This is a sensitive page for me, it really rips my insides out. I spent years on the verge of suicide over a double life I was living where I hated a part of myself.

Essentially in my teen years my friend group was split where one part of the province knew me as an easygoing guy who had a relaxed view on gender expression and sexual orientation; in the city I rolled with crew of friends who were more in tune with street life and I feared that meant they wouldn’t tolerate my past. I lived in fear of the day that the two worlds would meet and I would be exposed and rejected; I often contemplated killing myself should it ever happen.

By the time I wrote “Venus In Retrograde” I had learned to embrace my crossdressing and bisexuality. Much of the poem draws on crush I had on a guy and how strangely enough at the same time I made a mini skirt out of an old pair of corduroy pants. This skirt would follow me until I would later cross-dress openly on social media in an effort to come to terms with my past, and truly love myself.

PS. the idol in assless chaps mentioned at the end of the poem is, and always will be, David Lee Roth in the music video for the song Yankee Rose.