Sexilio

CREDITS: Written, illustrated and lettered by Jaime Cortez From biographical interviews with Adela Vazquez Translation by Omar Baños with consultation by Adela Vazquez Edited by Pato Hebert SHOUT OUTS AND LOVE: • Adela Vazquez for living this amazing story and then sharing it. • Pato Hebert for shepherding Sexile through to completion and for the world-class love, support and laughs. Post fierceindeed, Duckman. • George Ayala for the leadership, vision and windows of opportunity. • AIDS Project Los Angeles and Gay Men’s Health Crisis for the willingness to try something scary. • Jose Marquez for initiating the Sexile website at KQED, from which this comic sprung forth. CRITICISM, TECHNICAL TIPS BY: Tisa Bryant, Pato Hebert, Claire Light, Jose Marquez, Marcia Ochoa, Sarah Patterson,Carolina Ponce de Leon, Lori Wood, Matt Young, Peta-Gay Pottinger. INSPIRATION BY: Yoshitoshi, Aubrey Beardsley, Neil Gaiman, Jean Genet, Jae Lee, Frank Miller, Jose Guadalupe Posada, Joe Sacco, David Wojnarowicz, and the diasporic folk of the Proyecto Village. Hope you guys like the new baby. I SAMPLED: Yes, I am a hip hop baby that way. • The fetus image (page 4) was based on a photo from LennartNillson’s Drama of Life Before Birth. • The drawing of outrageous queens at a café table (page 19) was based on a detail from Paul Cadmus’ 1952 egg tempra painting Bar Italia. • The photo of our bloodied, beat down protaganist (page 25) is based on one of Carolyn Cole’s 2003 photos from a Haitian food riot. • The drawings of the refugees crowded onto the boat Lynn Marie (page 33), the boat docking(page 36), and the Point Trumbo Air Force Base hangar (page 37) were based on images found on the Cuban Information Archives website (http://cuban-exile.com). • I cribbed the phrase “No drama. Just the truth,” (page 48) from author Reid Gomez. • The image of the feet in the bathtub (page 63) was based on a detail of Frida Kahlo’s painting What the Water Gave Me. ISBN 0-9759225-0-5 © 2004 TheInstitute for Gay Men’s Health All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Info: phebert@apla.org

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Foreword by Patrick “Pato” Hebert

“To migrate is certainly to lose language and home, tobe defined by others, to become invisible or, even worse, a target; it is to experience deep changes and wrenches in the soul. But the migrant is not simply transformed by his act; he also transforms his new world. Migrants may well become mutants, but it is out of such hybridization that newness can emerge.” —Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands “I ain’t cross over, I just made my own lane.”—Common, Electric Circus What does it mean to leave what you love in order to become what you love? What does it mean to locate yourself again and again while keeping company with so many tremendous losses? How does that shape your sense of risk? Belonging? Desire? Representations of transgenders far too often consist of mere exotified curves and flattened emotional surfaces. These caricatures tend to bedisconnected from truths about how our lives as queer folk intersect. Fortunately, the pages of Sexile are considerably more alive, somehow mature and still in the making all at once. Sexile reminds us why we matter to each other. I was blessed to meet both Adela and Jaime when we all lived in San Francisco’s Mission District in the mid-1990’s. By simply and fiercely being themselves, they showedme an example of another world, one full of tremendous queer beauty and perverse creativity. They changed my life with their deep thinking, sharing and immense potential for silliness and pleasure. Adela once told me a story about a fine Dominican man with whom she’d had a sensational tryst. She was attending a queer Latina/o conference in Puerto Rico and found her special caballero while...