The Fairest of Them All

My blog has turned into a place where I can publicly love on my friends and tell the world how great they are on their birthdays. This is good, but what happens when I fall behind and don't celebrate someone on (or even near) their honored day? Well hopefully forgiveness, so here goes...

Although a dubious career move and fiscally ruinous, living in Portland, OR for a year was a great thing for me. I got to shed my New York tough girl skin, kick back with the pine trees, and experience what can happen when all your energy isn't going into fighting for survival with eight million other people.

In Portland, people were so nice I was afraid of them. In New York, when strangers talk to you on the street it's either because they want money or are loco. In PDX, bus drivers tell you to have a great weekend on fridays and it's not because they're hitting on you. It's cause they hope you have a nice fucking weekend. It was totally confusing for me at first, then I began to revel in it.

When I moved into a giant dilapidated house across from the river, I had never met anyone as friendly as my housemate Fairley. Born on Strong Island, but raised in Humboldt County, Fairley talks to everybody. She loves riding the Greyhound bus because of the strangers she meets, and even made a documentary about it. Her parents were back-to-the-land hippies and she was raised up right in the redwoods, donating the proceeds from her lemonade stand to Earth First! when she was only 8 yrs old.

As Capricorns and video artists, we knew we were going to be friends right away and I even had the privilege of editing her senior thesis paper on Anarcha-Feminism. A few summers ago, I went to visit her at her parent's place and got to swim in a dragon fly sanctuary cold water pond on her dad's property while tripping on mushrooms. It was so rad. We've had some rough times over the years, but love each other so much that we decided to live together again when she moved to San Francisco.

Fairley's love of humanity especially extends to old people. She loves them and she is good with them. In fact, she wants to get her MSW with a focus on LGBT elders. Fuck yeah. I am so glad that Fairley will be fighting for the rights of the queers to be radical until our dying day. Oh yeah, and she's easy on the eyes. Happy belated birthday Big F, te queiro mucho hermana.