Zara’s Connection with GO: She Was Actually My Basic | GO Mag

The 1st time we picked up a gorgeously homosexual copy of GO mag I was a spindly freshman in twelfth grade. It had been early 2000s and I was actually living in limited sleepy community one hour away from Manhattan. Getting the earnest
lesbian teenager
that I became (as well as in various ways nevertheless are), I spent a lot of my personal time secured inside my room, dutifully memorizing Ani Difranco words and re-watching the movie ”
Bound
” on VHS. About this particular day, I’d made a decision to get a train to “the city” for a brief time of residential district reprieve.

I found myself stomping round the East Village within my Dr. Martin boots (as displaced adolescents for the early 2000s had been wont to complete) Bikini eliminate cranked to full-volume to my Discman, whenever I stumbled into a no-name coffee shop from the place of 8th and St. Marks. I came across me magnetically drawn to a pile of cool-looking magazines, holding courtroom on a communal dining table. We clumsily grabbed the very first one my personal fingertips grazed and made my personal way to a lone armchair tucked away inside the straight back place for the shop. Within thirty mere seconds of leafing through the Voir la page femme mure cherche homme, the tornado that endlessly swirled through my personal child brain, had been instantly waiting zenfully however. I became transfixed by these photos of women! Women who appeared as if the coolest women I got ever put my 15-year-old vision upon! Certain ladies had locks cropped near to their unique heads and others had very long cascading surf. Many of the females rocked tattered trousers although some happened to be draped in expensive-looking jackets. Regardless of their unique huge difference between window-dressing all of the women which were caught on these shiny magazine pages, radiated this awesome fuel that believed strangely…familiar for me? That is if it dawned on me personally.

They can be lesbians. Just like me.

I invested the second a long time, curled upwards in a strange coffeeshop, devouring opt for an untamed power I experienced never ever reached prior to. I gazed in the images of these out gay women shamelessly clutching hands and proclaiming their love for their partners, once I was struck with an alarmingly positive thought:

Do you know what Zara? You will be OK. You are life isn’t going to be a horrible just because you are a dyke. Is in reality going to be pretty freaking awesome.

While GO pleasantly acknowledged
the very real hardships
of being a lesbian, the journal was not centered around the scary from it all. GO was my first exposure to the “other area” from the homosexual globe. Along side it that extended beyond the “it’s a difficult life, child, but I you” garble that permanently tumbled outside of the mouths of well-meaning grown-ups. Along side it in which gay ladies did not just have to survive in the harsh, cool globe, but could really thrive. Have
brilliant jobs
. Go To
fabulous events
. Belong
unapologetic love!
For the first time ever, I wasnot only OK with being homosexual. I happened to be worked up about being gay! How lucky ended up being we to be element of these a badass society?

Whenever I started operating at GO, it felt like coming residence. In my experience, GO is without question a stable stone in an increasingly unsteady globe. Regardless of the bevy of political hurricanes raging outdoors, GO features stayed the sanctuary we are able to together spider into. A secure, strong, haven, teeming with family. ‘Cause we are all a household. GO readers, the employees, the community most importantly… we are all connected by anything just as powerful as blood. Identification. Sex. Strength facing hardship. Therefore just before flip through this thirty days’s concern, permit me to officially acceptance you residence, fam.

Xoxo,

Zara

That is a two-part Editor’s letter,
read Amy’s letter here
.