Heather Trahan – Q & A

I met Heather on the Metro Detroit poetry scene a few years ago. She stood out because she is an enjoyable performance poet and she is quite tall. I’m usually the tallest woman in the room, but I think Heather took the tall woman stage that evening. After exchanging contact information, we’ve kept in touch. Thanks to Heather, I was able to write for an online gay organization when she referred me to the editor who was looking for freelance writers. 

 

Q.            BTW, how tall are you?

A.            I am 5 feet 9 inches (ish)

Q.            You hail from the gay-friendly areas of Ferndale and Royal Oak (Michigan). Have you been fortunate enough to find gay-friendly areas in Ohio?

A.            Yes. I lived in Cincinnati for two years, and there was a lovely gay club down the street from my house that I frequented often. They had karaoke and drag queen/king shows. Fun times! I currently live in Bowling Green, Ohio, and last fall we just passed a city ordinance preventing queer folks from being discriminated in terms of housing and also employment. It was a very empowering moment for us here. I am a part of the organization Queer Grads on campus, and there’s many other organizations available for folks of all ages and persuasions here, including the Lavender group for lesbian women. 

Q.            Why did you move to Ohio?

A.            I was accepted into the University of Cincinnati’s MA program, where I studied creative writing and also literature. Whilst there, I fell in love with teaching first-year composition and was a mentee of Dr. Laura Micciche. Laura inspired me to switch from the subfields I was in to the other subfield of English, which is rhetoric and composition. Currently, I am in my second year of PhD study at Bowling Green State University. Who knows? I may end up staying in Ohio once I become an assistant professor! (Although I am very open to moving anywhere in or out of the country! I will go where the jobs are!)

Q.            In the anthology, you list that you are bisexual and married. Does this mean your husband is accepting of your bisexual status?

A.            Indeed so! My husband-partner identifies as a bisexual as well. We have that in common. In my experience, the bisexual status is quite misunderstood. Folks assume that you are “on your way to gay” or just plain confused. Recently, I’ve actually begun publicly referring to myself as queer…and my husband has been using the term pansexual. We like these terms perhaps just a bit better than bisexual—because “bi” implies that there are only two genders/sexes—and we know that’s just not true, both physically and spiritually!

Q.            I know a straight man who is married to a bisexual woman and he is accepting of his wife’s long-term loving relationship with a lesbian. Are you in an open marriage where it would be ok for you to date women?

A.            The ethical choice of whether or not to enter into an open relationship or a polyamorous one (those are both different options, in my understanding) is a complicated and exciting issue today. I would say that my partner and I do know many poly/open folks and we have read a great deal on the subject. I may actually be writing my dissertation on the rhetoric of sexuality (I hope!), and the subject of non-monogamous relationships may be a chapter within that. 

Overall, I’d say that many progressive people are beginning to question traditional assumptions about how love, romance, and sexuality functions (or could function more ideally). More and more, people are realizing that jealousy is something that is rooted in fear—and that jealousy, like any other flaw, can be overcome with constant emotional and spiritual work. In other words, we should not just assume that jealousy is “natural” and leave it at that…rather, we should interrogate it! We should look into why we are jealous and what that might mean for each of us, in certain situations.

Unfortunately, though, a great many (majority of?) people are not ready to undertake such a heavy task (or even begin thinking about such a task), as the underling principle which makes open/poly relationships work in a healthy manner are total honesty with all partner(s)…and that is currently too huge a task for some who are not even ready to be honest with themselves.

Now, politically speaking, being “out” as poly, open, swinger, non-monogamous, etc. can actually be a dangerous situation. Many fine folks have lost jobs after coming out. Many have lost their children, too, as courts see alternative lifestyles harmful for children (which is ironic, too, because having a larger tribe than just two people caring for children seems a much more loving and stable and practical way to raise kids, right?!!) Also, coming out has caused many to become estranged from their extended families and/or religious communities. However, a great many brave souls are still willing to overcome their fears and stand up for what they believe. Just as gays were coming out in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so too today, other non-traditional-relationship people are making themselves visible—because if there is no visibility, then folks assume those ways doesn’t exist. On a sidenote, I wonder if the sometimes dangerousness of coming out stems from a general confusion: Many people falsely assume that poly/open relationships are related to polygamy (like in the TV show “Big Love”)—which is one form of non-monogamy that promotes the exploitation of women. Certainly, polyamory and polygamy do sound quite alike. But they are vastly different. Typically, polyamory is not about restrictions based on gender; while polygamy is the situation where a man may take multiple wives and those wives may not have romantic relationships with each other. In polygamy, the man is the king. He is the ruler and he is the ruler over his wives. This is NOT polyamory. The word “polyamory” was coined in the 1990’s, and it means “multiple loves.” So, for instance, a situation could occur where three people (three women; two men and one woman; two women and one man; or three men) could be in a loving relationship—that may or may not always involve sex. For more information on this topic, a great source to check out would be the book The Ethical Slut (2^nd edition) by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy. Their book is considered the “Poly Bible” by many. Lots of good information for those who might be questioning what they want out of their relationships. In this book they reclaim the word “slut” as a positive term for someone who has deeply considered and created their own ethical values—and lives by them daily! 

Coming out can be a powerful statement to the world. I think Seattle has something like over 2 million openly poly people—folks are flocking there, finding a warm, embracing, like-minded community. It’s so interesting, I think. And if you check the web, more and more discussion boards, forums, groups, etc. are popping up. People are getting curious. And they are realizing that monogamy is only one option out of many. Are we really still animals who cannot control our territoriality? Are we really still creatures who must sneak around and cheat? Or can we be happy for our partners if they choose to make new connections and learn new life-lessons from other people? To be perfectly honest, I’ve given this issue a lot of thought…and I feel pretty strongly that, in a few decades, Western culture will be a lot more willing to interrogate monogamy and traditional two-person relationships and marriage. I think we will begin to look at life more fluidly—sexually and spiritually, too!

To summarize my stance, I see open/poly/non-monogamous relationships as another branch of “queerness.” And I think it’s awesome!  

Q.            For those who may not understand what being bisexual is all about, will you allow them to “step into the shoes” of a bisexual woman by discussing your feelings on bisexuality?

A.            For me, bisexuality is about realizing that life is beautiful and so full of possibility! I find women, men, and those who don’t identify with one gender to be beautiful for different reasons. I find women to be thrilling and comforting, while I find men to be sexy and mysterious. I think that many people have a bi-curious streak within themselves—whether or not they want to act on it is, of course, their decision. Not everybody wants to mess with the label they have. I think it’s particularly challenging for a gay person to explore their bisexual side; this often is misinterpreted by others as abandoning their gay community…which is silly when you think about it, because bisexual is a part of the gay community.

If you look at the work of the scientist Kinsey in the 1950’s, he argued that if you are heavily emotionally-identified or find comfort in the same sex that you are not really wholly straight. He urged folks to look at not just sexual acts when determining one’s own orientation but also fantasies, daydreams, emotional connections, young adult experiences, friendships, etc. So, for example, if a woman is married to a man but has mostly all female friends, then she is not (at least in terms of the scale he created, called “The Kinsey Scale”) purely straight.

If I had to put it in blunt terms, I am definitely more lesbian-ish than I am straight. In other words, I usually am more attracted to women. Not surprisingly, the man with which I am life-partnered  has many female qualities. He calls himself “woman-identified.” He was raised by his grandmother and mother, and he has always enjoyed surrounding himself with close female friends.

Q.            You submitted three very interesting poems, but I would like to talk about one of them. In “Midnight. Her Eyes Are In My Mouth.”, one stanza arouses curiosity about whether this is fact or fiction and if it’s written from a bisexual perspective. Would you shed some light on the following stanza:

     Later, midnight, her eyes inside

     my mouth, her legs will rise;

     a staircase;

     the kind with the spiral, the kind

     with the clouds on top.

A.            I wrote this poem about a female lover that was “real” in my life—not fictional. She lives in another state now, and I miss her very much…we still talk on the phone weekly and see each other every few months, though. I love her like I love myself. I do not feel sad that the time of our sexual tryst is over…I do not dwell on what I lost rather I feel grateful for what we shared and am excited about all our friendship-adventures to come! I should say that my husband is good friends with her, too.