Number 200 Winter 2024 $11.95Issue 201 / Spring 2025 COLORS OF SPRING Submission Deadline: February 15, 2025 www.rfdmag.org/upload S pring is more than just a season; it’s a vibrant celebration of life, renewal, and self-expression. As nature bursts into a riot of colors, we, too, are invited to shed the layers of winter and step boldly into our authentic selves. In the LGBTQ+ community, spring represents an opportunity to embrace the spectrum of our identities with pride and confidence. As we welcome the warmer days, consider how the colors around you inspire your personal journey. How do the shades of spring reflect your inner world? Are there new colors you’re ready to explore, both in your wardrobe and in your life? Whether it’s the pink of a budding rose that reminds you of a tender romance or the purple of a lilac that resonates with the strength of your identity, tell us about the colors of spring in your life that remind you that we are all part of something beautiful and ever-changing. Javier Trelis Sempere RFD 200 Winter 2024 3 Republicans Fucked Democrats Vol 51 No 2 #200 Winter 2024 Between the Lines Here in the Land of RFD we’re pushing to the future come what may. Our readers sent in a variety of approaches to the future—defining it, exploring the fictional and factual reali- ties of the future, exploring who they are now versus the past and making sense of living in the now while plotting a way forward. Some explored the idea via the media—comics, television and cinema representations of queer and transpeople. We’re also remembering a few familiar names in our com- munity and their passing. Please take a breath to remember all whom we share and forget to share. We have to say we love the images that folks send in they re- ally augment the stories and poetry that other folks share! RFD’s fifty years has been rocky and smooth all at the same time—a constant road shared with various friends along the way. We hope the future road is long for all of us and we appreciate each of you sharing your ideas, dreams and promises. On a practical note, we’re looking for helpers sometime in the spring of next year to come help inventory the RFD back issues in our storage unit in Northampton MA. If you are close by and are interested we’ll put together a little poll to come up with dates. Our goal is to inventory what’s left of our back issues so we can shift some of them to archives and libraries as well as sell them to make the road forward not entail a big U-Haul to move things again. From a sunny blustery day in New England —the RFD Collective4RFD 200 Winter 2024 RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149- 709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press, Inc., with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $11.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive RFD four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Northampton, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press, Inc. The records re- quired by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material as- sociated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001. Production Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier Production Editor: Matt Bucy Submission Deadlines Spring–February 15, 2025 Summer–May 15, 2025 See inside covers for themes and specifics. For online issues, advertising, subscriptions, back orders and other information visit www.rfdmag.org. Visual Contributors Inside this Issue Artwork not directly associated with an article. Front Cover "One Fine Day" by Patrick Gracewood Back Cover "Wading In" by Paul Wirhun/EGGMAN Front Inside Cover "Sunflowers" by Javier Trelis Back Inside Cover "Morning in Mendocino" by Matt Bucy Patrick Gracewood .......................2, 30 Denison Beach ..............................4 milo beach creature .........7, 27, 29, 36, 40, 45 Artboydaning ..............10, 11, 32, 35, 55, 57 Kirk Read .................................19 Javier Trelis ......................20, 46, 50, 53 Ricard Vyse ............................23, 24 Matt Gold .................................58 Detail of large carving "One Fine Day" by Patrick Gracewood. I won't be here that much longer. Wasn't sad because I understood life will go on, there will be a beautiful sunny day, birds singing, and made the celebratory relief sculpture. RFD 200 Winter 2024 5 CONTENTS We Are Still Here .........................Luna .................................5 My Dreams For the Years Ahead ...........Gordon Binder ........................8 For Queers of The Past, Present, and Future .J.N. exe ..............................10 The New Pronoun Tool ...................Source Aurora .......................11 Imaginary Planet .........................Carlo “Uranus” Quispe ................12 2035 ....................................Ed of All People ......................18 Foreigner ................................Khe Charles ..........................21 Aria .....................................Khe Charles ..........................21 Jogger ...................................Andre Le Mont Wilson ................22 Like Whitman’s Two Boys Together Clinging .....................Andre Le Mont Wilson ................25 To a Musician in a Caravaggio Painting .....James Kangas ........................26 Future Love ..............................Stephen Schwei ......................28 France ..................................Stephen Schwei ......................31 If I Lived ................................ Stephen Schwei ......................33 Antinostalgia ............................Blythe White .........................34 Inner Sanctum ...........................Joseph Zaccardi ......................35 Bring Me the Broomstick of Irene Selznick .........................Claude Chabot .......................37 Big Time: Pop Culture and the Path to Acceptance ....................Bob Mathis-Friedman ................47 Remembering Tom Spanbauer .............Clyde Hall with Kwai Lam .............59 Delishus Memories of Alan Sabal ...........Habibi, Agnes, and Keisha .............626RFD 200 Winter 2024 "Visitation of the Faerie Spirit" by Denison Beach. RFD 200 Winter 2024 7 I woke up to the sound of rainwater dripping in a bucket. Badger had managed to patch most of the leak in the roof with some old tape they had found at the bottom of one of the rusty cabinets in the tool barn. What would I have done without Badger? I’d probably have been dead. I slipped into the blue dress that I had found in the drag room when we first arrived. It was torn at the shoulder and it had some stains of mold on the hem, but it was still my favorite. I went downstairs and out into the bath area to wash my face and start the fire under the drum. After weeks of drought, last night’s rain had replenished the source and I was giddy at the prospect of finally being able to wash. Until then, we had been rationing the water and using most of it for the garden. Growing our own food felt like a daunting task at first, but thanks to the combined knowledge of Badger and Starlight we were getting better at it. I was just good at remov- ing weeds and picking slugs one by one so that they feasted on the grass instead of our lettuce. Six years ago, when Croquette started making preserves of every edible plant, berry and vegetable imaginable and stocking them in the cellar, Faeries made light fun of her. Croquette was one of those shy Faeries who preferred doing things over talking. Her obsession had been making all those preserves and to that end she had turned the kitchen into a witches’ lair. She had all kinds of wild herbs hang- ing from the ceiling to dry and watched over a handful of pots and cauldrons that she left simmer- ing for hours. The Faeries indulged Croquette, as they always did with the most eccentric among us, although a few were frankly annoyed by having to cook meals in a kitchen that smelled permanently of boiled cabbage and vinegar. We enjoyed talking about Croquette around the fire, sharing memories and stories. She had transi- tioned well past her fifties and was often harassed in the outer world for her weight and lack of passing, but that never prevented her from living life on her own terms. No one really knew where she was from or what she did for a living, if she did anything at all. She only spoke French, mostly to herself. We would not have survived the first winter without Cro- quette’s preserves and the recipes she had left writ- ten on a small notebook tucked away in the library. At the beginning it had only been Badger and me. When we decided to attempt the journey, my only wish had been to see the prairie and the ancestor’s tree one last time. As the world we knew was quickly falling apart, I prepared myself for the worst, but Badger wanted to live and it was their love and determination that carried us through. A few times I feared that we wouldn’t make it, like that night at the forest when we were assaulted in our sleep by a group of drunken militia men and had to flee leaving behind our backpack of supplies. The day we finally arrived at the sanctuary, the house was covered in vines and several window panes had been smashed. Some nasty asshole, probably a face- puffed teenager from the village with acne prob- lems, had sprayed “mort aux pédés” on the door. During the first five years of Le Pen as president, the gatherings continued uninterrupted. There was a need to come together and to heal after the shock of seeing the far-right taking power in one country after another. We spoke about resistance and resilience; we offered workshops in self-defense; we collected money for refugees; we joined in the struggles and protests of other groups in the region. At the same time, everything around us kept look- ing puzzlingly normal. People were going about their business, the stores stayed open, the shelves were full of food and the cost of gas even dropped thanks to the fracking projects approved by the new government. It was not until the war began, during the second term of Le Pen, that things started to change and change rapidly: the new laws on nation- al security, the blacklisting of activists, the climate crisis denialism, the state-sponsored hate campaign against minorities. For the Faeries, everything came to a head the night that five police vans appeared in front of the house and arrested everyone for infring- ing the new laws. The Faeries just spent a couple of nights at the police station, but the raid had a chill- ing effect on the life of the community. Soon after, the sanctuary was hit with inspections, fines and finally a court order to cease all activity. By the time of the Flare, the Faeries had already abandoned the sanctuary and the war descended into even more brutal and desperate bloodshed. When Badger and I arrived, we spent days cut- ting the growth around the house and cleaning the We Are Still Here by Luna8RFD 200 Winter 2024 mess that vandals had left behind. Some mysterious spell must have protected the interior of the house, as there were no traces of unwanted visitors. Apart from dust and mold, we only found the droppings of the occasional mouse. We also found one remaining Faerie. It was Sleeves, the tomcat who used to spend the season of gatherings at the sanctuary. Sleeves had gone back to his feral roots and it took a while to regain his trust, but after a few weeks he started getting closer to us until he finally felt confident enough to sleep in our bed. We spent that fall and winter eating through Croquette’s preserves and cutting wood for the stoves. After sunset, Badger would read in candle- light everything they could find in the library on how to live self-sufficiently, while I tried to mend the harp and teach myself to play. We made love every night as if it was our last, riding into sleep on the waves of emotion and pleasure unleashed by our orgasms. One morning in early spring, as we were still ly- ing in bed with Sleeves nestled at our feet, we were woken by the sound of the bell. In the haze of my semi-conscious state, I felt for a moment that I was waking up from a long nightmare and that some Faerie had just rung the bell for the morning circle. Then reality sunk in and I was suddenly terrified. In the new world we were living in, unexpected visitors were the last thing anyone wanted to see. We crept out of bed and tiptoed downstairs avoiding the creaking step. From a corner of one of the windows in the kitchen, all we could see was a wide-brimmed straw hat. Then we heard it: yooohooo! We rushed to open the door. We basked in the warmth of those deep blue eyes and broad, wrinkled smile. We couldn’t believe that Starlight was just stand- ing there in front of the door! We hugged and cried as many tears of happiness as we did of sorrow, for our reunion brought also the memory of our loss. Starlight was one of the elders of the community, beloved for his gentleness and green fingers. The night of his arrival we had the first heart circle since the sanctuary had been abandoned. We ended the day cuddling at the friendship room and falling asleep to the sound of crackling wood. Phones were among the first things of the old world to die, and yet the word managed to spread. As if connected by invisible threads, Faeries from far and wide had heard Starlight’s yooohooo and started to come home to the sanctuary. A week after Starlight, Bongo and his turtle arrived. Then it was the turn of Zimt and Arándano. Many more Faeries came over the weeks and months that followed. One of them brought a rifle. We had a series of long and excruciating circles regarding whether it was okay to have guns for self-protection or even to hunt. The bitter debates almost broke our fledgling communi- ty, but in that darkest hour the different sides finally managed to come to a consensus. The following day we made a ritual in which we put the rifle in a metal box and sank both of them at the bottom of the lake. We did so many more rituals in those early days. We were all becoming feral and growing our own food had also taught us to be much more attentive to the cycles and needs of the land. Some of us were learning to be fantastic foragers, discovering the troves of treasures that had always been hiding in plain sight in the forest. Others made their homes up in trees and befriended many a wild creature. I took to speaking with animal spirits and on full moon nights I summoned the owls. One thing we could not grow in the garden or forage for was retrovirals. The plague reared its ugly head again and the bodies of Starlight and other Faeries started to decay. Those of us who had been spared, remembered the deeds of our ancestors and came together to care for our sick and hold their hands until their last breath. We dug a small cemetery not too far from the ancestor’s tree where we put our siblings to rest, and let their flesh melt with the earth. It was heartbreaking to watch those Faeries go, knowing that the meds that kept them alive had been so widely available in recent memory. But Starlight saw it differently and asked us not to cry when his time would come. He felt immense gratitude that death would find him surrounded by the love and presence of Faeries. Under cover of darkness, a few Faeries liked on occasion to venture as far out as the monu- ment. At the beginning, they came back with tales of terrible fires raging down in the valley. We all knew about the fires as the ash darkened the sky and shrouded the sun for days on end. The world around us continued to spiral down into destruction and somehow it had forgotten about the Faeries. Over time the fires disappeared, as did the terrify- ing roar of fighter jets over our heads or the echo of faraway explosions. By now we have learned to live day-to-day, through our collective joys and sorrows, remembering to always plant the next harvest but also not knowing what tomorrow will bring. I have a recurring dream. I plunge into the lake and dive as deep as I can, almost out of breath, until I find the metal box containing the rifle. And, as I am just about to take the box into my hands, I wake up. All day today I have been restless, unable to fo- RFD 200 Winter 2024 9 cus or even do the simplest tasks. I knew what was nagging me. I went there before the sun hid behind the trees. I was afraid of being discovered and yet I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I just wanted to see it and hopefully get some relief. I dived deep into the lake and looked for the metal box. I took one plunge after another feeling the anxiety growing in my chest with each unsuccessful attempt. The sun was setting and the water was getting colder. I kept look- ing for it everywhere, tirelessly, desperately. I kept looking long after it was too dark to see. I left the lake dreading the dreams that will visit me tonight. "Wisteria" by milo beach creature. Archival photo artists and subjects unknown, design and all other photos by milo.Next >