🌲🌴Arbor Day Musings 🌳🌲
My Queer Roots and the Trees That Knew Me
Today is Arbor Day, which we’re pretty sure counts as a gay holiday. Whether or not you plant a tree today, we are reflecting on the forces that constantly try to uproot queer joy. Nay and Vico thought about the trees of their past and the depth of their roots. Read on and you might get hungry for some sapphic fruit. Plus, a new song to blast in your apartment!
Also, the gays love trees and plants, so there's that. 🌳
Vico:
My brain has been in a thousand million different places this past week and after reading this prompt what I want most is to literally do nothing but lay at the base of a tree, protected by its trunk while receiving some refreshing shade as I gaze at the glittering sun rays that peek through the leaves. Perhaps hang a hammock somewhere and let myself sway with the cooling tropical winds…. OK… but for realllsss? The first tree that comes to mind is a mango tree. Thick trunk, robust leaves, testicle looking fruits hanging from it (lol). Suckin on them juicy sweet and tart deliciousness hehe. I ain’t even kidding… look at the size of these! 🤤
Alriiiiightttttt back to the *actual* prompt… and I’m gonna try not to make this super weird with the previously hilarious horny segue, but when I think of “Queer Roots and the Trees That Knew Me” (while I do think of thick juicy mangos in general) I specifically remember the mango tree behind my grandparents’ house… keep a straight face people! I’m being sweet now! *ehem*
This house has gone through a series of transformations all while being witnessed by this spectacularly magnificent mango tree. I’ve seen photos of the house when it was made of wood with metal plank ceilings, the tree right there, steady and consistent yet ever so slightly giving us the perspective of change and growth. Then photos of the house as it was being re-made with cement. A humble kitchen connected to a living room and a bedroom that gave refuge to the slumber of my grandparents with their 7 kids (my dad included). This mango tree has been a steady and sustainable supplier of snacks and desserts to so many generations. To think of my dad as a 5-year-old plucking a fresh fruit from this tree and fast forward 30 years later to a 5-year-old me doing the same?? Precious!
Sustainability is pretty gay, yeah? Resilience is gay, right?
This tree has been through at least 6 hurricanes and as queer people we’ve been through and seen a lottttt… and still? We remain constant. Steady, connected and always bearing fruit. Fruit meaning: love, care, earnestness, protection, wisdom.
Not to be too dramatic, but when I die… I want my ashes to be spread by a mango tree. Perhaps several generations from now… you’d be sucking on me hehe.
🌲🌳🌴
Nay:
What’re some of your favorite trees? My mind immediately goes to a long time fave of mine, a large, old tree in Champaign, Illinois. This tree has some branches that are super low and spread out across the ground of the park.
I’ve seen people in the Chambana Uncensored facebook group bring up this tree. She’s a hometown star. As I was searching through my 116k+ photos (I have a problem) to find one of this tree, I was thinking about how almost every time I go home, I gotta at least drive by it and see what it’s up to.
Thinking of that tree led me to the tree in the front yard of my childhood apartment and the matching one that was across the street in front of my aunt’s. Hours, days, weeks, years of laying under these trees. Swings, picnic tables, blankets, babies, babies that grew up, numerous pets from dogs to rabbits, hard conversations, easy conversations, laughing, crying, flowers left over from funerals, dirt covered homework, what didn’t find its way to the shade of these trees? I can remember sitting underneath and eavesdropping on my neighbor who was breaking up with her boyfriend. She was on the phone and I was 11 or so sitting under the tree eating up every word. She slammed the phone down on the receiver (landline, baby!) and started blasting Monica’s Don’t Take It Personal and I thought damn, that song is cool. I imagined being grown up and alone in my apartment singing that cool song post break-up. I couldn’t wait to be heartbroken in that way. LOL weirdo.
I think the glamorizing of heartbreak was my early gay yearning practice lol. You know how the gays love to yearn. I would try to imagine what lost love would feel like and think to myself that I’d just be happy to have been loved at all. Ok drama, cause girl, what? Chill, the heartbreak is coming soon enough, don’t you worry. Also, self-esteem? Please find some.
I can absolutely report now that it is still very cool to blast Monica when you’re alone and sad. Actually, I can't think of any time when Monica won’t hit. It’s both funny and concerning that my adolescent daydreams were about being grown up and alone and hurting, because honestly, as a kid, I was already doing that. I’m definitely someone that goes insular when I’m in pain. Heartbreak, a migraine, embarrassed, HA! See y'all in a week. I’ve gotta go figure this out by myself! I’m not sure if this has always been my inclination or if as a young person I didn’t usually get the support I needed and stopped asking for it. Who knows. That’s a fun question for the next daydream/nightmare.
Anyway, what the hell does all of this have to do with queer roots? I mean, maybe nothing but probably everything. To me, there is a comfort in knowing that part of myself, things I still do, like, love, hate, have always been with me. I like knowing that I didn’t lose all of myself along the way and that there are very certain parts of me that have never changed. The world and its people didn’t get to me all the way.
There are a few characteristics I have that my memory suggests have always been with me, and thank god one of those things is queerness. It didn’t make any sense to me back then but makes the most sense to me now. My roots were there then and they’re here now. These trees and I both have seen me change a lot but also remain myself in a lot of ways.
I’ll leave you with one last tree. It lives at one of my favorite spots right outside Urbana where Country Road 1900 E crosses a creek that’s off the Salt Fork River. These days, I love to sit by the ocean as often as possible but back when I was a landlocked Midwesterner, creeks were where it’s at.
That tree's roots run under that bridge and across the creek. The creek looks different every year. The roots aren’t always visible but they look the same when you can see ‘em. In dry years the creek is small and disconnected with the roots exposed. Rainy times have it bubbling and covering the roots and full of tadpoles. I think there’s an analogy in there about me also changing year to year but still being a rooty creek. LOL I don’t know. I do know that I love it when I’m feeling great and get to revisit somewhere that I’ve only known in pain or sadness. It’s a reclamation and a slight reintroduction. I’m like, are the trees up to date on me? Would they recognize my roots the way I can theirs?
both of y’all’s Arbor Day musings remind me of the Live with Ben, and how Nay described the magical throughline of queerness we can trace back!
the mangoes are queer joy shared intergenerationally 💛 and the rooty creek is each of our queerness being constants, through floods and mud and storms 🩵