Ugly Islands/Innocence

On visiting one of the people who inspired this project . . .

Rikers sucks. Just so you know.

Be attentive to the fact that, if you're going to visit any of the people who prompted your latest craze to make a difference, you'd best speak with some of their attorneys. Research attorney information. Leave messages.

Don't be surprised, when one attorney calls at 7 p.m. Remind your lover that you've already explained defense attorneys don't keep bankers' hours. Feel abashed when you pick up the phone and say, "Hey," because the ring tone you hear is assigned to one of your closest friends; the display says "PRIVADO," and that's how conversations always start: you say, "Hey"; he says, "Hey, what're you doin'?" Tell the attorney you thought she was someone else. Immediately drop into what your children call "Dr. Intense mode."

Bemoan again your inability to match the conversation style of people on the East Coast of the U.S. This woman talks hard and fast, asking pointed questions in a staccato delivery, like a finger jabbing repeatedly in the face. Say you are answering her questions. Try to speak more loudly, so you're heard. Listen to her tell you at least five times, "Doctor, I'm not trying to make you defensive. I just need to know what you want from my client, so I can take this to my colleagues." Tell her again and again what you're doing, until she repeats it back, so you know she's heard you. Listen to her position on presenting press credential: it allows for two hours with detainee, rather than one, plus paper, pens, and a tape recorder are allowed. Insist that you don't want to meet these girls as a member of the press; you don't even want to write about them: if they want to tell their own stories, you're willing to provide space for that. Wonder whether the attorney is intrigued or annoyed by this stance.

Give up on talking with attorneys. Figure, if the one representing the lead girl in this case knew anything at all, he wouldn't have let her be convicted. Anyway, he never returned your call. Recognize detainees don't need attorney permission to have visitors. Determine to let the lead girl decide for herself. Wonder whether to send her a letter first. Decide to just go.

Read the instruction sheets for visiting Rikers several times, to familiarize with rules. Check again, before leaving. Think you have a good understanding of what can and cannot be brought to or done at the facilities.

Drive three hours across three states, and through insane NY midtown traffic. Play loud music. Fuss with cosmetics, at traffic standstills.

Stop at parking lot, across the bridge from the Island. Stand in line to get on the bus. Realize you're totally over-dressed for this; everyone else is wearing t-shirts or tank tops with denim or cheap skirts.

Ask someone how much the bus costs. Step onto bus; take out two dollar bills. Be annoyed, when told the driver says the bus doesn't take bills, only change. Make everyone nearby in the thronging crowd unhappy, by slowly digging out two dollars in coins. Feel pleased that several people offer to give money. To the people who loudly ask one another, "What the hell she doin'?" answer that you weren't ready to give only coins. When they yell, "Well, you best be ready," say, "This is my first time. I'm workin' on it." Watch their faces turn to sad nods of understanding. Appreciate the sense of community.

Arrive at the entry port. Stand in line again. Ask someone how to get to the Rose Singer facility. Learn that everyone must first go through general processing. Try to hear the guard at the front of the line. Realize there's no way to hear him, over the clamoring voices of the visitors.

Show the guard ID. Realize he doesn't even look at it. Walk to the next line, in front of the building. Be glad people continue to be helpful, like telling you to take a filthy, broken white bin. Hold the bin with the two bags of stuff for the girl you're visiting, plus the bag you always carry -- the one you've emptied of everything but a wallet and cigarettes.

Stand at the first security checkpoint for a long while. Hear everyone complaining about the heat. Keep trying to listen to that guard down below. Finally hear him say that cigarettes are contraband. Ask the guy behind you whether you heard correctly. When he says yes, admit you have cigarettes. Feel assured, when he says you'll only be asked to put them in a locker. Be annoyed, later, when it turns out the cigarettes and lighter were taken from your bag at that checkpoint. Be more annoyed, when it's seven more hours and another state away, before you can actually find a place to purchase a pack of the brand you smoke.

Breeze through first security checkpoint, minus cigarettes, with no conversation. Watch young Black man behind you have his one item, a wallet, inspected several times, each currency bill pulled apart in a search for contraband. Note racial profiling. Think maybe it was a good idea to dress differently. Debate whether to feel stupid for thinking that. Hear your friend V. in your head, chastising you about "using your little light-skinned privilege."

Over the course of the day, remove shoes five times. Show ID six times. Note that only once is ID actually inspected, at the window where you get a set of two cards to complete, in order to visit a detainee for the first time. Run bags through security devices three times. Run body through security devices three times. Perform a light strip search once. Remember to tell girl you're visiting you had to take off your clothes, just to see her.

Arrive 11 a.m. Find way back to parking lot, across bridge, at 3:30. The allotted visit with detainee is one hour. The rest of the time is spent sitting in plastic chairs; walking from one check point to another; taking buses from one area to another. Do not stand on or beyond blue lines, ever. Do not approach doors, ever. Sit precisely where you are told. Stand when you are told. When on buses, always stand back. Farther back. Sit down, if possible. Hold on, if unable to sit. Become accustomed to the barking of guards, repeating these instructions. Do not pause to think, else suffer the wrath of guards who find the pause suspicious.

Try not to panic in the airlessness and oppressive heat of the rooms swarming with people. Fight the memories of growing up in institutions with these same hard floors and ugly chairs. Pretend you're outside. Do not attempt to go outside for any reason, unless directed to do so.

Assess the demographics of the visitors, in an effort to understand how so many individuals and groups can be there on a Friday morning. Realize they're mostly women with small children, or older women. Mental note: 98% Black and Latino/indigenous. A few White faces. No memory of Asians at all. Two women are sighted reading books. Everyone else eats small bags of junk food from the vending machines, talks with one another, tends to small children, or some combination. Don't eat anything. Just watch.

Don't ask too many questions. If you must ask questions, assess friendliness and patience factor of persons in vicinity. Realize there is no way around this, when the only guard present answers your question about how to open your locker by saying, "What does it look like I'm doing?" It looks like she is helping the primarily Spanish-speaking, generally drunken little man who's been asking one person or another for help since the first rooms. Say you don't know what she's doing. Flinch, when she retorts, "Well, let me know, when you figure it out." Watch her for another three seconds. Recognize there's a strand of keys attached to her belt, and she's holding one. Say, summarily, "So you have the keys." Watch her roll her eyes and walk away. Realize she'd be really fucking hot, if her attitude didn't suck donkeys.

Be prepared to have items you brought the detainee to be rejected. Be surprised, when the colored pencils are the only things not allowed. They're on the list of approved items. Don't argue. Listen to the guard's muffled voice, through thick bullet-proof glass, saying that next time you should only bring one book. Out of sheer curiosity, ask whether she means the books of literature or the composition notebooks. Don't be surprised, when she holds up one of each, and you can't understand her answer.

Listen to the other visitors joke about the pomposity of the guards. Note that these women all seem far too familiar with this scene. Watch the sadness and fatigue written on their bodies. Remember every day room, visitors' room, and holding room, ever. Try not to dissociate.

Ask whether you can buy a bottle of water. Decide against it, when the guard answers that, if you do, you will lose your chance for a visit, if you're at your locker when called. Remain thirsty for seven hours.

Sit in another chair. Wait to be told whether the detainee will see you. Wonder why there is a television set blaring some court TV program. Find that ironic.

Further note that's it's difficult to hear anything at all, including the television or the guards, with the enormous free-standing floor fan blowing. Watch the guard with the suck donkey attitude say something. Wonder whether she said, "Next." Realize now she's really pissed at you, because she actually said "Miss," and she meant you.

Stand and go to her. Remove articles of clothing, as told. Stand behind screen, when told. Reposition clothing, when told. Don't bother asking why someone so young and otherwise hot has such a shitty attitude.

Sit in yet another room with ugly chairs. This time, be prepared, when a new guard says, "Miss." Hesitate only because there are at least five other women sitting there. Wait for her to say, "You, in the white." Don't hesitate, even though you're wearing mostly black, with a white overblouse, and there's a woman wearing a white dress; the woman in the white dress is staring at the wall. Give the name of the person you came to see, as directed.

Next, become accustomed to being called by the name of the person you came to see. Allow a moment of confusion, when a guard looks at you, and says that name as a question. Say, "No, I came to see her." Nod, when another visitor explains that, from now on, you'll be called by the detainee's name. Okay.

Stand. Go into yet another security screening booth. Show hand under black light, illuminating stamp from when you entered this final building. Be waved into yet another room. Wonder whether this means the detainee has agreed to see you.

Sit in some seriously ugly chairs: all primary colors, with mauve thrown in for distraction, around low, tiny tables with white block numbers. Go to table 21, as instructed. Sit again.

Be surprised, when the detainee comes out, even though you know her story, and have seen photos of her. She's tiny. She looks all of twelve years old. Watch her cross the room, in her baggy grey jumpsuit. Try not to think of your own daughter in lock-up, at an even younger age. Try not to make this about you at all. Stand, shake her hand. Introduce yourself. Know you'll have to say your name into the noise of the room ten more times, before she gets it.

Talk about the details of her case. Shift between casual and professional modes of communication. Recognize no cause or project fits this girl. Ask her only what she needs. Listen.

Know that talking with her for that one hour makes everything you've done worth it.

Know this is just the beginning, and from now on, you'll know the system better.

Wonder whether you'll ever stop loathing institutions.

Follow directions to the building next to the one where the shuttle leaves you. Approach a group of about seven guards; ask how to break a twenty dollar bill to get back across the bridge. Attempt a smile, when one man grins, "How good do ya swim?" Listen to them all give different answers. Say, "Seriously. One answer will do." Listen to them joke about how each of their responses is the best. Finally get a consensus, and go find a van service.

Wait in the heat for twenty minutes, while the van driver eats an orange, smokes, and tells a visitor how to hook up with a guard who will apply money to a detainee's account during off hours, for a three dollar fee. Watch that transaction.

Watch how everyone is depleted, after their visits. Gutted.

Hate gridlock traffic through Manhattan, and all over the bridges. Wonder what kind of scam allows for toll fees. Sing and take photos out the car window, when traffic is at a literal stand-still.

Come home to more email than you can handle.

Try to imagine a life where there's time and energy enough for everything.

Feel good, thinking there are far worse concerns.

Ask yourself again how you're going to help this child who's facing five years minimum.

Try not to hate.

Remember her leaning forward several times, saying intently, "There's a reason for everything. Even this."

The day of sentencing, know her face, her small hands. Know, too, the voice of a person in authority who can defend his position by stating judges are not inanimate objects, and are therefore entitled to permit their strong personal opinions to influence sentencing. Girls such as these should recite nursery rhymes, he says, and walk away from harassment.

Ask yourself why anyone needs be reminded that a girl, too, is a sentient being. Consider the possibility that the judge doesn't have a girl he loves. Acknowledge that he rarely, if ever, walks the streets and, when he does, has the power of the judiciary to mete out his punishments for any perceived harassment. Tell yourself again that girls, young women, everyone has the right to self-defense.

"There is a reason for everything," she says. "Even this."

Wonder how she'll feel in five, ten years.

Try to recall being a teen. Wonder whether you were ever that innocent, that clean.

Yes.

Wonder what happened to you, to innocence.

~Emmanuela

A Word For Studs and AGs

Okay, this post is definitely going to constitute more than a word or two. There might even be a rant involved, though I'm gonna try to keep my head clear.

One of the most compelling factors to push me forward in this photo project came when I was working on a tribute for Sakia Gunn. Around the same time, Patreese Johnson and the six Black lesbians who accompanied her to NYC in August were convicted of "gang assault," amongst various other charges.

Patreese, who is 19, has been convicted of first-degree assault. The attempted murder charge against her was dropped, but first-degree assault carries the same potential sentence.

I'm looking at all that, and feeling completely gutted, when the Village Voice runs that wholly ridiculous article, "Girls to Men." Along with the article, there is a gallery of images, by photographer David Yellen. The pictures aren't bad, if you like studio sets with paper backdrops and conventional lighting. The captions are what really annoyed me.

I know the communities have been outraged over this article. I feel that. I know a lot of good people are working to make a positive difference out of something so harshly inflammatory.

What I don't know is what that photographer said, what he promised, what he proposed, to earn the trust it took to have the AGs featured in that gallery pose for him.

I do know everyone's mad about it. Hell, I'm mad about it.

And yes, I've extended an invitation to studs and AGs to participate in my photo project.

I want you all to hear me now, when I say, clearly and with absolute certainty: I do not misrepresent anyone in my work.

You come to me, you get what you want. If you don't like an image I've selected for inclusion in my web gallery, that image is simply not seen by the public, evah.

Let's make a positive difference. It matters.

~Emmanuela

So, I Started a Photo Project . . .

Several years ago, I began photographing butches, studs, and transpersons who were my lovers, my friends. All were first-time models; few wanted their images publicly displayed on the internet. I have a great repository of photos I cannot include in my public portfolio, in respect for the subjects.

Eventually, people began coming to me by referrals from friends. These new subjects actually wanted to create a new sense of visibility for the non-traditional types of masculinity they represented and with which they identified. I was able to begin building a small public gallery dedicated to my love of butches, studs, AGs, and masculine-identified trans persons . . . but my work was still local.

So I put out an open call to the various LGBTIQ communities. The responses have been overwhelming and, despite the fact that I work on the East Coast of the U.S., there is considerable interest from the West Coast and Canada.

As a femme, I can't pretend to know realties other than my own. All I can do is respect each person who wishes to participate.

The project is worthy, because the focus is on those too often unseen, willfully misinterpreted, ridiculed, and reviled. I want to be a part of changing that.

Read more about the particulars for this work by following the link on this page.

~Emmanuela