Twig Delugé

 This interview was recorded in Twig Delujé’s kitchen on the traditional lands of the Pueblo and Jicarilla Apache peoples in Pecos, New Mexico on July 8, 2014.

Interviewer: Rae Garringer Transcriptionist: Kayden Moore

My name is Twig Delujé, I'm thirty-one years old and I live in Pecos, New Mexico. It's beautiful because I get to live rurally but also have access to - there's city type things available. So it's kind of mountainous, but - it's high desert. Where I particularly live, there's more water than there may be in like, Madrid or Sante Fe, and especially Albuquerque. So it's like, the further south you go, the drier it gets. And so I'm in more of a mountainous region.

Rae:   So, how do you feel about being both, like, queer and country, and - that.

Twig:    I mean that's how I identify as a whole person, you know? I identify as a country queer, and it's very much - I think because it also, it took me a long time to get here, as I'm sure it does for many people, of melding, or finding the balance, or - or marriage [laughs] - between those two things, because they're not always something that we're taught or told or validated, that they can co-exist. And they can. That varies from how that works and what that looks like from person to person, but, for me, it was finding that comfort again in myself. Like, you know, knowing that I like being in the country, I like throwing hatchets, I like doing things that don't involve a lot of other people, and I get to do it by myself, and be out in the woods. And sometimes it's a little more affordable to do that as well, so sometimes that's a factor. And sometimes it's totally not more affordable. But you know, it's - I totally grasp so hard onto my identity as a rural existing queer that trying to think of myself as anything else at this point in my life is almost unfathomable. Yeah. So.

Rae:  So who do you feel like your community is here?

Twig:   Hmm. 

Rae:   Or is your community out here, or is it in town?

Twig::    Right. Well I'm really fortunate that my landlord currently lives on site, and we're really good friends, and so that's somewhat community - but we don't hang out a lot at all, so - but that's also by choice, on both of our sides. And…so it's like, my community - it's weird. Ever since leaving Portland, I feel like a lot of my community's in Portland, which was not something that I was expecting. But also, a lot of my community's in Madrid, New Mexico. Those are some of my oldest friends, a lot of them being country queers, and a lot of them are in Sante Fe. Yeah, so in Pecos I don't have a lot of people to hang out with, and rarely anybody makes it out this way [laughs], 'cause it is half an hour drive up a maintained mountain road, so it's like, mmph.

So I guess, yeah. My community would be in Sante Fe and Madrid, Portland. As far as Ozarkian folk, I don't really have a lot of folk that I connected with. I go there because it's where I like to be. It's the place, not so much the people. Yeah I guess it would be whoever I'm connecting with at that particular moment. And I guess people that I can not see for a long time, and still feel that connection with. And I feel like that's what happened with Portland, is that I can still connect with a lot of people that I may not talk to for two years, and it's fine. Um -

Rae:   So that leads me to another one of my questions - 

Twig:   Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Rae: Which is…do you feel like - do you feel like you have a lot in common with queer people who live in big cities, just sort of because of your kind of queerness, or do you you feel like it's hard to relate because your life feels really different than theirs?

Twig:  Yeah. No, I would totally agree - well, with the second part that you said. Cause I don't actually feel like I can connect with a lot of people that do live in cities, 'cause yeah, their existence is totally different. Their idea of queerness also - tends to be very different. Um, like... Okay, I'm going to totally out myself as outspoken - and saying things that maybe a lot of people don't like to hear. But, um -

Rae:   I - I think that's fine -

Twig:    [laughs] I just - I just… [laughs]

Rae:  I'm being quiet over here, so I'm like, “It's great! It's great. Go for it!” [laughs]

Twig:    I'm like, “I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings!” But I - I feel like people in cities - I'm going to say, in non-rural areas, for a large part get very, very wrapped up in a lot of politics and a lot of concern around politics - well, okay, let me be clear on politics. Politics, not just like governmental, but gender politics, and being very, like, trigger warnings - and things like…that's the only thing that comes to mind right now.

And, I feel like people that - when you're in a rural existence, sometimes you're more concerned about your garden or your next meal, or the safety of your pets or your livestock, or just your own safety, that sometimes you - and again, I'm just speaking from my own experience - but sometimes I find that when I'm living out in a rural area that I'm more concerned about myself than how other people are actually perceiving my queerness. I'm kind of contradicting what I said earlier a little bit maybe, but I guess - okay, let me say this: I'm less concerned about what other queers think of my queerness than I am in a big city. When I'm in a rural area, I'm less concerned about what other queers think of my queerness or my existence than when I'm in a big city.

So it's like I think just I can't always connect with them 'cause I don't have a lot to talk about. Like maybe they're growing a backyard garden, or maybe they, you know, at one point grew up in a small town or something like that. But their consistent - their consistent ruralness, if any, doesn't always exists, and sometimes that becomes difficult to make any kind of now-connection with. Being queer just isn't enough for me to connect with somebody. You know? Yeah.