large batch meals for my recovery from surgery. I felt really cared for.

My mom's homemade chicken noodle soup

Reconnecting with my parents just before surgery was hard because I have been hurt by them repetitively questioning my sanity and spirituality, deadnaming, and misgendering me, but I wanted to give them a chance to see me just in case anything went wrong. I hoped they would want to do so as well. Because Odd Mart invited me to join the Lynn Lake Street Muralists this year and stencil up a line from my collection, I asked my mom if I could come practice on a canvas with her. We had a blast.

Practicing my spray paint in my mom's yard

Currently, on my path for gender liberation and euphoria, I am reading Janelle Monáe's The Memory Librarian and other stories and using beard oil and a beard roller to try to grow my beard in. I spend about an hour shirtless every morning with my coffee, and in a couple of weeks, I will no longer have to wrap. Can’t wait for this new chapter!

On The Trail: Hiking Adventures with Colorful

In June 2021, I embarked on an unforgettable journey along the Superior Hiking Trail with my good friend, Colorful. The trail, known for its breathtaking views and challenging terrain, offered us a chance to connect with nature and each other in profound ways. As "The Vest," my trail name, I embraced the adventure, while Colorful brought her vibrant energy to every step of the journey.

Here are some snapshots from our hike:

Each photo captures a moment of our trek, from the challenging climbs to the serene breaks. Hiking the Superior Hiking Trail was more than just a physical journey; it was a chance to reflect, connect, and grow.

Walking through the lush forests and along the rugged cliffs, I felt a deep sense of peace and belonging.

Nature has a way of teaching us about resilience and the beauty of the journey, no matter how tough it gets. These hikes are a reminder that every challenge faced and overcome is a step towards discovering more about ourselves and the world around us.

Introducing Gene Gazelka

Phoebe Fettig Images

In the world of academia, educators often play a pivotal role in shaping the future of their students. One such remarkable individual is Gene Gazelka, who not only serves as a dedicated teacher at North Hennepin Community College in Minnesota but is also making waves in the literary world as an emerging poet. They are set to release their debut chapbook titled Tender One through Finishing Line Press in June 2024.

Gene's journey as an educator and poet is a testament to their unwavering commitment to both their students and their craft. Their passion for teaching shines through in their role at North Hennepin Community College, where they work tirelessly to inspire and uplift their students.

While their role as an educator is undoubtedly significant, Gene has also found their creative voice in the world of poetry. Their debut chapbook, Tender One, is a testament to their talent and the depth of their literary expression.

Gene Gazelka's debut chapbook, Tender One, is highly anticipated by poetry enthusiasts and promises to be a collection that leaves a lasting impact. With a release date set for June 2024, this chapbook is likely to showcase Gene's unique perspective and lyrical prowess.

Gene's writing journey is marked by dedication and a distinct approach. They often begin their creative process in the early hours, at 4 a.m., armed with coffee and a cigarillo, allowing their thoughts to flow onto the page. Their poems are born from this introspective and sometimes solitary early morning ritual, fueled by music and the quietude of the pre-dawn hours.

Their writing process also involves a deep connection to authenticity. Gene prefers to write about things that resonate with their own experiences and emotions, creating a genuine and heartfelt connection with their readers.

As a writer, Gene Gazelka draws inspiration from a wide array of literary influences. From the raw and poignant style of Hemingway to the free-spirited narratives of Kerouac and the empowering prose of Audre Lorde, their eclectic taste in literature has contributed to their own unique voice as a poet.

Juggling the demands of a teaching career and a burgeoning writing career can be a challenge. As a professor, Gene acknowledges that writing often takes a backseat during the academic year. However, they make the most of their summers, dedicating themselves to the craft, and writing almost every day.

When not immersed in the world of literature and teaching, Gene finds solace and joy in various hobbies. Listening to records, hiking, backpacking, and enjoying cigars are some of their favorite pastimes, providing a well-rounded balance to their life.

For aspiring writers, Gene offers a simple yet profound piece of advice: "Just write." This succinct guidance reflects their dedication to the craft and their belief in the transformative power of putting pen to paper.

As we eagerly await the release of Tender One, Gene Gazelka's debut chapbook, we can't help but admire their passion for teaching and writing. Their journey is a testament to the idea that creativity knows no bounds, and their unique voice promises to resonate with readers and students alike. Gene's dedication to both education and poetry embodies the spirit of a true artist and educator, making them a name to watch in the literary world.

You can find Gene on Instagram as @with_a_gg_

My Story: A journey to self - embracing identity and truth

I didn’t have a lot of trans friends or exposure to trans people – I know that’s a common myth. I didn’t even have the language for my experience until January 2017 when I discovered a National Geographic Special Issue on the Gender Revolution. Before then, I had reported my gender and race as “Other” or preferred not to answer to academic institutions – perhaps subconsciously aligning myself with the other-gendered people I had read about in my ex-wife’s cultural anthropology studies. I still don’t really know my trans elders.

It was discovered I was queer in my teens, and I was sent to an anti-LGBT clinic for mental health issues. By 18, as a senior in high school, when I still had not changed, my parents kicked me out of the family. They posed it as a choice between the woman I loved and my family home. Being queer is not a choice; who you love is not a choice.

We eloped, and I moved to Florida. We were young, and there were a lot of pressures in the relationship. One of the primary issues was that she wanted me to bear a child and that just was not something that was physically possible for me at the time, nor something I wanted. Our relationship ended, and she happily married someone else and bore her own children.

I ended up pursuing my dream to be a writer. One of the pieces of advice that I got to becoming a good writer is that you need to live first; you need to travel; you need to get your heart broken. It took 5 more years for me to truly get my heart broken.

She was somebody I hardly knew. Whether it was wrong place wrong time or that I had expectations I shouldn’t have, I felt a great loss. She had really been there for me through some personal trauma.

One of the first times I presented as transmasc, I used a sock for a package and a camisole folded over my chest.

In February 2018, I took one of my first steps towards embracing my true identity. It was a tentative but empowering moment, using whatever I had to feel more aligned with myself. The simplicity of a sock and a camisole marked the beginning of a profound journey.

I developed an interest in rediscovering my purpose. I wanted to be a better role model or live up to the expectations society had for me, but I also could not seem to shake my rebel instincts. In my classrooms in Tennessee, I went from teaching a course for research on the pop culture myths of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Mae West to the myth of the American Dream, focusing on Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, and Mae West.

I started applying makeup in private to my facial hair to see if I would look good with a goatee.

By December 2018, I was experimenting with my appearance, imagining what I might look like with facial hair. It was a private exploration, applying makeup to create a goatee, and envisioning the person I was becoming.

In trying to rediscover my purpose, I started really identifying with male characters in biblical stories like when Jacob wrestles with an angel for a blessing and ends up with a limp and a new name, or when David flees Saul, or the love he shares with Jonathan, or his love of Bathsheba. In reading the New Testament then as an adult, it was the first time I understood my spirit is male. I saw similarities in the Creation story in the Quran that God created us like them in their image when they said, “Let us.” I started trying to transcend my animal nature as depicted in the Bhagavad Gita through meditation and become more divine.

This, too, in a way, was grief.

November 22, 2022 - Day 1 of being on testosterone.

November 22, 2022, was a pivotal day – the start of hormone therapy. This was the beginning of a new chapter, filled with hope and anticipation for the changes to come.

I did not know it yet, but this was one of many “first” goodbyes to my childhood innocence. I was becoming a man.

An author headshot in my sports coat at Spyhouse Coffee Roasters by Phoebe Fettig Images

As I navigated my transition, my identity as a writer and advocate also flourished. This headshot, taken at Spyhouse Coffee Roasters, captures a moment of professional pride and personal authenticity.

I started experiencing an escalation in systemic oppression from everything from receiving a non-renewal lease after coming out as queer to my landlord in Tennessee to being fired for “workplace violence” and being “unprofessional” from two different jobs as a temp after asking about bathrooms and enforcing the use of my gender pronouns in Minnesota. After giving an interview with Star Tribune reporters about the conversion therapy I had received as a teen, I was put in 72-hour watch by my sister-in-law and shipped out to Red River, ND, where a psychiatrist persisted in claiming being trans is a mental illness and filed to have me civilly committed. It would be 3 months before I would be released to residential care in St. Paul, Minnesota where they would confirm that as a trans person it was more likely that I was experiencing discrimination.

First days of recovering from a laparoscopic hysterectomy wearing a MegEmikoArt Gender-affirming Healthcare Saves Life sweatshirt.

The journey included significant medical milestones, like my laparoscopic hysterectomy in December 2023. Recovery was a time of reflection and resilience, captured here in a sweatshirt that speaks to the importance of gender-affirming healthcare.

By November 2022, I got on testosterone and started receiving gender-affirming care. Around this time, I also started to focus on putting together my poetry manuscripts for publication. By the end of 2023, I had received an Honorable Mention in the John Rezmerski Memorial Manuscript Competition and Tender One was scheduled to be published.

Wearing Bookstagramrepresent apparel "Read Trans Books."

Advocacy took many forms, including supporting trans authors and promoting visibility through platforms like Bookstagram. This apparel became a statement of solidarity and encouragement for others to read trans books.

One of my poems overlaid over a James Dean photo, one of the pop culture icons I identified with in my early twenties.

In my early twenties, I found inspiration in pop culture icons like James Dean. This photo, overlaid with one of my poems, symbolizes the blend of my literary aspirations and personal journey.

This is being written in advance of August 2024, but -hopefully- by now, I have successfully received 2 gender-affirming surgeries and finished my legal transition.

Cheers, queers.