Why I’m Torch the Witch

When I was a teenager in Windsor, Ontario, my 2 best friends were Kevin and Tammy. I had known Kevin all my life having gone to grade school with him. We were all kind of weirdo outsiders. Kevin was gay but none of us were acknowledging that yet, including him. It didn’t, however, stop almost everyone else around us from the barrage of insults that he constantly dealt with. I was a gangly boob-less loud mouthed kid, Tammy was hated because she did ‘modeling’ and was blonde and conventionally pretty. Kevin and Tammy were dating and we all used to talk about sex a lot despite the fact that we had very little experience.

I don’t even remember how it started but we were thinking about nicknames and Kevin and Tammy started to call me Torch. I think it was a combination of my hair and my big mouth/attitude. I valued the friendship and opinions of these two people very much and I loved having a nickname that wasn’t just ‘Red’. Kevin called me Torch for years.

In my 20’s, I started to get hard core into feminism and witchery. I dove into both, thirsting after the history that I was never given anywhere else and I of course very much identified with the ‘witches’ of Europe, my parents having come from England. I knew that if I’d lived back then, I’d have been one of those people being torched at the stake.

When I started to use the internet, particularly on Bulletin Boards like the Michael Moore and Ms. Magazine bulletin boards, I had to come up with a handle and I wanted it to be significant to me. Torch the Witch seemed perfectly apt! I was Torch, the witch. And it was a reminder of those times and even current times, representative of the existence of women under patriarchy. Go ahead and torch the witch. I dare you.

Torch is a part of me. She lives inside of me. She is not all of me, but she is on fire and I love her.