:: ABOUT ME !
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names + pronouns:: howdy, ive been going by jim for a long time & it suits me in a way, but since coming out of the closet + beginning my transition a little under 5 years ago, i've done a lot of work and soul-searching, so i'm toying with some new names. i'm a nonbinary trans man, FTM or transmasculine, which means I was assigned female at birth ('afab'), but despite having a very feminine and genenerally gender nonconforming style, i consider myself to be, first and foremost, just a guy. |
that said, my gender transition is the best thing that's ever happened to me (second only to meeting the love of my life & current partner in the woods), and being trans + queer is one of my most favorite + celebrated things about myself! yes, it IS my whole personality.
now that i'm out, i am resolved to always stay there no matter the cost; i owe it to my younger self to be the transfag i needed to see in the world. transmascs in particular face a disproportionate amount of erasure & invisibility, even in queer spaces, so showing love to my fellow ftms + other genderfuckers is of the utmost importance to me ♡︎ gender is a game, and we're winning.
“God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine; so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”
-- Something That May Shock And Discredit You
I became homeless in the winter of 2014, just a few years after I became disabled. I caught what I believe to have been swine flu in 2011 and was sick for four months, and I basically never got better; I was just never the same after that. My POTS got worse, my MALS reared it's ugly head, my chronic pain flared in general. Following a breakup around the same time, I was forced to move back in with my parents, then drop out of college. I tried to keep working and keep myself afloat, sometimes juggling 3 jobs, and splitting rent with coworkers or strangers. It would buy me about a year. I caught another flu that winter and got so sick I couldn't even keep down water for a week. I lost my job, and my apartment was soon to follow.
At the time I had virtually no family or friends left in Wisconsin, where I was. But a friend who had just moved to Boulder said that I could stay with them and thier motley crew of displaced queers if I could make the drive to Colorado. Armed with nothing but my year's measly tax return and whatever I could fit in my Honda Accord, I drove almost 2,000 miles to a place I had never been, to live with people I had never met.
Since I first left my parent's house at 18, I have moved 16 times across thousands of miles and US states. I have never had my own housing in my adult life; I have always had to split rent with friends or partners, and for the last ~5 years or so (since 2020), that has been totally unaffordable. Most often, I couch-hop, bouncing from space to space wherever friends and family can fit me; once, I literally lived inside a walk-in closet for several weeks. But my favorite place I have lived so far is in the back of my car in the national forest, and it's the only kind of housing I'm interested in now.
I Love the Unloved Things; my artist statement
I am also disabled by multiple conditions (namely, MALS, a vascular compression; POTS, or dysautonomia; hypermobile joints; and CPTSD) which has led to me being homeless & housing insecure for my entire adult life so far, with no end in sight. With already limited prospects and fascism now on the rise in my country, my partner and I dream of going back to van life in the national forest, which we've already done once and greatly enjoyed. Before my conditions forced me to drop out of college and quit the workforce, I was 3 years into my degree with a 3.6 GPA and had worked in over 16 different service industry jobs, my favorites having been cake decorating & selling tea for a certain erstwhile mall chain.
I am a writer, photographer, and dabbler in many other arts. I particularly like visible mending, and embroidering moss onto my clothes and hats. I also really like making jewelry and mask chains, and sculpting & building miniatures whenever I can get my hands on them.
As an artist, all of the "failures" of my being are the things I take the greatest pride and inspiration from. I may have failed to conform to society's expectations of me by being too sick to 'contribute,' by refusing to be a woman or a man 'correctly,' to prove my intelligence and worth with a degree and so much debt,to provide for myself & partner & keep us housed.
These are things I have been taught to be ashamed of and to hide, but I know the difference between shame and guilt, and shame is not a useful emotion. I will not be ashamed of who I am, or blame myself for choices that were really ultimatums made for me by others. There is no shame to be had in being queer, being disabled, being a dropout, or even in being homeless, and all of the work I do and the art that I make sets out to prove this.
I set out to prove this with each day that I continue to live and to thrive in a world that tells me I would be better off dead. It's important to me that other freaks like myself & my boyfriend feel seen & heard in the cacophany of lies and pearl-clutching judgement that capitalism perpetuates.
♡ ︎The Sun to my Moon ♡︎
Bellamy and I have been together since ♡︎ 06/30/2023 ♡︎
In 2020, I made a wish; one that many a lonely queer has wished, I'm sure. I had dissected past relationships & knew exactly what I didn't want; I was newly out & wanting to find kindred spirits, especially in terms of gender ideology. but it wasn't enough for me that my future lover be trans and queer. i wanted to be with someone who would understand my disabilities, too, both physical symptoms + mental ones; someone who had similar political leanings to me, who I wouldn't have to talk into being antifascist. I was really feeling the lack of transmasc energy in my life and wanted to meet other gnc trans guys, because I'd only ever met very aggressively gender conforming ones who acted very cishet and we did not jibe. i wanted him to be an artist, down to earth, with some of the same hobbies as me; maybe we could camp together, or visit each other's Animal Crossing islands, or maybe he'd be a bass player, which as we know, is the sexiest instrument.
It was a wish and nothing more; the world isn't build-a-twink workshop. I had been longing for a companion to really see me for me for my whole life. was it any wonder that I wanted someone who reflected me now, as I learned to truly love & see myself for the first time? I joked about it with my friends and even posted a little poem on Lex.
What if you were what I was hoping to discover?
What if we learned to love the self via the other?
What if you made me believe I'd love again?
Maybe someday they'll find our poem and say,
'Wow, they were really good friends.'
Then in the spring of 2021, I went to meet some friends at a campsite in the national forest, and... there he was. The gayest and best-dressed person in the group, the autistic, antifascist trans man of my actual dreams. He picked the best songs to play on the speaker all night, and we sat next to each other, sharing snacks and weed and painting rocks together until it was too dark to see by the fire.
We became fast friends, and spent much of our free time together, rockhounding on the beach, going to local events, and camping in the same area we'd met. When we weren't out at camp, we were often at his house watching movies with his three beloved cats, fish, and snake. Within a couple of years, we were among each other's best friends and biggest supporters alike, able to come to one another with any topic or vulnerability.
Bellamy had been renting his childhood home from his mom for several years after she had left, and moved elsewhere with her new husband. He had a spare room and hated living alone, and we talked often about me moving in. At one point his mom even said she would draw up a lease, asking for my legal name to do so. Instead, she evicted us both; me before I'd ever moved in, and Bel from his home of 9 years.
At first, a friend offered to take Bel and his pets, and we decided to roll with the punches and move to Grand Rapids. But merely three weeks later, the same 'friend' told Bel not to come back, and threatened to burn his things, all over a miscommunication.
We were camping at the time, a last hurrah for his 24th birthday before he was supposed to start a new job in GR. We had to scramble to rehome his pets; after a restless week of calling every shelter in the state, thankfully, his cats ended up with a friend just 4 hours away, and we would be able to see them again- but the same could not be said for the fish and snake. We were able to find people to take them, but it was the last time we would see either one.
With the animals placed, we moved into the back of my car, a 2007 Nissan Murano. We lived in the national forest until winter and loved every minute of it. Sadly the car would only make it a few more months before the alternator died on the way to replace the brakes. We couldn't afford both and a tow. We sold it for $300 and came back to the national forest the next summer without a car, hoping to make it to our housing interview (which went horribly & we did not get the housing). It was extremely dangerous and isolating, but we have couch surfed in worse places.
We had concerns of bears getting into our supplies at camp, and ultimately the same friend fostering the cats offered to let us crash on the basement floor. We are currently staying with her, and I'm using the wifi & electricity access to update some of my pages, write about our experiences, and try to rustle up money for a new (used) van for us to live in.
Despite the loneliness and invisibility we often feel, neither of us is ashamed to be homeless, any more than we are to be trans or queer. Being a vagabond is just another kind of lifestyle- one that even ended up aligning with our values, and working with our disabilities, quite a bit. We both have extensive trauma (some related to housing, of course), and feel strongly that our #1 job in life is building a life worth living to us. We are doing that out here together, despite the obstacles we face & the things we lack. We have each other & that's a hell of a lot. There's no one I'd rather be out here facing our demons together with ♡
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