#is she taking nancy to a gay bar ? or are they girlfriends exploring the city ? or is it a metaphor wink wonk ? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ugliy-moved · 5 years

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ximena aiza was born a curious girl from the start. her family thought of her tendency towards exploration fondly, though her mother was worried for her every time she’d step out the door. but as outgoing as she was towards the exterior world, she didn’t always have very much energy for the people around her. she was quiet when spoken to, never rose her hand much in class, only would be caught in daydreams, heading out on her own, spending hours staring at empty houses in the neighborhood. curious, but funny. funny odd. strange.

what her family never knew was the inclination towards the occult their daughter held, not by her natural curiosity, alone ( though it certainly increased the interest ), but by a desire to know. to understand. to seek out some way to comprehend the mess of dreams that followed her every night. the feelings she got in the weeks leading up to a family member’s death. the voices that whispered to her through the walls. the instincts. the impulses. the luck that met her at so many turns in her life. good & bad, it always felt like it meant something, like it stood for something.

she never did find the answer, but she got better at handling the secrets she held as she got older, finding relief in the art she made. public school art classes often proved to be total shit, and xi’s experience wasn’t much difference while growing up in san francisco, but she did have the added benefit of living in a city of an art class as it was, anyway. in 1978, when xi was fourteen, her big brother gifted her an old, used nikkormat camera and some film. xi went crazy with it, taking photos up and down their street, going as far as she could. by 16 she’d gotten pretty good at it, going further to making collages out of her own pictures. materializing the dreams she’d have. visions. images of things to come. a lot of them turned out right, and with the collages matching up, she became more and more sure that she wasn’t just making it up.

when she was seventeen, xi fell for her first love. her name was josie, a girl who lived down the street. same grade, different school. sucked. but they spent every afternoon together. met up at fisherman’s wharf every saturday. it was kind of picturesque –– they’d been friends since they were fifteen, when josie first moved in, but two years in, that’s when xi knew. she always knew, to some degree, that she wasn’t like a lot of the girls she knew. not her mother, not her brother’s girlfriend. she took a while to vocalize it. even to herself. but at seventeen, she knew. she knew from the feeling she had when her and josie hung out, the way she wanted to tell her anything exciting first, the way she caught herself looking at her. it was clear. it was clear for both of them, and josie was the first to say it, which caught ximena off guard.

josie knew for a while longer that she liked girls, but she didn’t like to say it, either. not to her parents, who were by far much more conservative than xi’s, and who wouldn’t understand. and not even to her friends. not to xi, not until she knew she could trust her –– trust that she wouldn’t bolt, look at her different. and she didn’t. not for one second.

the two of them turned out not to be perfect together. better as friends, ultimately, but it was sure enough that they needed each other those years. without each other, neither of them would have had the guts to head to their first bar. go to their first pride. xi came out to her parents when she was nineteen with josie’s encouragement, and josie’s support was invaluable for the aftermath. she got lucky, really, with a mom who fought hard to get her father to understand. but they weren’t the most supportive, either of them. they both still held the belief she might “snap out of it” and marry a man, one day. xi knew she couldn’t convince them. or maybe that she was scared to try to, because she didn’t want to lose them.

her brother was as good as josie in a lot of ways, though it took him, too, a minute to acclimate. aside from the typical brotherly teases, he didn’t treat her any different. he made her know she was still a part of this family, as she was, for who she was. no matter what their parents said.

xi got into the sf art scene around that point, working shit day jobs here and there to pocket cash and crashing in her old bedroom. it was only when she around around twenty four she finally got a solid enough amount to feel like she could fly the nest, and that realization was accompanied by a pretty offer from an ex of hers ( her and josie broke it off around twenty, but stayed friends, and both of them ended up getting pretty seriously into the dating scene after that ). she’d had a friend who knew a friend who was starting up a gallery in chicago for lesbian and gay voices. a spectacle of acceptance and found family. xi was enamored by the idea, and with hundreds of collages and art pieces of her own collected over the years, she thought it could be a real opportunity. a chance.

moving to chicago to chase that dream ended up being a big mistake, but probably the best one she ever made. the gallery fell through and she found herself royally fucked, left without friends or community in a totally foreign city. used all her money to get herself out there and an apartment for the first couple months, so at least she had that. but it was a lot of scrapping. a lot of working shit jobs yet again and trying hard not to give up. she managed it for a while, and eight months in, she actually caught a break. found herself a gig in a café that fostered a hearty lgbt community, and suddenly she could feel the heart of her old home back. it felt nice, comforting, to be surrounded by people she could be herself around. it felt right. and it ended up being more beneficial as time went on. the people who ran the café needed more business, and xi’s flyers did the trick. soon she was helping design some menus, signs –– turned out she had a knack for graphics.

one thing led to another and the owner of the café, a sweet man named tony, was doing everything he could to help ximena. he knew she was meant for something good. something big. he ended up hearing from a friend of his about an opening at a local paper for a graphic designer. said he could set her up. a few weeks later, ximena was meeting eugene grady, cartoonist at the paper in question, and a man who would become one of her closest friends. the man who would later introduce her to the most exciting, strange, weird girl she’d ever laid her eyes on. nancy wheeler.

#this is her bio hehe #▌ ⁑╰ i. ximena a. / written .#the psychic stuff again is like .. not that huge a factor but i'll reveal more abt #the events that it featured in later

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