According to Wikipedia, Donkey Kong escapes, Princess Diana marries Prince Charles, the Stardust club burns down killing 48 people and Video Killed the Radio Star premieres but I never watch MTV until I am almost 15 years old, and Muhammad Ali exits the ring for the last time. June Jordan publishes Civil Wars but Carolyn Forché’s The Country Between Us wins prizes. I am delivered by a doctor who would be forced to resign 30 years later after he is accused of assault. I’d probably guess that is one reason I am queer but who is really to say when I just love who I love and most of them happen to be women or nonbinary. Photos of me as a child suggest I travel rivers and borders to visit relatives scattered across various deserts, but I only remember splashing in the San Felipe beneath the railroad tracks and distant cousins who would grow up to vote for Trump because you simply cannot trust all Mexicans to betray whiteness. Val Verde County did not yet have an ugly disjointed barrier in 1981. Eventually the state would pay more than 3 billion dollars to erect steel bars to incarcerate the land. I did not even know how to swim yet. Likely this is how I learned to navigate astral planes. My imagination stays alert, so I never rest but I am already ready for after midnight portals or jinn that visit me. We move from the blue trailer to the yellow house to some other house to finally the one house I would write in as my home address for the rest of my life. Yes, the one down the street from a cemetery. That is how Death became my neighbor. How else do I explain how I am the way I am without listing all the historical events of my birth year? I didn’t even mention that someone tried to assassinate the pope or that the first reports of crack cocaine appeared the same year Ronald Reagan became president. What would have happened if John Hinckley Jr. had been a better shot?
