So I’ve never really talked about it on here but I think I’m ready to talk about when I got attacked back in January. I was out around 10:00 p.m., not so much downtown Vancouver but still a busy part of the city, and I just picked up my friend’s Lita boots for men because I was wearing them to the Lady Gaga concert the next day. I also was going to drop off my friends leather shorts because I had borrowed them a few months earlier and really needed to return them. I was transitting back from picking up the boots when I missed my busstop, which I actually had never done before that night, so I had to walk back a stop and catch the train, which added about 10 minutes to my trip. When I got off the train I was walking up Cambie towards 12th, for anyone who lives in Vancouver. It wasn’t really that busy, but there where a few people around. As I was walking up the hill right beside City Hall I saw a man sort of staggering drunkenly, so I moved a bit closer to the edge of the sidewalk to give him space. When I passed him he didn’t say anything or look at me from what I can remember, but about 7 or 10 feet after he passed me I heard a click like something locking, and I turned around while the guy was in a downward swing at my head with a metal baton. I sorta buckled my legs a bit but didn’t fall down, and just said “What the fuck”, a bit loud and distraught, and the man swang down at my face with the baton, this time I blocked it with right forearm. I staggered back a bit and the guy said “Fucking faggot.” and stared walking away. He didn’t ask for my wallet or anything, he just hit me, called me a faggot and walked away. I ran across the street and asked some strangers to call 911, while I called my friends who lived very close by and asked them to come meet me (again, im writing this very calm now but I was crying and all that when it happened.) I remember grabbing the back of my head while i was on the phone and then looking at it and seeing a lot of blood, and that really scared me. After that I called my mom and told her, she lives about an hour drive from where I was. Her boyfriend happened to be close by, so he came and stood with me, so did my friends until the ambulance got there. I remember being in the hospital and just not being able to stop shaking, which really scared me. It felt like I would never be able to stop shaking, like you shake when you’re really cold. My one friend sat with me the whole time, and helped me carry all my stuff and fill out forms and that kind of stuff. I remember spontaneously crying really hard 3 or 4 times, and another time when I saw my mom when she got there. This is her, and probably every parents, worst fear when they have a homosexual child, so I know it has and is hard for her. I was suppose to get 12 stitches on the back of my head but only ended up getting 3 and the rest was glued. I only got two hours of sleep that night, and got up early for the concert still, which probably proves my love for music more than anything haha. I was really skiddish on the street all day, I was wearing the heeled boots, skinny black jeans, a tanktop that showed my nipples and a Picasso print jacket. I looked a lot more gay, whatever that means, than the night before. I remember the concert being good, but the minute it was done I was scared again. My friend offered to pick me up and drive me home, and the next morning drive me to my mom’s house in Langley, which I took her up on. Since then, I barely go out late and when I do I walk with my keys in between my knuckles and check behind me constantly. Although I have to say, I haven’t stopped dressing gay. If anything it’s escalated. I wear those boots to school sometimes, and I have a few more pieces of women’s clothing I wear as well. The picture above is a photo of the scar from where I got hit. I guess I wrote this just to say hey, this sort of stuff still happens. It still weirds me out to think about it, the way I most often describe the whole thing is “really weird.” because it was. I think we like to pretend, especially in Vancouver that it’s a very gay-accepting city but, not as much as we’d like it to be.