MAINLINE FALL 2018 by Dianne Heimer

Rose Vega LEARNING TO LIVE WITH IT

Ben Irwin MUSICAL MEDITATIONS

Anastasia Jones ACTING DIFFERENTLY

Steven Logan Abel RING LADIES

FA L L 2 0 1 8

Heather Roegiers BECOMING ME

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PAIN BEAUTY PAIN BEAUTY Photograph byJason Pierce

Editor's note: PICTURED: Lee Kohler

“Beauty is pain.” I've heard the axiom at least once from every makeup artist I've ever met, while each coach and gym trainer echoed their more macho remix, “No pain, no gain.” Our experts in art and science say it, too. “The deeper sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain,” says Kahlil Gibran. Obstacles drive us to develop skills that others don't have, says Malcolm Gladwell in his book "David and Goliath." However the saying is packaged, society seems nearly unanimous:

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Greater prizes come with greater prices.

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But often the people who pay the greatest prices of all are least able to grasp the meaning of this treasured saying. Sometimes pain happens for no beauty, gain or reason at all. While beauty and pain do not travel together, there is something beautiful about putting words to pain. There's something beautiful when an artist shares their burden and the audience realizes they're holding up the same weight, so that each may relax and loosen the knots they thought they needed to fasten the world to their backs. There's beauty in knowing we are not alone. The following stories are about pain, adversity, resilience, transformation and beauty. Not every word is easy to read, but beauty is pain. - Heather Roegiers

T H E V I E W S E X P R E SSE D I N M AI N L I N E D O N OT N EC E SSAR I LY R E FL ECT T H O S E O F T H E SAC R AME NTO C I T Y CO L L EG E J O UR NAL ISM D E PARTM E N T, SACR AME NTO C I T Y CO L L EG E , O R TH E LOS R I O S CO M M U N I T Y COL L EGE D I ST R I CT. FO R M O R E I N FO R MATION R EGAR D I N G M AI N LINE M AGAZ I N E , J O U R NAL ISM 4 03 /4 07/4 0 8, O R T H E CITY CO L L EG E J O U R N AL ISM D E PARTM E N T, CO NTACT: JAN H AAG (916) 5 58-2696 H AAG J @ S CC . LO S R IOS.E D U SAC R AM E N TO C I T Y COL L EG E 3835 FR E E P O RT B O U L E VAR D SAC R AM E N TO, CA 95822 SACC I T Y E X P R E SS.COM

CONTENTS

Rose Vega LEARNING TO LIVE WITH IT

Undoing the damage of childhood sexual assault 04

Ben Irwin MUSICAL MEDITATIONS

Lifelong musicians reflect on the magic of music

Heather Roegiers BECOMING ME

A journey through the gender spectrum

Anastasia Jones ACTING DIFFERENTLY

The stories of Elizabeth Silva

Steven Logan Abel RING LADIES

The women of pro-wrestling 30

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Fall 2018

LEARNING TO LIVE WITH IT Undoing the damage of childhood sexual assault

BY ROSE VEGA

At naptime that Friday, Joseph comes into the beige room where we kids sleep on little sleeping bags. The room is beige, the carpets and walls all beige, and I can see everyone sleeping, but I am awake. I am always awake. I don’t know what happens next, but I know what Joseph does after. He bends down by my face, puts his hands on my throat and says that if I tell anyone, he will kill me. Suddenly I feel a lot of pain, and I rush to the bathroom, where I pull down my pants, see a lot of blood between my legs and try to clean it up.

When she found me at Roxann’s house, I had my hands over the front of my blue shorts, and she noticed the blood. She pulled down my shorts and saw that my entire vaginal area was red and swollen. She immediately took me to the car, where we went to pick up my father and then take me to the emergency room. I learned from the report that I kept begging them to let me change my clothes, but they told me that the doctors needed to see me as I was. I couldn’t change right away. Blood clots had started to form; my shorts were completely soaked with blood that had started to drip down to my socks.

I am terrified.

By the time they started examining me, it became too painful to continue. The doctors were worried about the amount of blood I was losing and sent me into surgery to stop the bleeding. I required three stitches, but I recently learned from the report that there had

After another examination on April 12, a week later, it was determined that I had been raped. This was not a solitary incident, I have learned. In my mother’s report I had been mentioning that Joseph was hurting me. However, Roxann kept reassuring my mom that I was making things up and that her son wasn’t even home most of the time, which is, in fact, exactly what she said that Friday. When the police arrived, they found him in his room, and he immediately confessed to what happened. Later I would find out that Joseph was hitting me, choking me and kicking me during naptime, this caused me not to sleep and I would get in trouble with Roxann. I have only learned all these new details since writing this story. After so many years it felt like it was time to finally relieve the weight I had been carrying around for so long. This is the first time in a long time that I have felt truly comfortable with myself and open enough to relive my experience. When I was in elementary school, I tried to share my story once with my friends, but they were too young to understand, and they told me I was lying. I have only told a few friends since.

Photograph by Jason Pierce

To this day I don’t know what he used to hurt me, but an object had been forcibly inserted into my vagina, causing a tear in my vaginal wall. Later I would find out that Joseph had abused me several times before.

been no other damage to my other internal organs.

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Here is where my memory differs: After being in the bathroom, I remember that my mom picked me up, and my shorts were blue, bright blue, that had now started to soak up blood, and then I passed out. But recently, after reading my mother’s statement that she filed to get the daycare facility shut down, I learned that I never passed out. In her statement, my mother reported that Roxann, the daycare lady, had called my mom to say that I had locked myself in the bathroom, and I wouldn’t come out. I had been given the phone, but my mom said she couldn’t understand what I was saying, so she rushed over to get me.

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riday, April 5, 2002. I am about four and a half years old, and I’m at Roxann’s house, the daycare center where I have been for a little over a year while my mom is at work. The previous day Roxann’s adopted son, Joseph, told me to come into his bedroom. (I’m not using their real names for privacy.) He is a big boy, 13 and a half years old with blond hair, blue eyes and glasses. Once I was in his room, he told me he wanted me to kiss him. I shook my head no, and I wanted to leave. He put his hand around my throat, pulled me towards him and kissed me.

PICTURED: Lee Kohler

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I know what people want me to say: They want me to say I forgive him, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, and I think that's OK.

I am not the first victim in my family. My mother, Cheryl Silva, was sexually assaulted at knifepoint when she was about 23 years old in 1981. She was working for a realty company after graduating from City College with an AA in business. She was about the age then that I am now, and she knew all too well the effects after experiencing such a traumatic event. Despite this, I have never spoken to my mother about what happened to me—until now. I meet my Mom at her condo. I grew up in the condo just downstairs. When I arrive, it’s clear that my mom changed the table decorations to be more autumnal. Pine cones and golden leaves decorate the glass top table where we sit. Almost as soon as we begin to talk, my mother says, “I constantly felt I was at so much fault. There were signs, and I wish I would’ve said, ‘Rose, what’s happening?’”

Later I learned that Roxann told my mother that she was having a hard time with Joseph and was considering sending him away. I learned from my mother’s report that Joseph was bipolar and had frequent angry outbursts, which caused neighbors to report him to police. The report indicated that Roxann had considered closing the daycare business in order to handle Joseph’s behavior. My mom recently gave me some of the paperwork she had compiled for my case. She documented

When she filed to get the daycare facility shut down, law enforcement officers interviewed the other parents because I had stated to one officer that I was not the only victim. The facility had all young children in its care—none of us older than 6—and I had said that another little girl was being assaulted. “I couldn’t believe that—it broke my heart,” my mom said. However, no other victim came forward, and it wasn’t brought up in my case. What shocked my mom was that the other parents whose kids were in that daycare facility didn’t seem to care. In fact, they seemed to make her the villain.

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I know my mom put an overwhelming amount of guilt on herself for what happened on that Friday in 2002. I don’t blame my mother for what happened. My mom took action immediately after my assault. She didn’t allow what had happened to me to completely consume her; instead she worked tirelessly to make sure I received justice. It took three years to work up a complete case, but my mom started making calls the day after my assault. My case was settled out of court, and Joseph was sentenced to seven years. I cannot find information on where he served his sentence.

“I just couldn’t even comprehend that something could happen to such an innocent little girl,” said my mom, who not only was trying to cope what happened to me but with the memory of her own assault. “And then it brought out a lot of what happened to me again. It’s like a vicious circle.”

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My mom expressed this same sentiment in her written statement back in 2002. According to my mom, I had often talked about Joseph before the assault, but Roxann insisted to my mother that I was “telling stories” and that I had made them up. My mother says at the time that she was feeling “just an overwhelming sorrow for me that my little girl had gotten so violated like that.” She places her hand on her face and shakes her head.

everything, had the name of every detective, attorney or city official she spoke with. My mom faced every parent’s worst fears, and she persevered even when other forces tried to discourage her.

“They were more concerned that they didn’t know what to do with their kids than what happened to you,” she said. She shook her head and turned away. My mom said she was again shocked when the intake log officer at juvenile hall called to ask more questions. The officer said that she felt there were two victims—Roxann and me. “I couldn’t believe that came out of her mouth. I was stunned, absolutely stunned,” my mom said with a look of complete disgust on her face. My mom fought for me with everything she had, and she was so confused about why people kept trying to dismiss or minimize the situation. My assault took a great toll on her, resurfacing anxiety from her own assault. “I took it so hard, for so long, but you do have to let go in order to live,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I got so depressed, I got anxiety-ridden. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to make sure that nobody would hurt you again."

PICTURED: Rose Vega with her mother and her grandmother, 2001

In writing this story, I learned from my mother that there has been a history of assault that began before me, before her. “The older generation, like (my) mom, would’ve never come out, and the reality is it happened to her, too,” my mom said, though truthfully, I have only heard my mom talk about my grandmother’s experience twice. Not only was my grandmother sexually assaulted as a young child, but another dear family member of mine faced molestation at 6 years old. Three generations of woman all hurt in the same way.

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Unfortunately, my mother, my grandmother and I are all statistics. According to Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, every 98 seconds someone experiences sexual assault.

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“I think we had to be silent for so long, and we were made to be that way,” said my mom about women not reporting their assaults, especially for those raised in earlier generations. My mom felt that sexual abuse was prevalent in our family but never talked about. The effects of sexual assault are severe and long-lasting, according to RAINN. Sexual assault survivors are four times more likely to develop symptoms of drug abuse, or experience PTSD as adults. and three times more likely to experience major depressive episodes as adults. Since high school I have had moments where out of nowhere I’ll start to think about what happened. I’ll be driving, sitting at my desk or sleeping, and suddenly I get so upset that I shake, my feet feeling numb, or I’ll randomly burst into tears. About two years ago I started getting severe panic attacks, which slowly intensified. I didn’t know why or how to stop them. After a year of anxiety, I had one of my worst panic attacks. I was taken to the emergency room and felt as if I was constantly on the verge of passing out. My lips, fingers and feet all started to tingle. All they could do for me was

sedate me and wait until my heart rate was in the acceptable number of beats per minute to discharge me. And so I slept off two days after being given lorazepam, the same drug my mom was first given years ago for her anxiety. My doctor had suggested I see a therapist because, along with a lot of other things that were happening at the time, I was having nightmares of my assault and being stuck in that beige bathroom. All these things contributed to being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder with severe panic attacks. After my mother’s attack, she would experience extreme pain in her body. She started attending Victims of Crime, which was a local group located downtown that provided support as well as other services. She found this group after reporting her assault. The officer said that there had been a string of other assaults and that he believed her attacker was a serial rapist. He was never caught. My mom had never experienced serious anxiety before her attack, but afterward, she started getting severe panic attacks and suffered from depressive episodes. They decreased over time, and she rarely gets them now. After my assault, my mom, dad and I all went to family therapy for about a year and a half. As part of my therapy, I was asked to make an image of my attacker. My mom explained to me recently that it was something like a paper doll. “You decided when your papa came home that you never wanted him [the attacker] to hurt you again, so you said, ‘Let’s put him in the freezer, Papa,’ and that’s what we did,” my mom smiled as she looked back at the paper doll, “We put him in the freezer.” This is one of the only projects I can remember from therapy and the first one my mom brought up. Sometimes I think about that paper doll in the back of the freezer serving his life sentence.

Therapy really helped me, but I think it truly helped my mother most. “I don’t think, especially as your mother, that I had the tools to know what to say or do for you,” she said, adding that she could provide comfort but was afraid that she couldn’t help relieve me of all of my anxieties. “It was so hard on me just that it happened to you, I think I would’ve silenced you. I believe I would’ve silenced you.”

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After therapy and the paper doll, my mom said that I never talked about the event but that she still worried about me. “It took a lot for me to finally say, ‘You know what? She’s going to be fine,’” said my mom. Today I am off medication completely and for the moment do not wish to go back. While I still get panic attacks, they are less frequent. Writing this story has been therapy in itself, and I have finally found a sense of relief that I hadn’t before. “Yes, people are monsters out there,” my mother said, “but you will find that peace in your soul eventually. It doesn’t go away, but you learn to live with it.”

Photograph provided by Rose Vega

I know what people want me to say: They want me to say I forgive him, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, and I think that's OK. Most people go through these horrible experiences and are forced into this idea that forgiveness is the only way they will be able to move on. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not. You have every right to feel angry like I do, to be upset. After 17 years I am still living with the repercussions of somebody else's actions, and I will have to continue to live with this for the rest of my life. People deal with trauma in many ways, and everybody's journey is their own. I hope that those who have been through what I have been through, what so many girls have been through, realize that all wounds heal. I may be left with a scar or two, but I am still whole.

Photograph byJason Pierce

Photograph by Jason Pierce11

PICTURED: Lee Kohler

MUSICAL MEDITATIONS Lifelong musicians reflect on the magic of music

MAINLINE Fall 2018

BY BEN IRWIN

itting at the grand piano in the fellowship hall of Davis Lutheran Church, Lee Kohler pulls the hood up and removes a black velour cloth, revealing a shining set of pristine ivory keys. The piano is a stunning sight, a beautiful tool of wood and ivory. A warm-hued gold metal frame houses hammers and metal strings, strung under such tension that they are ready to burst with expression.

Photograph by Phoenix Kanada

As Kohler begins to caress the keys, his surroundings fade; all that remains is his mind, his heart and the piano as he improvises. He has gone to a cold winter, his shoulders tensing up as his fingers lightly fall on the keys like snow. The piano paints a beautiful picture of a snow-covered landscape, but with every note and chord comes a grimace,

remembering the hardship and pain of the cold, bleak winter. The notes continue layering like snowflakes, and as the sound ringing from the piano builds and the notes come down harder, the tones pile up, weighing heavily on the heart. The lonely pain of a loss is felt as the music climaxes, and the tender heart breaks under the weight of abundant snow. The storm recedes as the music tapers off, and the heart is left buried under deep powder. As silence resurfaces, the mind is pulled back into the present as the walls of the fellowship hall come back into view. Something remarkable has happened. The ability for musicians to take themselves and their listeners to a different state of mind is a phenomenon that most have felt but can be hard to

comprehend. Two lifelong musicians, Lee Kohler and Matthew Grasso, offer their insights about how emotion is conveyed through music. Lee Kohler is a classically trained jazz pianist who serves as the music director at Davis Lutheran Church. He studied classical piano performance and composition at Montana State University in Bozeman from 1980â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1986. Matthew Grasso has been a guitar teacher at Sacramento City College for the last 14 years. He studied classical guitar performance and composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the early 1990s, after which he studied North Indian classical music at Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael.

PICTURED: Miyan and Matthew Grasso

In October Matthew Grasso held an in-class concert with his son, Miyan in the Performing Arts Center. Strikingly similar to his father in appearance and mannerisms, Miyan showed exceptional technical skill at 17 years old with just a year and a half of playing guitar under his belt. Grasso and Miyan sit at the front of the classroom. It is an intimate setting of about 20 listeners, most of whom are beginning guitar students of Grasso’s, all with their guitars in their laps struggling not to fidget with them. Grasso and Miyan tune their extended seven-string guitars by ear, calmly listening for the subtle hum of harmony in the strings as the fidgeting audience starts to settle down.

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After introducing Miyan, Grasso gives background on the first piece, “Gnossienne No. 1,” by Erik Satie, a late 19th-century French composer. Before beginning, Grasso closes his eyes and breathes, seeming to meditate briefly before performing. The duo turn their heads up from their guitars toward each other, lock eyes and inhale, and the music begins. As the first supple notes ring from the two guitarists, the classroom and all its occupants fade away. The soul has gone elsewhere, carried away by the elegant flow of the duo’s melody. The tempo and dynamic of the tune wander freely, as does the soul, seemingly on a journey without defined destination, swimming in an ocean of contemplation. Grasso and Miyan have embarked on this soul-searching journey together, trading melody for accompaniment between contemplative phrases. While Miyan’s technical prowess shows, his father has surrendered himself to the music. Grasso’s eyes are closed, his breathing moving in unison with the sound flowing from his guitar. As Grasso feels something rise from within, he waves his hand in a releasing motion, beckoning forth the rippling waves of sound like a rising tide. Grasso makes eye contact and smiles at Miyan as they exchange musical phrases, sharing the journey with his son. There are no words spoken, but it is clearly an emotional experience for both of them.

Grasso and his son sitting side by side, playing the same tune, illustrated the differences in their delivery. While Miyan is clearly very technically skilled, Grasso’s musical passion and wisdom resonate from him like an aura. Kohler, too, recognizes the ability to convey emotion as what differentiates musicians. “I like maturity in music. There’s something about hearing a kid play—which is really great, they’re usually really technically proficient,” says Kohler. “But there’s something about a musician that’s lived, and has had pain and emotion in their own life—there’s a big difference there. Not to say (the kid) is not going to have that soon.”

Grasso recalls a moment of musical nirvana in the ’90s while preparing for his senior recital at the San Francisco

“The listening side of music—jazz musicians talk about this all the time. And it’s not exclusive to jazz musicians; it’s exclusive to good musicians. They hear in their inner ear,” says Kohler. “The inner ear is a really important thing for musicians to develop, and that has a lot to do with emotion, too—hearing the music.” Kohler believes that, for him, hearing the music comes from silence. “My wife is always asking me in the car, ‘What should we listen to?’” says Kohler. “And I always say, ‘I’d like to listen to the wind,’ and that really is my favorite music. The wind is kind of a metaphor for silence, in a way.” Growing up in Montana, silence is something Kohler says he has come to enjoy. “I really like silence,” says Kohler, laughing as he continues, “it’s really hard to find. So when I was growing up, living in Montana helped. I can just drive a little bit, and I’m in the forest. So I’ve always felt that music comes out of that silence. Have you ever really listened to the wind? Sat down and listened to it spin, and—you know, it’s a pretty remarkable thing when you have concentration enough to listen and hear it.”

Photograph by Phoenix Kanada

“You spend so much time going, ‘We have to get this note here, and this proper placement of the finger’, that we—,” Grasso says, pausing before continuing, “you know, it’s hard for us to really spend time just listening, and at some point, all of it just kind of comes around full circle. …When a musician becomes ripe enough essentially, that we realize just listening, that simple idea of just listening on a very deep level is where all the magic happens.”

For Grasso, the simple act of listening guides the notes that he plays. For Kohler, listening is a central part of music as well.

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True devotion to the practice of music, according to Grasso, is the first steppingstone on the path of greater musical understanding. “It becomes more of a way of life, in that sense—I’m talking about really giving yourself on a deep level.” After years of devotion and practice, Grasso believes a musician can become “ripe.”

“I remember going into the hall just to do a sound check for about 30 minutes—I remember for the first time in my life—and this is after I had been playing for 10 years, that I walked into the hall, and for the first time I heard something completely different, in a different way. I heard the hall singing, I heard the instruments singing. I just kind of let myself allow the notes to come out instead of trying to always force the notes out. …You really start to realize that your ears are truly the driver of the car,” Grasso says, laughing as he asks, “Does that make sense?”

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To achieve this level of musicality, Grasso believes people must feel that they were born to do so. “I don’t think that it’s just something that you can just kind of casually do,” says Grasso. “I knew that when I was 12, and I held a guitar in my hands that that’s why I was put on this earth. I think that people who experience something similar like this at a young enough age, that they put in, you know, time.”

Conservatory of Music.

PICTURED: Matthew Grasso

Kohler and Grasso’s philosophies of listening are rooted in a common practice: meditation. Kohler has been a student of meditation scollege, and spends time every day in meditation. “I would just practice being really quiet, and listening, and just really trying to calm myself down,” says Kohler. “And that’s really what meditation is all about, just trying to calm your anxieties down, and find that center that were all looking for, that contentment.” A student of meditation for over 20 years, Grasso began formally training during the mid-1990s with a Burmese Buddhist nun. “What it taught me was that I didn’t actually add anything to my mind or my process,” says Grasso, “but I just removed all the unnecessary debris, and I kind of got to a much deeper core.”

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Meditation has been a tool for Grasso, allowing him to focus on a deeper level.

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“It’s kind of like the rays of the sun,” says Grasso. “When they come down, they don’t have the ability to do much, but if you take a magnifying glass, then you start to burn grass; it really intensifies that energy. So I think meditation to me is a lot like that. It helped me to magnify my music, to help me focus on a much deeper level.” Grasso and Kohler share a mutual feeling of music as a spiritual journey. “I see it as a way to look at myself on a variety of different levels, and to encounter your inner demons,” says Grasso. “As individuals we an either choose to be our own worst enemy or our best friend. You can either continue fighting with yourself, or you can allow things to flow at a very natural and effortless way.” “I believe, for me, it’s always been a spiritual journey,” says Kohler. “You start to talk about God and the spiritual side—it kind of means something different to everyone."

Kohler recalls a moment of spirituality during his time at Montana State University in Bozeman, when practicing in an empty music department over the weekend. “I started to mess around on the piano, and I started to write, I started to get into this, thing,” says Kohler, pausing after emphasizing that last word. “And I was like ‘oh, somethin’s goin’ on here.” Kohler pauses again, searching for the words to describe his emotion.

“That made a big impact on me,” says Kohler. “I think about that a lot when I’m working and even when I’m in concert.” Kohler believes that in essence, prayer and meditation are one and the same. Grasso has found similar close connections/ties between prayer, meditation and music. Grasso’s last music teacher, Ali Akbar Khan from Ali Akbar College, enlightened him to a spiritual way of thought in relation to music. “‘(With) music in some sense, you can create your temple of sound. You can go anywhere to pray or meditate in your temple of sound’—that made a lot of sense to me,” says Grasso. “When people ask me what religion I am, I just say I believe in Nada Brahma—sound is God.”

Photograph by Phoenix Kanada

“I wrote this whole song, and afterwards, man, I just wept,” says Kohler, the inflection in his voice seeming to release the emotion of that event even in recalling it years later. “Because all of a sudden it was just like,” Kohler claps his hands together to show his point, “it was God, right. And so, I’ve never had that experience since.”

Kohler finds solace in a famous phrase quoted by a renowned guitarist Christopher Parkening: “Pray when you play.”

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Kohler pauses before continuing, the emotions of the event culminating in him.

“But it really felt like someone had gone into my fingers and my ears,” says Kohler, “...and then it left, and I was just left like...” Kohler drops his hands and lets out a breath, evoking an uncanny combination of confusion and satisfaction.

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“It was kind of like this unbelievable, spiritual experience I had, hearing this music come through my mind,” says Kohler. “It was almost like someone had gone through my hands, and started—I wasn’t hittin’ any wrong notes, and It was going places, and I just—”

This profound experience is not something Kohler says he talks about much because it can be hard for most people to relate to.

PICTURED: Lee Kohler

BECOMING ME A journey through the gender spectrum

BY HEATHER ROEGIERS

remember my first time in drag. When I was about 22 years old, I went to a promthemed costume party where all the men were supposed to wear tuxedos, but I always found tuxedos so boring. I felt like the whole point in prom was the dress, so my friend loaned me a shimmering blue, frilly thing, which I matched it with blue nails and eyeshadow. It was a fun little experiment, and as the night began to wear down, where I expected to find relief to put an end to such a played-out performance, instead I found hesitation. That night, it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel like I was performingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;everything else did.

or me, gender was not a scream, but a whisper. Like there was something missing. Like I was absent. Growing up, I always looked up to action heroes. It was always men saving the day and winning the hearts of beautiful women, and I thought I had to be a man to do that. “Like a girl” was an insult I heard often by both adults and peers, so I grew up considering women as inherently less valuable than men. While I was curious about my sister’s pretty dresses, the only time I tried one on, I was chased through the house with a camera by a family friend. So I learned not to try on dresses. I was caught playing Barbies by my cousins and learned not to play with dolls. I learned what every boy learns. I learned what I could and couldn’t do if I wanted to avoid humiliation.

“I don’t think most parents care what gender their child is, but after having three girls, it felt good to have a boy,” my father said when I asked how he was adjusting. While he says honestly that he never put much weight on my gender, his words spoke to the fear that prevented me from expressing myself. I was my father’s son. I had a male identity. I didn’t want it, but it was mine. I had a legacy to carry on. I was Mr. Roegiers. To declare myself a woman felt like I would fail my father and every Roegiers before him.

An earthquake was coming.

Photographs by Jason Pierce and Heather Roegiers

Over the next few days, if I was sober, I felt like I was drowning in a state of dissociation, so I drowned myself in alcohol instead. I spiraled downward into a hole of self-loathing so deep the only way out was to black out on alcohol as often as possible. I drank to forget, to punish myself for being a failure, and to put a swift end to my misery. I begged for an escape. I smiled at oncoming traffic, holding that sign that read, “Kindness saves the world,” while the shame in me grew its own words, its own suggestions and commands. Something in me had fractured. If my psyche came with a seismometer, it would have been rattling a warning signal: Somewhere near Watsonville, 2015

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I became a traveler and began to hitch around the country, performing magic tricks at tourist traps and flying a sign that read “Kindness Saves the World” at the places I visited between them. The freedom I experienced made it worth the stigma I endured from the housed community for being another dirty kid with a giant backpack. Being a white, assigned-male American citizen, living without shelter marked my first experience with marginalization, and the first time I ever chose to exchange the status of my class for the call of my heart. It would not be the last.

But to live that life felt as if I would be letting everyone down. I was a homeless drunk, and while it was difficult to fathom how my gender identity could possibly make me any more disappointing to my family, still I carried this mental connection to manhood. I still feared losing respect. Years later after I socially transitioned and presented my new identity, my dad admitted that he had trouble getting used to telling people he had “four girls” instead of “three girls and one boy.”

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But I always remained curious, and that curiosity grew inside me. My feminine inner self felt called to blossom like a seedling called to light. But like concrete over dirt, I hid everything wild and natural in me beneath a straight and orderly veneer. Denied expression, my roots grew deeper, and I began to search around for myself in the dark, unfolding aimlessly in all directions. I skipped from school to school and job to job like a stone across a pond, incapable of settling for fear I would splash and sink.

The gender dysphoria came in waves. There were periods when I didn’t think about it for months or years, and periods when I could think about nothing else. It would be awakened by some sort of stimulus to remind me what I was missing, such as encountering a woman I admired. I thought if I could just learn to trust women, I wouldn’t think I needed to be one anymore, and I’d be able to embrace my manhood. But still, I would be haunted by a phantom itch, with each new wave of dysphoria worse than the last one. Then one day, I hit critical mass. Not by anything big or noteworthy, just by an actress in the trailer of an action movie, doing a pushup. A single shot from that trailer left me cut open by a sadness so sharp and sudden I could feel myself plummet as she rose from that pushup. Everything I thought I had gained by being a man was nothing at all—she had all that and so much more. I thought I had to choose, and because of that, I had sacrificed half of who I wanted to be. I found myself crushed beneath the weight of an entire life left unlived.

On the eve of my 25th birthday, I used the celebration as an excuse to try to drink myself to death. I didn’t recall what happened at the time, but I recovered the memories years later. PICTURED: Lee Kohler

I was camped in the woods outside Austin, Texas. I had met a traveler named Patches while hitching out. He was camped in a patch of woods with some houseless residents—veterans, drunks, meth addicts and survivalist types. Patches began bringing people into camp from the Drag, a part of Austin where the dirty kids congregate. They seemed pleasant enough, but as one of the survivalists warned me, they were strangers. And my emotional state at the time made me a powder keg. When the argument happened, I don’t even know how transgender people came up. But some guy said, “Fuck transgenders,” and that’s when my self-hatred found its opportunity. “And then what happened?” I asked Patches the next morning, discovering that I was covered in bruises.

“You said you were a woman trapped in a man’s body,” he told me.

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He said I started a fight with a woman. The worst case scenario had passed. Rather than outing myself deliberately and stepping into my power, it felt as if I had been outed by a secret enemy: an alternate, drunken identity that had taken possession over my body and forced me out.

Fall 2018

I’m not sure if she was defending her boyfriend’s “fuck transgenders” remark, or if she was simply rejecting my self-identification, but for whatever reason, a woman started arguing with me. I remember feeling sick of hiding. I didn’t care about the consequences anymore, so I commanded her to hit me. She grabbed a handful of my hair and began tearing it out, so I threw her to the ground. That’s when everyone else stepped in and beat me until I stopped getting up. I gave up when my eyes were bloodshot and my nose stuffed with deep red snot.

They claimed I kicked her. Patches and his new friends expected remorse from me for my actions, but I couldn’t even remember doing it. I had to be told my own coming out story by people who’d just fought with me the night before. And because my remorse lacked sincerity, a few days later a couple skinheads came to finish the beating. They chipped my teeth, broke my face and left me disfigured. My eyes swelled shut until the doctors cut the knots open and drained the fluids from my face. I distinctly remember one moment. As one of them held me by my arms, and the other landed hit after hit upon the pile of rubble that used to be my nose, they ordered me onto my knees while cracking jokes about burying me in the woods. They even held onto my shoulders and attempted to push me toward the ground. But I remained standing. They could pound my face to hell and back, but the worst was already over. I was out. Nothing they could do could outdo the agony I had already put myself through over that one, silly secret. There was no pain I’d ever felt in the world worse than self denial. There is no choice more terrifying than to embrace a truth that contrasts with the expectations of others.

Life is not easy, especially for a trans woman, but any adversity I now encounter externally is a joke compared to the internal conflict I’ve overcome. 20

I began to come out to people I trusted and test the shallow end of the gender spectrum. I adopted non-binary pronouns but rarely mentioned and never enforced them. I tried to be happy as another gender-nonconforming hippy, but I remained dysfunctional in ways I couldn’t even understand were related to dysphoria until my transition would alleviate them. It still itched, but I hesitated moving forward. I thought there was no point in living as a woman, because the world would just see a freak. To take the next step, I had to unlearn the beliefs that were holding me back.

Then there was my hairline. Each day, I obsessively searched my scalp for signs for of baldness. Researching into the gender transition process, I learned that male hair loss was an irreversible process. The tapestry I wove in my mind of a happy life was unravelling into handfuls of tangled threads. And like the loose strands accruing on my hair brush, each day the waste seemed thicker than the last.

When the makeover was complete, the artist turned me to face the mirror, and the feeling was like seeing an old friend. I smiled. The girl I’d left behind in my childhood smiled back at me through my reflection, grown but intact. Her eyes began to well up with tears. That was the moment I gained the motivation to transition. It was not from dysphoria, not the suffering that did it, but the recognition that I didn’t have to suffer that motivated me to move forward.

A bell jingles its jovial welcome as I push against the heavy glass door and enter the Gender Health Clinic in midtown Sacramento. Nghia Nyugen smiles and welcomes me from behind a window at the front desk. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen her. “I know everyone who walks through the door,” says Nyugen, who’s been a receptionist at the GHC since May. I remember my first time at the GHC. Freshly 28, the time could not have come soon enough. My heart

They knew how to sort through insurance, they knew the trans-friendly doctors, they provided professional recommendations for gender-affirming treatment, and later, they made the journey as easy as possible through the tangled mosaic of name and gender change paperwork. Temple Kirk, who has worked at the GHC for five years, says the nonprofit organization attempts to serve whatever the transgender community needs. “There is no core service here,” says Kirk. “There’s counseling, drop-in respite, HIV testing. We have a prep program, we have a hormone clinic. We’ve got the advocacy appointments to help people with healthcare navigation, housing issues, economic empowerment. We do identity document support, name and gender change paperwork, passport change paperwork, birth certificate change paperwork. We also do outreach, we teach schools, businesses, religious organizations.” I began hormone therapy summer of 2017 and presenting as a woman full time soon after. Before even seeing the changes, just knowing I would be going through those changes gave me a sense of validation that enabled me to come out to even my most closed-minded peers. This marked the completion of my social transition.

Illustration by Wikimedia Commons user ParaDox, edited by user Xavax

Everyone in the store smiled at me. The makeup artist complimented every feature she worked on. I felt nervous and embarrassed, but I wanted this so much that I didn’t care anymore. I wanted it so much that I upset the friend who gave me a ride. She forgave me when she saw the look on my face after it was done.

But quickly I discovered she and others at the GHC were not there to judge me; they were there to help me.

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I needed hormones. That meant getting off the streets, which for me, fortunately enough, came down to resolving a strained relationship with my mother. So I ended up in Sacramento, which turned out to be good luck.

thrummed and my nerves sung as I talked with the receptionist and checked in for my intake. My advocate smiled and asked for the name my parents gave me, which would later become my “deadname.” We walked a colorful corridor and found an office with a couch covered in fur, then began to set up paperwork and make small talk. She mentioned that she didn’t like the color of her nails, which she described as Pepto-Bismol. I laughed and made a comment, then instantly wondered if my comment sounded like one a real girl would make. I wondered if she’d see me as a fake. I wondered if she would think I wasn’t dysphoric enough, or feminine enough, or trans enough.

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Then one day on the streets of Berkeley, a nice young man gave me a card that would change my life forever. Sephora, it said. One free makeover. I was doing magic tricks, guessing birthdays, while my friend Sean Paul Haas and his dog Leo worked their own magic. Haas was a former salesman who had renounced his possessions to pursue happiness. One of many travelers out there in the world, and a familiar face, I never really got to know him until then. He would later tell me that what he witnessed in the month I spent in Berkeley was like watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon.

The inner war to realize my identity was over, but to get society to recognize me, the fight had just begun. I didn’t know what I wanted next, what name or pronouns. I didn’t know what the definition of a woman was, I didn’t know if I deserved that label. But I saw what trans women looked like after some time on hormones, and I knew I wanted that, too.

Not everyone handled it well. “Are you doing this to trick guys into sleeping with you?” one of my former friends asked. “Because that’s not cool! That happened to my friend, and he was traumatized.” I learned from the GHC’s Nghia Nyugen that this is a common misconception.

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“Typically when a trans woman is murdered,” says Nyugen, “You’ll find within the comments section or just amongst peered discussion, that the dialogue is, ‘Well, that’s her fault. She shouldn’t have lied. She should have told her lover, or she should have told the guy. Like she shouldn’t have tricked him.’” However, Nyugen has a different perspective. “I know on my end, and all of my trans sisters, that the men do know that we’re trans, and they hit on trans women because they are attracted to trans women,” says Nyugen. “They are sexually attracted, or even romantically attracted to trans women because we are trans women. It’s emblematic of a lot of their baggage: womanhood, their sexuality, many, many things. All the taboos that men cannot embody or touch are in a trans woman.” Temple Kirk also believes that the root of the violence comes

from the social stigma against dating trans women, combined with the abundance of interested men. “Our sisters of color get murdered by the men they date at a pretty high rate because there are a lot of men out there who are attracted to trans people, but they can’t let any of their friends know,” says Kirk, “because their friends would deprive them of social status and inclusivity into their friend group.” Nyugen, a Vietnamese immigrant, says there’s a reason black trans women are particularly at risk. “A lot of black trans women are subjected to such violence because of the intersections of their identities,” says Nyugen. “When you’re a black person in a white supremacist state, that’s the target. When you’re a woman in a sexist patriarchy, that’s the target. When you’re poor in a capitalist structure, that’s the target. So when all of these things are in one body—all of these identities are made flesh in a black trans woman— they’ve got more targets on them. “ Nyugen recounts facing violence while growing up poor in Los Angeles. “I’ve had teenagers throw eggs at me, come up to me with shaving cream and spray it all over me,” says Nyugen. “I’ve had friends lock

me in the closet, like hold me up and beat me. They were playing like they were my friends at the time, and then when they got alone time with me, that’s when they did those things.” Nyugen explains that all this changed when she moved to Sacramento and began to pass as a woman. She considers her ability to pass to be a privilege that shields her from violence facing the transgender community. “I’m not at risk anymore because I’m a passing trans woman now,” says Nyugen. However, even if they pass, trans women still face discrimination due to their identification. ProPublica reported in August 2018 that in 74 of 85 murder cases with transgender victims, investigators referred to the victim by a name they had abandoned, and a gender they don’t identify as. These murders have a 55 percent chance in resulting in arrests, compared to 59 percent in the national average. Advocates claims these murders are less likely to be solved because police are obligated to identify people by the name and gender on their ID, which in the case of trans people is often a different person from the victim witnesses knew.

Gender markers did not exist on passports until 1972, according to the Daily Beast, when the culture underwent a shift and the gender binary began to loosen. With the Trump administration now trying to make gender markers immutable and based on DNA testing, according to a leaked memo in October, this begs the question: Why is it better to interfere with police investigations than it is to let someone identify their own gender? Perhaps the answer is because it roots our identity onto something we can’t control. Perhaps the purpose is control. When I tried to be a man, I was always made to feel the gap between myself and the ideal male archetype, my manhood constantly under threat of being repossessed if I did not behave a certain way. But when I declared myself a woman, suddenly my manhood became an immutable, biological fact. “We live in a society where masculine people are policed on how to behave—how to behave with their sexuality, what to wear,” says Nyugen. “And we, even though we’re trans women, we are resisting all those things.”

I began the process to change my name and gender at the beginning of 2018, and as of this writing, my ID continues to hold my deadname and the letter M for male, as the DMV rejected my paperwork and sent me back to my doctor to revise it.

Fall 2018

On Nov. 11, Nghia Nyugen, Temple Kirk and the rest of the community at the GHC organized a march on the State Capitol to fight for jobs, housing, and equal rights for trans and non-binary people. I attended with my boyfriend.

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“We can still change your name,” the clerk at the DMV informed me when I told them I had already changed my Social Security information and had a paycheck to cash. “But changing the gender is more serious.”

Noticing men for the first time is just one of the many changes I’ve experiences in the last 18 months on hormone therapy, but one change stands apart. My life before was not always unbearable, but sometimes it really was. Now even on my worst days I don’t feel like that anymore. Now I feel alive.

Photograph byJason Pierce

23 Hair and makeup by Nita Gardipee

ACTING DIFFERENTLY: THE STORIES OF ELIZABETH SILVA

Rachel. Sarah. Becky. Shrea. Coco. Keyna.

BY ANASTASIA JONES hese women have their own stories. Rachel is the aggressive one who likes to pick fights. Sarah, nicknamed “The Crybaby,” plays the victim and craves attention. Becky is the professional who’s obsessed with fashion. Shrea, Coco and Keyna shared years together on stage in dimly lit strip clubs making quick money.

These women have been together for years. They’ve chopped wood on a dairy farm in the summer and helped raise kids that weren’t theirs. They ran away from home and traveled from Washington to New York and then back to California. They’ve been homeless on someone else's couch and struggled with alcohol addiction.

Now their passion for theater has brought them to City College, but that’s not all they have in common. They have someone in common.

Elizabeth Silva settles into a shady spot on the patio of a Starbucks away from the bustle of people shuffling in and out for their caffeine fix. A man in a police uniform sits a few feet away sipping his coffee. Nothing out of the ordinary. Silva pulls her chair around the corner of the building for a more private space, one out of eyesight of the other patrons. She places the remnants of her iced coffee togo on the table. She’s wearing a well-loved blue button-up covered with patches of handwritten notes of appreciation in permanent marker from her classmates last semester. She smiles and cracks jokes. She speaks with an unwavering passion about her life. It’s not obvious that she shares her mind with seven other people who have lives of their own. “Their names are Sarah, Becky, Rachel, Elizabeth, Coco, Shrea and Keyna,” says Silva. “There's a boy, but I don't know his name. He's a meanie.” Silva was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, at 11 years old.

Silva says her personality Rachel, which she identifies as “the black personality,” was born that day. She remembers the day vividly. “It happened, I think, on a Wednesday and I went (to school) on Saturday and led the band, hurting after being raped. I was a drum major at the time.” She looks into the empty space ahead of her and then back down at the table, thinking about the attack. “I wish I wouldn’t have ditched school that day.” Fearing for her and her family’s safety, Silva remained silent about the incident for 44 years. Silva says the rape deeply affected her life. “I dropped out of high school, got pregnant and went on a run from hell.”

Fall 2018

“We could be talking and stuff, and then all of a sudden I hear something, and I'll start saying, 'Oh, that motherfucker.' That's Rachel,” Silva says. “She'll start cussing, and I'll recognize (it). Elizabeth cusses but not like Rachel; (she's) more aggressive. I used to not know. I used to wake up (from) a blackout and go, 'Where am I? What have I done?' But I haven't done that in 10 or 15 years. It just depends.”

“He got away with raping a cop’s stepdaughter (while he was) in uniform,” Silva says. “(DeAngelo) is racist. He did it because of my stepdad being black.”

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DID is a relatively uncommon illness affecting approximately .01 percent – 1 percent of the population, according to WebMD. It states that the disorder is characterized by “the presence of two or more distinct or split identities or personality states that continually have power over the person's behavior.” Silva explains that certain instances can trigger her different personalities and that sometimes she does not recall what the different personalities do. Her episodes have varying lengths of time and intensity.

On that day in 1973 the man in uniform violently raped Silva in the back of his car by the river. He then threatened to kill her and her family if she ever reported him. Silva knows that man to be Joseph DeAngelo, more recently arrested and charged as the Golden State Killer.

Silva got pregnant at the age of 17 and dropped out of high school. At 18, she left her infant daughter in the care of her mother and ran away to Hollywood. She began stripping to make money. “My life was just crazy for the next 13 years in the stripping world,” Silva says as she let out a light chuckle. “I was in Hollywood for five years straight. Hell, I was running shit by 20. I was a manager at two different clubs hiring and firing the girls.”

Silva grew up in Visalia, California, a city nestled in the San Joaquin Valley approximately 40 miles southeast of Fresno. She attended school and had hobbies like most other children her age. It was here that Silva remembers being approached by a man in a police uniform one day when she decided to skip class.

Silva notes that the drastic change of direction spurred new life in herself. She says, “The three stripper (personalities) were born in the ’80s.”

The man Silva describes was wearing an officer’s uniform from Exeter, a city adjacent to Visalia. Silva, who was 12 at the time, thought she was in trouble for skipping school. Her stepdad, Joseph Collins, was an officer for the Visalia Police Department.

“I went to New York and Washington, just traveling,” says Silva. “I was on a mission to save as many girls as I could possibly save, whether it be from rape or pimping. Girls would run away, and they don't know what to do. I'd show ’em how to get in clubs and dance so they wouldn't turn into being a prostitute. There was a few girls I lost overseas and [they] didn’t come back.” Years in the stripping world took a toll on Silva. She realized she had a problem with alcohol use and wanted make a change.

Photograph byJason Pierce

"He said he was gonna take me to my dad,” Silva said in an interview with Capital Public Radio on April 30, 2018. “I was in the back of his cop car, handcuffed, and he took me to St. John's River."

During her time in different clubs Silva says she found purpose in “saving” other girls.

PICTURED: Lee Kohler

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“At 30 I woke up. I got clean and sober. Between 30 and 40 I was sober. I stopped stripping in '91. I went back to school, graduated valedictorian at adult school at Hanford High. I went to speak in hospitals and institutions about alcoholism. I sponsored women, I thumped the Big Book (of Alcoholics Anonymous) like it was the Bible.” Silva got married at the age of 42 and spent the next chapter of her life on a dairy farm in Visalia with her husband and his two children. She lived a quiet life there for eight years. “I know everything about a cow you wanna know. I was raising two kids, and I didn't show nothing of any mental illness. They didn't even know I had (a) mental illness until I flipped out when they put that patch on me. Then I couldn’t hide my mental illness anymore.”

In the winter of 2010, Silva suddenly felt pain in her chest while chopping wood. She was taken to the hospital and discovered she had a layer of fluid surrounding her heart. She was administered pain medication in the form of a patch. “It took nine days to get the fluid off of my heart,” Silva says. “They put one of those patches on me, and with my mental illness I don't do very well with (pain meds), so that patch made me flip out and got (me put) in the nuthouse. Got out, ended up in the nuthouse again, and my husband divorced me.” Within the course of three months Silva’s life was in upheaval. After heart complications, two mental hospitals and a divorce, Silva’s daughter moved her to Sacramento in 2011.

Fall 2018

Turning Point Community Programs is an organization that provides aid to those in need with mental health issues, according to their website. They offer help in the form of housing, employment and mental health services. Their program, Pathways to Success After Homelessness, provides “Intensive mental health services with the goal of helping people recover from homelessness.”

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“I came to Sacramento when I was theoretically homeless on my sister's couch, sleeping in my car, just going from place to place,” says Silva. “Then I started drinking really heavy. I got into rehab, and they took me from rehab and put me in an aftercare shelter, and then I got into Turning Point.”

“I've been with them for (seven) years,” Silva says about Turning Point. “They got me permanent housing, set me up with treatment. Then I ended up going to school, and I've been going since 2013.” She’s particularly proud of the skill set she’s built through the program. “I feel like I'm their star baby because I've picked up all the tools they've given me.” Silva has received seven scholarships since her enrollment at City College five years ago. She’s received several awards and recognitions while being deeply involved with the theater program. Photograph by Jason Pierce

“I'm Phi Theta Kappa, was on the president's list, (I have a) high GPA, I've been in two movies, and I've crewed five shows,” Silva says. “I've done so much. I'm just now recognizing my accomplishments. With my mental illness I don't understand what stuff is all the way, so I just show up. But I got it.”

Sacramento became home for Silva. She invested in herself through school and counseling. She gained a support network of professors and peers. A network that Silva needed when her past re-emerged and she saw an old photograph of her rapist, Joseph DeAngelo, in the news. “I was on my way to school when they flashed the news with ‘The Visalia Ransacker’ on TV,” says Silva. “They showed an old picture of him in his cop uniform. He raped me in his uniform so I identified him right away. That's when I went into the DSPS (Disability Services) office and I told the counselor that I needed to make a police report because I just identified my raper.” DeAngelo, also known as The East Area Rapist and The Visalia Ransacker, committed several counts of murder, rape, kidnapping and burglaries across southern and northern California, according to an article on the CNN website. He was found in Citrus Heights and arrested April 25, 2018. Silva, now 57 years old, came forward about her attack when she saw the news report two days after his arrest, and interviewed with several media sources.

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"It's funny,” Silva says about an interview regarding her attack. “They talked about that during the CNN interview, about how small he is. I don't know, I was handcuffed, he was behind me so I didn't see anything. To me (he felt like) a horse at 12.” Silva says that some of her closest relationships have suffered after she spoke up about the attack.

Fall 2018

“The day I identified him, I called my mom,” says Silva. “(She said) 'I don't want to hear about it; I don't want to talk about it'. That's the new battle that I'm preparing myself for. I have to put on a whole new cape, and it’s not the victim cape. It's the survivor cape of battling all the people that don't believe rape victims.” Silva hopes that coming out publicly with her story will encourage others to do the same. She hopes to advocate for other rape survivors and show it’s possible to persevere. “I want to be known as a survivor. Not a victim. There's no healing in victim. That's what I've been doing: healing. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's empowering.” Silence about the attack was a heavy burden for Silva to carry over the years. She says she feels a sense of relief now since DeAngelo has been locked away. She knows he can’t hurt her or her family anymore. “I just feel so much better now (that I can speak),” she says. “I feel like I have to advocate for the 12-year-olds so they feel like they don't have to wait 44 years to speak.” She admits that even though she has found her voice, she feels a sense of guilt for not coming forward sooner. “I've thought about connecting with some of the other victims, but I feel guilty that I didn't tell (at the time). Because I didn't tell, a lot of people died. A lot of people. For 30 somethin' years. So I have to get up every morning and say, 'I forgive you, Elizabeth; you were just 12. Not your fault that ya didn't tell.’”

Silva still has bad days. Her accomplishments and awards, she says, don’t make up for the lack of support from her mother. They don’t cover up her mental illness. They don’t erase rape. The baggage of her story is enough to weigh on the shoulders of eight people. But Silva knows she’s more than the sum of her parts. She sits outside a Starbucks in a shady spot on a warm October afternoon, blanketed in words of affirmation from her peers. “I wore (this shirt) because it made me feel power in the summer,” says Silva. “I wore (it) on my last day of summer school, and I had students sign me because I never got to have a yearbook. D'Angelo took that away from me.” MAINLINE Fall 2018

Silva reaches out and points to a note scribbled in orange ink on the back of her shirt right between her shoulder blades. “I love this one the best,” Silva says with a big grin. The note reads, “A theater show might not last forever, but when you meet a great person, their act will be forever known.” Her time in Sacramento has given her a sense of stability. Through the support of her peers and professors at City college and with the skills she’s learned with Turning Point, Silva has found herself. “Since I’ve been here in Sacramento, I’ve learned how to merge them all together,” says Silva, talking about her personalities. “I don’t jump out from sounds, smells, people’s actions (or) people’s clothing. I went to group and learned to focus on what's in front of me. I just stay calm. Certain things like fighting will definitely bring Rachel out. Seeing people all dressed up, ya know, Becky is wishing that she was kinda dressed up.”

Photograph by Jason Pierce

“Today, I think I'm just Elizabeth.”

PICTURED: Lee Kohler

MAINLINE Fall 2018

RING LADIES The women of pro-wrestling BY STEVEN LOGAN ABEL

odor of concessions snacks rarely smell pretty when they are combined. They sit side by side in white folding chairs. The smell, the noise and the closeness only builds a stronger bond within the wrestling community.

The men wearing tights and spandex are not soft. They throw each other into the corners and into the ropes. Bodies slam onto the mat. They insult each other with creativity. “Get up, you piece of trash! There’s still some ass to be whooped,” one of them threatens. Then they turn their insults toward the crowd.

“SPW! SPW! SPW!”

The man in blue takes a seat and laughs with his friends who sits next to him. They still taunt the wrestler from the seats, but by then the wrestler’s attention is elsewhere.

They show their strength by being an active audience while they drink their sodas and eat their popcorn. They make the room smell of cheap food, snacks and sweat. Bodies of people in small quarters and the

Karina Kyle stands outside of the ring adorned in black and white stripes like a Zebra. She makes sure that the person thrown over the ropes is physically OK. Alexandria Bell, A.K.A. Eliza Hammer, who has just been tossed out, signals that she is unharmed. Part of Kyle’s job is to ensure the safety of the wrestlers. When Kyle asks Bell if she is OK, part of Bell’s job is to tell Kyle her real condition without the audience seeing or hearing. After Kyle learns Bell’s condition, Kyle makes a face of serious authority and tells Bell that she has been eliminated, then orders her to head back to the locker room. Bell gives Kyle and the crowd an angry look and walks back to the entrance ramp. And capturing it all with her camera is Heather Merrifield, using her passion for art and photography to record the moment in time. While these women are outnumbered in the sport, like many industries swept up in social change, pro-wrestling sees more and more women taking an active part.

Photograph by Heather Merrifield

The wrestlers have conditioned their bodies and characters to rid themselves of softness. The crowd is not soft. They do not squirm at the violence. They keep their eyes on what goes on in and outside the ring. They insult with vitriol and boo with contempt. They cheer and support those they get behind. Loud unison chants of “SPW” fill the room: “SPW, SPW, SPW!” (short for Supreme Pro-Wrestling, a regional company based in Sacramento).

In the ring a 20-person battle royale is taking place. The object of the match is to throw your opponents over the top rope, with both of their feet hitting the floor. The last person not eliminated is the winner.

Fall 2018

“Put a shirt on, you fat fuck!” the wrestler yells as he leans over the top ropes.

The unified chant fills the South Sacramento high school gym. The ring makes loud thumps with every punch, kick and slam. People rise to their feet in support or to show disdain.

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An overweight man in the audience wears a shirt showing his midriff. His face is painted blue, an homage to an old wrestler who went by the name The Blue Meanie. The letters on his shirt read “BWO,” short for Blue World Order. He stands up and begins to taunt a wrestler by dancing and shaking his body. His stomach moves his stretch marks in odd angles.

While wrestling is fake, there’s nothing fake about the people who participate. The newest creation of tough people emerging from the pro-wrestling industry are not just men in tights, not just men in the audience, and not just men who built the ring.

PICTURED: Referee Karina Kyle restrains wrestler Alexandria Bell

he professional wrestling ring is not soft. Thick, wooden planks fit snugly atop steel beams. Only a 3-inch foam cushion sandwiches between the planks and a blue canvas mat. The ropes are made of steel wires. Only a few layers of tape are wrapped around the steel wires. In the corners, steel hooks connect to the 9-foot pole that attaches to the ropes. Covering the steel hooks is a thin black cushion with the letters SPW.

PICTURED: Heather Merrifield at work

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Photographer Heather Merrifield positions her upper body on the apron, her long pink and blonde hair tied in a ponytail. Throughout a SPW show, she takes a position on the apron multiple times a night. It is the space between the middle and bottom ropes, near any corner of the ring, where she looks for the right angle to capture the best picture. It is not a job for people with weak feet.

Photograph by Mikey Nolan

“Each show is about three hours of onyour-feet, running-around-the-ring, non-stop shooting,” says Merrifield. She works weekdays full-time for the state and almost every weekend at a job not many women do. According to Merrifield, she is aware of only three women shooting pro-wrestling in Northern California.

The same way it takes practice and training to get efficient and competent at professional wrestling, it took photography classes at Sacramento City College to help Merrifield gain the knowledge and experience to enter the wrestling world. Taking courses from digital design to virtual entrepreneurship, Merrifield believes she learned how to “produce better art, how to work with studio lighting, and how to run my business.” Merrifield has been shooting professional wrestling for about two years, through 75 shows and over 500 matches. She learned on her feet, at the side of the ring, literally learning the ropes of photographing pro-wrestling.

“You have to know the business, understand the moves, anticipate what might be coming so you can get the perfect shot,” she says. One of the lessons she had to learn came from her experiences that a classroom could not teach. It was a lesson on being in the right spot at the right time. “With a class, you can go back and redo an assignment, generally,” she says. But, for example, when shooting weddings, “You can’t ask them to walk down the aisle or do the first kiss again. Wrestling photography is the same—you don’t get a do-over for that perfect shot.”

According to her sister, the bruises “looked like a tramp stamp.” Being a professional wrestler is not only difficult on the body, but for Bell, it has taught her a hard lesson in time management. “The toughest part of being involved with wrestling for me is that there has been considerable personal sacrifice that has come along with it,” Bell says.

“It’s very rare that we fall as adults, so the idea of falling to a hard surface is very weird,” Bell says, remembering that it took time to get comfortable and acclimate her body to the stiffness of the wrestling mat.

“Spending so much of my time on wrestling, there have been other parts of my life that have been really impacted,” she says. “I’ve lost a job, I’ve been broken up with, and I’ve missed quite a few family events—including my younger sister’s high school graduation—all because the scheduling didn’t work out for any of it.” But the physical and personal challenges of being a professional wrestler are worth it for Bell. “Wrestling is the thing I love most in the world, so I show up to training every week and go to as many shows as possible,” she says. “When I love something, I want to give my all for that thing.” For Bell, it’s simple: “Wrestling is my great love, and I’ve never gotten home after a show and wished I had done something else,” Bell says. “I’m much happier than I’ve ever been; [the] sacrifices are extremely taxing but very worth it.”

Photograph by Heather Merrifield

“I saw my first wrestling show and absolutely fell in love with the artistry and storytelling involved,” she said. It was the men who would become her trainers who helped her develop a love for wrestling. “The stuff that I saw my trainers do at training really hooked me,” she says. “They did some basic moves that to me looked like the coolest stuff I have ever seen, and I thought to myself that if I could learn to do that, I could do anything.”

One of the more difficult aspects of pro-wrestling is “the bump” in professional wrestling vernacular. The professional wrestling bump is the act of a wrestler hitting the mat with his or her back. What wrestlers do to stay safe is practice throwing their legs into the air, tucking their chins, and having their backs hit the mat flat while slapping the mat with one’s arms. Think of it as someone pulling out a rug you’re standing on as you try to hit the ground as flat as possible.

She chose wrestling.

Fall 2018

Bell was not a woman who sat and watched professional wrestling on television. “I started training to be a wrestler before I had ever really seen any wrestling,” she says.

But it has not exactly been easy for Bell. The winners and losers are pre-determined and the blows landed are choreographed, but it doesn’t mean that body goes unschathed. Fake cannot necessarily be applied here. It’s tough on the body when wrestlers first start out, the body unconditioned to the physicality that wrestling requires.

MAINLINE

When Alexandria Bell walks through the black curtains, she becomes Eliza Hammer, and if she has the opportunity as Eliza, she will punch you in the face, kick you in the stomach, and slam you to the mat. Her wrestling tights are black with white trim on both sides of her legs. Black pads cover her shins and wrap around her feet. A black-andwhite dotted sports bra covers her chest. She is tall and tan with short hair.

Work, family and relationships have been challenged because of Bell’s devotion to wrestling. Her former employer at a security agency gave her an ultimatum: work weekends or you’re fired. Bell now works for Amazon and has the weekends free.

PICTURED: Alexandria Bell slams Patrick Fitzpatrick while referee Karina Kyle looks on

But even running off or being thrown into the wrestling ropes is not comfortable. “At first I didn’t think nothing about it, but then my body was sore,” Bell says. “Then my younger sister saw bruises, black and blue marks, on my black and sides.”

PICTURED: Referee Karina Kyle makes a call as wrestler Keita Murry holds Boyce Legrande

Karina Kyle wears black pants, and her shirt is white with vertical black stripes. She maintains order in the wrestling ring. She keeps men who are large and tough looking in check, making sure they submit to her authority. She shows no fear when the muscular men argue with her, threaten her, stand close to her face. She stands her ground, and on most occasions, she makes the men take the first step backward. She stays in the right positioning, aware of what is going on in the ring at all times. Her main job is to count a pin fall, where she makes sure a wrestler’s shoulders are down on the mat for three seconds. Her call is final, and no dispute can be made when she counts to three for the pin fall. Refereeing professional wrestling matches is not a hobby for Kyle. Even though she has a bachelor’s degree in business management and a career as a banker, refereeing is an earnest endeavor. “This is a job I take very seriously,” she says. And the willingness to take her duties as a referee, which leads her to lengthy travel requirements every weekend, comes from a love of the business. It began for her, like many people, as a child. “I enjoyed wrestling on TV when I was younger,” she says. But as she grew older and life took over, Kyle stopped watching wrestling. Work, children, family, relationships took center stage for her. But a few weekends of wrestling changed the trajectory of her life. “I went to a couple of shows later in life and fell in love,” Kyle said.

MAINLINE

The renewed interest in professional wrestling would lead her to begin training as a referee with Pro-Championship Wrestling of Oroville, California. And much like the pro-wrestlers, she, too, would have to learn how to take bumps and run the ropes.

Fall 2018

As one of the few women referees in the pro-wrestling industry, Kyle feels she has received no special treatment either in a positive or negative manner, during training or after her training, because of her gender. Kyle is not new to refereeing professional wrestling matches. She made her debut as a referee in December 2014. She now has bigger goals for herself. She wants, she says, “to be the best I can and enjoy my time in the business. I would love to travel more and ref all over.” Her experience as a referee has led Kyle to believe that not only is the referee position important, but so are women in pro-wrestling. “Our roles are the same as men. There just happens to be more men,” she says. “In the past, current and future, our roles are the same, but now more women are joining in.”

In an industry that is often thought as fake, there is nothing fake about these three women. They live busy lives. They struggle to make ends meet and to face down challenges of adulthood. But they are as powerful as the men who don tights and spandex in the ring. If they have a shared wrestling character, they are the gimmick to women and girls that proves that they, too, have a place in the pro-wrestling world dominated by men. And Kyle—with whom Bell and Merrifield agree—holds this belief: “We [women] are steadily growing. It’s not just a man’s sport anymore.” And they are mighty powerful in their fighting skills. They fight for their real dreams, real passions and real goals in the fake world of professional wrestling.

Photograph by Heather Merrifield

JOURNALISM 403 / 407 / 408

SACRAMENTO CITY COLLEGE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF PUBLICATION DESIGNER PHOTO EDITOR CONTRIBUTORS

HEATHER ROEGIERS RAVENSTORM LABARCON JASON PIERCE STEVEN LOGAN ABEL BEN IRWIN ANASTASIA JONES HEATHER ROEGIERS ROSE VEGA

PHOTOGRAPHERS

PHOENIX KANADA JASON PIERCE

FACULTY ADVISER

JAN HAAG

SPECIAL THANKS

JACKSON DURHAM NITA GARDIPEE HEATHER MERRIFIELD MIKEY NOLAN