Our personal stories are often split into two pieces: what we share with the world, and what we constantly hold inside for ourselves. As a queer person from rural conservative U.S.A., there has always been a difference between how I live and act outwardly, and how I feel internally. Most people who, like me, have spent significant amounts of time hiding pieces of themselves from the world, constantly feel this split tugging them into multiple directions. Every word is chosen carefully, every action designed to not seem too effeminate or masculine. Even when we find ourselves in an environment where we can live openly and express ourselves freely without the risk of violence (but let’s be honest, it’s always out there), we maintain a wall that, more often than not, creates wedges in our personal relationships instead of bringing us closer to the people we love and rely on. The queer dating scene can be a painful — and liberating — place.
In the summer of 2014, I was single and I was doing an internship in Montevideo, Uruguay. I lived in a hostel in the Old City with a bunch of other foreigners who were either passing through or working there, trying to figure out where they would travel to next and picking up a few bucks on the way. I like to call Montevideo the San Francisco of the South. The mismatched architecture, the tight streets that empty out into the ocean, the feeling of being permanently stuck in the ’70s. When I was there, I knew Spanish, but I could hardly understand the local dialect. I was also not out of the closet at home, and this was the first time I was on another continent, able to live openly by my own rules, in a country with more progressive LGBTQ+ rights than anywhere in North America. Communication was difficult, because I was still struggling with finding my own, true way of expressing myself to other people without hiding any piece of me.
I flung myself directly into the queer scene of Montevideo, thinking happiness would rise out of the darkness to meet me under the bright disco lights of the local gay bars. But what I hadn’t reconciled back home was still dragging me down: this was a temporary move, with the individuals I was meeting necessarily being temporary flings, with horrible, closeting, daunting Idaho waiting for me in a matter of months. Counting down the days was not the ideal way to experience sexual freedom. But for the first time in my life, I was dating. I was meeting people and going on dates in public with other queer people and, with enough cigarettes, I was choking down the depression and anxiety that I hadn’t yet learned to manage.
I was writing poetry daily in Montevideo. Something about how I felt so welcomed but also so isolated forced me to reconcile my inner and outer experiences every time I tried to put my feelings into words. Poetry, for me, is closer to therapeutic storytelling. There’s no rhyme, there’s no real metre. I put my continuously-running inner dialogue into words and shapes on the page, using different words that trigger me into releasing something deeper that I couldn’t previously tap into. Some of what I was feeling, I only knew to express in Spanish. When a guy I gave the cold shoulder to looked me in the eyes as I left the bar with someone else, the words he shouted angrily at me were in Spanish. All of my poetry is written by association: the scenes, the sounds, the smells all hit me, spin me around, and push me to vomit everything they make me feel, however I was feeling them in the moment.
If anything, I hope you read these and get sucked into the city, and are forced to feel what it’s like to pull your insides out and be faced with your full, true self for the first time. Here are some Poemas Montevideanos:
