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Camera
Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS |
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ISO
125 |
Aperture
f/3.5 |
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Exposure
1/1250th |
Focal Length
55mm |
This is the town I grew up in. Sure was pretty, even if it was a lousy place to grow up queer.
I hadn’t been there in 16 years (you can only get there by car, and I don’t drive), so when Vera & I took a roadtrip to visit my chosen families in New England & New York, I asked if we could make a detour.
It more or less hasn’t changed. The market is now an antique store, but it’s still owned & run by the same man, and the giant rotting factory in the middle where everyone worked burned down and was replaced by a park (I have no idea what people do for work up there now), but otherwise it all looks the same.
With the exception of the lovely ceramics artist I used to work for as a teenager (who mistook me for a different transsexual who’d worked for her, which was kinda hilarous), most of the local folks I knew and loved from when I was a kid were deeply shady towards me, unimpressed at what I grew up to be. I kind of wanted to ask them: Y’all expected the little boy with the glittery purse and the clip-on earrings to grow up to be… what, exactly? ‘Cause I grew up to be exactly what I told you I’d be; it’s not my fault you didn’t believe me.
It was good to go back one more time and get it out of my system, but I don’t think I’ll ever need to go back again. It’s in the past and that’s the best place for it.
