6 Quotes by Chelsey Johnson

The world of shoulders is one I know well. But now I could see clearly, my head level with all the others, an unobstructed view. Behind me the regular-sized girls were patiently, miserably tiptoeing and peering through the gaps between necks and shoulders. This is what it's like to be tall? I had said in wonder and indignation and envy. They just walk around, able to see everything. And they take it for granted.

Maybe Flynn at thirty was still becoming, I realized. Maybe the Flynn I loved was on the way out. Or maybe the Flynn. I loved hadn't been around for some time now. It was easy to mistake proximity for closeness.

I seldom even thought of myself as woman or girl, just person. Just human. I only became girl or woman when men walked into the room or I walked into theirs, when that gaze hit me like a hot breath. As a woman you walked in and we're assessed, ignored, or both.

But then there was school and work and the doctor and the dentist and the Internet. There she was not a parent but a mom, a species held in somber, near-spirtual regard while for all practical purposes steadily crushed by the forces of public policy, like the American bison.

All I knew that for all our art, for all our writing, for all our self-defense workshops, for all our banding together in our cities and oases, queer survival was still not guaranteed.

Why should citizenship depend on one exclusive form of a relationship? What about love between friends, community, love of work?