The tears came only after I thought about how cowardly I felt for denying my sexuality in order to fit in better, for how hurt and betrayed I felt that a group of marginalized people that I connected with so well would so easily marginalize me in return.
When I do hear Springsteen’s “4th of July, Asbury Park,” I won’t long for something I never had because I was born too late. I’ll let the song wash over me gently, wistful for all the people I knew who made the best of bad luck down the shore.
Considering the discomfort my friends and loved ones experience when we travel together, or when I share what I think are unremarkable experiences of microaggressions or discrimination, has helped me understand the degree to which I’ve normalized things that are not normal.
The entire time I was waiting for Tanja I was trying not to panic, but couldn’t help thinking: If we can’t find this screw, then how will I make it to the airport?
Somewhere at the back of my mind, I’d convinced myself that attempting to pull my slightly overweight and totally out of shape ass across the seven levels that made up the gigantic waterfall was an impossible dream…
I didn’t expect us to create a Blood Moon Healing Circle Ceremony. It wasn’t on the emailed itinerary. Why did we even feel the need to create it? Two words: intergenerational trauma.
In the middle of a winter night in 1973, while the residents of a small island fishing town in Iceland slept peacefully in their beds, a crack opened up in a flat patch of farmland and began spewing fire.
In the span of a few hours, in two different Indian airports I experienced a spectrum of responses to my gay trans self that would serve as a microcosm of not only my trip, but of my entire queer experience. There are no guarantees, so I’m learning to be my own safe space.
There’s nothing like a beach date to the Northernmost tip of your home island of Cebu, Philippines to make you ponder the meaning of love and life, as part of the Filipino diaspora!
Being in places that took pride in their weirdness made it feel natural to take pride in my own.
I spent my adolescence trying to be a boy. I wasn’t very good at it, but I tried really, really hard. I didn’t wear bright colors, I didn’t listen to pop music, I didn’t even style my hair until I was 17. I certainly wasn’t the kind of person to dress in drag. And yet I was. And yet I did. Because when I was 16 I won a drag show in Florence.
Romantic getaways help form bonds, memories, and connections. The regular stress of traveling as a couple is amplified when traveling as a gay couple.
Tip #2 – “Don’t Trust the Internet.”
“We were talking about all the places we wanted to visit, all the people we wanted to be. When she asked to kiss me, I said yes.”
I traveled to West and North Africa to find myself, my family, my people. Gender dysphoria met the diaspora and my idea of Blackness, home, and identity were not as tidy as I thought.
A road trip with my introverted wife and extroverted baby through the reddest part of California made me question my relationship with strangers (and my obsession with Rick Steves).
A teen dyke wanders around the country in the early 2000’s, armed with an Ameripass and a journal.
Everything looks better when you’re in love, and Nevada City was no exception.
You’ve probably seen billboards advertising an exotic trip to the country where I was born. In those pictures, the sea is always a clear turquoise – like glass – and the sand is always blinding white, and the sky is always a clear stretch of blue that takes your breath away.
Once the itinerary is printed and your bag is packed, travel forces us out of our own limitations, the boundaries we create in our heads.
