financially independent. But these days people are coming out at younger and younger ages. Some research puts the average age at 15. In too many cases, when a young person comes out as LGBT, their parental units respond by disowning them and kicking them to the curb. Just so, the number of homeless LGBT youth keeps growing.”
“What assholes,” Otter whispered. “What kind of parents disown their kids?”
Comesflying obviously heard him and said, “Far too many.”
“Hey,” one of the older White men held up his hand as if he were back in school. “I thought I was always supposed to call you guys Native American, but he (and I suddenly had a finger pointed at me) used the word ‘Indian.’ Am I using the right word?”
“You have to remember we all have our own tribal names for ourselves.” Comesflying pointed his lower lip at Otter. “What do your people call themselves?”
“Ka'igwu,” Otter answered. “In English we’re called Kiowa.”
“And you?” he looked at me.
“Nymoomah,” I said.
“And what do these words mean literally?”
Otter and I looked at each other. “People,” Otter said.
“Human People,” I said. “In our language we consider all to be people—so you have to say Salmon People, Bear People, or Human People.”
Comesflying looked back at the White man who asked the question. “Anything we call ourselves in English would be using a foreign language, so many of us don’t get our panties in a twist if you call us American Indian or Native American. After Native American started being used by the federal government people suddenly realized it automatically included Native Hawaiians. Suddenly they became the second largest Native population, just behind the Navajo. But the feds didn’t provide any additional resources. American Indians protested.
“As a result these days on all federal forms we’re listed as American Indian/Alaskan Natives. Native Hawaiians are now categorized as Asian/Pacific Islanders. If you’re from a reservation you’ve always grown up having to deal with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Services. Hell, you’ve living on an Indian Reservation. Just so, it’s natural to use Indian. Bottom line—you’ll never go wrong using the term Native American—it indicates you’re trying to be PC and respectful. Just don’t call us Redskins. For a lot of us, that’s our N-word.”
The White guy raised his hand again. I rolled my eyes. “Could you tell me what a Two-Spirit is? It was listed on the flyer that announced this Workshop.”
“Back in the 1990s there was a concern expressed by a number of Native folks that terms like gay or lesbian were very Euro-Centric. If a younger person is seen as different these days, they’re automatically labeled as gay or lesbian. But many of us have words in our Native language for someone who is different. For us, it almost always has a spiritual element to the identity—it’s not solely focused on sexual behavior. So it was decided by an International Gathering of Native people to try what was called a working term. They came up with Two-Spirited to imply a combination of male and female energy. Later on it was felt Two-Spirited sounded past tense, so it evolved into the current Two-Spirit. It’s an additional option to use that a lot of Native people prefer. Other Natives specifically identify as gay or lesbian.”
When the White guy seemed satisfied, Comesflying flipped through more statistics and then put up an image that read Condom Time!
“So I’ve brought enough bananas for you to use in our condom exercise. I originally brought zucchinis for everybody and at the end of my workshops I’d be stuck with dozens of squash. Then I hit on the idea of giving away bananas and after practicing with a condom, everybody would just eat the banana. As a Native American I like the idea of ecological recycling. When I was doing a workshop in Michigan, Jane, the organizer, sent her sister to take me to a store to buy the condoms I needed. When we got there, she said she would wait for me in the car. When I asked why, she told me she would feel humiliated about having to go in and be with me as I bought so many condoms. As a sex educator, I think of condoms the way an elementary school teacher thinks of pencils. It had never occurred to me to be embarrassed.”
He held up a banana with a strategically placed condom on the tip. I don’t think I’ll ever see breakfast cereal in the same way again. “So—for the first time I paid attention to the checkout clerk. She looked at dozens of bananas and boxes of condoms I had put in front of her and said, ‘That’s a lot of bananas.’ And she was right.”
Otter accepted the banana handed him along with a couple of condoms. I reminded myself he was used to doing this once a month. I had never tried a condom on and randomly wondered what it would feel like.
“Jane had three generations of her family with her—her son and her mother were there along with several Elders. At one point all of the Elders burst into laughter. When we went over to see what had happened at their table, one of the women said, “When your mother was trying to put the condom on the banana she broke it. We told her—that’s the way your daughter was born!”
We all experimented with our condoms—the first time just to make sure we knew what we were doing. This included opening the square package carefully so there was no danger of ripping the contents. So even if you were desperate for sex, you weren’t allowed to rip it open with your teeth. Good to know. Then we did a second round where we competed against each other to see who could protect their banana the fastest. Otter won. I guess practice makes perfect.
“And remember to use a water based lube.” He clicked his control and some examples of Astroglide, Liquid Silk, KY Jelly, and ID Glide appeared on the screen. “We don’t recommend one brand over the other. These are all easily available and at the end of the Workshop I’ll have free condoms and free samples of lubes so you can experiment. If you use petroleum based lubes like Vaseline, they’ll actually break down the condom and it will be much more likely to fall apart. There’s currently new research going on about the use of lubes without condoms because it looks as if a lot of lubes by themselves may cause damage to rectal cells.”
He looked at a few of the participants and added, “Rectal cells make up the tissue in your anus. Certain actions—like anal sex with someone when you don’t use lube can cause tearing of rectal tissue in the anus which creates an opportunity for all sorts of nasty things to enter the body through those rips and tears. That includes Sexually Transmitted Infections beside HIV, like chlamydia and syphilis. For those of you who are Native, I’m not happy to tell you we have a problem. According to the Center for Disease Control we have higher rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis than Whites and Latinos and we’re second only to African Americans, who have the highest rates for all three STIs. STIs increase the likelihood of HIV infection.”
I thought about my first official lover—a foreign exchange student from Italy and how much of a screamer he was when I plugged him from behind. I wished I had known about lubes back then. Although I kind of got off on noisy bottoms. I found that hot. Otter was someone who was pretty silent. He explained it was from a tradition of having to share a teepee and keeping quiet for privacy reasons. I thought that was total bullshit and called him on it. Otter’s family hadn’t lived in a teepee for generations. I’m positive teepee etiquette is not genetic.
As we ate our safe bananas, Comesflying mentioned putting a dab of lube inside the condom before putting it on increased the pleasure sensation for a lot of the tops. Good to know. “This Center also offers free HIV testing. You can have it done after you’re finished here. Remember, even if you test negative you should also do a follow up HIV test three months later. The test looks for antibodies that show you were exposed to the virus, but it’s like a snapshot of where you were three months ago. That means there’s always a possibility you could have been recently infected and your body hasn’t had a chance to create the antibodies for the test to detect.”
He put up some historical images of different tribal groups. “Traditional
ly in many of our Native Nations, sex was simply considered a regular part of life. People talked about it openly and many of our Coyote or trickster stories provide a lot of information about what and what not to do.” He grinned. “Coyote is our original sex educator.”
Having had some up close and personal contact with Coyote, I wouldn’t recommend him. Way too much of a “hands on” approach, if you know what I mean.
“Remember that while it’s estimated about one in five people in the general population don’t know their HIV status, it’s believed that the number is higher in Native American populations—about one in four.”
“When will you tell a Coyote story,” Otter asked. Believe me, I didn’t. I had been around Coyote far too much.
Comesflying looked up as if he were searching for the right story. His hand moved and an image of an actual coyote with its tongue hanging out appeared and I admit that even made me smile. “Long time ago, Coyote was going along and he saw some Two-Spirit Twinks gathering strawberries and he was impressed how cute they were. ‘Ah, such young