Belonging

Belonging

Transcript for Belonging (full episode)

It's 90.1.

K-Z-S-U.

Last year, I spent three months living in Brazil, and then I spent three months living in China.

My experiences in these two countries could not have been more different.

In Brazil, I felt right at home.

With my brown skin and my curly hair, I could easily pass as a Brazilian.

All it took was two kisses on the cheek to say hello, and that was it.

But in China, things were harder.

Whenever I'd ask for something, using my limited Chinese and my heavy American accent, they would laugh.

And it hurt, because I was trying really hard to fit in.

One day, I was in my tiny bedroom folding my laundry, and while I folded, I practiced this one phrase over and over.

我要中国一段, 我要冲着.

It means, I have China Mobile, and I need to recharge my phone.

It was just one phrase, but I thought that if I can get it, maybe, in some small way, I could belong.

I went to the store.

It's a guy at a kiosk smoking a cigarette.

I walked up and I said the line I had rehearsed for so long, but he laughed at me.

I felt completely defeated.

I didn't even put any minutes on my phone.

I just walked home.

When you belong, you're on solid ground.

But when you feel like you don't belong, you are on a tightrope.

Every step is harder.

Simple things like charging a phone, or big things like finding a job.

You have to work extra hard at everything.

But this doesn't just happen when you're in a foreign country.

It can happen in your own home.

And when you feel you don't belong, it pushes you to change something.

It pushes you to create a sense of belonging for yourself.

You're listening to State of the Human, the radio show of the Stanford Storytelling Project.

I'm Leslie Nguyen-Okwu.

Each week, we take you deep into a single human experience, like obsession or making a promise.

Today's show is called Belonging, and we're bringing you stories of people who don't quite belong in the world where they live.

Together, we'll hear how they take matters into their own hands to construct their own belonging.

In our first story, we discover how to find a sense of belonging when you're running away from an angry mob.

The secret?

Magic.

In our second story, we hear what it means to belong when you come from two very different tribes.

In our third story, we travel all across the US to find how glitter, humor, and very high heels can make you belong.

In our fourth and last story, we discover how belonging sometimes means to long and to be.

Stay with us.

To begin our show, we take you to a place where belonging is a matter of life and death.

We're talking about elementary school.

It's a story of a girl who did not belong and how one day at recess, she decided to own it.

I'm Carla Lewis and I'm 18 years old.

I grew up in a very small town named Carabel, Florida.

Usually when I try to tell people where it is, I say, have you heard of Tallahassee?

And I just tell them go an hour south onto the coast and that little tiny space of nothingness is Carabel.

I felt isolated in my beliefs and my family's beliefs because I knew they were very different from the traditional Baptists around the area.

So in first grade, kids would love to go around the lunch table and ask every single person, do you believe in God?

And everyone would be like, yeah, of course I believe in God.

And they would get to me and everyone else had said so, so I was like, yeah, I believe in God.

But then I didn't really know what that meant.

So I asked my dad later and we went outside and the wind was blowing through the wind chimes and it was very mystical, magical.

And my dad just in his very distant voice tells me, Carla, God is everything.

God is in the wind and the trees and the leaves.

And I just thought it was kind of a load of malarkey.

The Gideons came to my elementary school in the fifth grade, a public school, and handed out these little red miniature Bibles to everyone.

And they shared some of the messages of the Bible with us, stuff I'd heard before, stuff that I already knew I didn't believe in.

Afterwards, we went out onto the playground for recess, and as usual, there was the group of kids sitting on the picnic tables, lounging about, talking smack about other kids.

And these were kids I used to be friends with for a long time.

I did dance with these girls, and I used to play Pokemon with the boys up there.

But things had changed somehow.

I never really understood why, but things had changed.

And so, I was walking by them to go do backflips off the monkey bars.

And they said, And at this point, I had decided I was agnostic and that I didn't believe in God.

I believed in spirituality, but not in God.

I paused for a minute, remembering how I used to always say yes so that the other kids would approve of me.

But this time, I just didn't care anymore.

So I said, no, I don't believe in God.

And they all went, ooh, as if I said some kind of major diss or burn.

And then I walked away.

And then they came up to me and started splashing me with the water in their water bottles and shouting, the power of Christ compels you.

And I thought it was kind of funny at first.

It was cliche.

I'd seen the clips from the exorcism, and I didn't really take it seriously until while I was up there, they were throwing their little red miniature bibles at me up on the monkey bars.

And I couldn't really get away from them, but I jumped off and ran away and they chased after me.

They followed me, still spraying me with this water.

I was bewildered.

I was a little scared, just because you have a horde of kids chasing after you and you're reminded of images of the crusades and burning witches at the stake for being strange and ungodly.

I ran between these three trees that were adjacent to the chain link fence and I just kind of barricaded myself in there and these kids were around me and they all gathered around.

I believed that there was this sort of natural energy, mystic force and this triangle of trees that was very protective and natural.

We used to play a lot of fantasy games, me and the other weird kids, and I always used those three trees as my fortress.

They like all gathered around.

They stopped, they stopped, and then they just went back to their picnic table.

I guess they'd gotten bored of the game, they'd gotten bored of chasing me, but I think that encounter kind of affected the way we interacted from then on for a long time.

I knew why.

I knew it was because I didn't see things the same way they did.

I knew it was because I didn't believe in God, but I still didn't understand why it made sense for them to do this.

There was a long time, just growing up, where because the criticism would always change, the reason the kids didn't like me would always change, but there would always be some reason that they didn't.

Odd, eccentric, weird, different.

I always judged myself for being too emotional.

I always felt, I definitely felt not good enough.

What's the word for not feeling good enough?

That definitely carried through for a long time of feeling like there was something just sort of off and wrong about me because it was uncontrollable.

I couldn't control that I was a very sensitive kid, but it made kids not want to hang out with me.

I couldn't control that it really didn't make sense to me to believe in a God, but it made sense to me to still try to be spiritual and in touch with some higher level of your being.

People will always judge you, and they can make those judgments, and you don't have to take them too personally.

It's funny because so much of what they said has turned out to be true about me, but now it's things that I kind of embrace about myself.

I am a little bit strange and eccentric, and I am definitely an extremely sensitive person.

So now it's just taking all the stuff that I was insecure about as a kid and really owning it.

That story was produced by Justine Beed, an associate producer for the Stanford Storytelling Project, and it featured the voice of Carla Lewis.

Justine and Carla are both freshmen at Stanford.

Today in State of the Human, we're bringing you stories of a deep human need we often take for granted, the need to belong.

In the previous story, we heard about how sometimes you may never fit in, and sometimes, freaking out where you don't belong is the perfect way to find where you do belong.

Our second story is about belonging to a clan.

In this case, the Maloy clan.

It's about a Jewish teenager who tries to impress her Irish cousins by beating them at their own game.

Eileen Williams tells the story.

It was winter of 2006.

I was 12 years old.

I was in the car with my mom, driving home from school.

I saw two bumper stickers on the car in front of us.

One was a fish.

The other said, don't let your child be the one that got away.

I turned to my mom.

What does that mean?

The one that got away?

My mom tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

For a moment, she didn't speak.

Finally, she said, that's me, the one that got away.

From Jesus, from Catholicism.

I didn't ask anything else.

I didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

But for the first time, I was afraid.

Was I going to hell?

In my family, we didn't talk about hell much, but it was a big deal for my mom.

She grew up in a strict Irish Catholic home, and until age 18, she did not know what getting away even meant.

Every person she knew was Catholic, or at the very least, Christian.

In college, however, she fell in love with a Jewish man.

My dad.

After my dad proposed, my mom had to announce the engagement.

Her mother didn't accept the news for two full years.

My grandmother never accepted the fact that she had Jewish grandchildren.

She had us baptized in secret.

Though I had known all of this for years, it never really sank in.

But that moment in the car, I suddenly felt other, less than.

Did my mom's family think there was something wrong with me?

I loved my mom's family, the rowdy Malloy clan.

When it came time for my bat mitzvah, one year later, I desperately wanted them to come.

I've been practicing since I was six, learning to read Hebrew and chant from the Torah.

I needed them to be there with me.

My mom didn't want to invite my Malloy cousins, but I begged and begged until she agreed.

As the printer spat out the envelopes for her family, she shook just a little.

My dad reassured her, it'll be okay.

He rubbed slow circles with his thumb on the back of her hand.

The week of my bat mitzvah, my cousins Emily and Marie arrived in St.

Louis.

They were my favorite cousins, and our time together was precious because it was so limited.

At the Friday welcome dinner, I tried to concentrate, but Emily and Marie asked endless questions.

What is that?

Why do you do that?

I felt self-conscious.

I didn't explain the traditions I loved.

Instead, I said, I don't know, just some Jewish thing.

When we covered our eyes to bless the candles, I peeked through my eyelashes.

Emily and Marie exchanged a look.

How weird, they seemed to say.

Suddenly, I wanted to fly through the remaining prayers.

The next morning, I walked into my synagogue and saw Emily standing alone, staring blankly at a round piece of purple cloth.

She flipped it inside and out.

She had no idea what to do with it.

In that moment, I saw our tradition through her eyes.

It felt strange.

I wasn't scared anymore to stand up and read Torah to 300 people.

I was terrified of what my two cousins thought.

Four years later, it was my sister Shoshana's turn to have her bat mitzvah.

She wanted everyone to come, especially our cousin Edward.

We loved to see Ed.

He was a big bear of a man with a mop of dark hair.

He wasn't around much, but when he was, it was special.

Ed had not come to my bat mitzvah.

He'd been having a hard time and had to drop out of his university.

But things were better now and he promised to be at Shoshana's.

Finally, in August of 2010, my whole family gathered at a party in my aunt's basement.

Edward hadn't arrived yet, but I was glad to see Emily and Marie's bright red hair in the crowd.

I tried to spend time with them, tried to make them feel comfortable and welcome.

We couldn't really seem to connect on anything, except how excited they were to have their own hotel room.

When they arrived at the hotel that night, Tom, a young man with a deep voice, greeted them and gave them their key.

Later that night, Emily and Marie were just starting to settle into bed.

Suddenly, the phone rang.

Emily picked up.

Hello?

This is Tom from the front desk.

I'm sorry, but it appears we've overbooked the hotel and we need your room.

Offered the choice between staying with her parents and getting another room, Emily picked the room, even when Tom told her it wouldn't technically be a room.

Tom said, it's more of a closet, but we'll bring rollaway beds and it'll be free.

Emily thanked him and hung up the phone.

She told Marie that they were moving to a closet, but Marie didn't believe it.

Instead, she picked up the hotel phone and re-dialed the last call.

It was Edward.

He'd pranked Emily, a running joke between the Mallois.

When Marie told me this story, Emily was humiliated.

Her face turned blotchy and tomato red.

I laughed, but I wasn't sure if it was okay.

I wished I could feel in on the joke.

The morning of the bat mitzvah, Shoshana stood at the lectern.

She led the congregation in her traditional Hebrew prayer.

My cousins couldn't read the Hebrew, and they stumbled awkwardly on the phonetic translation.

But at least that night, we'd be on more neutral territory.

It was Saturday, and it was a huge relief to walk into the ballroom for Shoshana's party.

On one side of the room was a massive balloon banner that read, Shoshana, underneath screaming 12 and 13 year olds spazzed on the dance floor.

Across the room was a carousel with hand painted horses.

A park ranger watched the kids ride up and down, ensuring the safety of this historic landmark.

Halfway through the night, Emily, Marie, and I figured out that we could jump off the carousel's highest horses mid-revolution.

It was a thrill, and of course prohibited, but we did it anyway.

Emily spurred us on, Come on guys, the park ranger can't see us.

Jump!

After we'd gotten tired and quit, I ran into my cousin Edward.

I told him about the carousel, certain that he'd appreciate our mischief.

I also asked how he was doing.

He told me things were better, he was back at university, and he even bragged about the extremely nice Lexus he had rented for the weekend.

It's a great deal, he said, especially when you don't buy the insurance.

Later that night, I was walking across the dance floor with Emily and Marie.

Behind us, we heard a serious voice.

Excuse me, ma'am, I need to speak with you.

It was the park ranger, and she wanted Emily.

A crowd of onlookers watched as the park ranger escorted Emily to a corner of the room.

She pulled out her handcuffs and said, Please put your hands together.

Emily was petrified.

She couldn't even move her hands.

Though the DJ was playing, the room felt silent.

And then, unable to contain himself any longer, Edward burst into laughter.

I realized that he had been behind the arrest.

I had to laugh, a deep belly laugh that made my abs ache.

Yet part of me felt guilty because Emily was, once again, bright red and humiliated.

This time, it was partly my fault.

By telling Ed about the carousel, I had aided and abetted a Malloy family prank.

The next morning was our final event, brunch at a fancy restaurant.

When my cousins came, we sat down together at an empty table.

Emily said, I wish there was some way to get back at Edward.

I replied, maybe there is.

An hour later, the room was full of family and friends.

From across the room, my cousin Marie yelled, Eileen, I forgot my cell phone.

Can we drive back to your house and get it?

I called back.

Okay, let's go.

My sisters, my cousins and I left noisily.

Just a few minutes later, we re-entered the restaurant.

I started to cry.

Mom, Dad, I said.

I crashed the car.

My parents asked, are you all right?

I said, I'm fine, but that Lexus on the lot isn't.

Out of the corner of my eye, I had been watching Edward.

When I said, Lexus, he looked up, dismayed.

Together, my father and I walked out to the parking lot.

Emily Marie and Shoshana followed.

About 15, 20 seconds later, Edward appeared.

His face was ghost white.

I could see him calculating the thousands of dollars of repairs to his uninsured car.

When Ed got close enough, he looked up at the car and...

It was completely fine, not a dent.

I could see him struggling to make sense of the scene.

He was bewildered and then astonished and then joyous because the car wasn't crashed and then confused again because the car wasn't crashed.

And then he got it.

My idea finally worked.

This time, I pranked the Maloy King of Pranks.

After a second of silence, he started to laugh.

We all started to laugh.

The sound that rippled through us was incredible.

And it was incredibly familiar.

It was exactly how my family sounded when I was five.

For the first time that weekend, we all belonged exactly where we were.

I was a piece of the joke, a part of the team, one of the cousins.

Eileen Williams is an associate producer for the Stanford Storytelling Project, and she's a freshman at Stanford.

Today's show is called Belonging.

We're investigating how far we go to create a sense of belonging in our lives.

In our next story, belonging means going big.

Big hair, big heels, and a sachet bigger than Marilyn Monroe's.

We'll take you to meet seven dazzling American performers.

A quick warning, this piece does contain some references to drugs, and even though sex isn't explicitly discussed, there's some frank talk about sexuality.

So if you don't want your kids to hear it, just skip the next 20 minutes.

Here's the story, narrated by Raya Light.

What a beautiful crowd we have tonight.

Y'all should work in radio.

Now how many of you are here for the very first time?

Don't be shy, we're not here to convert you.

Tonight is for anyone who has ever felt different.

For all you Dorothy's out there looking for your rainbow.

You're going to meet seven gender-defying divas tonight.

You'll see that for them to find their way home, it took a lot more than clicking together some size 13 heels.

Let's start at the beginning.

When Brittany was still innocent and Cher, well, Cher.

But beware folks, these queens weren't always fabulous.

I just, you know, I've always been different.

I've always been treated different.

And I've kind of accepted that and like just rolled with it.

Because growing up, it's like, I wasn't a particularly masculine child, nor was I particularly feminine.

I was just there.

Everything was offered to me as a child.

It's like, this is what masculine is.

It's like, well, that sort of doesn't work amazingly well for me, but you know, we'll work through this.

I never identified with my age.

I didn't want to be at the kids' table.

I wanted to be at the adults' table having adult discussions.

This is Alexis Blair Penney, originally from Kansas, and currently part of a performance collective called Shadeep.

I had very clear aspirations as a child as to what I wanted to be.

I wanted to be a stripper, a drug dealer, a prostitute.

I wanted this alternative power that I perceived women as having, as being sort of underclass, just like, look at all the weird things that you get away with because of that, because people have low expectations of you.

And also that reverse power of using sex to manipulate, that was always really attractive to me in what has now become a really gross way.

But at that time, it was very mystifying.

I'm from Juneau, which is the capital, but it's only 30,000 people.

This is Macy Rodman of the Brooklyn Bushwick Sea.

It's like middle America, but like plopped in the middle of a place where no one should live.

A lot of like really sad, disenfranchised people.

So yeah, not a real community outside of like people who do drugs together.

People were big into sports and also really into like Oxycontin and heroin.

I was kind of a loner, but I mean, I went through a period where I was like, you know, breaking into houses and stealing people's prescriptions and stuff like that.

But cause like that's what you do when you have fucked up friends like that.

It's kind of like everyone is just gets used to not being able to relate to anybody.

I was just like socially retarded.

Damaged at an early age happens to the best of us.

This is Mathu Andersen.

Shapeshifter, extraordinaire and RuPaul's right hand man.

I mean a lot of kids start out doing drag because it's a way of reconciling their otherness.

Most kids that do drag are usually somewhat introverted and it gives them the leverage to sort of jump the fence and just let it all out.

And when I was younger, that made sense to me.

It's like, I'm free, I've got this incredible armor and I'm mostly bulletproof unless you hit me in the...

High school, I quit high school when I was a freshman.

It was really hard.

This is Sissy Spastik of Chicago.

And that's pretty much how I got my name, was inspired by the movie Carrie.

The girl no one likes, and everyone makes fun of her.

I could really relate to her, but too bad I couldn't get back at the kids like she did at her prom.

For Carrie, it will be a dream come true.

For everyone else, it will be a nightmare.

I didn't even go to prom, so she went to prom.

It's actually one of my looks, see that red bloody dress?

And I had like a real bouquet of pink roses, pink blood all over me.

A night to remember.

For most of us, homecoming looked a little bit different.

Let the mascara run.

There was this like underground theater group in Kansas City called Late Night Theater.

So that was my first encounter with drag because they would do these drag floor shows in the middle of the parties.

There's a drag number that I always say is like the reason I do drag, Dee Dee DeVille.

It's like the super androgynous kind of Annie Lennox.

And she had a voice like this, she like smoked a lot.

I think it was the first time I did mushrooms actually.

They did a David Lynch theme party and she was dressed like Laura Palmer in the river.

With like plastic, she had like taken this plastic tarp and made it into a dress with like a big cowl, but she was nude underneath it and she had styrofoam bubbles on her face and her hair was slicked back and she did number one crush by garbage.

And it like, completely opened my mind to everything and I was never the same afterwards.

My early drag is so terrible and so grungy.

This is Peaches Christ, grand dam of the San Francisco drag and underground film scene.

I had a little kid once ask me where my balloons were, and Martini was just laughing and laughing.

Martini finally said, the kid thinks you're a clown.

Living in Ames, Iowa, I was heckled more in my day-to-day life dressed as a boy than I have ever been in drag.

This is Cher Noble of the Bushwick scene.

There was one time I was sitting outside of a hobby lobby and I was wearing like hammer pants and a muscle shirt and some guy drove by and yelled, it's illegal to cross-dress in the state of Iowa.

But when I'm in drag, more people are like either shocked or sort of in awe.

The worst thing I've ever heard is someone yell like, what the which I thought was sort of a compliment.

What are you anyways, a he or a she?

That's sort of just what I was going for.

Once these small town girls discovered their style, it was time to strut their way towards the rainbow.

So turn on, tune in, drop it like it's hot, and glue some flowers to your lace front cause we're headed to San Francisco.

But the rainbow has a touch.

When I first moved to San Francisco, AIDS was in full effect.

This is Heclina, long time San Francisco drag star and founder of the legendary Trash Shack Club.

I worked just right next door here at the Tower Video, and I was in the accounts section, and I was deleting people's accounts.

You'd send somebody a letter that had a late video rental, and then it would come back like, oh, this person's dead.

I think it translated into nothing also being sacred.

When life is so unreal, it's like you can make, the only way to really look at really, really tragic things is to kind of hold them up and make fun of them, especially with AIDS or anything like that.

I think people were shocked that we were kind of started to make fun of it or reference it in our pieces very early on.

But just like, you know, I'm HIV positive.

If I want to make an AIDS joke, you know, it's like nobody can tell me not to do that.

I got diagnosed in the mid-80s.

I would just come out of the military.

I mean, luckily, I wasn't one of those people who was like, thought they were gonna die and max out my credit cards.

I don't try to future trip.

You know, I do things, I'm constantly moving forward, but I'm not thinking like years ahead.

I was kind of in the moment.

And you know, I've seen so much change over the years.

I used to think, oh, there's gay people, there's straight people, maybe there's bisexual people.

My concepts were a bit vanilla.

And then when I started doing drag, all of a sudden there were straight guys that would be hitting on me once I got all dressed up who would never look at me otherwise.

Even a straight guy wants to be with a woman with a b----, and I had to realize that that still makes them straight.

I quit so much labeling people.

I don't go by anything because when I'm by myself, I'm like, I am a fantastic drag queen.

I have some really crazily presenting trans friends.

One who technically is they, but she's just like, I just call everybody she.

No nonsense.

Cut it out, stupid.

I mean, I had literally met maybe one trans person in Kansas.

Suddenly you're in Oakland where it's like every other guy is a trans guy.

And then suddenly I'm like getting mistaken for being transgender and living in this weird liminal phase where like nobody knew what gender I was.

I didn't know what gender I was.

And she just made the most sense.

I guess around the time that I actually started passing is when I sort of started to realize the actual diversity of how I could present and really play with people's ideas.

Gina called it an ultra ego where it's just like, it's everything you are, amplify.

It's like clowning.

Your eyes are bigger, your lips are bigger, your cheekbones are wider, your hair is huge.

You know what I mean?

It's like these supernatural features that are neither feminine or masculine and kind of make the distinction moot.

You're just hyperhuman.

Like I felt like this weird alpha everything.

It's almost safer to be in drag than it is to be out of drag.

Seeing a man in booty shorts walking down the street is a little more bothersome to a straight man than some weird thing walking down the street with like a hairy chest and heels because they're just like, that's a little too much, I don't need to deal with that.

They just want to beat up a regular gay man.

They just don't see as much of themselves in that.

RuPaul said that like the greatest act of treason is femininity or portraying yourself as feminine.

Outward expressions of femininity is just something that really makes people uncomfortable.

Even in women, even if it's like a pure expression of your art and you're not trying to be confrontational, it just is when you're in a public space because by being so bold as to display femininity in public, you're giving a big **** you to everybody.

So I've always kind of been naturally attracted to the other.

You know, I was really, I mean, I find Sissy Spacek and Carrie to be the gorgeous one.

Sickening.

I was always attracted to Divine, you know, even though your everyday average person is gonna look at Divine and see a monster, that was, for me, the definition of beautiful.

Oh, thank you.

I am God.

I don't know, from my point of view, it's like I can only ever have my point of view.

I'm in here and I look around and that's me.

It was about being beautiful.

And that is my, it's like if I'm gonna go ahead and make a statement about what it is for me to be a drag queen, it was never about being a woman.

It was always about being this object of beauty.

I have a weird sense of vanity when I put my face on.

I certainly want to look beautiful even if I'm making some kind of commentary about that beauty.

I always say I want to be disgusting.

Who doesn't want to be pretty, you know?

I went and did this hideous private party.

I had to sign a piece of paper saying that I wouldn't say whose party it was, that I could never talk about who was there.

Between quarter of a million or half a million dollars was spent on this party, and all 300 guests were put into full drag.

We're talking men, women, children.

They were tossing wigs around like they were nothing.

Putting these giant Marie Antoinettes on, laughing and kiki-ing, dancing, throwing them on a chair.

You know, and I'm like watching this, and I'm thinking about the thousands of hours of work that went into these wigs, because they are fricking amazing, RuPaul quality, queens worked this out kind of wigs.

And I said to the party planner, did you rent these?

And they had bought all the wigs.

You know, I would have pulled a truck, I would have rented a truck and pulled it up in there, and I would have had like a giant wig fair and doled them out to all the poor queens who couldn't afford it.

I think they would appreciate it.

Part of me is glad for that party, and part of me felt dirty.

I was disgusted by it.

I wonder if that is the attraction right now.

People are now seeing the truth.

People are actually attracted to what was deemed freakish or taboo, queer or gross, and their strength to turn it into something powerful and beautiful.

And maybe that's a good thing.

I don't know, it's too early to tell.

It's funny, because as gay culture has become more accepted and more mainstream, it's become simultaneously more boring.

And I really, really am along for the time when it was, when we were more outcasts and more unaccepted by mainstream culture.

To me, it was more of an interesting time, you know.

I was doing drag before I had ever dealt with my real internalized homophobia.

I had to overcome my own self-hate, and I went through this process of deciding that I was going to embrace the part of me that was Peaches.

If you don't accept yourself, then how are other people supposed to accept you?

Just like, you know, if you can't love yourself, how am I supposed to love somebody else?

That's so true.

It's very simple.

Well, for me, it's very simple.

All great creativity comes from love.

It really does.

People sometimes think it's like a minstrel show of femininity, but...

A menstrual show, in short.

A menstrual minstrel.

Starting at the end of the month.

Already got my ticket, girl.

Speaking of full moons, I think it's time we take it slow.

Hello, here, take my hand.

The bigger the hair, the closer to goddess.

I mean, around the time I was performing in San Francisco, I really realized that drag occupies this really crazy spiritual place within society, especially gay life, as you are sort of the mystic, you're the shaman.

And I read this article about these computers they have at Google, and the transistors are actually on these super thin layers of liquid nitrogen.

So because it's so cold, the signal, or like the electrode, or whatever, can like move really slowly across.

Rather than just being limited to being zero or one, like a normal computer chip, they can be zero and one simultaneously, due to like the quantum theory of something.

And I was like, when I read that, I was like, that's what my gender is.

It's like, when you try to look at it, it squirms and you maybe can pin it down on one side or another, but it's actually both simultaneously.

Identity is this really funny thing because it feels thrust upon you, but you really are thrusting it upon yourself.

But I definitely don't feel like I'm trans, because I definitely don't feel like I actually need to embark on a transition.

I've finally made peace with identifying as an artist.

Drag is sort of this crazy, mystical undercurrent to my life.

I'll never be able to leave that, or would ever want to.

It's just so transcendent of the duality of what forms the basis for our society, which is gender.

Once you cross that line, you really can't go back.

Can't pull the veil back over.

Brittany Newell is an undergrad at Stanford.

Brittany's work was funded by the Brayden Grant from the Stanford Storytelling Project.

_______

You're listening to State of the Human.  Today's episode is called Belonging.

We're investigating what happens when you don't belong in a world where you live in, and you set out to create your own sense of belonging.

In the final story, Josh Hoyt discovers how you prove you belong, even when the numbers are against you.

When I was in kindergarten, I spent about a week and a half as the greatest Native American in the world.

It was just before Thanksgiving, and my Seattle Montessori was learning about pilgrims and Native Americans.

I raised my hand and announced to the class that I'm Native American.

It was like I had announced I was related to Peter Pan.

You could see them straining to imagine me in a loin cloth and feathers.

When recess came, it was like some kind of kindergarten press conference.

Do you live in a teepee?

Do you hunt with a bow and arrow?

Can you really paint with all the colors of the wind?

It was exciting at first, being the center of attention.

I felt special.

But the more questions they asked, the more I realized I didn't really have anything interesting to tell them.

My life was just like theirs with a powwow thrown in here and there.

So I had to start embellishing.

My brother was a northern traditional dancer, and he had tried to teach me some basic steps one time.

So I told him I danced in powwows.

My dad kept a rifle in the closet.

He never used it because he was scared of guns.

So I told him that sometimes we hunted buffalo with bows and arrows.

And yeah, we rode horses.

You can't shoot arrows from a car.

Of course, we stayed in teepees at night.

You ever heard of an Indian in a tent?

My classmates loved it.

I mean, they couldn't believe that they went to school with a real Native American.

I guess I kind of figured things would die down pretty quickly, but they kept coming up to me every recess now with more questions, wanting more stories.

And this went on for days.

But for me, it stopped being fun after about the first day.

I started to feel ashamed.

And when I remember the story, it's really the shame that I remember.

For most of my life, I thought this was a story about getting stuck in an uncontrollable lie.

But more recently, I've come to believe that this story isn't just about lying.

I wasn't just ashamed about telling lies.

I was ashamed because I couldn't prove I was Indian.

In the end, I answered my classmates' questions with spectacular success.

But for me, it was the start of my own questions about being Indian.

Am I a real Indian?

What is a real Indian, anyway?

I've been asking these questions ever since.

When I was six, I remember being in the car with my half-brother, half-sister and our dad.

My siblings and I have the same dad but different mothers.

My mom is white, Italian and German.

Their mom is a full-blood Navajo.

My dad was driving and my sister Winona was in the passenger seat because she's the oldest.

She must have been about 16 and my brother Chuskay was about 11.

My brother spoke up from the back of the car.

My father said.

We're enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa.

But you and Winona are half-navo too from your mom.

My dad was frequently grumpy.

And I remember his being a tone of annoyance.

My brother didn't notice and kept up his questions.

So how much Indian are we?

This is the part that stands out in my memory.

Waiting as my dad went around the car giving us each a number.

Well, I'm half and you and Winona are three quarters, he said to my brother.

And Josh is about a quarter.

Again my brother spoke.

So does Josh have enough blood to be in the tribe?

No, my father said.

This time with so much annoyance that even my brother finally stopped asking questions.

This was my first experience with blood quantum, the most frequently used measure for who is Indian.

It has a long and controversial history as the official legal definition for an Indian.

The use of blood quantum began when the United States government imposed it on tribes.

But most tribes still use it to figure out who can be an officially enrolled member.

And unofficially in many Native American communities, having a higher blood quantum also gives a certain informal status, especially being full blood.

Most of the time when I tell somebody I'm Native American, the next question is, oh, how much?

It's ridiculous really to determine identity mathematically.

But this number still has a hold on me.

When I have to tell people that I'm a quarter, and actually a little less if I'm being honest, I can't help but see them doing a simple calculation about who I am.

It's not uncommon for people to say in one way or another, so you're not really Native American though.

When this happens, I'm right back in my kindergarten class, reaching for some way to prove my identity.

In third grade, we were asked to do a project on our heritage.

We were supposed to research our family's ethnic history and make a mask reflecting that history.

Each student would then answer a small questionnaire, and the masks and questionnaires were to be hung up for parents to admire during the annual open house.

A couple days before the open house, I was one of the only kids who hadn't finished my project.

There was this one question I just couldn't answer.

Choose one word to represent your ethnic heritage.

Even then, the idea of distilling my identity was a little annoying.

What word could represent my Italian Grammy, who came over from Italy when she was 12, and Grandma June, who grew up on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota?

What is the word for that smell just after the garlic hits the heated olive oil, but also for the feeling when the powwow drums get into your chest and start pumping your blood for you?

And then a word came to me, honky.

I had heard my dad say honky to describe people he didn't like, and my teenage brother would listen to NWA and talk bitterly about honkies.

I wasn't totally sure what it meant, but I knew it was about white people.

I thought it was a secret Indian word that would be unknown to my white teacher in the almost entirely white class.

The day before the open house, my teacher quietly took me out into the hall.

She seemed uncomfortable as she tried to delicately explain that I was going to have to choose a different word.

Honky was a bad word, and she couldn't hang it up on the wall for the parents to see.

I was so embarrassed.

I had gotten used to feeling like I was not Indian enough, and now here I was too much of an Indian.

I think now that this was really an ingenious attempt to assert my Indian identity, I knew that none of the other fathers used the word honky.

Honky was the best argument I had for being Native American.

How can you be white if one half of your family says honky?

But of course, now I can also see that honky is the argument against me being Native American.

The half of my family that says honky could really be talking about the other half of my family.

I don't remember what word I finally chose, probably something Italian to represent my mother's side of the family.

But I look back now with pride because I think honky was the perfect word.

Now at 28 years old, I've gotten much better at being an Indian.

I know that if I can just slip into conversation the name of the reservation my dad grew up on, then most people will accept that I'm really Indian.

But I also know that sometimes, if I'm around other Indians, it helps to make a joke about how light my skin is.

So they know I'm not trying to be the most Indian guy in the room.

While I'm good at being Indian for others, I don't ever feel Indian enough.

Some part of me doesn't truly believe that I belong as an Indian, and I still don't know what it means to be a real Indian.

So a few weeks ago, I called up the only real Indian I can ask about these things.

I called my older sister, Winona.

She lives in Montana near the Fort Belknap Reservation and teaches at the public high school there.

Our conversation was a little uncomfortable because we don't ever talk about this kind of stuff.

And I realized as I asked the questions that sometimes I don't even have the right words to use.

So the school you teach at, it's like, you know, mostly Native Americans, right?

Right?

Yeah.

Like vast, vast majority?

Like probably 95 or greater.

I mean, 95, 97%.

Yeah.

And is there ever a question of Indian-ness?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Like-

What sense do you mean?

Like as far as what kind of an education we're providing them or their own sense of self or?

Yeah.

Sort of their sense of self or like other kids that are like picked out for, you know, not being Indian kind of thing.

I would say that a great deal of our students that are from this area, they, at the very least, at the bare minimum, they know who their family is.

They know their tribal identification.

They know approximately what their blood quantum is.

And then going from there, I would say, just depending on the kids that have a strong bond with their parents and their grandparents and extended family, tend to typically have a greater connection to their culture and understand their Indian-ness, as you would say.

In the moment after she gives this answer, I am totally flustered because I'm sitting there wondering, is it weird to say Indian-ness?

Is that not what Indians say?

How should I call it for the rest of the interview?

And I'm so flustered at the time that I didn't realize that she was really describing the differences between us.

All the stuff that she says leads to cultural connection, I'm lacking in all those areas.

I stopped seeing our dad when I was about 10 and he never taught me about being Indian.

Winona is really the only member of my Native American family who I'm close to.

My blood quantum is pretty low.

I don't have official tribal identification.

I don't live on the reservation like she does.

And that's why I'm calling her to ask about Indian-ness.

Really, there is no getting past it.

My brother and sister's lives are more Indian than mine.

While I was reading science fiction books, my brother was competing as a traditional dancer in powwows.

While my brother and sister spent their summers on the Navajo reservation, I went to academic camps.

Even our names reflect our different paths in life.

Winona means firstborn daughter in Lakota, and Chasquet, my brother's name, means firstborn son.

When I was born, my father wanted to name me Plains Buffalo.

Apparently, it's a family name, but my mother put a stop to that.

She is the child of Italian and German immigrants, and she insisted on something biblical.

So I was named Joshua.

I guess my mom's dream for me is the immigrant dream of fitting in.

But for my Native American family, the struggle is not about fitting in.

It's about holding on as tightly as possible to your Indian identity.

I'm stuck between these two opposites, trying to figure out ways to merge the two.

Talking to my sister left me feeling less Indian than ever, so I called my mom.

It's in comparison to her side of the family that I've always felt most Indian.

She said that when I was first born, it was 10 p.m.

Everybody in the Montana hospital room was exhausted.

The doctors cut my umbilical cord and handed me to my father, and he immediately flipped me over, searching for a small dark spot on my lower back.

It's called the Mongolian spot, and it's a birthmark.

It's found on 80 to 85% of all Native American babies.

And there it was, in stark contrast to my white skin.

Seeing it gave my father immense relief.

But now the spot is gone.

It fades and disappears as you get older.

I sometimes wish I still had it as proof.

Then I could just pull down my pants when people question my Indian-ness.

But I realize that it's not really the spot that conferred my identity.

It was my father's relief.

A couple months ago, I bought the Pimsleur Ojibwe language course.

Now I walk around Stanford campus repeating the words of an old Ojibwe man and an old Ojibwe woman.

Learning Ojibwe would help me overcome all those things I never had control of.

My pale skin, my blood quantum, my lack of tribe and clan and family.

I want to study my way to being Indian because it is one of the only ways I can become more Indian.

While I repeat the words, I like to imagine what it would be like to speak fluently.

I could prove myself just by saying, Anin, Anishinaabe and Dao.

As I listen to these two old Ojibwe speak, it feels like I'm hearing what real Indians sound like.

But then I think about their lives.

Maybe the man went to one of the boarding schools that so many Native Americans attended.

The nuns at the boarding schools did everything they could to cure him of his Indian-ness.

Kill the Indian to save the man, they said.

And when he arrived home from years of Catholic boarding school, how Indian do you think he felt?

I guess there's really only one thing that all Indians have in common.

One experience that every Indian shares.

We are all just a fraction of the Indian we want to be.

All my life I figured that real Indians didn't have to try to be Indian.

But it turns out that trying is what defines a real Indian.

That moment in kindergarten when I first wondered what it means to be Indian.

That was the moment I became an Indian.

—--------

Josh Hoyt is a producer for the Stanford Storytelling Project.

He is a senior at Stanford.

This is it for today's episode of State of the Human.

This week's show was produced by Will Rogers, Natacha Ruck, and Jonah Willhinganz, with help from Rachel Anberg, Charlie Mintz, Christy Hartman, Nina Fouche, Josh Hoyt, and Miles S.

It contains stories by Justine Beed, Eileen Williams, Brittany Newell, and Joshua Hoyt.

It features the voices of Carla Lewis, Winona Azure, Raya Light, Macy Rodman, Peaches Christ, Alexis Blair Penney, Haclina, Sissy Spastik, Mathu Andersen, and Chair Noble.

For their generous financial support, we would like to thank the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Stanford Continuing Education, the Program on Oral Communication, and Bruce Braden.

If you want to find links to all the music that was used in this episode, or find out more about the Storytelling Project's live events, grants, and workshops, go to our website, storytelling.stanford.edu.

For State of the Human and the Stanford Storytelling Project, I'm Leslie Nguyen-Okwu.