Suzette.

Mom was an 18-year-old bad girl from a top-shelf, Chicago, Irish-Polish family. Dad was a 28-year-old Hispanic dude she met in a bar. He was one of thirteen children from a migrant family that lived on dirt floors, and he made her laugh. In the spring of 1961, I was born in Chickasaw, Oklahoma.

During San Francisco’s roaring ‘80s, I studied post-modern photography with Minnette Layman, and underground magazine publishing with Lutz Bacher and Steve Deitz. Ten years later, I participated in Liquid Eyeliner, a groundbreaking show at the SF Arts Commission Gallery curated by DL Alvarez featuring the work of Jerome Caja and Rex Ray, among others. In between I sold books for which I was never arrested.

For three decades I worked as a community developer and non-profit organizer. I served as an AIDS chaplain, street outreach worker, substance abuse counselor, reproductive health educator, volunteer coordinator, mental health activist, and public speaker. I worked for a large urban church for more than thirteen years and managed an HHSA community liaison for children’s public behavioral health. Before retiring to provide better support for my autistic and proud son, I served as the director of education for a local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. 

I try to make coherent sentences and a little good trouble while living with my wife and two dogs inside a 10′ x 12′ canvas tent in my mother’s backyard in San Diego, CA.