A conversation with Lauren Mathers

Transcript from episode twenty four of the Good Folk Podcast.

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SPENCER GEORGE: Hello, folks. My name is Spencer George and you're listening to the Good Folk podcast. I'm reporting live to you from the state of North Carolina and specifically from the campus at the University of North Carolina, where I'm a graduate student in Folklore. At UNC, I investigate the role that folklore can play in a world and region that teeters on constant collapse. How can storytelling methodologies and communal practice bring us together against all the odds? How can we find common ground in one of the most complicated and contested regions in the world? Do we attempt to love the places we are from, or do we learn to find comfort and freedom in abandoning them completely? Most simply, I describe all of this as folklore-futurisms, using the field to stare down the dark unknowns of the future and attempt to find a path to them, no matter how tangled and intertwined it may be.

This, I believe, is also the role of many community activists across the South today. It is exhausting work to be an activist and especially here in the South, where so often it feels the places you live reject the work you attempt to do. I work these days largely in rural activism and climate change awareness, but those are only two branches of a very large tree. 

You might notice that this podcast is dropping into your inbox on Friday instead of our usual day of Wednesday. Let me provide some context. We had every intention of getting this to you on Wednesday, but then walking back to my house in the middle of the day, police cars sped past me on the road, rushing towards campus, and a few minutes later I received a now familiar text alert from the university: Emergency. Armed, dangerous person on or near campus. Go inside now. Avoid windows.

Just two weeks earlier, UNC students received the same message during what turned out to be a fatal shooting in one of the science labs on campus. On Tuesday of this week, UNC students were thrown out of the legislative building in Raleigh after they gathered to protest the GOP leniency on gun laws, laughed at by lawmakers as they exited.

It feels impossible sometimes to be an activist here. It is exhausting. It asks so much of you and it takes and takes and takes and yet, we are still here believing in change. The South is the ground of fertile resistance, and it has been the birthplace of some of the largest activist and labor movements in history. Those aren't the stories we get in the media, which often focus on repression and denial. But if we're willing to look around and pay attention, we will see there's a very different story happening all around us. One led by the activist community leaders and believers of change who are willing to show up day after day in the hopes of something better for all of us. 

Lauren Mathers is one of those individuals, and I'm honored to be joined by her on the podcast today. Lauren, she/her/hers, is the executive director of Sandhills Pride, the LGBTQ+ support and advocacy nonprofit based in Moore County, North Carolina. She has spent her entire career in the nonprofit sector, first in dance and theater in Chicago, New York, the Berkshires and Florida, and later with the Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida, and now with Sandhills Pride since January of 2022. Lauren received her degree from Southern Illinois University, where she studied art, film, photography and bookbinding, and she continues to pursue her artistic interest for relaxation and personal enjoyment.

I am tired. I am grateful. I am inspired by individuals like Lauren who remind me that we must keep showing up and we must keep believing. Despite it all, I still believe. I hope you enjoy this conversation. 

LAUREN MATHERS: Yes, for some reason that's an effect that if I don't turn it off, it just wants everyone to just come with it. All right, then. Yes. Okay. Let's chat. 

SPENCER GEORGE: Let's do it. I actually wanted to start here—because we have our amazing podcast producer, Vic, who is from Moore County, who has grown up in Moore County, and Lauren, we’ll have your whole bio at the beginning so people will be already familiar a little bit with your work. But, you know, both of you work very heavily in queer communities in Moore County. I am also a queer person, but I only lived in Moore County for a year, so I'm perhaps not the best person to speak to Moore County. So I wanted to turn it over to Vic a little bit, if you wanted to talk while we have you here about your experience growing up in Moore County and what this landscape has been like for you before we get into what Lauren does and the incredible work of Sandhills Pride. 

VICTORIA LANDERS: Yeah. So I lived in Moore County for about 20 years now, and I would say my—I have an Italian Catholic background. So being queer in that space and especially being queer in the South, while I was figuring myself out was very daunting and scary and it felt very wrong. I like to think that a lot of young like gay babies, if you will, gravitate towards each other before they realize you know, who they are. I think my entire friend group that I made in high school, we're all queer in one way or the other. So you have that natural navigation and comfort of where we all kind of like slowly came out to each other.

I remember my best friend's 18th—no not 18th, 16th birthday—and we were walking into an Italian restaurant and this was after, like, you know, really praying the gay away or whatever. And I was like, “I think I like girls.” And I blurted it in this parking lot, this little local Italian restaurant. And then my friend next to me went, “I also like girls.” And I said, “Do you?” And she was like, “Yeah.” And then the birthday girl, she was like, “I think I also like girls.”

So we all came out to each other in a parking lot on this thing, and it’s one of my favorite memories of all of us. But it felt so daunting and scary, because there wasn't any local representation in the area. Like the only time I saw representation of queer people was the “kill your gay” tropes. Like Brokeback Mountain. I remember all three of us watching it and I was like, “Am I destined for this? Just like a sad cowboy story? Is that, like, all I'm really meant for?”

So that's what my experience was, just, like, coming out and just kind of the daunting-ness of it all and just being unsure, especially in Moore County. There wasn't, you know, pride flags hanging in the windows or there weren't stickers that say like “this is a safe space.” My therapist—I went to therapy in a church. And, you know, when I was struggling with all this, I came out to him, and then, like, unbeknownst to me, I kind of went through essentially what was a really one on one version of—I guess conversion therapy is the closest I could really get to it or explain to it. And then I was really excited, just all these confusing emotions and, you know, questioning my representation and what I was meant for as a queer person in the South and in Moore County. 

I was very excited to leave for college. I left for college, was great, met a lot of queer people and I really found myself and was like, “Oh, there's more to this than I realized.” I came back home to Moore County, and it was like those four years of living away from home, it really exploded I feel like. When I came back home and there was a couple queer flags or like pride flags in a business window. And I was like, “What? This is crazy. I never thought that would happen here in like, little small town, nothing. America.”

Then the past couple of years, I started volunteering places and that's how I ended up running into Sandhills Pride. My best friend that also came out in the parking lot to me during that my friend's 16th birthday, we were at a winery and we saw a little like, info flyer about a Sandhills Pride Pride Month in Moore County. And we're like, “Oh my gosh, we have to go.” Like, this might be the first and last depending how it goes. We have to be a part of this. And that's how I met Lauren, and ever since then, it's just been… Every week I feel like I go out and I see an addition of, you know, safe space stickers or just more queer people unapologetically existing in Moore County where I never thought I would see that growing up. So that's like a really fast and dirty version of my experience. 

SG: Yeah. Vic, thank you for sharing that. And Lauren, I obviously want to pass it over to you here, but it seems to me so strongly—and I think a great point that I have to also make is that when I lived in Moore County, that was also my first experience really having [a queer community]… You know, I went to a women's college, but that was my first experience really having a queer friend group and and finding your people in a place that you wouldn't necessarily expect to. And it seems to me one of the sentiments here is that Sandhills Pride was there, always, but all of these things often are hiding in plain sight in ways that you have communities and you have organizations doing that work, and it's sometimes hard to bridge that connection. I feel that so deeply with organizing around the rural South and finding arts communities of going, I never thought there were artists here and of course there were and they always have been here. And I think it's the same story for queer people in the South of, you know, we have the largest population here and we've always been here and we're long here. 

But Lauren, I would love to turn it over to you to think about kind of what brought you to Moore County and your experience working with Sandhills Pride. And like Vic said, this place has changed and is changing at all times. And I'd love to hear a little bit of your reflection, I think, on how it has changed in the time that you've been working here.

LM: Thanks, Spencer, and Vic, I have to say your story is not unfamiliar, both from kids in Moore County and people everywhere.

How did I come to Moore County? I have always known that I was part of the queer community, or at least queer adjacent, but as a young person, and I'm a bit older than both of you, so I started doing my exploring in the 70s, and one of the things I knew was that I definitely wanted to be a parent. I wanted to be a mother specifically, and I wanted to try to do that the old fashioned way. And I, at the time identifying as bi, didn't really see that in the queer community that I experienced.

I was living in New York in the mid to late 70s and this was about the time I was doing this exploration. I also went to an all women's college in Chicago and that was my first experience actually of being with women and going, “Oh, this is something I think I am like.” And of course, also having come from the Midwest, I was raised in a pretty conservative background, church background, and that was of course not a thing that I could even quite fathom. So I had these different pulls in my being and wanting to explore my world, but I made the choice to marry a very wonderful man. And we had a fabulous child who is, in fact trans-nonbinary themselves and is an educator at the university level in gender and sexuality. I’m very proud of them and they guide a lot of the work that I do here. Their experience has informed many of my decisions and paths. So that's part of that. 

But fast forward, I raised my child, had a wonderful life, created a fabulous family, but never quite felt like I was living my true self. We get into Covid and we know that Covid really brought out all kinds of things in people, and one of the things it brought out was people being alone with themselves for extended periods of time. And that experience, I think, led many people to look inward and many people to look outward and try to find meaning and answers. And that happened to me as well.

I had always been what I would say “gay adjacent”. So I worked in theater, I supported the Comprehensive Aids program in Florida, did a lot of fundraising work. My father came out to me as gay much later in life and unfortunately later died early because of not being able to come out in his world at the time. So all of these things informed who I was, and I'm sitting in this space and one of the dear people that helped me be present in the gay world to the extent that I felt I could, died very suddenly from Covid. And so one of my links that I felt I had to being able to sort of express this part of me, disappeared suddenly in the middle of this pandemic that nobody knew what the hell to think about or what to feel. And all these experiences were coming up at the same time that same year, very shortly after that, I celebrated the same birthday that my father was when he passed. So this brought up all kinds of stuff. And I, as many people did, had a bit of an emotional-mental-revelation-breakdown, however you want to look at it, but I knew that I needed to investigate myself and my being more fully and did so. Got therapy. Highly, highly recommend mental health care. Just going to put that in there right now. It's really vital to anyone on any path, but particularly I think on people in our community that are going through a path of trying to figure themselves out. 

I had a wonderful person who was still with me and they helped guide me and I realized I needed to be authentic. And long story short, I changed everything in my life. My fabulous spouse at the time supported me wholly and is still one of my dearest friends and greatest allies. And I made the decision to leave my job, leave my life, leave my world, and leave basically everything I knew in Florida, where I was living at the time. I had friends and family in the Triangle area and chose North Carolina as the place to land.

Through a series of meeting people and traveling about to try to get to know the area, I wandered into Southern Pines and I fell in love with the feel and look of the town, because it reminded me of a place I had lived when my child was quite young in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. And I always liked that, living right downtown in a small town feeling. But I experienced the same thing Vic did. I was walking all over the place in downtown and I could not find any representation of my tribe. And this kind of concerned me because I'm like, “okay, well, I know I'm here and statistically I know that I'm not the only one here, but where are we?” 

I came around a corner, went into Pennsylvania Plaza, and down Belvedere Plaza there in Southern Pines, I found this tiny little rainbow sticker in the window of what was, at the time The Leadmine. And I walked in and I went, “Oh my God, here we are, they're here, they're here!” I walk in and there's a new bartender. I was truly that excited inside. I didn't quite express it that way when I walked in, this poor guy. But I walked in, there was a bartender there, and I said, “I saw your sticker in the window and I wondered if you were queer friendly.” And his response was just hysterical and also kind of sad. He said, “Oh, you just missed them. They were here last week.” And I didn't quite know what to think of that. But what he meant was that the Sandhills Pride had just done their first drag performance in the Plaza the weekend before in celebration of Pride Month, and it had been quite popular, and The Leadmine had been a sponsor.

I was like, “Oh, okay, so there are people here and I can be safe.” And through a series of reaching out to Sandhills Pride and going over to Starworks, who's a great supporter, and seeing a big Pride flag hanging on their pole, and then walking in and seeing a sign that said that 10% of sales of rainbow merchandise would go to support Sandhills Pride, I said, “Okay, who are these Sandhills Pride people?”

I finally found an email, got a hold of them, became involved, started volunteering, and later submitted an application to become Executive Director and am now that person. But I've only been in this county for two years, so I can't really speak too much to how things have changed, because I don't have a reference to how they were. But I can speak to the experiences of people who have lived here and people like Vic who have come back. And what I've come to understand is that although there has been a queer community and Sandhills Pride has been in this area for quite a long time—we're coming up on our 10th anniversary in 2025 of being, you know, incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, so we've been around—but the programs were smaller and didn't have quite as an extensive reach. And just as they were starting to grow Covid hit, and knocked a lot of things out. 

When I came in, Sandhills Pride was really just getting their feet back under them in terms of getting things going and heading programming and doing services for youth and for women's groups and men's group and having trans non-binary discussions and being able to do public events with different businesses that are supportive and affirming and open and we feel safe.

And that's, I think, one of the most important things that my eighteen months here has shown me—is that there is always and will continue to be a very big need for creating safe spaces where folks can just get together and be. And that is often a challenge because as Vic and you have both experienced, we're not welcome everywhere in the South, even though we're a huge percentage of the population and represent one of the largest percentages. We're very quiet. And I think that's because of concerns for safety primarily. You know, we just want to kind of live our lives like everyone else.

But sometimes we're not allowed and they're situations that become unsafe or you—like Vic—had no support, couldn't really find a way to navigate the questions. So my goal really being here is to just provide help in the simplest possible terms. Help can mean so many different things from, where's a friendly barber? What’s one I got recently—I received an email saying I'm coming to visit my parents in the Sandhills, Pinehurst, wherever, where's a gay bar? And I just have to laugh, poor things… because we know there's not a gay bar here. We make them. We create the space we need because it's just not here.

It was really exciting to me personally because my girlfriend and I went up to Raleigh and we just walked right into a gay bar and it said in big pink neon over the door “Queer Bar.” And we just stood outside of there and looked up at it and went, “Oh. Look at that. Right there. Out in public. Queer bar in pink neon.” And there's this feeling of lightness that occurs when you find a space and you see representation of who you are in the world around you. And so I think that's the absolute biggest goal, personally, and as I try to help this organization move forward in this community, is to just find as many of those places as possible and make them as apparent and visible as possible. There’s safety in numbers. We've been saying it for years. It's an old saying we throw out, but there's truth. If we support each other more, we can be ourselves more. 

SG: That's beautiful, Lauren. I'm just thinking so deeply on everything you've said. I always say on this podcast that organizing is, in so many ways, its own art form. And I think the intersection of this podcast, it's really an organizing project first and foremost, which is saying we want to create the space for people to be themselves and to find themselves and to do that in community. Because as all of us are saying, you know, we went through this journey largely alone and that is a very different thing than being able to go through an experience and have a community and to enter into the world and know that there are people by your side.

And so creating and opening up those spaces is probably one of the greatest tasks that I think any of us doing arts or organizing work face in the South. I'm biased in that I think the arts are one of the best spaces to do it, so I'm really happy to hear you mentioned Starworks, which is an organization that I'm a huge fan of. I think they just do incredible work. For anyone who doesn't know, they're an organization that does a lot of rural arts organizing, but similar in a lot of ways to what we do, bringing artists together.

But, you know, we are a primarily arts podcast, and I think people might be wondering, well, how does this play in into the arts world? And to me, I approach it where anytime you're creating a space and organizing around that, it is absolutely an art form. I think we should be approaching organizing as its own art form and as something we need to practice and curate and learn, because organizers are artists in every way, and to hear the way you're making spaces and to see… I moved out of Moore County two years ago, a little over two years, and to see the way it has changed, even just in the last two years is, I think in no small part, probably directly related to people coming back, such as Vic, and choosing to to make this home, but also to the work that you do with Sandhills Pride and letting people know that you don't have to hide in plain sight anymore. Right. Like, you can be out in plain sight. And that's, it's—it's a small distinction, but it's a huge one. 

LM: Thank you. Addressing the arts, I absolutely agree. I think that arts—I mean, I spent forty years in theater and dance administration and organizing. Organizing is my passion. People think I'm a little cuckoo about it, but you tell me where you are and you tell me where you want to get, and I will organize the hell out of that for you and get you there. Because systems is how my brain thinks. Logical steps. How do we break this down into manageable portions?

And that's really what managing and helping Sandhills Pride is about. I mean, if I tried to look at this project as a whole, I would never get up in the morning. It's a lot, but we break it down and I have amazing support. I have to really put this in here, y'all. I have amazing support from volunteers. I mean, there is no way one human being can do the work that this organization does, and I'm rather proud to say that we do it really well because many people think we have a staff. I love it when I get the emails that say, “Could you please ask one of your staff members?” And I look around the room at myself and my living room and go, “Yeah, could one of y'all get to that?”

Because small organizations like this, small organizations like Good Folk, what y'all are trying to do, it always starts at a grassroots level with some people sitting around and having an idea. And that's how Sandhills Pride started. People sitting around having a conversation. I wasn't here, but this is—this is the organizational history I had been getting really angry about the, you know, the bathroom bill and the things that were going on in North Carolina, and then marriage equality became a big topic and they organized around these rights for the LGBTQ community. That's how Sandhills Pride started. 

When I came here, having gone through the experience of having a kid and myself, you know, feeling really kind of lost in youth about it—I didn't, you know, come out until much later in both of our lives. ButI know that the most vulnerable populations need the first help. I mean, that's just logical, you know? So when I came in, I looked at what I could see, which wasn't a lot, and said, “let's start with our most vulnerable populations,” which was our youth. Because you know how it feels to not have support and I was running into both kids and parents who needed help with how to navigate what they were experiencing.

I've come to understand since I was a youth that the spectrum of gender identity and gender expression and gender and sexual orientation is huge and wide. And it includes such a big spectrum that we can't stay in a small lane anymore. We have to expand what we do to embrace our full community. So that's the goal around that. And arts is the way that we can reach so many people.

I mean, one of the major things that we looked at when we did Pride Fest this year was having a queer art tent, because we know from an experience that we have with our youth that the space of creating art is a space that brings calm, that brings clarity. I have kids that can talk when they're coloring, but they can't necessarily be able to address and speak if they're just sitting there. So having the creative outlet, having a way to use creativity, use hands-on art projects to open up space for conversation is vitally important. I mean, there's a reason there's a field called art therapy, you know, and music therapy.

So we include the arts majorly and we partner with arts organizations, because I also find that within the arts there is a bit more expansion and willingness to collaborate than in some other settings. And so it's in those settings that I've always found my more creative thinkers, the more progressive thinkers, the people who are more willing to help push the boundaries and to come together in support of an idea.

I think the arts are vitally important and I spent the first two thirds of my professional life working specifically in the arts because I loved it so much and I found so many wonderfully warm, loving, supportive people in that environment who wanted to work together. So bringing that concept and that way of working into an organization like Sandhills Pride is integral to our success. I think making that space for everybody.

You know, we work with organizations like The Sunrise and Weymouth, which are major arts communities in this county, and by partnering with these beautiful institutions that have already established themselves here, and are already beloved, and are supportive of our mission and what we're trying to do, we create such a stronger foundation so that people can see themselves here and can feel safe to be out and can know that it's not just three or four people, but it's a whole group of folks, a much wider community that is really present. 

That came out so much last December when we came under attack for doing a drag show downtown because suddenly there was a moment that happened where people decided to stand up and say something that I think maybe prior to that, because there hadn't been this level of conflict so publicly displayed, had maybe not been willing to speak up. And as difficult as it was—and let me tell you what, that was one of the most difficult things I've gone through in my life, both emotionally and physically, you know, having a fear of being hurt, harmed is not something we like to live with. I think we all do to some level, but that was very pointed.

I had walked up on that stage. I told someone later that I actually had that moment where I realized, “wow, doing this work could actually get me killed.” Because only just a couple of weeks before that Colorado Springs had happened. And I was sitting here looking at this incredible sea of happy, joyous, just amazing faces of people who'd gone through a lot to get into that building and to share that space. And to realize that in those moments of the highest joy that sometimes our greatest tragedy also happens. But because of some of those moments, as difficult as they are—and thankfully there was no harm, nobody got hurt, everybody stayed safe through the diligence of many people, including our fabulous friends of the Sunrise and our sponsors—but it's in those moments that people stand up, you know, and that voices are finally found. And I think that's what we've seen happen in Moore County. Some of the divisiveness that we have been actually so afraid of and that kept us in the shadows for so long, is actually the trigger that spurred this growth of acceptance and embracing the community and trying to find more ways to support it and to create more diversity in our area. 

So, you know, as hard as that is, as hard as those moments are to experience and to see the pain and the harm that can be done through some of the things that happen, it's also those same things that trigger the responses that support and that create the next steps of growth. As long as there's the opportunity to educate, you can create understanding. And if you can create understanding, then your next step is acceptance. And it's not that far from acceptance to peace. It's just not.

Every single step we take, every person we talk to is a drop of water in that big pond. And those go out and eventually my job won't be necessary anymore. And I would love to think that that's going to happen before the end of my lifetime on this planet. I doubt it, but that's ultimately my goal. I shouldn't be necessary. Sandhills Pride shouldn't be needed. The understanding that everybody is the same and equality is what it is, and everybody gets to live their life... That should just be a given. And that's what I work for. That's why I get up every morning—so I can be out of a job.

SG: I work in the nonprofit world and have for, gosh, I guess the last ten years. And I think really is the end goal of every nonprofit should be to not exist, but mean then you have the nonprofit industrial complex. It's a much larger thing than that but I completely agree.

There are so many things in which you've said that I want to respond to, but I of course wanted to talk about the December attacks, and I think I would love to dial back to that a little bit, in that it was a really interesting experience for me going through that. Having lived in Moore County, I lived right in downtown Southern Pines, just a few blocks from the Sunrise Theatre. [In December] Vic and I recorded a whole podcast episode doing some live coverage and talking about this whole experience.

But I was living in Durham at the time that everything happened, and Durham is, for anyone who doesn't know, Durham is very much a very artsy, very queer city, very left leaning. And it was really interesting to see the response that was coming out in Durham and the stereotyping of rural places.

I was digging into Scott Herring's work this morning, who is a professor in the Yale American Studies Department, who works in rural queerness and talks a lot about the concept of metronormativity. One of my favorite things, he opens his book, Queer Anti-Urbanism, with the line “I hate New York” and this pressure—I wrote a whole thesis about it in college. I really recommend his work and I will link to it here. But it's this idea that, if you are a queer person, then what you should want is to get to a place like Durham or to get to a place like New York City or to get to San Francisco, right? That those are not only spaces of safety, but those are also spaces of community

I think it puts a very unique pressure on anyone who's in a rural place to say, “well, my community isn't here, so regardless of whether or not I'm a city person, if I want to find my community, I have to go elsewhere.” Metronormativity. That's where it comes in.

I would love to talk about things like Queer Eye and the way in which we have these kind of quote-unquote, very “urban”, very sophisticated, queer folks coming in to largely rural spaces and saying, “if you can't get to the city, let me bring the city to you.” Because in so many ways now to be queer has also become synonymous with being a very urban, young, hip city person. And that is obviously a huge stereotype and not true at all. But I think the response to what happened in Moore County felt so deeply rooted in metronormativity to me. A lot of people were like, “well, if you come to Durham, we have drag shows all the time,” and it's like, well, that's great, that's awesome, but not everyone wants to have to come to Durham, right?

And that's just the closest city. It extends much larger than that, especially when you look at it regionally. But I would love to hear the ways in which metronormativity as a concept and this kind of pressure to to leave a place in order to find community has played out in the work you've done with Sandhills Pride.

We talk about it so much on this podcast. I think it is the core of why I wanted to do this work, because I don't think you have to leave the spaces that raised you in order to figure out who you are and find community. But there is such a huge pressure around that, especially to young queer people. And having been a middle school teacher in the arts—Vic and I both can speak to this as well— it is just so, so prevalent and it's why I think is again so amazing to see organizations like Sandhills Pride who are saying, actually, you know, that community is here and it doesn't mean you have to stay. It doesn't mean you have an obligation, but you can still find that community for as long as you may be here, which I think is of just paramount importance. 

LM: I would definitely agree, but I also understand the feeling that kids growing up in a space where they've had no other options feel to get out and check out the rest of the world. I mean, I grew up in Indianapolis and it was, you know, a medium sized, pretty decent sized city, mostly conservative, very Midwestern, and I needed to get out. I mean, I just needed to get out because that's where I'd be my whole life and I needed to experience something different. And I think that that is a very natural process that kids go through and should be accommodated to the best of whatever family's ability, because exploration and understanding different cultures is how we get along, you know? 

I as a kid moved to Chicago, moved to New York. I've lived in both for extended periods of time. I loved the cities when I lived in them. But I also feel that there's an energy and vibe in the city that just after a period of time wore me out. Just literally the vibration constantly of the subway underneath the tracks under your building. You don't even recognize how it affects the energy field that you live in.

So after a period of time, I went to school in a very rural area down in southern Illinois, Carbondale. And the university was the biggest thing in the town. You know, when the kids were there, the population doubled and it was still a small town, still rural. So I had that experience. I had city, I lived in suburbs because that's where I grew up. 

I eventually bought a house in Florida. And having all of those experiences, what I realized suited me best was the convenience of living in a city in that you can walk outside and you are somewhere already. You don't have to go somewhere or get somewhere. It's right there. But I wanted that on a much tinier scale. So the living style for me that I found after multiple, multiple decades on this planet that worked well is living right downtown in a small town, much like what you talked about.

I fell in love with Southern Pines because it did have a number of things available that were important to me, just as a person who has had other experiences in the world and has lived in a city and has been used to having 24/hour things available. Now we don't have that. But, you know, having a couple of coffee shops that are independently owned... One of the things I loved about this area, too, is that there were so many independently owned businesses and family owned businesses. You know, I loved that downtown wasn't a bunch of block stores. And then I felt that there was community, even if my particular group and population were more hidden.

What I wasn't prepared for was quite the level of—I lived in Florida, which we now all look at side-eye and go, oh, look what's going on there. But I felt much more a presence of queer community there. There were many more flags, you know, parades, major celebrations, than in where I live now. Where I lived was a little bit more—it was West Palm Beach and a little bit more affluent because working in the arts, you almost always are working in a community where there's some money. That's who can afford it, unfortunately. But, you know, that sort of goes hand in hand. So having that experience, I think, and then coming to a small town, I did it by choice. And I think that's the other difference.

I would hope that we would be able to provide resources and communities so that folks who like Vic, who grow up here but then want to go off and have some experience, want to come back here. You know, when the December event happened and so many people asked me the same question, “Why are you there? Why are you there? Why are you there?”

And I do sometimes ask myself, especially when I'm walking downtown and I'm with my partner and I want to reach out to hold her hand and I have that split second where I think, “Is that okay?” You know, I look around who's around me. I don't want to have that moment. I would prefer to live my life where it's a natural gesture, and I don't think about, am I in a safe space where I can reach over and hold my partner's hand or give her a kiss in public? But I think about that because of where I live.

That being said, I'm not going to go anywhere because this is where the work is. It's easy to be queer in Durham. It's easy to be queer in New York. It's easy to be queer in Chicago. It's easy to see and to be queer in a number of places. It would be easier for me to move…But right now, I really feel that the work is here.

So that's something that I think is the difficulty for people who want to stay in the community. It’s literally safety. Sometimes we just don't feel safe because the voices that feel that our presence is somehow a threat to something that is valued in their life and they feel it so strongly that they have to become viciously and vitriolically vocal and sometimes physically active to work against our very existence, it does become exhausting. I can understand why some people would just not want to have to work that hard to live every day. I get it. 

That being said, I'm not going to go anywhere because this is where the work is. It's easy to be queer in Durham. It's easy to be queer in New York. It's easy to be queer in Chicago. It's easy to see and to be queer in a number of places. It would be easier for me to move. And maybe someday I will, because maybe someday I'll need a rest and I'll get older and I'll go, “I just want to walk down the street with my partner's hand and I want to see more, even more queer people.”

But right now, I really feel that the work is here. When I went through my personal experience of understanding myself and coming out, one of the things that I said to a very dear friend of mine, just talking about stuff as we do, is if—when—I get through this process, I really would like to give back to my community. Now, as I've since said to a number of people that I tell the story to, I really thought that meant volunteering. I did not think that it would be in this capacity, but this is what the universe presented to me and this was what the need was in the moment, both for myself and I feel for the community.

I am delighted and honored and quite humbled by having the opportunity to serve this community to the best of my ability and to expand the resources available in Moore County as much as possible, even against the tides that are present. And they are strong and difficult, so that folks don't feel like this isn't a place they can stay. But I want people to invest in this community. I want them to buy houses. I want them to stay. I wanted to raise their children. I want to create change from the ground up, and we can't do that if we all leave. 

But I, on the same breath, have to understand, if you grew up in this county and this is all you've known, I completely understand the desire to go away and have additional experiences and I think everyone should. But I also encourage people to come back and create roots here because change doesn't happen without a force and we need the force.