Pick Up the Pace

Pick Up the Pace

by Jem Ashton

Walking the dogs can be a frustrating experience all year round, but especially in the Fall. Denuding trees drop scents from the skies. These scents, unreachable to my dogs at all other times of the year, are now conveniently at their level and the temptation to tear away from the sidewalk to stick their noses in any pile we pass is high. In the late afternoon of December 9th, 2024, they were on their best behavior. I felt proud of them and, after an unusually busy weekend, I was relieved to be sharing an hour of peace with my pets.

As we walked down 900 East, a fairly busy commuter road just outside the heart of Salt Lake City, I heard a voice behind us. I ignore voices. It’s none of my business. 

Dolly, my boyfriend’s dog and the older of the two, gently diverged from our path to sniff a tree trunk. This was acceptable - a gentle request to explore the olfactory world that is essential to their being but a mystery to me. Giving her time with the tree trunk, I stopped walking. My booted footsteps ceased; the auditory layer of our environment quietened. The voice that was behind us became more apparent. 

I looked toward the approaching figure and his words became clear. He was saying faggot.

“Faggot! Yeah, I’m talking to you, faggot!”

Dolly wasn’t done sniffing, but we had to go. I had to go. The dogs were still ignoring the voice, but it was now all I could think about. No more sniffing. I quickened my pace. The voice continued to call out. Faggot, faggot, faggot in repetition among other words I couldn’t quite make out. We turned a corner and he stopped, but the voice kept rushing through my head. I didn’t slow down. 

When we got home, I let my boyfriend, Kyson, know the dogs were on their best behavior. They did a great job and it was a good walk.

“...and some guy called me a faggot.”

It’s his instinct to try to solve my problems, even ones like this. He wanted to figure out some way to report this guy. 

“There has to be somebody to call.”

There isn’t though. There’s nobody to call when you’re called a faggot. What good would it do? Technically, I could report a case of harassment to the police, but it’s not like it will actually do anything. They can’t do anything when “some guy called me fag on 900 East.” Regardless, I appreciate Kyson’s instinct to make it better. We should expect the world to be better. We should expect to feel safe. 

This dog walking route is one I’ve always felt safe on. It’s become the standard, the one we go on most, because it’s where I had never been called a fag before. I’ve been called a fag in Liberty Park, downtown, or on busier roads plenty of times. On the nearly empty sidewalks of the quiet neighborhoods surrounding our home, it had never happened. I was taken by surprise.

In the past couple years, I’ve been called a fag more than ever. Despite the fact I’ve done everything I can to draw less attention to myself. I’ve deliberately started dressing in generally more “masculine” clothes - at least when I know I’m going to be alone. When I know I’m going to be safe in a safe place with safe people, I’ll go ahead and fag out a bit. Otherwise, I’ll do what I can to draw the least amount of attention. On the walk, I was wearing jeans and a completely unremarkable winter coat. I felt unremarkable. 

“I just don’t understand what I’m doing,” I say, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

In the past, I wasn’t so afraid and I didn’t give a fuck about how people would react to me. I was wearing purses on a daily basis (they’re convenient), I’d wear makeup, I’d wear outrightly feminine clothes. I was so much faggier, but I was rarely the target of harassment. Now, I won’t even use a tote bag, I never wear makeup, and I go full “normcore” most days. I’m more of a target than ever.

To be fair, I dropped the makeup more so because it didn’t fit the vibe I’m going for anymore. The purses, however, I stopped using after some old guy in the neighborhood yelled out “eww, it’s even got a purse” a few years back on another dog walk. The rest has changed gradually after years of voices calling fag have gathered in my mind.

Each time it happens, it brings attention to how much of myself I’ve stripped away to feel safe - to feel like I’ve decreased the chances of being unsafe - only for it to have not really made a difference. I’m dressing differently, I’m being perceived the same. Men on the street are still calling me a fag. I am still a fag. 

The harassment is more common now, but it isn’t new. When I was 19, I was leaving the train station on my way home from work close to midnight when a man approached me from behind, grabbed my shoulder, forcibly turned me around, then said “oh, sorry, I thought you were a bitch.” Nope, just a faggot. It was on my way to this same job on another occasion in broad daylight when a group of younger teens slowed their car to yell out “dick or pussy?” Both instances were months apart. I reacted to both feeling weirdly satisfied rather than scared. Oh so you think I’m pussy?

The underlying threat of violence has always been there, but it didn’t click until an instance a couple years ago. It was near the end of Summer and I had started a new job at an environmental nonprofit after graduating with my bachelor’s degree. I was working on moving our office to a new location: packing, packing, moving, packing. I was in shorts, listening to music, kind of prancing around. I was having a good time. Then, a man on the street very aggressively said that word.

Faggot!

I’d heard it before. No big deal.

I’ll stick a knife up your ass faggot!

That was new to me. I hurried into the office and I locked the door. He came up to the window and kept saying it. I picked up my phone and mocked a phone call, which prompted him to leave. Maybe this was one time when I should have called the police. It was a real threat of violence. They never would have come in time to do anything about it though. He had already turned down another street, never to be seen again. So I thought. The next day, there he was again. I went inside. He was yelling the same things, this time adding slurs that didn’t even apply to me, but he didn’t come to the window. He just kept yelling as he made his way down the same path as the day before.

This is when it finally clicked that anyone who’s called me a fag out on the street genuinely wishes harm upon me. They want me to be hurt and they might even want me to be dead.

It was also the kick-off of a long year of being the target of harassment with unusual frequency. At least once a week, somebody would call me a fag and I’d hear that threat of violence.

It would come in places where I used to feel safe: crowded parks, busy streets, the grocery store. Each time, I’d ask myself, “what did I do?”

The frequency has lessened a bit now - maybe just once a month - but I know that’s in part because I’m hiding more. I don’t walk the dogs in the park as often. I’m more cautious in public when I’m alone. I’m doing more to just look less gay.

I don’t know what’s changed in my community. I could probably find a way to neatly tie it to the political moment, but I honestly don’t care what the source of the problem is. Whatever it is, I know it’s largely out of my control and I can’t do anything about it. I feel powerless. I feel like I’m in danger. I feel like I need to get out of here. 

That feeling became very clear in my mind after a trip to New York City earlier this year. I was visiting my cousin in Brooklyn for a weekend. We saw an extremely gay play, we were going to gay bars, guys were winking at me and waving hello, we were making sweet conversations with people everywhere we went, and it felt cartoonishly welcoming overall. I was enthralled, I felt at ease, and I felt safe. Then, the day after I got back to Salt Lake City, I was paying for parking at my gym when I turned around and the guy standing behind me in line looked at me dead in the eye and said, “fucking faggot.” The first words a stranger said to me after returning from my trip.

Maybe, despite being a “blue bubble,” Salt Lake City isn’t the hub of progressiveness that it claims to be. It’s still in Utah, one of the reddest states we’ve got.

I know New York City has its share of assholes. I’d be called a fag there too, I’m sure of it. I’d just hope it’s more often in a way I like it, because I do like it sometimes in a kind of fucked up twist. But it can’t be coming from some random asshole on the street, especially not as often as it happens now. It’s a cutting word that’s severed me from my sense of place and my sense of community here in Utah. I have a wonderful community here, but it’s shrinking as people move away. Maybe it’s time for me to pack up and go find a community somewhere else. This is a problem I don’t mind running away from.

Introducing Me (DRAFT)

 By Jem Ashton

When I was a little girl living in Taylorsville, my parents played tennis at the nearby high school’s court in the summer. My sister and I would usually just hang out on the court eating M&Ms, which I liked to turn upside-down, because the flipped M kind of matched the Wilson logo on the tennis balls. 

“See? Now they match.”

An early sign of what I could later call sensibilities and just one example among many of what I could later call queer sensibilities - an appreciation for order, aesthetics, and little amusements. I wasn’t only interested in the fact that the flipped Ms resembled the Ws, I was interested in creating a consistency. When the M&M Ms matched the Wilson Ws, they became part of the tennis experience. They were no longer a random candy that happened to be here with us on the tennis court, they belonged here.

Order and consistency created belonging. 

My childhood was filled with belonging, despite the fact that I liked to dress up in my aunt’s old dresses and my cousin’s princess costumes. Despite the fact I consistently chose the path of womanhood when my family played a game of Life. That when Mrs. White wasn’t an option for me during a game of Clue, I’d go with my reliable backup option, the faggoty Professor Plum. Aside from an largely unexplored and completely random interest in baseball for a brief period, everything I did as a child seemed to be in opposition with the gender I was assigned at birth. For a long time, I didn’t notice, because I didn’t have any other boys to compare myself to. The only other kids I knew were my sister, Madeline, and our first three cousins: Isabella, Fiona, and Emma. The kids I knew were like me - I thought I was just being a kid.

When I started school, I naturally befriended the girls in class. During recess, we would run around the playground acting out the macabre and fantastical stories we’d come up with together. The cracks in the blacktop were silk webs where the giant spiders might bite our heads off. The field down the hill was forbidden territory where gangs of raiders might shoot our heads off. The towers of bridges, slides, and monkey bars were predictably castles where another awful thing might happen to our heads. Imagined danger was everywhere. These stories would follow us back to the classroom, where Ashlyn, my best friend for years, and I would write them down. Our teachers would say “this is… creative.” Yes, it was.

As the years went on, the distinction between me and the other boys grew more apparent. The reaction to me almost exclusively having girl friends went from “ooo the girls like him” to “oh…he’s kinda…” and I could feel that change. The change in how people looked at me. I thought I was just being a kid and I’m certain the kids I knew thought so too, but the adults in my life thought something different. In their eyes, I was being queer.

I was being queer.

Outside of school, even moreso. Whether at home or at my grandma’s house, playing with my sister or with my cousins, the roles I took on in our imaginary worlds spread across the gender spectrum.

“Pretend I have short hair.”

“You do have short hair.”

“Girl short hair.”

I liked the names Rachel and Paige - inspired by an instructor in one of my mom’s workout tapes and the character from Charmed, respectively. As a boy, my characters were named Bob, Bill, or Max - less inspired. Regardless of my characters’ name or gender, they’d often wear a dress. Primarily because the chest of dress-up clothes at my grandma’s house only had dresses, but also because I loved wearing dresses. Even after more traditionally boy-ish options were added to the dress-up chest, I’d go for the dresses for as long as they still fit my growing body. If I had to wear a boy costume, I’d opt for the cape. I didn’t mind the cape - made from red velour with a gold trim, it at least had the potential to billow theatrically, to give my costume some drama.

Despite my vested interest in theatrics, dramatics, and embodying characters, I never took up acting. My family existed in a self-wrought isolation, imbuing my sister and I with a pervasive shyness that I’m confident wouldn’t have taken root in us under different circumstances. Social situations outside of my family and school were largely non-existent. We would only go to the community pool if it was completely empty. We were discouraged from seeking extracurricular activities. We were rarely allowed to visit friends and it was even rarer that they were allowed to visit us. The message was clear: socializing is a burden and it should be avoided at all costs. 

I understand why my parents did this. They were in their early 20s, raising two kids who (the math would argue) were life-altering accidents. After having been through my early 20s myself, I understand now that people of that age are only technically adults. In the infancy of their adulthoods, my parents were ill-equipped to raise children, as are most people in their early 20s. They weren’t ready for us, they weren’t able to rise to the occasion, and while I have learned to empathize with their situation, I have yet to find it in myself to forgive them for what was a turbulent and overall harmful childhood.

While I never felt like I didn’t belong, it was clear to me from a very young age that the place where I belonged most - with my family - was dangerous. My sister and I found relief in periods of neglect, because that’s when we didn’t have to worry about enduring another violent outburst from our father. We were starving, but we had some peace. It feels absurd to say it, but one of my favorite childhood memories comes from one of these periods. On a Sunday night, my sister and I were sitting on the kitchen floor of our family’s house in Eagle Mountain, flipping through cookbooks to see if there was anything we could whip together with the ingredients available to us. We hadn’t eaten the day before and we hadn’t eaten yet that day, but we were going to do our best to change that. Turns out there’s not much you can do with just flour, canned baby corn, and ketchup. Our little brothers were out of sight. Finn was downstairs playing video games he definitely should not have even been aware of. Liam, the youngest, was either sleeping or playing with dolls - completely unsupervised in either case. Words like “neglect” and “abuse” hadn’t entered our joint lexicon yet. Madeline and I had already been chuckling at our woefully unsuccessful attempt to find anything to eat - spirits were high despite our reality - when she said, “I feel like we’re orphans”

I thought that was hilarious. 

We were just like the sad orphans in old children’s cartoons and that was so funny. We started riffing on the concept, putting on accents and begging imagined pedestrians for money or food. The bit ended with us sitting cross-legged, holding hands, chanting in gibberish to summon a hot meal.

We went to bed hungry that night, after failed attempts to convince our dad we had no food. He was sure we had waffles in the freezer. We definitely didn’t, but he wasn’t going to be hassled to check. To protect himself from being inconvenienced, he willed himself into believing his children weren’t starving. 

At least we got a laugh out of it.

That’s more than we can say about the times he’d drag us to the cold storage room to destroy our toys in front of us or the times he’d throw us on the ground and so forcefully smother our crying with his hand that our noses would bleed. 

In high school, after my family moved back to Taylorsville, a favorite line of his when targeting me was “this is a good family, don’t you know how lucky you’d be to be in this family, if you were gay?” Said through clenched teeth and with a red face, of course, while jabbing the air around my face with his tanned finger. As if not being homophobic excused him from over a decade of ongoing child abuse, as if I hadn’t heard him make homophobic comments in the past, and as if I were at all worried about being gay. I knew I was. I was perfectly fine with it. My life was filled with people who already accepted me for being queer and I couldn’t care less about my family accepting me - I’d be fine. My friends accepted me. On top of that, they never hit me.

Throughout high school, my friends and I bonded over our miscellaneously dysfunctional families. We’d make fries together, try to imagine our futures, and trek to the Utah Pride Center in Salt Lake City every week for what was supposed to be group therapy but was more just a bunch of queer kids talking about whatever - something we all needed anyway. My friends who had jobs were kind enough to pay for my bus fare. We’d get there early to look through the free clothes and eat the free snacks. I got my favorite winter coat there - a high-necked puffy-but-sleek down coat that’s black with a blue fleece lining - and it keeps me warm to this day. 

After high school, I got a part-time job as a receptionist at an escape room in the dying Gateway Mall downtown and enrolled in classes at Salt Lake Community College without any real plan of where I wanted that to take me. I’d bought a cheap laptop using cash I’d saved from “friends” who’d give me money after we hooked up - they called it gas money. With that, a job that barely required sentience, and a willingness to endure late night classes, I was ready to chip away at building a future for myself. Without a specific destination in mind, I enrolled in whatever classes interested me, but focused on topics related to writing. Writing, I thought, had the potential to lead me to careers that involved minimal human contact. After two years, the time came when I needed to pick the major that’d be printed out on my associate degree. After that, I guess I’d need to figure out the rest of my life. I decided I didn’t want to do that and transferred to the University of Utah to give myself another two years. I liked school anyway - it was safe, it was what I knew. I wasn’t ready for the future and this felt like slowing life down.

I was disappointed to find that life did not slow down. I dated a wonderful, bipolar addict who still captivates me. I had a brief stint with serial monogamy. I’ve landed in a problematic age-gap relationship with a hoarder, who I can’t help but love despite the 20 years between us and all the clutter. Aside from my sexual-romantic relationships, there’s been continual familial drama, growing pains, straining gender dysphoria, a horrific global pandemic, lovely animals around every corner, a flourishing love for making books, and so much more! A life like any other, I know, but it’s the one I know best and the one I can write about.