ABOUT

Born in suburban near-rural Pennsylvania, I was bred between a cornfield out back and the cemetery hid there in the center of it. I hope never to forget the smell of first rain on gravestone, when I learned I’d had a story worth sharing with the world. Still very much I do, and, in that, I am not alone.

How do I belong in this movement for liberation? Whatever I have done has always centered my community. Eleven years old and looking for belonging, not a single queer elder in sight, I knew at least I had my church, and their love of me was really quite radical. I sang for our deliverance from evil. Five years later and searching for a movement, I knew at least I loved straight men, and none at all what it meant about my gender. In belonging, then, to some kind of Otherness, I wrote four plays for our freedom from suffering. Another five years later and chasing some relief, I knew at least I was not male, and none at all what it meant to be myself. To a movement I was found, and performed of the stage for our very human nature. Five years hereafter, I am in pursuit of no answer, but a deeper understanding of what it means to be an artist. Whatever I have done has always centered my community. I am a woman of trans experience and proudly, perfuming for our long overdue liberation. So, how do I belong in the movement? I do.

Here’s how. I have known liberation myself; the work is, then, in the making of a path. I sang the songs, I wrote the plays, I played the parts, I danced the stage. Nothing was ever very much good enough. Language insufficient, I turn to the quiet practice of perfume. With it, the freedom of self-expression, and I’m talking that of the people wearing it. When personal fragrance is a personal story, and the powers that be are working to erase your own, perfume becomes political and wearing it an act of resistance. That’s how.

Having done away with the language of gender terrorism, I have left my will to change the world behind. I seek no longer to make flesh crawl and I am finished with the manufacture of contempt. Moving forward with singleness of purpose, I work in service of us Othered. It is not for a process of assimilation, but for the love, rather, of all that is holy. I believe god is gender-expansive and roomy. I’ll here be celebrating queer beauty and excellence. I’d love to see you join me.