stories from the Realm

There was a time when I let my sexual orientation rule me. For 4 years it was the focal point of nearly every conversation, every joke, every academic paper. As one of perhaps 4 out teenagers at a fairly conservative Christian high school, I occupied a nether region somewhere between circus freak show and official queer spokesperson. People would ask me questions randomly, during lunch hour: “Did you know right away?” “Are you going to be like this forever?” “Do you think you’re going to be a good mother?” I answered these questions with aplomb and fortitude that I didn’t truly have – I was still searching for the answers to those questions myself, but admitting this would have meant diminishing my credibility as the resident gay person in high school.

As many young teens do, I struggled to find an identity for myself, and being known as The Lesbian provided not only a script to reference and follow in social situations, but a painless way of ignoring the sexual politics of high school that I so desperately wanted to avoid. So for a while, I was fine with the rigid definition of “lesbian.” However, in time I grew weary of having only one sense of identity. I am not only queer. I am a musician, I am a woman, I am a writer. I want people to see these parts of me before they see my dating habits. I became restless.

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I went to the Brooklyn Flea with my friends today. I got overwhelmed by the cool stuff and didn’t buy anything, but I did take some pictures and drink Hibiscus tea. Summer’s looking up.

Today I packed up more than half of my possessions and put them in a storage unit in Tribeca. Next week I will move into a cute but tiny apartment, and live out of boxes for 2 months. Over the course of the next year, I will live in 4 different places: a New York apartment, Hawaii, London, and then an NYU dorm.

I’ve had people tell me that if there’s ever any time to live a nomadic life, it’s when you’re in college — but I still can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that this isn’t what’s best for me. I’m the kind of person who likes routine. I want to put down roots. I want to stack my books on a shelf and not have to worry about packing them up 8 months down the line.

I keep reminding myself that if I can put up with this for one more year — one more year – then the reward is that I will finally have my own place to live and my own part of the city. But that doesn’t really make the unease go away, the feeling I have that if you don’t have a place to go home to, you’re really just drifting in the wind.

NYU Local‘s 2009-2010 Editors (and friends) (via Nicole He)

Honolulu Civil Beat, Pierre Omidyar’s new journalism project, officially launched today. As excited as I am to witness the birth of a new media organization in my home state, I was disappointed when I learned that Civil Beat is planning to charge $20 a month for access to its site – disappointed because I want to see what happens with it, but I don’t know if I’m willing to pay the fee.

Conflicted by this, I decided to seek advice from the twitterverse, where more of my journalism friends spend their time. I posted a status update asking whether people though it was worth it for me to fork over the money. And CivilBeat responded to me, saying, “Definitely don’t go without life’s necessities!”

Okay. Wait a minute. Life’s necessities? Can we examine that statement for a bit?

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