Honcho Campout is A Rollercoaster

Honcho Campout sounds like a dystopian paradise; a six-day music festival at the Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary in Artemas, PA. The festival itself is packed with music, dancing, speakers and wellness programs aimed at queer people and their gender-fluid neighbors. Despite it being attended by predominantly cisgender, white, gay men, Campout champions BIPOC queer folks with its emphasis on the Queer Fam Fund, a diverse group of staff, volunteers, and talent along with its ever-expanding relationships to marginalized communities.

Months leading up to it, there was chatter between my group of friends as to who was going, but neither parties confirmed who was camping with whom. I later realized I would be camping alone. My friend Steven told me to have my own plans.

“Martin… you’ll naturally meet people near and around you, and with your magnetic personality, that won’t be an issue at all. And when you DO see [your friends], be happy to see them.”

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IMMERSION

View the NFT piece HERE

“I knew you were gay before you came out”, one of my good friends said on one summer drive to the Jersey Shore.

I was too afraid to tell them about who I was, back then, in fear they would banish me from the group. I was too young to realize these rational irrational fears would consume my young adult life. 

I kept to myself throughout college, even refusing to come out to my fraternity brothers when I joined one as a freshman. I wanted them to treat me like how they would treat their cisgender members, not shying away from casual spitting of slurs that would not work in our time today. But back then, I wanted them to try and verbally hurt me in hopes I would come out “stronger than yesterday”, as one pop princess echoed in one of her songs. I buried myself in schoolwork, collegiate and philanthropic work, since I didn’t know any better, and I felt out of place.

I explored my sexuality and had relations with women then, too, while still knowing I was far more attracted to men. I’m certain my peers could attest (if you ask nicely) that they may have seen me with a few them at one point or another. “It comes with the territory of being in a fraternity”, they said. A desire to belong, I risked not showing people who I truly was, until I was already a member of that social club. That nauseating fear I experienced during my early childhood crept up to when I finally came out to them. Nightmarish imagery of being lost haunted me, and I ended up in an echo chamber of self-doubt, regret, and resentment only because I was existing around people who didn’t understand me. 

“Note To Self: IMMERSION” encapsulates my younger self looking at that blinding light while in the dark. I took this photo of a good friend in Philadelphia, as we danced the night away. 

ENMESHMENT

View the NFT piece HERE

I’ve always had an inkling of who I was, but didn’t quite understood my real place in this world.

I also knew that there were many queer people in my life, whether it be my uncle, my mother’s colleagues, neighbors, hairdressers, or acquaintances. I’m sure they all had feelings of who I was to become before I could even figure out why I liked certain people more-so than others.

In high school, I was enamored by this boy (he was a Junior, while I was a Freshman). I thought fondly of him, and we became close friends through an ROTC-program. I wanted to be a part of his life, and I made it to a point to be his wingman. I did my best to kept confusing feelings towards him to myself, making sure I always went right by him, aany messages and gifts he wanted sent to girls came through me, and vice-versa. A bridge for communication pre-social media. 

But what made this once fruitful partnership between us ending in complete shambles is solely by miscommunication — how word of mouth traveled much, much faster than tweets and DM’s of today. There was some sort of sophisticated way these would pass from one person to another I’ve still yet to understand. Gossiping in a dangerously small campus filled with pubescent and hormonal teenagers was a cocktail mix I never steered away from. 

There was a tense moment he and I fought for what felt like hours, and I was left to tears. My older sister picked me up and I asked her why I was devastated over a girl. She knew it wasn’t about the girl, but about this boy I was winging for. I don’t think she ever admitted it to me until much later in my young adult life.

Everyone in my life knew who I was before I came to that realization. And they were all woven together, helping shape and comfort me up until the time my true self would finally arrive. I chose this photo I took of power lines, digitally colorized with a spectrum of colors to showcase people’s connections to one another, whether it be something intimate, to something grander. We are everywhere, after all.