Sarah Sawyers-Lovett was born in Tazewell, Va., and says she isn’t offended if you haven’t heard of it. She enjoys pickles, punks and coffee and writes ’zines and blogs. She’s currently working on her first long-form memoir, “Everybody Else’s Girl.”
PGN: Tell me about Tazewell. SSL: It’s a really small town in southwest Virginia. It’s very rural, very religious and not very diverse. It’s mostly straight-laced cisgender Christians. The gay community is about 10 people.
PGN: What about the fam? Are you an only child? SSL: I never know how to answer that. I had a brother but he died when I was in about eighth grade.
PGN: I think that answers it. How did he die? SSL: He was crossing the street going to school and got hit by a car.
PGN: Without warning, that must have thrown the family into turmoil. SSL: Yeah, it was pretty difficult. He was about three years younger than me.
PGN: What was a happy memory with him? SSL: We used to play video games a lot. Wait, scratch that. One of my favorite memories of him was dancing to the Whitney Houston video, “I Want to Dance With Somebody.” We were both obsessed with it. Our favorite part was where she shook one of the guys singing, “Don’t you want to dance, say you want to dance!” and we’d take turns being the shaker and the shakee. He probably would have turned out to be a fabulous gay man.
PGN: My younger brother and I used to do that to the Prince song, “The Beautiful Ones.” We’d sing in the bathroom for the acoustics (plus a mirror) and when we got to the part where Prince screams, our poor mother came running up the stairs thinking we were being bludgeoned to death or something. SSL: I used to think that the lyrics to “I Would Die for You” were “apple, dapple doo.” I remember my mom and her friend driving in the car and cracking up when they heard what I was singing!
PGN: So speaking of mom, tell me a little bit about the folks. SSL: Well, my dad was never really in the picture and my mom didn’t really work. She had a drug problem but she’d read to us a lot and encouraged us to read as well, so there was that. I don’t know, that’s a weird question for me.
PGN: Did you grow up with public assistance? SSL: Yeah, AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children] and food stamps and all that good stuff.
PGN: It’s kind of scary that they’re cutting all these programs now for families in need. SSL: Yeah, We lived in a trailer park and we wouldn’t have had any resources if that had been cut off. Even then, things could get lean at the end of the month. AFDC paid our rent and electricity and things like that and my grandparents helped out with clothes and toys for our birthdays, but it was pretty bare bones. The funny thing is that I didn’t know we were poor until I went to school and there was something to compare it to. I think perhaps growing up with a mother who was on public assistance made me resourceful. I’m the queen of finding things on sale, or using Craigslist and Freecycle. As a kid we didn’t have a lot of toys; I’d get maybe a Barbie for Christmas and a Barbie for my birthday and that was big livin’. I’d cut their hair and draw tattoos on them, I never played normal Ken and Barbie games. Instead I’d imagine Barbie slipping through a mirror into an alternate universe and coming back with a thirst for blood. So not a lot of people played with me except for my brother! We’d have these epic weird Barbie games. I don’t know, maybe my mother would have sprung into action if public assistance wasn’t so available but I don’t think so; she had addiction issues so, without help, I probably would have ended up in foster care. I’ve never really given it a lot of thought before. Interesting to think about the what ifs?
PGN: What kind of kid were you? Obviously imaginative. SSL: Yeah. I was a pretty weird kid. We used to put on shows for the parents who were perpetually stoned, which probably made our shows all the better. There were two old freezer trucks parked in the woods and we’d use them as club houses. We’d use the car seats like couches and spent a lot of time there painting on the walls and reading. I spent a lot of time in the woods too, looking at animals and thinking about running away. I’d come up with these elaborate schemes about how to survive. Since I had no marketable skills at age 8, I’d have to support myself by begging. I’d envision smudging my face with dirt to look cute and a little pathetic. You have to exploit what you have! I never actually ran away, but I thought about it a lot. We lived in a trailer park so we’d play stick ball with the other kids, sometimes using apples for balls and an old shoe or somebody’s dog for third base until the dog wandered away.
PGN: And it sounds like you were smart. I read that your mom had to write notes to your teacher so you could read things outside your age bracket. SSL: I guess one benefit of having a mother who wasn’t super attentive was that I got to read anything I wanted. I read a lot of what my mother read, Harlequin romances and crime novels and things like that. My grandmother would take me to the library every two weeks and I’d get a stack of books. Reading was a huge part of my early development. As soon as I cracked the cover on a new “Choose Your Own Adventure” or “Boxcar Children” book, all my problems would fade. Things in those worlds were wholesome, different from the physical world I was in. It’s funny because when I was in first grade, they put me in a slow-readers group, but I think I was slow because I would write down what I thought about the things I was reading or rewrite them in my own words. I was looking for answers in books, but after they realized I wasn’t slow, I was pretty free-reeling and fun-loving with the books.
PGN: Did you spend most of your life in the same area? SSL: Until I was about 18 and then I went to community college and married a very nice straight guy. It was kind of a buddy-buddy marriage. Then I met a girl on the Internet and moved to Wisconsin. She turned out to be crazy and abusive, so I moved to Virginia Beach and spent a lot of time getting drunk and whoring around. Then when my grandfather died, I moved back home to take care of my grandmother. That was rough, moving back to the area where I’d been abused, so I had a pretty serious drug problem when I got there. After a bit, I decided to get clean and realized if I wanted to stay that way, I needed to get out of there. So I made a list of cities and compared crime rates, cost of living, GLBTQ community, the distance from other cities, etc., and Philadelphia won.
PGN: You’re in the process of writing your memoir about what you lived through. I know your mother was abusive; was she abused as well? It seems these things go in cycles until someone gets the wherewithal to stop it. SSL: Yeah, my mom was abused as well, but I’m not comfortable saying more. It’s not my story to share. But it is interesting the way it has played out in both of our lives. She physically abused me, but the sexual abuse I suffered was so vastly different, so randomly different, that I don’t even know what to make of it. I feel like there’s some kind of glib lesson to be learned from it, but anything I try to piece together doesn’t make sense. It’s something I puzzle over.
PGN: So, what is a zine? SSL: It’s a cross between a magazine and a pamphlet. The great thing about them is that anybody can write one, about any subject. There are poetry zines and queer zines and lesbian zines. They’re a wonderful resource and anyone can make them. I’m completely in love with them and have been since I was 15.
PGN: And you credit the zines and the community for saving your life? SSL: Well, after feeling wasteless for so long and then finding an avenue of expression that you have total control over is very powerful. People who relate to it reach out and you build a community of people with queer issues or abuse or poverty or addiction or different problems. It’s a non-threatening way to communicate because it’s not in person so there’s no pressure until you’re ready for it to develop. With letters and with zines, you get to choose your words carefully and can choose how much you want to reveal or how much you want to let someone into your personal territory. As a kid, growing up in a small religious town, all I heard was “God doesn’t love you, you’re going to hell,” so finding other queers was very normalizing and it made me feel less freakish and alone.
PGN: I read that you discovered them when you were a member of a queer pen-pal group. SSL: Yup, I answered an ad in the back of a Rolling Stone magazine when I was in high school. You’d tell them if you wanted to write to someone geographically close or far, male, female or transgender and they’d match you up with a pen pal. One of my pen pals sent me the zine and at first I thought it was kind of weird but then I got into it and thought, I could totally do this, so I did.
PGN: Do you have to be an artist to be a zinester? SSL: No, no, not at all. You just have to have the desire to express yourself.
PGN: What did you study in college? SSL: I studied radio and television production until I realized that I hated being in front of a camera, so I studied journalism until I moved to Wisconsin. Since I’ve been clean and sober, I started taking classes online so “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” I’ll be graduating with a bachelor’s this year in English.
PGN: And what do you do at my favorite anarchist shop, The Wooden Shoe? SSL: I’m a buyer and I’m on a committee.
PGN: You must get some fun characters in there. SSL: It’s a good time. I love to interact with the community and watch people on South Street. People are so excited to see the variety of resources we have that they want to talk about it. Sometimes we have to curtail it, like, “I’m so happy you found info on vegan microbiotics, but I need to get a little work done. Please make yourself at home.” One of my favorite regulars in the store is a woman named Stella. She has some developmental issues and she often doesn’t realize that she’s being inappropriate. So one of my favorite things is to watch new staffers interact because they’re not sure what to do with her. I figured out that if I got her bubble wrap it would fascinate her for hours so I could get some work done. She’s so cute!
PGN: And your “day job”? SSL: I make balloon animals and do face painting for kid’s parties.
PGN: Very cool. Tell me about your partner. SSL: She’s a school teacher and we met online. I wrote her a letter and she wrote me back. I wrote again and she never answered. So I figured, “OK, I guess she’s not into me, not everybody is — no harm, no foul,” and then I saw her at a volunteer training at the William Way Center. I felt a little weird because I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, so I emailed her one more time and it turned out that she’d decided to move to Philadelphia at the same time I did and we just had some scheduling differences. We started dating and we recently got married at Fleisher Art Memorial. It was overwhelming and exhausting but amazingly beautiful. Then we went to New York and got our official license. It was a great experience with friends and family.
PGN: Family? SSL: Well, since I’ve been in Philly, I’ve created my own family based on shared interests and community, which feels more sincere than with the people I share a bloodline with. My mom did come. She was the only one in the family that did; the rest of the family is very religious and of the “love the sinner, hate the sin” mentality. I think it was a good experience for her. Ryan’s family came from all over and it was wonderful.
PGN: Any non-human companions? SSL: I have a hedgehog. I love her so much, I did not even know that I could love a hedgehog like that. Like, yesterday I gave her a bath. You have to keep them warm so I put her in my shirt and we fell asleep. It’s awesome.
PGN: Three sounds that disturb you? SSL: When kids are really crying, distressed or in pain. In part because it’s alarming and in part because of my profession. Since I’m a balloon twister, it’s something I can fix. I carry them with me and if I see a kid crying on the train, I’ll jump in and help. Asking first of course, so I don’t seem like a creeper. I’m pretty shy by nature, but that sound is enough to make me overcome my reticence and get involved. Also, screeching tires and sirens. Don’t like them.
PGN: Ever play any organized sports? SSL: Not really. In high school being in the locker rooms with presumably straight girls really made me nervous. I was hyper aware of them knowing that I was gay and terrified that they would start something to mess with me.
PGN: Secret remedy for hiccups? SSL: I have a great one. It’s my wife’s remedy. Have someone stand behind you and cover your ears with their hands. As you chug a glass of water have them put pressure on your ears. It works like a champ.
PGN: What book would you put in a time capsule? SSL: “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure” by Dorothy Allison or “Written on the Body” by Jeanette Winterson or “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.
Learn more about Sarah Sawyers-Lovett’s work at punkjoanofarc.com
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