Pride Month is a time of year when the diverse segments of GLBT community come together to collectively celebrate all the things we are. Together, we celebrate the past, embrace the present, and work towards the future. We celebrate pride in those who came before and all who are yet to come. Pride is a place of arrival as well as the journey. Pride is what makes you happy, what makes life worth living, and what you survived that may have made living hell. Pride is an act of expression.
This year the submissions for the fifth annual Windy City Times Literary Supplement proved to be an embarrassment of riches with quality original GLBT expression pouring in from writers worldwide. Choosing the pieces that will become the Pride literary supplement is never easy, and this year was especially challenging. If space allowed, we could have easily doubled the number of winning entries and been thrilled with every piece. Regrettably, some difficult cuts had to be made. We wish to extend our deepest thanks to all those who took the time and effort to express their pride on paper and enter work for consideration.
The theme for this year's literary supplement is OUTBURST. OUTBURST proved a wonderful starting point for the expression of our simultaneously unique and varied experiences. OUTBURST is a word of movement. It is an emergence, a blossoming, an explosion, an opening, a release, an expansion, a coming out, a declaration, and even an orgasm. It is a moment of growth and oftentimes of courage. What could be more perfect for this time of year?
So here is our OUTBURST, the Fifth Annual Windy City Times Pride Literary Supplement. We hope you enjoy it.
With Pride,
Kathie Bergquist
Owen Keehnen
Editors
Kathie Bergquist is co-author (with Robert McDonald) of A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago. Her writing has appeared The Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, The Advocate, OUT, Girlfriends, DIVA, and Curve magazines, and in the books Best Date Ever and the forthcoming anthology Best Lesbian Romance 2009.
Owen Keehnen is a Chicago-based writer and journalist currently working on a humorous fictional memoir. He lives in Rogers Park with his partner, Carl, his dogs Flannery and Fitzgerald, and Kitten the cat.
It Will Always Grow Back By Chelsey Clammer
'Coral, are you sure you're ready to do this?'
'Yeah, I am,' I said attempting to hide the uncertainty that lingered in my throat. 'Just do it before I change my mind.' Angelina shrugged her shoulders with a mischievous grin as she picked up the electric razor. A metallic buzz whirred into action, while a vibration tingled through my body. The razor cut through my wavy brown hair like it was on a mission to get to the root of a problem, to make way for a clean slate. Or, at least for a bald head. I gasped. Angelina's wrist flickered over the curves of my skull with swift and assured motions. Her cigarette dangled out of the corner of her mouth, each inhalation a small drop of nicotine, providing her with an I.V. of concentration. My mind was raw with excitement. My scalp became raw from the razor.
Sooner than I could have imagined, it was over. Angelina turned off the blade and brushed her palm over my head, swooshing the remaining tips of my longhaired past into the air. Clumps of brown hair had slithered into the sink; the rest gathered around our feet like hungry kittens.
'Welcome to the land of obvious dykes,' Angelina smirked at my new hairstyle.
When did I get this gay? I had only been out for a year, and now here I was a young lesbo of nineteen looking like a dyke with nothing to lose. The days of worrying about wearing a rainbow necklace to school were far behind me. I used to toe the line of public displays of gay pride, unsure of my ability to stomp the big dyke foot ahead of the small closeted one. Now look at me: bald in all my lesbian glory, begging for the throngs of attention I will inevitably draw from the disapproving eyes of normality. But I wanted that attention. I wanted to disgust all those small-minded heteros, to put them in their place, to let my newly shaved head glisten with joy and scream, 'Hell yeah I'm a dyke!' It was a reassurance that would give me a sense of pride—a tool for survival.
'Your mother is going to hate this,' my best friend reminded me. Angelina's almost-gone cigarette jutted out from her mouth, the hairs of her upper lip curling back in fear of the hot cherry that promised to singe them with every word.
'If she really loves me then she won't mind being re-introduced to my bald head,' I hoped out loud. Gazing at my newly acquired dyke identity in the mirror, I realized I should stop thinking about my mother. I needed to feel certain about the change I had just made in my life, not doubting the consequences of it. Too late to consider the consequences, Coral. This is who you are now. I continued to stare at my exposed head, brushing away the ticklish little shaved-off hairs that littered the back of my neck.
Chelsey Clammer is a queer, feminist and disability-rights activist and scholar. Her writing has been featured in Make/Shift magazine, on feministing.com and in her four self-published zines.
Of Past and Present, by Kevin C. Rooker
I found the book in a resale shop. Past And Present was a college textbook and the last owner had been 'A.E. Peterson, 403 S. Sixth, C. Phone 2168.' Inside the back cover were notes to a speech that began, 'Students of 1937.' But it was the notes elsewhere in the palm-sized book that convinced me to buy it.
On page 104, after a long discussion on philosophy and religion, the owner had underlined, 'First, get your man … he can learn to do all things … ' a pencil line directed the reader to the sentence with the words 'How to get real man'.
Page 216, following the words 'One thing I do know' the passage 'Never, on this earth,
was the relation of man to man long carried on by Cash-payment alone' had been
underlined.
And on the last page, again in pencil, a handwritten conversation:
'If you must know, I am still a virgin!'
'I'll break you for $ .50.'
'You're not pretty enough.'
'Ever heard of 'Little America' or the 'Howdy Club' in Greenwich Village.'
'where homos congregate'
'Want to sleep with me tonite?'
'Why sleep?'
I paid for the book and walked out of the shop, nodding.
Sometimes, an outburst can come quietly.
Kevin Rooker will be turning 50 in July and has already hired several people to insist that he looks much younger. He's always wanted to be in the Pride parade, but guesses he never will as he doesn't have anything pierced and wouldn't look good in a dress.
O Briar Rose, by richard fox
O Sleeping Beauty!
O embowered castle!
O catch-as-catch can!
O mood ring! O cock ring! O O-ring!
O forecast!
O revenue goals!
O jellyroll!
O violin!
O penetration!
O kiss! O termite! O love!
Richard Fox's work has appeared widely in many literary journals, and has been the recipient of awards and grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the City of Chicago. His first book of poetry, titled Swagger & Remorse, was published in December, 2007.
Untitled, by Jesus Encinar, translated by Lawrence Schimel
sé que resulta ridículo pero,
dónde piensas pasar la noche vieja?
qué color combina para las cortinas?
cómo te gustan los ravioli?
quieres pasar conmigo
el resto de tu vida?
no quiero volver a llamar
a un anuncio de chico busca chico.
ni visitar más ciudades
solo.
amsterdam! amsterdam! no me verás más.
no quiero dejar más ligues
en esquinas con dinero para
un taxi.
ni tener que
volver a pisar un bar,
pedir una copa
buscar un rincón
esperar
el hombre que me haga olvidar
el vacío de los domingos,
la soledad de mi cama,
mi necesidad
i know it must sound ridiculous but
where do you think you'll spend new year's eve?
what color goes best with the curtains?
how do you like your raviolis?
do you want to spend
the rest of your life with me?
i don't want to call again
some classified of man seeks man.
nor to visit more cities
alone.
amsterdam! amsterdam! you won't see me again.
i don't want to leave more hook-ups
on the corner with money for
a taxi.
nor need to
set foot again in a bar,
ask for a drink
find a corner
wait for
the man who makes me forget
the emptiness of Sundays,
the loneliness of my bed,
my need
Jesus Encinar is a Spanish entrepreneur whose companies include Idealista.com , Floresfrescas.com and 11870.com . Other translations of his poems have appeared in the UK journal CHROMA and in the anthology Poetic Voices Without Borders. He lives in Madrid, Spain.
Lawrence Schimel is an author, anthologist, and translator who's published over 90 books in different genres, among them Best Gay Poetry 2008, Fairy Tales for Writers, Two Boys in Love, First Person Queer and The Future is Queer. He lives in Madrid, Spain.
The literary supplement continued at www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Our-Fifth-Annual-Pride-Literary-Supplement-Page-Two/18756.html .
