 Welcome everybody to our storytelling evening here at the Portland Public Library. Thank you for coming out. You know it's been a really tough week and I really appreciate all of you showing up and coming together in light of a lot of tragedy this week. So my name is Tim LaBerge, I'm the Events Chair for Pride Portland and on behalf of the Steering Committee we welcome you. There's a couple groups and people I want to thank tonight. First off, Quality Main for collaborating with us. So big round of applause for them. The Portland Public Library who every year they work with us and they really help put this together. They donate the space and they've been so supportive with us all week. So big round of applause for them. I want to thank the Telling Room for helping coordinate this and providing all the resources to make this happen. And round of applause for them. And also a little sugar out of York who provided the cupcakes. They donated that to us this evening so make sure you enjoy those. And so again thank you for coming out and now I'd like to introduce Rominta from Portland Public Library. My name is Rominta Moore and I am the Cultural Librarian and Co-Chair of Pride at PPL. And I am so, so pleased to see all of you here participating in this event for our community. In lieu of recent events I feel that it is more important now, more than ever to show ourselves, to show our love and most importantly share our stories. It is through these stories, it is through our own commitment to diversity that I feel that we can overcome the pain and adversity we and our brothers and sisters face every day just for being who we are. Going forward we will have our before Orlando and our after Orlando. As the world around us focuses on blame and sound bites, long after the sound bites have stopped playing we will be here. We will continue to live our lives how we feel best. We will continue to fight the wrongs which we see. We will continue to love and we will continue to share our stories. I am proud to work for the Portland Public Library and its mission in embracing diversity and involving to meet the needs of its community. And on behalf of the Portland Public Library I welcome you all. And again I would like to thank just a few folks here that were not mentioned by name. Nick Shuler, the program director of the Telling Room. Chris O'Connor from Equality Main and Stacia Stanick Grove of Pride Portland who helped really build this event. I would now like to introduce tonight's MC, Gia Drew. Gia is the program director of Equality Main and is an educator, a writer and an athlete. While originally from Boston she has called Main home for 14 years. After earning degrees from Syracuse University and Savannah College of Art and Design, Gia worked as a high school teacher and coach for nearly 20 years. In that time she became one of Main's first out transgender public school teachers and one of the first transgender high school coaches in the country. A nature enthusiast, Gia spends much of her spare time outdoors hiking, distance running and snowshoeing. And her pronouns are she, her and hers. Please welcome Gia Drew to our stage. Wow, that sounds really good when you hear it. Thank you again, thank you everyone for being here tonight. Thank you to the Portland Public Library and the Telling Room and Pride Portland for bringing this event together. It's definitely near and dear to my heart in the work that I do as program director at Equality Main. And I'm also the president of Main Transgender Network and so a lot of the work that we do, especially me in education is telling stories and talking about our lives to create change. You know, and so this is a really special night, especially this week to come together. And as was mentioned, storytelling is one of the most powerful ways that we can learn from one another to learn about experiences and a great way to heal. And it's definitely been part of my heritage growing up in a French, Canadian, Irish, Catholic family and the way stories have been passed down for generations. It's really been ingrained into my life and I'm happy to be your emcee tonight and bring some really incredible people to you and let them share some of their lives with you tonight. And that's really exciting. So I do want to just a little bit about our agenda tonight so you know where we're going. And hopefully you'll be here with us all along this wonderful journey. So I'm going to do a few more little tidbits here from my end and then we're going to introduce four different storytellers to you tonight who have different experiences and different points of view which is really great. And then what we would like to do is invite all of you, if you're interested, to learn how to create and tell your story. And so we have some great people from the telling room with us tonight to help you in that process. And so after we do the stories, we're going to break at around seven and those people who want to participate in that can go for about 40 minutes to work with that team. And then we'd like to come back and hopefully one or two of you want to share your story as well. And I think that would be really great. If you're not comfortable doing that part, of course, you can hang out with the storytellers who are going to be here and ask them questions as well. So that's what we'll be doing tonight. And so I just want to give you a heads up of where we're going. So I want to tell you a little bit of how I ended up here at this stage today to get us going on stories and journeys. I started with Equality Main as a volunteer in 2012 and I see a friend from that campaign. And many of you are part of that campaign as well. At that point, I was looking for a community and I found it volunteering on that 2012 marriage campaign. And storytelling was integral in the success of that vote that November. Getting out and telling hundreds of thousands of stories to Mainers about what love really is. It's about love and commitment. And that really did begin to change the hearts and minds of Mainers. And that's why we were the first state ever to publicly pass a marriage equality, which is pretty cool. But that's not where I began. And as you heard, I used to be a high school teacher. My school teacher and coach for 20 years. It was the job I loved. It was my dream job ever since I was a little kid. And I looked up to the teachers I had in school like Mrs. Dukakis in second grade or Mrs. Moved's in senior year in high school. And I had two aunts who were wonderful teachers and I looked up to them and my neighbor across the street, Linda Casey, was a teacher. And so I was surrounded by really wonderful teachers. I was very fortunate to have that experience growing up. And so I went to school and became a teacher. And I loved my job. I'm one of those teachers that actually look forward to going to school every day. To work with teenagers mostly. I know some people are like, how can you do that? You know, it was definitely a reciprocal relationship. I always think of it as like I'm a vampire and I need to like feast on some of their youth to keep me going. You know, and that was a really wonderful experience. But deep down inside of me, I knew there was turmoil. Ever since I was a young child, three or four years old, I knew I was a lot more like my sisters and my mom than my forebrothers and my dad. And so I knew a little bit about my gender identity was different than everybody else. You know, but I wasn't in a place to really express that growing up. I was born in the 60s and then sort of grew up in the 70s and into the 80s. And there really wasn't a space for that gender expansiveness or being trans. I wasn't in a language for it. And so that really stayed sort of buried down deep. And the few times I did try to be myself when I was in school, I was quickly harassed or buoyed and, you know, retreated back. And so that sort of part of my identity kept sort of deep inside of me for many, many, many years. But about six or seven years ago now, as my world was kind of unfolding a little bit and coming apart, my marriage was crumbling and my sadness within me grew. I started to really think deeply about who I am and got some wonderful support here in Maine with the trans community and started meeting other trans people. And that was really special. And so in June of 2010, I actually marched in my first pride openly as GIA. And I wasn't out to anyone in the world other than this small little community here in Maine, in Maine Transnet, not to my community where I lived or where I taught as a high school teacher or to my family. So I did that, which was pretty empowering for the frontal if you've ever marched in pride. And that first time is pretty incredible. Sometimes the second time is just as good, you know. And so I made a commitment like, this is who I am. And so I went back to school that fall and I struggled with, can I come out? Can I not come out? You know, I'd been teaching at this one school in Maine for about eight years. And everyone knew me there as a guy, right? But, you know, I went through the winter and I came back in January with a commitment to myself. And I decided to transition. I decided to transition on the job as a public school teacher in Maine. Not knowing what would happen. Not knowing what the right steps were at all. I had some great support, though. There's one person that really sticks out in my memory and maybe some of you know Betsy Parsons. And I was fortunate to meet her before I took those steps. And she gave me some great encouragement about her journey, which was really remarkable. It gave me some great strength to take those next steps as a teacher. And so over a matter of months I went from Mr. Drew to Mr. Drew in the classroom. And on the track I went from coach Drew to coach Drew. Those titles just make things complicated, don't they? And I can tell you one of the most frightening days in my entire life was going to school that first day as me, really as myself. As the woman that I am, the woman I knew myself to be since I was a little kid. And it was a January morning. It was a cold January. I remember there was January 2011. That winter was cold. And, you know, I really didn't tell a lot of people at school. And so I decided to go to school dressed a lot more like this per se. A little bit more feminine. Maybe some skinny jeans, some girly boots, a cute top. I probably did my nails, you know, and wore a scarf and a hat. And I remember driving to school that morning at about 7 a.m. to get to school early to supervise the cafeteria before students came. You know, it's something I've been doing all year. And I pulled into the parking lot and sat in my pickup truck. You know, I sat there so long that the condensation froze on the window you could scratch it with your nails. You know, 7 turned into 705 to 710 to 720. And I was like, oh, can I do this? You know, and finally I realized this is who I am. I had to make a decision. This is who I am. This is my life. This is who I am as a person. And so I turned the car, you know, off and opened that door. And walked across the frozen parking lot towards the cafeteria with my head down in my book bag and opened the door of the cafeteria and kind of snuck in. Thinking, everyone was staring at me. Thinking and imagining there was a giant neon sign above my head like a motel or a diner saying, you know, look at the freak. And while I wasn't really dressed much differently than this, it kind of inside it felt like I was Scarlet O'Hara wearing this prom gown, you know. And so I dropped my bag, took my coat off, kind of looked up, and the kids weren't staring. They were just copying each other's homework and texting each other, you know. And so I kind of weaved my way through the cafeteria and made my way to the door that sort of abuts the lobby to the school where other students were gathering. And I sort of saw two teachers that I've been working with for eight years and shared that duty with, and they kind of looked at me oddly and didn't say anything about what I was wearing. We talked about the weather. Good advice. You know, and then I looked across the lobby and there were 60 or 70 other students waiting for the school to start. And I noticed this girl, Erin, and I had had her the year before in my photo class, you know. And she could be a real pain in the ass. She was smart, but trouble. She wielded a lot of power on campus. Maybe a mean girl, if you know that term. But kind of got along a little bit. And I noticed she noticed me. I noticed she noticed the difference in me. She saw the way I was dressed and I noticed she reacted to it. And then she started talking to her friends and started talking to me. She started talking to her friends and started whispering. And I started getting nervous. And I started thinking about high school, about the day when the one time I tried to show a little about that girl by wearing a flower on my shirt and I was bullied and harassed. And I was transported back nearly 30 years to that moment thinking, oh no, what is she going to do? And then she started walking towards me with her friends. And my heart started racing. Was she going to make fun of me? Was she going to point me out and laugh at the freak teacher? I didn't know. And then she stopped right in front of me. And she looked me up and down. And then she smiled. She said, I like your boots. They're cute. And walked away. You know, that morning a few kind words from the student began to melt away years of fear about who I was as a person. And I haven't looked back since. Thank you. It's emotional when I share that story, especially in light of what's going on. And I think a lot of us, this idea of coming out as this one time deal. For many of us, coming out is a life of coming out in different ways, for different things. And I think that's just one aspect of my identity in that one moment in time. But I think it's a sentiment for hope and kindness can really have a lot of power. And you don't have to go overboard. Just nice boots, you know? So we're going to get started with our guest speakers tonight, our storytellers. Our first storyteller is a Reverend Kate Dalton. And she began serving as the associate pastor at First Parish Congregational Church in Yarmouth about six years ago. It's the first job she's ever held more than two years. She has a passion for connecting people, building relationships and trying new things. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her wife, her twin 11-year-old boys. Oh my God. And their escape artist, Wheaton Terrier, named Lucky. Please welcome Kate Dalton. And I need to tell you that our church is having a service tonight at seven o'clock. So as soon as I'm done, I'm leaving to go to that. So please don't take offense. And if I sound like I'm going fast, it's probably because I have that in the back of my head. So if you need to, say, slow down. Can you help me with that? Okay. So I got together with my first girlfriend in the fall of my senior year of college. And listen carefully now. I lived in the sorority house. I lived in the sorority house. And it's not like all animal house-ish the way you would think. But there were six of us who lived there. But there were 80 women in the sorority and it was before cell phones. So what happens when you live in a sorority house before cell phones is your phone is also the phone for 80 women and their boyfriends and whoever. So we had, you know, lots and lots of people would call the one phone line we had to the house. And so started with a phone call, got a phone call, normal, you know. I talked to so-and-so, it wasn't for me. And I'm somewhat introverted. So I would quickly pass phones off to other people. And the woman on the other side of the phone said, hey, like, you know, I'm one of your sorority sisters. Why aren't you chatting me up? And I was like, well, you're not calling for me. So passed her on. But then she started calling for me. So she started calling for me and inviting me to hang out with her. And so before I knew it, we were hanging out a lot. And I realized that I was starting to have feelings for her. But I had no idea kind of where she was with that. And so one day we were sitting in a really ugly room in this sorority house in bunk beds. Remember bunk beds from college? Yeah, so we're sitting in bunk beds and we kissed. And I was really sure she had feelings for me. So then we started, I mean, we spent a lot of time together. But we also spent a lot of time trying to hide. We went to school in the Bible Belt. It was in deep Georgia. It was a Baptist university. And so we worked really hard to make sure that people didn't know we were together. And her roommate turned out to be our best ally because her roommate was convinced that it could not be possible. Have you ever met people like that? But it was great because people would say, because the most likely person to know would be her roommate. People would say, you know, are they, and she'd say, there is no way they are not together. Good shit. So, and like all first loves, I mean, you probably remember your first love. It was pretty intense. But it was further intensified. Right about the time we got together, I found out that my father was sick and I was at school in Georgia. But my family was in Connecticut and I was really close to my father. It was a really hard time and I would call home every day to check in. And I called home one day and a stranger answered the phone and so I hung up. I don't know if that's ever happened to you, but it's really disorienting. When you call a phone number, when you think you know who's going to answer, and that person doesn't answer. So I called back like three times and hung up three times until finally the person on the phone said, who are you looking for? And so I said, and they put my mother on the phone and it turned out that my father had died at home. And when someone dies in your house, the police have to come to make sure that there's no foul play. So the police had been answering the phone. And we were, again, we're sitting on the same bunk beds and I just hung up the phone and just started sobbing. Sobbing and she couldn't figure out, you know, what was going on and I couldn't speak and it was this messy scene. And when she finally figured out what was happening, she just kicked into high gear. So she called the counseling department. She called my professors because we were in the middle of exams. Her roommate who was our best ally came and took all my laundry and did it. So it would be clean. And she still didn't know we were together. And she just, you know, she took care of me and she got me on a plane and I got home. It was Christmas break. And then just a few weeks later, she got on a plane and came to Connecticut. She had never ever been on a plane before and her parents did not approve of her flying. She got on a plane and came to Connecticut and made sure that I came back to college because it was my senior year. If I didn't come back, I wouldn't graduate. So she brought me back. So by spring break of my senior year, it was pretty clear to me like, I want to marry this woman. I want to spend the rest of my life with her and if I'm going to do that, we need to start telling people. Probably not her roommate first, but we need to start telling people. So we made the decision that when I came home for spring break, when I got home for spring break, that I would tell my mother. So I got home, I told my mother, it was awful as probably some of you have experienced not like beat down awful, but just that sense of like, there's no empathy here. Like she had no clue and no understanding. And I just kind of was like really out of it for a couple of days and my girlfriend kept calling and I figured she was calling to support me. So I was like, I just wasn't ready. I wasn't in a space. So finally I called her back ready. I was like, okay, I need to talk to her. Like we're going to do this. And then she answered the phone and said, I couldn't stand the guilt. I told them, where were you? And all of a sudden I realized like here I think I'm calling to get support and our life is going to start and everything is going to change and everything is going to change, but not the way I thought it was going to change. And she said, they're taking me to church. Where were you? So for the rest of the week I'm like calling, calling, calling. No answer, no answer, no answer. And so I go to my church and I'm blessed because I have a community that says you're beloved. You're okay. And so they help me. They say, all right, here's all this stuff and they help me get ready. And finally at the end of the week she picks up the phone and I think here is my chance because here I'm going to explain how this is going to work, how we're going to live our lives and how we are not abominations. And before I can utter a word she says, if you were a man I would marry you, but you're not so it's over. And that was the end. She hung up. And so she went to church and she confessed and she decided to dedicate her life to God and she ended up marrying a man and moving to Florida where she works as a chemistry professor. And I spent years trying to come to terms with who I was and I had known in high school that I felt a calling from God to work in the ministry but I thought what kind of fucked up God calls a queer person to work in the ministry. I was angry and I ran. And I don't know if you know, but running from God is not often too effective. And so finally I think somewhat like, there just comes that moment where you can't run anymore. So finally I did what I had to do and in the fall of 2010 I was blessed to be hired by First Paris Church in Yarmouth as their associate pastor and they not only welcomed me but my wife and my kids and they affirmed my call to ministry but also who I was as a person which is a gift I can never repay to them. Sometimes people will ask me if I think that my first girlfriend was really gay. Guess what, I don't know. She's the only person who can answer that question but what I do know is I think we would both say that we were saved. She would say that she was saved from the sin of homosexuality and I would say that I was saved from the sin of denying whom God created me to be. And now when I close services at First Parish I'm able to proudly say you are a beloved child of God and a world full of God's beloved children. Thank you. Thank you Kate. It was really special. I'm not really that tall, it's just the shoes. Thank you. I never grow old of hearing that. So I'm going to invite our next speaker up. Thu Elliott grew up gay in a fundamentalist Christian family in a small town. He's a new manor with a history in Michigan and Washington D.C. Here in Portland he's a music director for our Trinity Episcopal. I'll volunteer with the Telling Room, a bookseller at Sherman's and the founder of a weekly singing gathering called Fun Sing Portland. Please welcome Thu Elliott. Can you see my face? And hear my voice. People from Michigan use their hands. The back of their left or the front of their right to describe locations. We say, I'm from Ortonville, a little town halfway between Pontiac and Flint right here. And then for a person sitting next to us we point to a spot on the bone that runs through the thumb halfway down the squishy part to its left or for a person facing us a spot practically dead center in this soft part. Our house was directly on a 75 mile stretch of two-lane highway called M-15. We crossed it every day to unload our mailbox and pick up our newspapers. When you're on a road trip in the summer and you pass those farmhouses and hand-lettered signs for corn, squash, tomatoes, that was us. Eventually we sacrificed nearly every one of our free roaming cats and dogs to M-15 traffic. Those that weren't drowned, shot or frozen depending on the season. One day a driver came to our back door with my two-year-old sister in her arms. She was just about to cross. I thought you'd want to know. A quarter mile up in the direction of Flint was Hamilton's, a corrugated steel building with a cement floor and stacks of 50-pound food bags for livestock. We kept chickens for eggs and meat. So Hamilton's was one of our stops sometimes. The best part about it was that they had a pop machine with Coke and glass bottles. Those half-sized six-ounce ones that now you can only find in prepackaged six-packs and shingled stores connected to restaurants with names like Granny's Country Kitchen. In 1969, though, they were standard. And after you put in your dine that you just spent 20 minutes begging and bartering for, how would come that perfectly cold, perfectly formed bottle, thick at the bottom and only the tiniest bit green, slightly scuffed from rolling against the others, full of pure sugar. God's kiss. Even if you did have to share it with any other sibling around. Hamilton's was where I flew. I was surprised that I could fly at all and a little disappointed that it was happening in the middle of the night with no witnesses awake. Still I figured if I can fly, maybe I can get a Coke without having to negotiate. I have a horrible sense of direction and as a child had none at all beyond left and right. But I knew that if you turned right at the end of the driveway and stayed on the same road, you'd come to Hamilton's pretty soon. I learned later from cartoons and movies that when you fly, you're supposed to have your arms out to your sides like this and you're supposed to be looking around at things you've never seen before and you're supposed to be surprised at regular intervals that it's happening at all. And it also tends to be daytime or if it stays night, you can see friendly planets and stars smiling at you. I just kind of hovered about six feet off the ground, made sure to take a right at the end of the driveway and I'm 15 directly. I could hear crickets and frogs in the dark. I was aware of having to concentrate to stay up. I was eight and I was out of the house and on my own in the middle of the night, possibly on my way to a free Coke. Hamilton's was closed. I flew back home and I didn't talk to anyone about it. I worried about the consequences of my folks discovering I'd gone out without permission. I was embarrassed that I had thought even for a moment that in the middle of the night I might get to reach into a pop machine and pull out a cold, beautiful bottle full of sweetness that would be all my own. I must have known already that it was important to have a highly developed sense of shame. That it was important to remember always that I didn't deserve anything. Last month, I got a series of texts, photos and Facebook messages from people who still live in or near Ortonville who still drive M15. Went past your old house today but there's no house. They're doing a controlled burn just wanted you to know so you won't be shocked if you ever drive through. I won't be driving through. My brother, Steve, the only one of us who stayed in Michigan sent a photo of a smoke-scarred hole and said he was going to gather some souvenirs. We've been out of that house for years and I don't know how many people have moved through it since us. Even though I lived there off and on until I was well into my 20s I never really came all the way back after my solo trip to Hamilton's. Something stayed outside hovering, waiting. None of us loved that house. Too small, too cold or winter, too hot all summer, especially after the only good shade, a huge apple tree where we had all learned to climb, got hit by a storm and had to come down. Ten people shared one bathroom there and not one of those bathrooms with a place to sit that isn't the toilet and multiple sinks with counter space and cups with names on them. In this bathroom you could simultaneously sit on the toilet, turn on the water in the sink and prop your feet on the bathtub with your knees fully bent. Your only hope for privacy was from pretending to be sick on a Sunday night or a Wednesday night when everybody else was heading to prayer meeting and just the right amount of sick, not sick enough that you needed anyone to stay with you. All of us lived in that house as if we were at the starting line of a race ready to go and go fast. The best thing about it on any day was walking out. A moment of being happy in it was always a surprise. The day before my parents left for Tennessee my brother John and I sat on boxes with them and had a farewell meal. I don't remember what we ate but it's likely that it was coney dogs and root beer from the A&W. We were happy and we were not surprised. Empty, the place looked smaller than ever like a nice starter home for a young couple expecting their first child. I stepped out into the yard and remembered my trip to Hamilton's and all the later daytime and twilight variations of that trip. Three and four hour walks in the woods through marshy fields out back or along Cursley Creek counting red-winged blackbirds looking for acorns and walnuts in the fall deer and rabbit tracks in the winter trillions in the spring the best and most complete shade in the heat of July and August. I remembered the time I heard a small sound to my left and turned in time to see just about six feet off the ground the fully extended wings of a great blue heron taking off into the night. Thank you. Certainly very special. Thank you, Thu. I wasn't expecting that. You know, I too grew up in a house very similar, you know. There were nine of us with one bathroom as well and it's incredible. Everyone lived that way. You know, that was the expectation, you know. I should have remembered my sister until I was about 12 or 13 and there were no locks on any doors and the idea of privacy never ever entered my mind what that felt like, you know. And as a young trans girl trying to find and carve out space for myself I too left the house and found a place of solitude and definitely nature. I definitely relate to that so thank you for sharing that. Okay, wow. I'd like to introduce our next storyteller, AJ Yarn. AJ is a 2015 graduate of Wayne Fleet School here in Portland and is currently a first year at University of California Santa Cruz Go Banana Slugs. He is the founder of Faces for Equality an organization striving to create safe and supportive space for LGBTQ plus people to express themselves through art and to be open and proud about their identity without fear. Please welcome AJ Yarn. I'm a lot shorter than everyone else. Okay. I have to apologize. My voice is very new. It just dropped like four octaves in the last two weeks so I'm still figuring out how I meant to talk with it or working on it. So I was 15 when I first stepped foot in Gorm High School for a glistened GSTA night and like Gia, it was Betsy Parsons who greeted my friend Leah and I. I had black eyeshadow up to my eyebrows, clumpy black mascara and red lipstick that I'd stolen from my mother. I had spent so many hours getting ready and worrying and freaking out inside because I was so used to being that weird different kid in my high school. I dressed very differently. I acted very differently even if I hadn't really come to terms with my sexuality and my gender identity. I knew that I was meant to be feminine and I knew that that was important and that I had to look good, to look pretty. I had to be feminine. I had to wear the lipstick and the dresses and I needed to do that. And I walked into that high school that I'd never been to before and I stood in that library and all I saw were signs that said love is love and queer student is proud and rainbow cookies and pizza and I felt so at home. In this school I'd never been to surrounded by these people I'd never met and Leah and I stood there a bit awkwardly at first not sure what we were meant to do and everyone seemed to know each other already but Betsy, she was quick and she came right up and she introduced herself and she asked our names and she asked our pronouns and no one had ever done that to me before. I had no idea that I had control over what people could call me and it felt so liberating and scary so I didn't really say anything at first I was like, ah well she is fine or just don't call me anything just use my name. It was very out of body experience for me and she introduced us to all the other students and we quickly found a place at the table crunched in amongst other people eating pizza, eating cookies having a really fun time and quickly we moved from the eating tables to a circle of about 30 kids or more and we all started talking about our schools and I realized the one thing that brought us together we wanted to make our schools safer we probably the 30 kids went to maybe 10 different high schools I don't think there were any middle school students different high schools, different backgrounds some people knew each other some people didn't but we had all had the same experience we'd all been bullied we all had social expectations of who we were meant to be that drove us together and we were sharing ally week plans and celebrating ideas and going oh that school did that oh I want to do that and quickly we were talking about making rainbow cakes and doing hand painting and all that kind of stuff I felt so included and so valued for the first time in a really long time and Betsy started talking about a leadership group they were the ones that put on these big monthly meetings and I knew, I knew at the exact moment I was like I have to do that I have to do that that's all that I want to do I want to be in this moment for the rest of my life and if I can bring it to other people and let other people feel the same thing that I'm feeling that's all I want to do and I remember I was so excited that I left my backpack and all my bags in Gorma high school and I left with my mother and we were half way home and then she goes where's your backpack and I was like oh luckily I did get back inside enough time to get all my stuff but I just wanted my mom to know about this thing that I was doing oh mom I was like look at this thing like the GSGA leadership oh my gosh and she was just like okay she wasn't really sure what to make of any of it but she's a lot better now she gets it you know I come home and I have my friends and they change their names three times in a week and she goes okay alright can't say anything about it so you know and fast forward an entire high school career all the ups and downs that go along with being a kid in Portland a queer kid in Portland a queer kid in a high school in Portland takes a lot of turns graduation was tough but I made it through and I got into the college of my dreams I knew I'd never actually been to California which was probably a bad idea considering that's where I wanted to go and I only applied to California schools and I managed to get into one and it was my dream school it was Santa Cruz and we flew out a couple days before and I remember I did not know who my roommates were until I walked in and I was terrified I had spent another hour getting ready but this time it was working more on the different colored hair I had and seeing if my button-up shirt fit right and it was less about what other people would think of me and more about what I thought of myself but I was still scared and still very nervous and I walked through that doorway carrying a box of shampoo and toothbrushes and my heart sank I had been placed with two girls this was several months after coming out to my mother I'd been out at school for a couple years which was an interesting dynamic when she realized that everyone else knew and she didn't and I remember I couldn't complain to my mother because it was still very new to her and she was like, oh well you know, they're girls like, so what? like, you look like one it's gonna be okay like, I'm sure they're nice you know my world was quickly, very quickly crashing down around me I did not know a single person in California and that support system that I'd created with Betsy and with Glycen and with EqualityMate and all the amazing people that I met here was gone and I stood in that dorm room with two girls who were very nice and very sweet but didn't really understand what was happening and I went to my RA looking for answers and he couldn't give me any and he steered me to the queer center and I walked down the hill and despite, again, the dire circumstances I was very excited I was ready for that moment again of walking into a queer center of meeting the people my people I wanted to apply I wanted to work there I wanted to be involved in my community like I was here and I walked in to this beautiful cabin settled in the woods a trans flag in one window a rainbow flag in the other a small kitchen in a corner a clump of desks by the door and this wide open space full of books and there were three people typing away and none of them looked at me and I stood there alone and awkward and after a few minutes I left and it took several days several days before I was able to be moved out of my room and moved into a room with another trans guy like me and I did end up having the most beautiful amazing experience of my life at college but there was that moment where I missed Maine and I missed my community and I realized that the activism I do it was so much about the people around me but I needed to also be about myself and I needed to be able to stand up and take that moment and say no this is not okay and eventually I did find it I do work with an amazing organization out in California now and I have amazing friends who are willing to stand up and do so much for me and I think that it was that moment back in Maine where Betsy Parsons came up and she was like oh here you go what is your name what is your pronouns here are the people to meet and I've discovered through my experience in California that I can be just like Betsy Parsons sometimes it has to be my job to be like I should have what I should have done when I walked in there was I should have walked up and be like my name is AJ this is my problem please help me and so I do want to thank all of you and I want to thank Betsy Parsons and I want to thank Maine for the what took a while giving me the strength to do that thank you there's my pen thank you AJ so much I've had the great fortune of knowing AJ for a few years and I feel very fortunate to be part of his life a little bit and to hear that was really powerful thank you again so we have one more storyteller for now and I had the really great fortune the other day I think it was Saturday I was in Belfast for the first ever Belfast has pride event it was a really wonderful day hundreds of people showed up from the mid-coast area and one of the second or third performers that day was this really soulful singer trying to energize the crowd which had diminished a little bit from the start but it was really wonderful and I'd heard about Lynn Deves before but I didn't know exactly what that meant but it was really special to put the name and the voice and the soul together on Saturday so Lynn Deves is a veteran she's a Maine singer-songwriter and multi-intrumentalist she has shared stages with many people including Katie Curtis Cheryl Wheeler Janice Ian Farron Chris Williamson and many more I know tonight she's going to share a few stories about her early years and hopefully maybe a few songs so please welcome Lynn Deves what if they don't like me growing up and moving every few years I was constantly faced with not knowing anyone and trying to fit in I remember the first day of school fifth grade in Georgia being followed home by some students throwing rocks at me and yelling, Yankee go home I remember later that year stepping onto a stage for the first time in the all-girl band the purple passions it made me feel powerful and important looking back I can see the path of my life was being set in motion with these two very distinct parts of myself the public confident powerful public persona performer and the scared insecure secretive private part of myself little did I know I was going to wrestle with these two parts for many years to come and looking back a few pivotal moments stand out the first is 1993 it's 2 a.m. at a rock club in Brewer, Maine cause I hope I'll always get back finished playing for the weekend and the rest of the band has already taken off and had it south and I'm left alone to get paid and drive the band truck home that night solo that's nothing unusual I actually always got paid at the end of the night and sometimes really enjoyed driving the band truck late at night by myself the freedom of the open road listening to my CB radio this was a new club we'd only played there a few times and I didn't really have a close relationship with the owners yet so I go into the office to get paid and it happens to be a woman and she immediately says do you know anything about a bunch of gay people being in here tonight and my alarm goes off inside what if they don't like me I'm scared I feel alone I'm totally surprised and caught off guard by her question nobody has ever posed that question to me before but I realize that I've been paranoid for many many years hoping that the club owners didn't notice all my lesbian friends dancing together instead of with the male patrons I've been hiding I've been in the closet I'm not out I hesitate thinking isn't this the town where they threw Charlie Howard off the bridge for being gay I carefully calculate my words not wanting to confirm or deny my association so I say, so what was the problem was there a problem did somebody have a fight or not pay their bill and she said no we just can't afford to get a reputation as a gay club realize she's talking about my friends she's talking about me right in that moment I see the fork in the road of my life and that I've been desperately trying for 15 years to hide my identity as a lesbian and I realize that I can't run away anymore so for the first time in my professional life as a musician I decide that it's time to stand up I take a moment to gather my thoughts I look right in the eye with this calm and strong of a voice as I can muster I tell her yes I did have a lot of music friends and fans in the club tonight some of them were gay, some of them were straight and I'm also gay and I still don't really understand what the problem is so she starts stumbling over her words oh no no it's not me some of my best friends are gay it's a couple of the bouncers they're the ones that have the problem so I end up getting paid and getting the hell out of there I actually remember getting into my truck all by myself and feeling relieved that the windshield wasn't smashed or the tires weren't slashed you know, from my true confession later on I capture the moment in a song that is to become my semi-sarcastic anthem to celebrate diversity first of all I make my hands fray be a silly father me so move ahead a few years to 1996 I've since retired my rock chick status and I've just written, recorded and released my first CD of original songs called Connecting the Dots I will try to soothe my soul media review in a mainstream Portland paper and it's like the guy that you want to review your record and he likes the record and he says all the songs are about being gay my alarm goes off inside what if they don't like me I'm petrified of being pigeonholed and outed in the same article I feel angry and scared and misunderstood here I am again face to face with that fear of being exposed and being outed and I don't think I'm ready and then gradually with the help of therapy and 12 step recovery I just gradually start realizing that I don't have to give my power away to other people and I don't have to place my self value and my self worth and give that give other people permission to define me and I just become more able to own who I am and be proud and I also proceed to perform at every gay and lesbian event and club that I can possibly find to celebrate and also to like force myself to face my own inner homophobia because I'm still I'm up there singing and I'm still afraid I'm inspired by those that come before me and I start realizing that maybe I can inspire those that are to come after me there's a message you could you guarantee South Asia fast forward to now my wonderful partner Cindy and I have been together almost 30 years now collectively she's been called a saint more than once collectively we have five nieces, six nephews two children and six grandchildren we have a love and respect of our families a couples counselor told us one time we're ambassadors we always try to remember that because we may be the only gay or lesbian couple that they know so we can show them what that looks like what love looks like also I've been a Buddhist meditation practitioner for the past nine years mostly in the tradition of the Vietnamese Zen master Tich Nhat Hanh may I love and accept myself fully and completely may you love and accept yourself fully and completely may all beings love and accept themselves fully and completely with many wonderful practices and teachers and mentors I'm able to appreciate myself and others in a more authentic way and on a much deeper level seeing that we're all interconnected and that we all have the same hopes and dreams my other guru Kev Mo says it best so now what if they don't like me oh yeah there's still a part of me that wants you to like me only now I know that I'm okay if you don't thank you Lynn very much it's three times in one week it's wonderful how lucky am I well before we move on I want to once again thank our storytellers who are here tonight Kate Dalton AJ Yarn Mendeves and Thu Elliot for sharing a little bit of themselves with all of us so thank you to our storytellers I would be remiss if I didn't thank our incredible interpreters tonight too so thank you very much well we're going to move on to our next part of our journey because I think that's definitely the theme I've picked up tonight maybe you picked up a different theme or a different thread but I definitely notice this ongoing journey that we tell ourselves stories to live as Joan Didi once said and we must continue to tell our stories to live and hopefully you'll take that opportunity tonight to think about sharing your story I'm looking in the room right now and there are 50 or 60 of you and each of you have a collection of wonderful beautiful terrifying funny stories within you that make life worth living to hear and to know how diverse and special each of us are especially this week thank you again for coming and supporting this event in all that is Pride Portland