At first, I toyed with the possibility of requesting a second selection from the Reversing
Vandalism committee; Gay Professionals / Corporate America seemed concerns far
removed from my life. But as a book designer, I was viscerally affected when I opened the
volume I had been sent; there, in a wedge between the pages of text, lay a ribbon of pain.
Like an outcry literally wrenched from the spine, the tale it communicated was desperation:
silent, secret, violent. I could see the thumbprint where his right hand had gripped the
book, the bent distortion as his left hand began to pull but was stopped by the binding and
forced to begin again. And near the hollowed center, I read the chuckling admonition,
“I’m going to kill you!” The river that flows beneath our clothes, beneath the bones, is a
winding tale—bottled and held by semi-decipherable constraints, then suddenly released,
offered up as an invitation.
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