From: eowyn@brahms.udel.edu (Zoe Antonia Velonis)
Subject: kudos
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 01:28:13 GMT

First of all, thanks to everyone who pounced on me...both on net (I
finally got to the end of those 400 odd articles that had stacked up) 
and off net.  You know who you are!  
Although they made me feel nice and warm and fuzzy, and squeezed and
loved, etc. (& I'm not belittling this!), I've got some problems I'm 
hoping you can help me with---hell, even typing it all down in verbal 
format will help.
If you've read Jim (seamus)'s posts, you know that on UD we have the
LGBSU (less politically active) and Queer Campus (politically radical).
I finally admitted being bi to myself and a friend up in NYC over e-mail about 
a month and a half ago, and three days later, proceeded to join QC to make 
some sense out of things.  It seemed to me like they were the only people
on campus doing a damn thing about homophobia, and I wanted to do something,
too.  So far so good.
But, with typical alacrity and zeal, I jumped in both feet first.  I'm now
the rep between QC , the LGBSU and our student govt., unofficial secretary
for the group, and (without boring you with all the politics that have 
been shuffling back and forth for the past month or so), have volunteered
myself to the extent that I feel like I am a political animal.  nothing
else.  
(I can hear it already.  Slow down, take it easy, let yourself get into 
things gently.  You have plenty of time.)
Conscience is really easy to write off as not knowing what it's talking
about.  It has a tendency to concentrate only on aspects of the problem,
not the whole thing.  I want to remain active, I like feeling like I'm
doing something.  But I feel like I haven't resolved my bisexuality 
within my own personality, that I've been hiding behind politics and 
creating this demarcation line within my life:  Before Queer and After
Queer.  I love being Queer, at least I think I do most of the time, but
I don't know how to reconcile being a daughter, sister, writer, juggler,
french speaker, poet, all of these things that have been so central to
my identity.  And the friend who is reading this over my shoulder just 
pointed out that they can still be central to my identity has a point, 
but it's a lot harder to do this than to say it.  How have you all
integrated the non-queer parts of yourself with the queer parts of you?  
It's proving to be a mammoth task that I am not really sure how to deal
with.
I can be Queer.  I have no problem with that identity.  It's being Queer+
Zoe, that's what I can't understand how to do.
Any suggestions?

On a lighter note, I thought I might explain my login name once and for
all so I won't have to keep mailing it individually.
Eowyn is a fictional character in J.R.R. Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_
trilogy, which I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't read it.
She is a really incredible woman who follows the guy she's in love with
and dresses up like a man and fights in the battle against the bad
guys and kills the king of the Nazgul (the big bad guys) and also gets
together with Faramir, whom I always kind of lusted after.  So she's a
wonderful role model.  And although she's not exactly like me, we have 
enough in common that I think we'd get along really well if we ever met
in person.  I'd probably make a pass at her (-:

Roy, good luck if you decide to tell the parental units.  I came out to
my brother on Friday---I whisked him aside and said to him, "What I wanted
to tell you except that we kept playing telephone tag was...."
and he said in that wonderful melodramatic joking tone of his,"You're
coming out of the closet!" and I said, well, actually, yes.  I'm bi.
He took it well.  Sat there with a big silly grin on his face.  But I'm
not planning to come out to any of my other family members.  It would
either destroy them---I know, maybe I'm underestimating them, but when
they're pretty damn close to fundamentalist christians who are unquestion- 
ably homophobic,  how do you drop a bombshell like that?  In my case, you
don't.  But as everyone else has said, you know them, we don't.  Do what
your heart tells you is right, do what will give you peace.  And hugs!

HUGS all round.  We deserve them.
Thanks for being here to gripe to! (-;

Zoe
(Have you ever noticed that whenever you try to say something really 
profound, you always end up sounding like the lyrics of a country music
song?)
  
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