Oral History Program Kami Christensen Interviewed by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles 9 January 2023 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Kami Christensen Interviewed by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles 9 January 2023 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Queering the Archives oral history project is a series of oral histories from the LGBTQ+ communities of Weber, Davis and Morgan Counties of Northern Utah. Each interview is a life interview, documenting the interviewee’s unique experiences growing up queer. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Christensen, Kami, an oral history by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles, 9 January 2023, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA), Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview conducted on January 9, 2023 with Kami Christensen by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles. Kami discusses growing up queer in a religious family, their struggles with mental health, and coming to accept their queer identity. GU: Today is January 9, 2023. It's about 11:30 AM, and we are at the Stewart Library in Room 333. This is Grant Ulrigg conducting the interview. My pronouns are he/him. I also have a second interviewer. JM: My name is Jim Miles. My pronouns are also he/him; I identify as queer. GU: Today we are interviewing Kami. KC: My name is Kami, and my pronouns are she/they, and I identify as currently genderfluid and bisexual. JM: So, Kami, for the record, can you just give us your last name as well? KC: Oh, Kami Christensen. No middle name. GU: Perfect. Just remember, feel free to opt out of any uncomfortable questions. If by the end of this, you want to switch out pseudonyms, just let us know. KC: All right. GU: Okay, so let's start at the very beginning. JM: Can we get when and where you were born? KC: When, August 15 of 2004. Time of day? I think it was sometime in the afternoon, but I couldn't tell ya. I'm sure my mother could. I was born at Ogden Regional Hospital here in Utah, just in the Ogden area. That's where I've been pretty much my whole existence. I've traveled but always called Utah home. JM: [Pauses to do math]. Yeah, go ahead, now that we've made sure you're 18 [laughs]. GU: What does your family dynamic look like? 1 KC: Currently, my family dynamic is me, my partner, and our cat, and that's really all that I consider my nuclear family, but of course I consider my friends to be more family than my family. GU: Okay. Since we are starting at the very beginning, do you mind talking about blood relatives? Like what that family looked like when you were born? KC: Yeah, I'm more than happy to talk about that. When I came into this world, my mom and my dad were still married at the time. Didn't last for much longer than that. So I had a mom and a dad, and they had a beautiful chocolate lab named Meg. She was very pretty. After a while, then things progressed, four years later, they ended up having my sister: my only full blood relative of the sort, and she was supposed to be the marriage-fixer baby. I feel very bad for her in that respect, because she was literally the very last thing that they had right before the divorce. So while I was pretty young, my grandma was a big part of my life because we were bouncing around from house to house, just trying to be somewhere to make ends meet. I didn't find out until much later that one of the ways that my dad was trying to do that was by dealing drugs, so that was definitely an interesting thing to find out. He now has diagnosed borderline personality disorder, and he ended up dying of an overdose in 2020. So that's part of the chapter; there's a lot to go through. GU: Yeah, and once we get closer to 2020, we can also talk about that. [To Jim] Do you have any questions so far? JM: You've talked very quickly about the early family dynamic and living situation. Do you feel comfortable going a little more in depth what that looks like? You lived in Ogden for a little bit. How soon did you move in with your grandparents? How often were you moving around? 2 KC: As far as right after I was born, we lived with my grandma out in South Weber. She lived there probably until I was about two. She was consistently trying to sell the house and everything, so I bounced around from there to my other set of grandparents from my biological dad. They lived out in South Weber not too far from my grandma at that time, and after my grandma moved, then we moved into our own spot, which was... I can't remember what school it's by, but I drive past it sometimes. It's right off of Harrison, but further on the North Ogden/Pleasant View side. So that's kind of where I spent the first couple of years. One thing that you might find consistent throughout this is apparently I tend to attract water. Every single house that I've lived in to date has had flooding or water problems. That's one consistent thing: every single house, I can tell you about the water issues that we've had. My playroom flooded in that house. I would like to say that it was a good start for me, not really knowing much about the world. My favorite color is yellow, as you can see, and it has been. We painted my room yellow with flowers all over it when I was about two, I want to say. It was usually pretty calm, just hanging out. I was raised in the church. My mom used to be a very devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints [whispers] and they'll slap you on the wrist for saying anything else. I remember going to church when I was young and I remember not liking it. That's another consistent thing, is that every time I went to church, I didn't like it. It didn't feel right. Even now, my grandma still tries to pull me back, but I like to think I closed that chapter and I've moved on. JM: So the fairly stereotypical nuclear family dynamic in the state of Utah. KC: Well, if you're talking the stereotypical family in Utah, yeah, the yelling, the occasional plates thrown, the general disagreements and fights about, "I want to go to church.” 3 “I don't want to go to church," etc. Yeah, that sounds about right. GU: I'm just trying to remember. When did you guys get into your own house? You said you jumped from one grandma—your maternal—and then you went to paternal grandparents, and then about what age did you actually have a house? KC: I would say right about the time my grandma actually started moving towards selling her house, about the time I was two. JM: So that yellow room was in that... KC: Yes. It was in my house. Maybe it was earlier than that. I can't date memories that far. GU: No, you're fine. I know that you're four years older than your sister, so I was just trying to place it. KC: Yeah. Spent about two years in the house before she was born. That sounds right. GU: Okay. How or when did you grow up really knowing about... what's the word I'm looking for? JM: Sexuality and gender? GU: Yeah, I was looking for the gender normalities, I guess. KC: I always knew something was off, if that's what you're asking for. It never felt right. Ever since I was little, I was in dresses and beauty pageants for little babies and all sorts of stuff. My grandma owned a wedding shop and I would help her model dresses and stuff like that. My mom always put bows in my hair and always did my hair very cutesy styles with braids and gel and all sorts of torture. I didn't care much for it. When I was about ten or so, that really started to show up when I started refusing to wear skirts and dresses and other things more along the general female, "This is what you're supposed to do. This is what you're supposed to look like," type thing. 4 I did ballet when I was a kid. I did gymnastics and I didn't like ballet, that's for sure. I was like, "No, we're not doing this." Gymnastics continued for a bit, but whenever the girls were wearing their leotards and stuff like that, I would always put on a pair of shorts because I didn't feel comfortable just wearing a leotard while all these other girls were wearing bright pink things. I was like, "What's the darkest shade you can get this in?" GU: So would you say that gender roles were pretty... I don't know what the technical word is. KC: Reaffirmed? Reinforced? GU: Yeah. KC: Oh, yeah. My grandparents don't actually know that I identify as anything other than a female, which I'm fine if this is how they find out. I'm A-OK with that because they were always like, "Oh, you're such a cute little girl." They were always like, "You should wear more colorful things. You should put on a dress, you should put on a skirt. You should wear this with sparklers. You should put more frills on your clothes,” and I wasn't having it. "I enjoy my t-shirt and jeans very much." JM: So were you taught stereotypical gender roles as a child? KC: Oh, yeah. There's a boy and there's a girl and there's nothing in between. JM: And what were the expectations you were taught around? Roles that you would take on later on in life, like housewife, breadwinner. KC: I was always taught how to cook, how to clean, how to maintain, but that's honestly something I feel everyone should be taught as a kid, because that's kind of one of those general things. If you want to get from A to B in life, those are some good things to learn. I definitely learned how to do laundry and everything, but I was always taking care of myself more than I was trying to take care of a household, until my sister really got old enough to the point where I had to start stepping up. I 5 was always told that I could do and be pretty much anything I wanted, which was really nice, because I was always told that I was a smart kid. Always, consistently, and my grandparents have even said before, they were like, "One day, she's just going to be talking about something she's doing in school, and we're not going to understand a word she's saying." We've hit that point. It was always open, free game. I could either stay home, but always the getting-married-type thing. "You're going to have a husband, you're going to have such cute kids, you're going to have all of this. We want grandkids," and that's still pretty prevalent. That's always something that they have wanted for me, but I've never really wanted for myself. JM: So gender roles are definitely present, but not necessarily being pushed on you as much. KC: Not as much as they used to be. JM: Okay. GU: So I guess in that same way, it sounds like they wanted you to have a husband, have kids. Kind of in that same mindset, sexuality was probably stereotypical as well, that they assumed. KC: Yeah, they were always thinking, "Yeah, you're going to have such a nice husband," and stuff. Of course, I was fine with that. I was like, "Well, the entire concept of marriage and I don't exactly get along too well," just because as we progress through the timeline, my mom has been divorced three times and there's just a whole mess of things. I don't know if marriage will ever be right for me, so I always was saying as a kid, "No, I don't think I'm going to get married. No, I don't think I want that." Everyone was like, "Oh, yeah, cool, because of the divorce and stuff?" 6 I'm like, "Sure, we can pull a cover on that. That'll be fine." JM: Did your understanding of sexuality go beyond man and woman as a child? KC: No, not particularly. I always thought the girls were cute and stuff, though. In gymnastics, like I said, I would always wear shorts and stuff because I didn't want to be as... I'm looking for the right words. I didn't want to be perceived as much as they were, if that makes sense. I think I started having crushes on girls around that time. That actually lines up pretty well. Some self-discovery happening here. So I would think girls are pretty and, "Oh my gosh, they can do all these cool things," and I never was really guided or instructed like, "Hey, yeah, that's, that's an option." I didn't really find that out until much later. JM: When did you start gymnastics, again? KC: I was probably eight. JM: Eight, okay. So let's roll it back a little bit. GU: As you can tell, we have not done this for quite a bit. I am struggling a bit here. KC: Oh, it's fine. Like I said, it’s the first day back to school. GU: Yeah. We didn't do any interviews during winter break, and I don't think we did any in December. JM: I did. I have been doing them consistently. GU: I have not, and it's showing. Okay, so that was eight, so let's go back. I really want to get into school, but is there anything around five years old that you want to cover? I feel like we got a decent amount before you start kindergarten, but is there anything that you can think of, or something that you recall? KC: Playing with dolls and having the traditional playhouse, like with all the dolls and everything. I really liked stuffed animals, but dolls were always that thing where I was like, "Okay, you can have a bunch of these, but what's really the point?" Of course, I pushed a baby doll around in a stroller, but I feel like that's fair game for 7 everybody, so it was more in preparation for my little sister being on the way and stuff. Soon I was going to have one of these ‘dolls’, but it's going to be alive and screaming most of the time. I always had a playroom. I always had a doll house or something, but I enjoyed doing other things, like the kitchen and stuff. I've always had a passion for food, and that was definitely something interesting. We had a ball pit; that was fun. JM: Very informative. Let's start with elementary school, or did you go to a preschool first? KC: I did go to a preschool, but not for very long. I can't remember the name of it, but the building, it's very prominent. It's somewhere out in Roy. It has piano keys along the top of it. It's a gray stucco building. GU: I feel like I've passed that. I live in Clinton, so I'm sure I've passed it. KC: You most likely have seen it. It's a preschool I went to, and like I said, I wasn't there for very long. I didn't fit in. I already knew everything they were teaching, so that was one of those things where I was already ahead of the curve, I guess? JM: That's good. Okay, so you went to preschool there, didn't stay. How long did you stay? KC: I wouldn't say anything more than three, maybe four months. It wasn't a very prominent memory. JM: Okay. Then you do go to kindergarten? KC: Yes, I did go to kindergarten. I went to kindergarten at Green Acres Elementary. I have no idea if she's still around, but Mrs. J was my teacher. She was really nice. JM: And do you stay there for all of grade school? KC: No. JM: Okay, then let's start at Green Acres and roll through it. GU: At Green Acres, you were there from kindergarten to when? 8 KC: Just kindergarten. JM: What was your social life like at school? KC: I was a fairly social kid, but I chewed on my sleeves a lot. People didn't like that. I was a chewer, that's for sure. I chewed on my sleeves, my collar, always, consistently; that was something that I did. Usually my sleeves were always soggy and I guess that wasn't very popular with other kindergartners. I remember playtime and all sorts of things. For playtime they always had—I don't know if they still even have them around, but they had these little wooden logs that you could stack on top of each other and build little cabins and stuff with. I always enjoyed doing that. I don't remember particularly having any one friend though. I don't remember anyone by name. GU: I'm trying to find a way to say this. Within kindergarten, you obviously met new people that you didn't know before, including boys and other kids. Did you see that you changed in some way, being exposed to different kids? KC: Being exposed to other things and other influences that I picked up on… I would say I picked up that wearing different colors other than just bright colors was okay. I noticed that a lot of the girls didn't wear skirts or anything, but I was still wearing skirts and leggings and stuff like that, which was interesting. I was still wearing a lot of colorful stuff, and I don't remember that ever making a direct impact, but maybe there was some change or something that clicked back then in my kindergarten brain that was like, "Oh yeah, look at all these different things." GU: Okay. I know that's a really young age, but there's usually a boy that loves to play Barbies. That was me. You just don't know what else would be there. JM: You say you only attended Green Acres for kindergarten. What happens that makes you move again? 9 KC: So right around that time, like I said, my sister was the fix-it baby; four years apart, so I was four years old when she came around. About the time that I was five, my parents finally decided to call it quits, so we no longer can afford the house, and we sold the dogs that I spoke of very fondly before. I still miss her, but hey, that's fine. After that, we moved in with my grandma in her new house that she had. It's in North Ogden. It's right behind the Megaplex, right there in those townhomes. She got her house built and everything. It was pretty cool. I had my own room there for a while, and we stayed there until my mom was able to really afford a new house. GU: So this was starting about first grade? Okay. How long did you stay with her, do you remember? KC: With my grandma, I stayed there through probably about a third of kindergarten, through the summer, and then by the next fall, I think we had a house. GU: Okay, so all of first grade, you were there. What school did you go to then? KC: First grade, I went to Majestic Elementary. JM: Any prominent memories from this time? KC: I didn't like the teacher and I slept a lot and I cut my own bangs. GU: Well, okay. KC: Yeah. I literally would sleep through class. I attribute that to the fact that I developed mild insomnia, just because stress kinda does that to a kid. I stayed up late and I read books and did other things instead of sleeping, so I was always sleeping. One time I don't even remember this happening, but they were like, "Yeah, she fell asleep in class, so we carried her to the nurse's office and she woke up like two hours later.” [Shrugs] An adventure, I guess. My mom used to make my Halloween costumes, and that year—I don't know if you can even still buy them, but Webkinz was a big thing, and I wanted to be a rainbow armadillo, and a rainbow armadillo, I was. 10 GU: Do you remember why you cut your bangs, or what led up to that? KC: I was bored. GU: Plain and simple. KC: Yeah, the hairdresser said that I’d actually done a really good job for not using a mirror. It was a straight line right about here [points to top of forehead]. They took me to get that fixed not long after, but that does segue... I was playing with cars and their carwash stuff at the hairdresser because it was in a home. Actually, just up the road is where she lives now. I would play with cars with her son and everything and I had a good time waiting. She does my grandma's hair still. GU: All right. [To Jim] Any other? JM: Well, I think the elephant in the room is the divorce, that we need to talk about. KC: Oh, it was messy. JM: Yes. What do you remember of it? How did it affect you? You mentioned you were stressed and not sleeping well. KC: Yeah. So as far as the divorce went, there was a whole lot going on outside of what I knew at the time that I probably don't know to this day. I used to go over to have frequent visitations with my dad. I used to see him every other weekend. I had a room, I had a box of colored pencils, and it was one of those cool boxes where when you open it, a spider or a little alien or something would spring out at you when you opened it, due to the mechanism in there. I remember that being a lot of fun. My dad had a girlfriend, so it wasn't necessarily a stepmother, but a stepmaternal figure at the time. They had a house right across from O'Ryan and one of those townhomes, and I remember dealing a lot with the police. I remember hanging out with officers and firefighters and a whole bunch of stuff like that, because from what I can understand, it was a bad divorce. My mom tried to make 11 sure that everything was fine for us, and she did a pretty good job, but when my dad stopped paying child support, we were barely making ends meet. She had to go to court every three or four months just to try and get him to pay his child support. It was not the best time. One of the things that I do remember, though, is that sometimes my dad wouldn't come and pick us up, me and my sister. Sometimes he just wouldn't show up on days that he was supposed to come and get us, and that is a very big route of a lot of anxiety that I have, separation anxiety. You can blame it on me being a littler kid and stuff, like throwing fits and tantrums and all sorts of other stress-related things; my mom would take me to therapy and all sorts of things, even when I was a small kid, because it just wasn't a good situation. I can only imagine what my sister went through, but I was old enough to remember, "Yeah. My dad didn't come to get me." She didn't really have that. She was younger, for sure. They did have two dogs, though. I only remember one of them. It was a Chihuahua. It was named Peanut. It was pretty great. Peanut was shortly gotten rid of after I ended up with a half-brother. His name is T. I don't really know much about him. When I was about, I want to say nine, maybe ten, my dad finally gave up custody, so I didn't have to deal with any of that anymore. But like I said, my mom was married three times, so the second time she was married for about six months. His name was M. I remember that he would let me play games on his phone, which was a plus, but that was about it. He wouldn't mow the lawn. He would sit up in the room all day watching football, and he wasn't really there. My mom was going to medical school at the time to be a nurse. On days where my mom wasn't home, sometimes we wouldn't even get stuff to eat. He just wasn't there. I remember 12 making peanut butter and syrup sandwiches because what else do you do as a small child, trying to provide for yourself and your little sister? Right around that time was when I had to start stacking up, and I had to start raising my sister. I was the only one consistently there because we would bounce from grandparent to grandparent, and we would sometimes stay at my greatgrandma's, but there wasn't really anything consistent around that time. It was definitely a lot going on. GU: Okay. Just to backtrack just a little bit, I want to get dates and to just make sure I understood correctly. Your dad gave up custody when you were about nine or ten, and when did your half-brother show up? KC: My half-brother came into the picture when I was seven. GU: And the half-brother is your dad's, correct? I just wanted to make sure I had that. KC: Yeah. JM: We kind of left off that you had moved into a house with your mom. How long do you stay there? And the other husbands that are coming in, is that all in the same house? KC: So we stayed in a house on Willowbrook Lane throughout the time that I went to Majestic Elementary. I went there from first to fifth grade, so from first to fifth grade, that's about where it was. My mom's second husband was in that house; like I said, again, not for very long. While she was learning to be an E.R. nurse, she met my... I don't even know if ‘current dad’ is the right word because they divorced. Current father figure. They met about then, and they got married and were married ten years. I was about, I want to say, nine or so when they got married. Right after they got married, everything was fine. Things were starting to look up. I was no longer being forced to go to church, star on that. Right about then, my biological dad decided, “Hey, this 13 dude's actually probably going to take better care of my kids than I, the drugaddicted alcoholic, is going to,” so that's what proceeded to happen there. About that time, they had another kid on the way, my half-sister J. Again, it was about a two-year gap, so I was about nine or ten for sure. I went through the entire adoption process and legally became my stepdad's kid. After that, things were pretty okay. I really like my older siblings that my dad brought into the picture, because he had been married three times previously. I have seven siblings that were then introduced: oldest is S, next K, T, G, JO, and then CH and CA. I have never met CH and CA. That divorce was rather messy and he didn't even get to see his kids after that, so I never got to meet them, but my five older siblings that I have met are all pretty cool. JM: So this is a little bit of a longer period of consistency than we have up to this point. How are you doing with your social life in school, with friends, grades? KC: Throughout school, it had always been too easy, up until right about fifth grade. I started to get my very first challenge of any sort academically in fifth grade. I started turning in my homework, because I didn't turn in my homework; I wasn't the biggest fan of doing my homework, but it usually just got lost in my backpack or lost in my desk, which were both always a mess consistently. I had a couple of friends that stood out from about first to fourth grade. I didn't realize that all of them came from ridiculously broken homes and stuff until later in life. One of them, her name—I don't even know what their pronouns are, so I'll use 'they'. Their name was MK and their dad was an alcoholic that stepped out. Then I had another friend, their name was JA; both of their parents were in prison and they were living with grandparents. I had a couple other friends, E and B. B actually, I ended up running into her a couple of years later, and we went to 14 elementary school together. Then we ended up going to high school together, so that was at least some decent consistency. I definitely had crushes on boys beforehand, right up until about fourth grade when I started to realize, "Okay, that girl is really, really pretty. Why am I not jealous?" Because usually when it's that age, it's all about social standing. Instead of playing with kids in my grade, when I was in second and third grade, I would play the older kids that were out on the playground at the same time, just ‘cause I didn't really do much with the kids that were my age. I've always preferred hanging out with people that are older than me. Like I said, in fifth grade, things really started to change. I started to mature, as all bodies do, and that really brought on some interesting predicaments. I really didn't like the concept of wearing a bra. I felt like there was literally no purpose to it, so I didn't until about halfway through sixth grade when my mom was like, "Okay, this is starting to get to a point where you're going to have to or you're going to get in trouble," because that was just how it was. I remember seeing pictures and everything and realizing, "Yep, my mom had a point," but I still didn't. By this time, I was wearing completely all-dark clothing and no longer wearing anything with frills. I always wore a jacket, though. I think it was a comfort mechanism or something, because I was always wearing a jacket of some sort, and it was the same jacket every day. I wouldn't let go of it, kind of like a blanket. JM: Okay. So your body started to mature. Is this when you start feeling some gender confusion? KC: I didn't particularly feel like I had fallen one way or the other, until I was actually fullon a female; like that's how my body looked, that's how it presented. I was like, "I'm fine with this. You know what? It's fine,” because I didn't really have any qualms 15 with it. I'm happy with my body the way it is. I wouldn't ever have top surgery or anything to augment or alter. I'm fine with the way I am. I might wear a binder or something one day, just because that's what I feel that day, but I never really felt like my body wasn't mine until later on. There wasn't much dysphoria in my younger years. GU: We kind of hit sixth grade, officially. Is that when you started middle school? KC: Sixth grade was when we moved. We didn't have middle school; it was K-6. Just your normal Utah/Weber County style. GU: Okay, I'm not familiar with the schools here. Sixth grade was middle school for me back in Washington. KC: Lucky. GU: Okay, so sixth grade you moved. Where did you move to? KC: We moved out to Farr West. There's more to the story than that. We sold our house in Willowbrook because my mom found out that she was pregnant. That leads to my half-siblings that are currently a part of my life. They're twins, actually; that was a shock that no one saw coming. Two lovely identical twin boys, D and L. I love them to death. They're pretty great. So my mom found out she was pregnant, and there were not enough rooms in our Willowbrook house to suffice that. We had a dog in our Willowbrook house. His name was Tucker. After we started moving, we had to move to a townhouse intermittently, and we had to have family come in. We moved to my Nana's house first because we were looking for a house and everything. My Nana is my biological dad's adoptive mother, because I didn't find out until later that he was adopted. My Nana is still a part of my life, along with my Papa. They're really nice people; they're really great. I'm very grateful that they actually took in me, my sister and my mom after that whole situation. 16 So after we moved in with my Nana is around the time when my brothers were born. We then lived in a townhouse for just a minute because of the nasty divorce I referred to, where my dad was not able to see his sons. That lady also apparently owned property that his name was on, and so he literally could not have another house in his name. Courts, legal system, everything: finally ended up getting the, "Go ahead. Yeah, that's fine." We built a house instead of moving into one—which, the house actually turned out to be a piece of shit, very poorly constructed. The dude who was doing all the excavation and all sorts of moving and stuff was drunk on the job and ran into our house multiple times, cracking the foundation and outside. GU: Jeez. KC: Yeah, it's always a good time. So like I was saying, we had to get rid of Tucker when we were in the townhouse waiting for our house to be finished up. So I got rid of my dog, which was another heartbreak, but hey, I had two new brothers that were screaming at all hours of the night. By that time, because my parents didn't want to make it difficult and make my transition abrupt to junior high—whole new place, whole new people—they decided to take me and drive me to Farr West Elementary from right around where my grandmother's house was, because we actually rented one of the townhomes right in front of her house. From North Ogden to Farr West every morning, so that I could know the people that I was going to junior high with. Sixth grade was a lot of fun, actually. Everything felt like it was pretty okay. I really liked my teacher, Mr. O. I still will go back and visit him and be like, "Hey, you did a great job teaching me," because I think that's something all teachers like to hear every once in a while. I do remember specifically being fast enough that I could run the mile and lap the teachers. It was a decent time. I had a few friends, 17 but not many, just because I was new and didn't know anyone from any previous time or years. But I did just fine in school and it was pretty okay. About halfway through the school year, we ended up moving into our new house. I kind of got settled in. My little brothers were not quite up and walking yet, but they were definitely on the move, so everything was childproof. We got a rabbit when we moved into that house, just because I lost my dog and was sad. We ended up getting a rabbit because a rabbit can't knock the boys over and run around and everything. His name was Bunny Bob Joe—not Billy Bob Joe, but very similar. He was a very nice rabbit. He was very good at being a rabbit and hopping around his cage. That was pretty much all he did. Poor guy was frightened out of his mind whenever my little brothers would come up and bang on his cage and climb on it, because what else are kids supposed to do? My little brothers definitely had an adventurous first year or so of life. They dumped olive oil all over the floor, like a full bottle. You know the Costco bottles? Yeah, one of those, all over the kitchen floor. They loved going into the spices and pouring them subsequently all over the carpet. They have always been into everything, a hundred miles an hour, one goes one way, the other goes the other way. That's just how it is with twins, apparently. JM: Yeah, it definitely sounds interesting. KC: Yeah. JM: So you roll into middle school then. Seventh, eighth grade, I assume? KC: Yes. JM: And this is now in Farr West. What was that like? KC: As far as school went on, I still was a ridiculous overachiever. I needed to have As, so that's pretty much how it went. I got As in most of my classes, and I actually joined the junior high school NAL team, the National Academic League, so that was 18 a lot of fun. I definitely made some better friends and people that I actually stuck around with. Oddly enough, none of them were from my elementary school, so it kind of backfired on my parents that way. GU: What was the name of the junior high? KC: I went to Wahlquist Junior High. It wasn't the old one, it was the brand-new one that they built right after they tore the old one down because it was a health hazard. JM: So you're reaching an age where people might start to really build sexual attractions and stuff like that. Are you starting to see more on your sexuality? Are you around people who are aware of their sexuality that's heteronormative? How does that look? KC: I wasn't really around anyone that was queer, other than one person that was out and he was very proud of it. His name was GA, and he was definitely gay, and he was your stereotypical loud gay man. I don't know how else to say that, like he wore nail polish, he dyed his hair, he was always in theater. No offense to the rest of the stereotypical, very out-and-proud gay men, but that's just what it looked like to me when I was at that age. One of the things that I started to notice was throughout seventh grade, I had a crush on a girl that I still have in my life, which is pretty nice, but she isn't my partner, sadly. Her name's AM. She was the first person that I felt ever to be so much on the same page with; we listen to the same kind of music and all that, and it was pretty great. We were good friends up until eighth grade when she suddenly fell off the face of the earth. There's an explanation for this later, but I never really got to tell her how I felt or anything like that. I did tell one girl how I felt and promptly got made fun of. She was like, "That's not right." 19 I was like, "Oh, yeah, sure." Throughout my seventh-grade year, I was really fem. I wore heels, I wore blouses, I wore tight pants, I did my makeup and everything like that. It didn't look anywhere near good, but I did, and after about halfway through seventh grade, I was like, "There is literally no point," so I just kind of stopped doing it. I yet again reverted to, "I don't wear skirts. I don't like that. Let's put a pause on that." One person who everything made sense after I actually talked with them: her name was DA and she was bisexual and she knew it. I was like, "What does that even mean?" She's like, "Well, I like both girls and boys." I was like, "Wow, that's an option, ain't it." We didn't really have the best of friendship or anything. We weren't anything more than acquaintances, and I didn't realize, but I really looked up to her and probably even had a crush on her at the time. So seventh grade was a big pivot point when I was finally like, "Something's not adding up here.” JM: Just for clarification, what year is this? KC: Oh, God. GU: 2014? KC: Fidget spinners were popular. What year were fidget spinners popular, 2012? GU: Let's see. No, cause you were born in '04. KC: 2016. I was always the youngest in my class, so 2016, probably. GU: Yeah, you would be. KC: Yeah. Always the youngest in my class. Cutoff was September 4. My sister actually ended up getting booted back a grade because her birthday is on September 4, on Labor Day. My mom went into labor on Labor Day. 20 JM: Seventh grade is kind of a pivot point. Is there anything else you want to talk about, or do you want to lead into eighth grade from what you learned from that? KC: Seventh grade year, as far as my NAL stuff went, that was actually something I was still rather proud of. We had to memorize 28-to-30-something page packets to answer questions based on, and it was intense. It was definitely a close call that year. We ended up losing at the finals. We lost at the last second, and there was nothing we could do, and we knew we had lost. It wasn't it wasn't a fun time, but [shrugs] learning experience. After seventh grade I had a couple solid friends. I had a friend group that had formed through NAL where we would hang out, and I really looked up to the captain of our team. That's how I ended up getting into the high school that I went to. Their name was B at the time, and they went to Weber Innovation High School. I was like, "That's what I want to do." So ever since seventh grade, I was gunning to go to Weber Innovation High School. I didn't even know much what that had meant at the time, but all I knew is that I could graduate, at least with my associate's degree. I was like, "Yeah, that sounds like a good deal." I went on throughout eighth grade trying to get the best grades I could and everything. I was really upset after eighth grade because I went through and did all of my eighth grade and ninth grade math, I just didn't end up getting any credit because the counselor screwed me over. So I had to redo ninth grade math when I made it to high school, which sucked because high school at Weber Innovations started in ninth grade instead of 10th grade, which it starts traditionally around here. In eighth grade there wasn't really much other than I finally had reached the point where I'm like, "Yeah, I think bisexual's the right term. That makes a lot of sense." As cliche as it might sound, I took a shit ton of BuzzFeed quizzes and that's how it went. I was like, "This word kinda doesn't mean anything to me right now, but 21 it's a label for how I feel," so it was pretty okay. Around this time, I think it was ninth grade when I started dating people. My parents didn't know. My mom and my dad were still on okay terms. I mean, after having twins and a sudden shock like that, they were okay. Around this time, side note, my mom nearly died. She ended up with pre-cancer cells all up in her lady bits on her insides. On her uterus and cervix she had pre-cancer cells, and that was courtesy of my biological father, who gave her HPV. She had one of the strains that didn't go away, so she had a hysterectomy, which was fine initially, but then she ended up with a huge cyst and she almost didn't make it. She nearly went full septic; she almost died. She still has heart problems from it. That was definitely a lot to deal with, just 'cause she was in and out of the hospital and we were wondering if she was going to make it or not. GU: Just to recap really quick, you were at Weber Innovation High School for all four years? KC: All four years of high school, yes. JM: Okay. And then I'm assuming your mother did make it. KC: Yes, she did, thankfully. JM: You said 'scare', so I just want to clarify. You're going into ninth grade, you're aware you're bisexual, you mentioned you started dating. Do you start dating men and women, or just heteronormative? KC: I try to stay heteronormative because after that one time that I talked about in seventh, eighth grade, I told a girl that I liked her and she was like, "That's weird." I was like, "Oh, that is weird." I tried to stay fairly heteronormative until that point, so as far as dating went, I didn't really know what dating was, and that was an interesting thing. It was a long-distance relationship because they lived in South Jordan and I did not. There was a lot of texting, a lot of calling, a lot of in-betweens. 22 There wasn't really much dating that went on. Just more, "Hey, we kinda like each other, so let's keep in contact." That's pretty much all that was, and that lasted until about halfway through my ninth-grade year. It went from about halfway through my eighth, so about a year. Through eighth grade and everything, we won the championship that year. Might I add, we completely destroyed the other team, so that was a highlight. That was the year that my uncle died, though. He was in a tragic car accident. A junkie, zonked out on pills, zoomed out in the middle of the lane, and he crashed his truck and didn't make it. JM: What grade was that? KC: It was in seventh grade, I remember, 'cause in art class, I actually drew a commemorative piece about losing him. It was a baby duck because he always liked to go duck hunting. JM: Is there anything else you want to talk about in junior high before we jump into high school? KC: No, there wasn't really much else. Oh, the girls' locker room. In junior high, there was everyone just changing; they were all just undressing and everything, and I was the awkward person that would go into one of the shower stalls and pull the curtain around and change because I didn't feel comfortable at all. Not just with my body, I didn't want to see anybody else changing, I was always like, [covers eyes and chuckles awkwardly] with my head down because I didn't want to accidentally stare. Because at this point, I was kind of realizing, "Hey, girls are pretty," and I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, so I would always go and change in a separate area, which was always awkward. Always took the longest time, I swear. GU: So it was a combination of exposing your own body to other people and looking at other people? 23 KC: Yes. JM: So then in ninth grade, you go to high school at Weber...? KC: Innovations. JM: Innovations. You've been an overachiever, you say, at this point. I'm assuming this is kind of an accelerated learning high school? KC: It is an early college school. JM: How are you doing in those kinds of classes? KC: I initially started in a STEM program that they had. It was Project Lead the Way. I ended up doing physics and pre-engineering courses there until I had some serious beef with my physics professor. No one should be teaching physics that early in the morning, I swear. That was the first class that I ever got a C in, and I was furious. I had never gotten anything less than a B+ and I thought it was the end of the world. It was not the end of the world. O-chem's the end of the world, but, hey, we're getting there. In ninth grade, I didn't really have many friends because Weber Innovation Center is actually a pool. They pull from all of the other high schools, so from Bonneville, from Weber, from Roy and from Fremont; all sorts of people were just coming to this place because it was an early college high school. That was something that was new, being around so many other people. You'd never guess who I ran into there. I ran into AM. I thought she had fallen off the face of the planet, but no, she actually had just gone to Weber Innovation Center a year earlier than I had. So it was pretty cool, at least knowing some of the people there. But I didn't really get to know anybody until I got into a Cards Against Equestria game, which is your more child-friendly Cards Against Humanity game that my friends and I from high school play. We were always playing games, reading books, and not doing our work. We were a menace to the general 24 population of the high school. There was a lot that went on in my ninth-grade year. There was Soviet bombing, which is where you would steal somebody's Chromebook—because it was an all-online school—and you would set the Soviet National Anthem up to play as soon as they opened their Chromebook, on the loudest that you could. It was great, but it wasn't a normal high school. We didn't have fixed class schedules or anything, we just kind of showed up, and like I said, did all our work online—which was actually a great preparation for college because there is no set schedule. You just have to work at your own pace on your own stuff and get help from the professors when you can. That's pretty much what high school was like. We ended up getting in trouble a lot because we were loud kids. I was halfway through ninth grade when I discovered energy drinks. It was a good time, but you have to imagine: I am about the same height that I was, but I was at least 20 pounds lighter. I don't think I ended up being 5'1 until 10th grade, so I might have been 4'11 or something, just chugging Bangs. It was so ridiculously bad for my health, looking back on it, but I have no regrets. I did date someone that was... I don't know if the correct term would be genderfluid or transgender, in their case, but after I broke it off with the person that I was talking to on the phone and stuff, I started dating this person and they weren't stable. They had too many things going on and it was really hurting them and everyone that they had in their life at the time. They just kind of fell off the face of the earth for three months, and I had no idea where they went or what had happened to them. It turns out they had ended up in a mandatory mental health facility for trying to harm themselves and others, and they wanted to get back together after that. I was like, "No, you were gone for three months. I don't want to be involved anymore." 25 My first real taste of the queer community was meeting one of my best friends, still to this day. Their name is S or SK, depending on which one they want to go by, and they are non-binary and they are agender and they were just a shock to me. Not a bad shock, but like a pleasant shock, like, "Wow, there is an 'other' category." Throughout that experience, it was really nice. There wasn't really much else that happened in ninth grade, but in 10th grade, I was behind in all my classes. They started to send me into one of the counselors nearly daily so that I could get caught up, which I got caught up in no time flat. It was literally just me putting pedal to the metal, pen to paper; I just had to do it. It wasn't fun, but I did it. I discovered my love for chemistry in 10th grade when I literally did the entirety of the chemistry course in a quarter because it was just so interesting. It was so much fun. I was like, "Wow, this is some cool stuff." Throughout 10th grade, I started getting into college classes up here with Weber State through our early college program. I took history and poli sci, so that was rather interesting. In 10th grade I met another person that I, again, still consider to be my best friend to this day. Their name is RA and they are bisexual and they use they/them pronouns and are just awesome as a person. I think that they're really cool. Around this time, I'd known my current partner for a little bit, but we finally started getting to know each other right before COVID happened. Over the course of COVID, after school and everything got shut down, we finally got together, and we're still together to this day. It's been a long journey, that's for sure. JM: What year did COVID happen? KC: 2020. GU: In 10th grade. 26 KC: Yeah. The virus hit and I was cooped up in the house and everything, and I started making more and more friends online through Discord. That's how I met my brother from another mother. His name is JL, which is the English white trash pronunciation of it because I can't pronounce Swedish. I've tried. He lives in Sweden and we have been friends pretty much since COVID hit. It's really interesting to see so many different points of view from outside the US: seeing how things look from Sweden, seeing how things look from Australia, seeing how things look from England. I feel like it was a very good experience. But also, my parents were like, "Yeah, they could be lying to you and they could come and kill our whole family." “Yeah, certainly can't happen, definitely can't happen.” I would say it's more rare than anything, where certain people are just out to hurt everybody they meet. JM: Since you're getting online friends, that's how you're maintaining a social life while everything's shut down. How did COVID affect your mental health and your schooling? KC: Schooling didn't really change much at all. Like I said, it was all online before, still was all online. My school was definitely ahead of the curve by that. They were just like, "Yeah, don't come to school, keep doing your classes, Zoom if you need it." That was just the norm for my school, and that was fine. As far as mental health, being cooped up in the house and everything definitely led to some less-than-savory memories of my current dad. He had a lot going on, and he was in a lot of pain from injuries related to work. He's a firefighter, and you can definitely end up with work-related injuries in that field. He had a lot going on and he was just away from the house so much. He started yelling and he started saying a lot of awful things. In 10th grade, we did end up moving right in October, right at the start of the year. We moved from Farr West to Pleasant View because they couldn't afford the 27 house anymore, so just hop, skip, and a jump away. I did have a brief taste of normal high school that I didn't talk about in ninth grade. I went to Fremont for two classes. I went there for Spanish and ceramics and it was fun. The halls were way too crowded, though. Oh, my gosh. There were so many people. I never went back after that. It was like, "Nope, nope, Weber Innovations. That's the way for me." We had class sizes of 20 people there. It was very small, very few people, and it was very nice. When COVID and everything happened, like I said, my dad was not in a good place. It was right before my first day of ninth grade when he started offering me alcohol and just continually pushing, like, "Hey, this tastes really good. You should try it,” or “Hey, as long as you're responsible, you can drink this." It was definitely something that was interesting and different and new. One of the reasons, jumping back, why I didn't show anyone what I looked like when I was changing in gym classes was because my mom had put me on Nutrisystem because she thought I was too big. I was the same weight that I am now, and it was fine. There was nothing wrong with me. There wasn't any reason to put a teenager on Nutrisystem just because I was in a growing phase and just hadn't completely grown into my body yet. I felt like that was kind of outrageous, now that I'm looking back on it, because she was always having us diet with her. It was like she needed her own motivation to finally commit to it, and if her kids were on it, and if there weren't any other options in the house, that definitely would make it easier. Bouncing back to 10th grade, my dad, whether he likes to admit it or not, did assault me, and I did not appreciate that very much. It started this whole spiral where I was drinking on my own. I don't have any scars from the places where I cut myself, thankfully, but there was a lot of pain there. I would take half a bottle of 28 ibuprofen or half a bottle of Tylenol at a time, to the point where I can't have Tylenol anymore because it tastes awful. One of the things that they put in those so that you don't do that is stuff that'll trigger certain senses, certain stimulations in your brain, and I can't have Tylenol any more 'cause of it. It was around this time that I started to have sensory issues as well. Textures would just start feeling wrong all of a sudden, and I would have fits where I would have to hit myself, have to feel pain, have to scratch, have to do something to just keep a decent grasp on the world, because everything felt like it was slipping. I don't actually know what was happening at that point in time. I've been to the doctor and they're like, "I don't know. Something happened." After COVID and everything, through most of 11th grade, things were still kind of 50/50 of, "Hey, are we going to show up to school? Hey, are we going to not? What's going on?" I would show up occasionally, and at this point, I was almost completely done with my high school courses. I was able to enroll fully in the early college program about halfway through 11th grade. I started coming up here on campus, which was really nice. It was a decent getaway, and it was really, really nice to see other people that were like me, to see other people that just like wearing jeans and t-shirts, to see some people show up in their PJs and just have the freedom to do so. It was incredible, just my first taste of the outside world. Ever since I was small, I've always wanted to go from A-to-B as fast as I can. By the time I graduated high school, I had my associate's done, and I was enrolled here in the current program that I am, with a crap ton of prereqs done too. I ended up pushing forwards through a whole lot of stuff. There were some interesting times, especially recently. Not much happened in 11th grade other than COVID was scary, but that was about it. I had to fight my mother to get my vaccination because she didn't believe in 29 it. I am fully vaccinated. I haven't gotten any of the boosters though, just because I'm lazy. I am bad at scheduling. I only ever ended up getting COVID once, and that was right before my driver's test. I wore a mask and everything the whole time, but my mac and cheese tasted terrible. I was so upset because that was the best mac and cheese that I had the day before, and the day after, it tasted terrible and I was very sad. Like I said, I've always loved food. Food's pretty good. After all of that happened, everything kind of just came to a head with my parents. They finally ended up getting a divorce at the end of my high school year, after everything had just gotten to the point where they were so far off-page from each other that they just couldn't reconcile anymore. They ended up splittin', and I did end up spending a couple months of my last year of high school with some extended family instead of at home, because I just didn't feel safe there. There was a lot that happened through my senior year, and my partner and I were luckily still together and pretty happy about it. My parents disagreed about us being together when we finally told them, so we were like, "Okay, JK, we're not together anymore." Totally were, but. That was one of the things that just kept me going through all that is, if I were to die, it would make my brother sad. If I were to die, it would make my partner sad. Those little things that you're trying to hold on to when you're at the end of your rope. Then by the time everything had kind of concluded, we moved from Plain City to where my family currently resides, back up in North Ogden. Halfway through my 11th grade year, we had another rehoming and I lost my dog at the time, Chase, but we kept the rabbit. After we sold Chase, then we got a dog named Cooper, and Cooper was too nippy for the boys because he had blue heeler in him—that was literally what he was bred to do. So we sold that dog, and then because my little brothers wanted a dog so bad, I was like, "If we had just kept my dog Chase…” He 30 was great. He was a goldendoodle, he was dumb as a box of rocks, but he was the best dog. We ended up moving into the new house and we got a poodle. The poodle killed the rabbit. My partner and I ended up coming home to eat lunch and pick up some things in-between classes. I was still at Weber Innovations, but my partner graduated early and went to Ogden Technical College, so they had a way more flexible schedule. After all that had happened, we cleaned up the bunny, put him in a box, and put him in the garage. We were like, "Yeah, he is dead." It was quite a mess, honestly, and my little brothers were heartbroken that their rabbit had died. They still don't know the poodle killed him because they are very fond of the poodle as well. Her name's Coco. After all this had happened, I was finally approaching my 18th birthday after my graduation. When I turned 18, I only lived in the house for about a month or so before I moved in with my partner, because I just didn't want to be there anymore. Throughout my work experiences, ever since I turned 16, I've had a job. When I was 16, I was putting in over 40 hours a week because my job didn't exactly follow good legal practices. I was working 40 hours a week as a 16-year-old while still maintaining everything; I still got As in my classes, I was fine. I did end up switching jobs when I was 17, just because I didn't like that they were breaking the rules and I didn't like working the hours that I had. I'm very happy to be with my partner now. We went through and we remodeled the majority of their parents' basement because we can't afford anything more expensive or extravagant than their parents' basement at the current moment, because who can? The housing market right now, apartments, everything: so expensive. Recently, for Christmas, we got our son, our little boy, our beautiful 31 kitten. He is absolutely adorable. His name's Mew, and he is one of the best things that's happened to me. I'm very happy with where I am at now, and I still honestly don't know what I am as far as gender goes. Genderfluid is probably the closest I've found to what I feel most days, because some days I'm definitely more in the they/them mode, and some days I'm more in she/her mode. It really depends. Since I've been with my partner and everything, I've been really able to open up and start getting better. I've gone to therapy since and I love my therapist. She is amazing. Her name's EL. She's a lesbian. She has so many cats and she is a wonderful lady. Her parents are also lesbians, and she's given me so much help and guidance throughout navigating what I am and where I stand. Another person to shout out to is Lorrie, your lovely Lorrie in your historian records department. She's awesome. Throughout all this, I've finally gotten to a point where I'm like, "My body is totally my body, and I'm going to do what I please with it." It took a long time to get where I am. I'm still managing to try and be a perfectionist in all my classes, despite my therapist's best wishes. That's pretty much everything that's happened to me from then to now. JM: Okay. We've got some wrap-up questions. KC: Yes, absolutely. JM: Are you currently out to any of your relatives? KC: My coming-out story. You probably want to hear about that. I realized definitely that I liked girls and also that I liked boys, so one day, I asked my mother to come downstairs, I just started sobbing. My dad wasn't home, he was at work, and I just started sobbing. She's like, "What's the matter? What's the matter?" I'm like, “Mom, I think I like girls.” 32 She was like, “Oh,” and it kind of just got left at that. JM: Was your mother religious? Is your mother currently religious? KC: She was religious, but she definitely has a different outlook on life after her first divorce happened. She no longer was so on board with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She was not about that, for the reason the temple marriage is the only thing that you can have to keep your family in the afterlife, from how they see it, and she wasn't about that. Especially since she had married someone that she absolutely hated at this point, so after all that, she wasn't particularly religious. She wasn't necessarily discouraging, but she wasn't exactly encouraging either. The thing that just upset me the most about that whole experience is that right immediately after the day after, suddenly my dad comes and picks me up from school. He wasn't supposed to pick me up from school, but he did, and apparently my mother had outed me to him. I was hurt. I still haven't been able to trust my mother the same way that I did before that. No matter what way you frame it, no matter how you say, "Yeah, I was just trying to get you the best resources," or whatever, I wasn't ready and that really hurt me. JM: When you say, 'Dad,' we're talking with your stepdad at the time? KC: The one that adopted me. It's been consistently the same one since the adoption. There wasn't anything else. JM: I just wanted to make sure. KC: Yes, no worries. JM: When did that happen? KC: That happened around, I want to say, the end of ninth grade, when I finally affirmed, "Yeah, this isn't right." I didn't feel like just pursuing guys was right. There was a girl that I had a little bit of a fling with, after that situation, before I met my partner. Turns out she was dating a guy, wasn't out to anyone, and it was a mess. She was at the 33 normal people high school. I met her in my 3D art and design class that I had there. It wasn't good. Nothing good came of that. JM: Okay. What was the queer or genderfluid representation that you saw growing up? KC: That I saw growing up? Pretty much nothing until I hit junior high. There wasn't anything on shows or TV until right about when I hit junior high, when people started being represented, like Gray's Anatomy. They had a lesbian couple on there, and my parents were just like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe they have to show these girls kissing. Why?" My grandma would say the same thing, and I was just shoved further into the closet at that point. But my parents, they did an okay-at-best job of handling finding out that their kid is not normal in the traditional, stereotypical, ‘everyone's-the-same’ way. JM: Do you have any queer icons? KC: Other than the few that I mentioned? RuPaul, always. Everyone knows who RuPaul is, and the way that I actually found out was when he was judging Skin Wars. I didn't know who RuPaul was before then, but then… Drag queens. Oh my God. Slay. Absolutely. I love drag queens because they do makeup better than anyone, I swear. I think it might have been after I started seeing drag queens doing their makeup and putting all that stuff on their face where I was like, "You know what? I don't want to do that." Even though it's a completely different process for them, I didn't see much difference between what they were doing and what most girls my age were doing, so I was like, "Yeah, I think I'm done with that." Of course, there weren't any other people that I truly knew that were like, queer-queer and not just screen-queer. I did have an insane celebrity crush on a girl, and I still really like her. My partner has had a hard time with that. We'll watch a show and she's in it, and I'm like, [head in hands] "Oh." They're like, "Stop." 34 I'm like, "My gay heart. Leave me be." GU: Who is it? KC: Madelaine Petsch. Beautiful redhead. GU: Riverdale. KC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. GU: I've seen it. It's chaotic, but I... KC: It's definitely chaotic, but her, and the fact that she ended up being gay in the series too. GU: Very naturally, too. KC: Yeah, and the fact that she is in real life was a shock to me, but I was fine with it because she was pretty. She still is pretty. JM: Well, as our final wrap-up question, unless there's anything else you think of: is there anything that you would want to say to younger self or others who are going through a similar situation that you did, growing up? KC: There's always going to be something better. You might not be able to see it. Everyone's always saying, "Yeah, it's gotta get worse before it gets better," but man, it can really get a lot worse. When you think you hit rock bottom, sometimes you just gotta grab a shovel because you're going to go deeper, bud. The only way that you can get out of the situation that you’re in right now is to find a good support system. Because you can be the strongest person, you can go through everything, you can be through hell; you can be through all circles of it, every level of Dante's Inferno, and you're not going to be able to make it out unless you have people that can support you. That's why I consider my friends more than my family when it comes to a whole bunch of stuff, because they were there for me a lot more than anyone that blood had picked. They always say blood is thicker than water, but that's not the full 35 quote. It's, "Blood is thicker than water, but that doesn't really matter. Water is the people that you choose, and water of the brotherhood," or whatever they said back in ye olden days. There's a lot out there in the world and there are more people like you. That's one very important thing, is that even though you don't see them, even though they aren't portrayed, even though they are persecuted, even though you may feel like there is no one else out there that has been through what you've been through, there are 8 billion people on this planet. There has got to be at least some overlap. You can't have 8 billion different stories. Just remember to hold on to the right people when you find them, and know that everyone out there is going through something that is making their life hell. It's a pretty good overview of what I feel. JM: Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to add to your short story? KC: Can I insert a picture of my cat? JM: Yeah, there's a point when we'll send you the documents, and we'll also ask you to submit any other things to accompany it. KC: Oh, my gosh. I will send you guys a picture of my cat. Perfect. JM: Okay. I think that will conclude the interview. 36