What is going on?

I was reading the Tuesday Mariana's Variety and saw a picture with caption, however it was missing a story. The caption mentioned a detail of an individual found not-guilty of attempted second degree murder. I was intrigued that there was a picture without a story and read it out-loud to a co-worker and they replied with the story that happened over a year ago. (A story that I looked in back archives and found only one article in the Saipan Tribune) The story I was told was one of two men that were jumped and beaten on by two other men as they were presumed to be gay (this was from my co-worker, not the article) and one of the men defended themselves with a box-cutter type knife which resulted in this individual being arrested due to one of the perpetrators being cut in the incidence and claiming they were the victims, rather than the perpetrators.

Several things about this story have me curious. First, how long will people not talk about GLBT issues openly here in Saipan? You have to know that there are serious events, such as this, that should be openly discussed. It is my opinion, that people should not be allowed to think that "gay bashing" is an acceptable thing here in Saipan! Secondly, how difficult is it to be openly gay living here in Saipan? I was openly gay before moving here and there was no reason to go back into the closet, therefore, I am curious about learning the difficulties that people have with growing up here and deciding to be out or in, the closet.

Island Dyke

Finding It Hard To Find Something To Talk About Thats Gay

Well, I have abondoned this blog for sometime as I hit a wall. Trying to find something to talk about that is GLBT has been almost impossible, especially as there are so many other things that seem soooooooo much more pressing, such as CUC power-outages and the other negative things going on lately in Saipan.

I have found myself, in iddle time, spending energy studying green options. In the July/August edition of Curve there was an article about a lesbian that bought an diesel Volvo with a veg oil system installed. With this vehicle she could run either diesel fuel or veggie oil. She named her car "Rudy" and it displayed the "greasecar.com decal stickers" from the conversion kit intalled on the car. She shares about the experience of how it took some time to become an expert in oil pouring and how "sticky" the process was at times. She is now on her second greasecar, a Benz she named Esmerelda. (Siegal, 2008)

To me it seems there is a little more involved in owning such a car than the norm, however, the pay-offs may be well worth it financially and saving the environment to boot. The only extra added skills needed is pouring oil with minimal spilling and finding an oil resource. The jury is still not out for me though as the air-compression cars are hitting the U.S. next year.

Island Dyke

Reference:

Siegal, E. (2008) Spreading the Gospel of Grease. Curve, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 77.

www.greasecar.com