A Summer in San Francisco
Two UNC students reflect on their summer experiences in San Francisco
by Win Chesson
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| Junior Win Chesson poses in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. |
As often as I have tried to fully reflect upon my past summer spent living in San Francisco’s Castro district, I know I have not completely realized how much this experience will continue to affect me. Perhaps the academic and professional merits of this summer experience will prove easiest to measure. They certainly feel more concrete to me: working at the National Sexuality Resource Center to plan an International Conference on Sexual Rights and Moral Panics, attending a four-week training on “Sexuality, Health, and Society,” and writing for American Sexuality magazine. Yet while my “9 to 5” San Francisco life has clearly helped to mature my professional aspirations in the human sexuality field, a wholly separate aspect of San Francisco life will forever remain even more dear to my heart—my experience with the queer swim team, Tsunami.
Though not part of my initial plan for my time in San Francisco, joining Tsunami immediately plugged me into a vibrant social network. The team bonded at our meals together and at each workout as we prepared for the International Gay and Lesbian Aquatic Championships. While sick one weekend, Tsunami members cared for me with Chinese takeout and when I moved from San Francisco State University dorms to the extra room at a teammate’s house, teammates helped carry my bags across town. Tsunami became my family.
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| A rainbow-flag in downtown San Francisco. |
Swimming with this team was also much more of an emotional experience than I anticipated. I had not prepared myself for an unexpected reexamination of the ending of my swimming career at UNC. Generally I like to think that I am capable of dealing with the filthy stench of homophobia whenever it manifests itself in my life and have had adequate practice. Yet I now realize that though I have always told myself that I quit the varsity swim team at UNC because swimming demanded too much of my time, this is simply not the case.
The act of joining Tsunami allowed me to revisit these forced justifications. Finally the unexamined sour taste left in my mouth after stopping my varsity career could be identified, and named for what it was: the rejection of a homophobic atmosphere. Swimming with Tsunami, I could accept that the undercurrent of unchallenged homophobia on the men’s varsity swim team at UNC is what drove me to quit more than anything else. With this acknowledgment, I have been able to accept the truth, heal, and move gaily forward in peace.
While I was healing this old, yet newly acknowledged wound, I never dreamed of the lovely friends I would stumble upon while training with Tsunami. All I really expected in joining was to stay in decent shape. If I was lucky, maybe I would even make a friend. As one of the youngest swimmers on the team, I realized that at UNC, almost ever other LGBTIQ person I know is near to my age. I hardly knew any LGBTIQ people over the age of 25, and certainly never had any such role models.
As I became friends with gay men of all ages, I learned stories about a queer past to which I had never previously been exposed. I became deeply connected to a uniquely queer history that has been silenced and suppressed. It was a history not passed down through textbooks and tests, but through engaging conversations, community networks, and friends. These friends discussed with me their struggles with and success in coming out, strained relationships with biological families, and how it felt to experience death after death of close friends at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. I learned of the crooked pathways these gay men followed in their journeys to where they are today. No topic was off limits. As I became better friends with these men with whom I trained every day, I began to understand the idea of constructed families, families of choice. I felt at home.
Every time I attempt to comprehend the entirety of how this past summer has affected me, I become overwhelmed and get lost in the many incredible memories contributing to my experience: engaging in passionate work in the field of human sexuality, feeling constantly inspired by my colleagues, healing old emotional wounds and continuing the sport I love, making new friends; discovering a loving family away from home, and living in an environment where my queerness becomes such a non-issue as to cause me to wonder what else about myself might render me unique. All these things became my summer in San Francisco—hopefully, what will have been my first of many.
by John Jackson
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| Juniors John Jackson and Win Chesson pose with a woman whose shirt reads, “Eat Organic Pussy” at the Dyke March. |
This past summer, I was lucky enough to live in San Francisco, interning for the National Queer Arts Festival. I arrived in May and stayed until the end of July. This was quite exciting for me, having only lived in North Carolina previously. Naturally the move was quite a culture shock, but I adapted well to West Coast living. I lived on Haight Street, noted for its 1960’s counterculture and hippie aesthetic. The laid back pace of life, lax views towards chemical indulgences, and appreciation for art and nature were imminently agreeable. It is my burning desire to return one day, and I would certainly encourage anyone who could, to visit.
I began work for the festival towards the end of May. As one of only two interns, I did work for the festival that ranged from publicity to hanging the shows to the styling of the food and flowers for the opening receptions. (This task was pawned off on me because I was the only gay male at the festival; fortunately my aptitude for floral arrangements is considerable.) The art that we displayed was by turns thought provoking, beautiful, and confrontational. Especially touching were the opportunities I had to meet, engage and learn from the LGBTIQ artists themselves, many whom were local to the area. One particularly memorable encounter was with a theater troupe that the festival flew in from Israel to perform a trans-themed play. After the unexpected opportunity presented itself to spend some time with them at both Disneyland and Universal Studios after the run of their play, I can assure you that LGBTIQ Israelis, are, on the whole, a hilarious and affable people.
San Francisco was, for me, a revelation. Here in Chapel Hill, my persona is John Jackson (a.k.a. Jacki Bitch) the witty, effusive, amusing gay man quick with a quip and heavy on the lip-gloss. There, however, I was treated as an individual, rather than a token. I realized that my personal merits could be attached to my skills and knowledge, rather than my ability to play into peoples’ expectations of what a “gay man” should look and act like. Upon returning, I have focused less on being a caricature of myself and more on cultivating a more authentic, natural human persona who transcends the sum of the expectations of the people I encounter here, on a daily basis.
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| One of the many works of art on the streets of San Francisco. |
This is for me not only personally empowering, but profound in the sense of my own evolution and development. It is my sincere hope to maintain the sense of self I gained in San Francisco as a queer person, because although labels establish identities which are convenient and easy to uphold, they can also be limiting. No longer shackled by conventions of my identity label, I feel free to express and actualize myself in a way that goes beyond the dictates of established conventions.