Welcome to Things I’ve Never Asked! In this A+ series, we ask people we’re close to questions we genuinely don’t know the answers to! Here, Nico interviews Carmen about her childhood, her dating history, her plans for the future and more!

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Nico: Hey, it’s good to see your face.

Carmen: Okay. I am still only partially dressed, but I am dressed enough.

Nico: It’s totally fine. This is not going to be the-

Carmen: Oh, your tattoo is so cool.

How did I not understand what was such an obvious thing? For some reason I was like, oh yeah, we’re not going to be on video. That’s great. I’m going to continue to be in my bra. I’ve pinned back my hair and I put a sweater on.

Nico: Yeah. I like my tattoo. Thank you.

Carmen: Whenever I see it, I’m just always like, wow. It is gorgeous. And then it’s also because it’s so colorful. I don’t know. I really like it.

Nico: I like colorful tattoos. A lot of people go with black and white and I’m really a colorful tattoo kind of person.

Carmen: I also love them. My god-sister terrified me with bad information when I was 18. My god-sister’s white and she was trying to look out for me. So she was like, “Oh, if you get colored ink, you have to be really careful because you have melanin skin and not all color shows up.” Which is not true. But when I was 18, I believed it was true. And even though I now as an adult know it’s not true, for some reason there’s a part of my brain that is always like, you can’t get colored tattoos. Which is not at all true. But you know how when you hear something when you’re young, it imprinted, I guess?

Nico: Yeah.

Carmen: Which is fine. One day I’ll get a color tattoo. And I really like my big black and white one. So anyway, be careful what you tell young people.

What are all your tattoos?

Nico: You know what, I’m adding this question, because I’ve never asked you, but what are all your tattoos?

Carmen: I only have the one that I took a picture of for the Insider. And that one, which is technically three tattoos-

Nico: Yes, yeah, I do know that story.

Carmen: Yeah. So that part, well, I’ll re-tell it for readers, is that I got two tattoos when I was a senior in college that were kind of small. And one is a Sankofa, which is a West African symbol of a mythological bird that looks backwards while it flies forward. And so it means ‘never forget where you came from’ or ‘never forget your roots, your passage.’ Next to it is a Taíno indigenous symbol, and those are the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. And Puerto Rico has a frog, of all things, that is also indigenous to the island.

And the myth is that this frog can only live in Puerto Rico, which is just not true. It moved into Hawaii and it’s not great for other people’s… not infrastructure, but whatever that’s called, environment and enviro-structure or whatever. That’s not the word.

Nico: It’s [the frog] the coquí?

Carmen: Yeah. The coquí. It eats plants. Hawaiians hate it because it eats up the vegetation. But Puerto Ricans love it and it’s indigenous to our island, so I have the indigenous symbol on there. It has a unique ribbit sound that it makes at night that is literally the word. It sounds like coquí, coquí.

Nico: Yeah. I’ve heard them. They sound like they’re so cute.

Carmen: I have those two symbols. But when I was in college, I did not take good care of them, and so they didn’t heal well. And then I had to get them re-inked later on. And they look fine now to the plain eye, but they’re raised if you touch them. Aftercare is important. I did not do that when I was 21. And then, above them I have a much bigger piece that takes up pretty much the size of my shoulder on my left-hand side, and it’s a bird that my tattoo artist made up from scratch, because when I was a kid, I always read books. And my cousins were rough and tumble kids and they would go out and play.

And I was super prissy and what I can now say is a very femme way.  I really enjoyed being a dress up doll and reading books. And that’s what I wanted to do. I never wanted to go outside. I didn’t want any of that. So my grandfather used to call me a rare bird. I got my tattoo artist to make a completely, one-of-a-kind, imaginary bird that looks over my shoulder. And so we incorporated it into… Sorry, this is such a long answer! We incorporated it into the two smaller pieces, so now it’s one really good-sized piece that hangs over my shoulder.

I also have a tattoo of a cross in what is unfortunately now the “tramp stamp” area of my lower back. And I got that cross… I actually still also wear the symbol on this chain around my neck. It’s the Kairos symbol. It’s a Catholic school thing. At a lot of Catholic schools, when you graduate, before you graduate, you go on this retreat. And I’m not super into religion, but I was when I was 18. But it’s supposed to help you remember to live your purpose. The symbol reminds me of that. That was my very first tattoo.

When I was younger, I had a lot of fear about oh, what if I get a job and I can’t have tattoos that show? I don’t know. It was a different era. It was the 2000s. So I have almost all my tattoos on my back, but now I can’t see them! Which I really hate. And so the next tattoo I’m going to get, I want to get it somewhere I can see.

Nico: Nice.

Carmen: That was really long. Sorry.

How do you feel that growing up in this serious theater family impacted you as a kid and as an adult and made you who you are?

Nico: No, that’s okay. It’s interesting because you veered into some other stuff I wanted to talk about. I’m going to take some notes about… I have questions and then I’m also writing followup questions as we talk. It will evolve. Okay, so you were talking about being a kid. I know from talking to you, that you grew up in a theater family.

Carmen: I did.

Nico: And that was a big part of your life. I was also curious, how do you feel that growing up in this serious theater family impacted you as a kid and as an adult and made you who you are?

Carmen: Well, that’s a really fun and good question! Okay. When I was growing up, well, before I grew up, I guess — to the point of ‘never forget where you come from’ or ancestor stories — my mother helped found a theater company in Buffalo, New York. It’s called Ujima Theater Company. And they were founded it in the late ’70s. So roughly 10 years before I was born. It still exists. It is the longest running Black theater company in New York State, outside of New York City. It’s one of the longest running Black theater companies in the entire nation.

She founded it with my Aunt Lorna, who was her best friend, and was a second mother to me. And when my Aunt Lorna passed away, which I have written about on the site, my mother stepped back into a leadership role in the company, which is still mostly family-run. My cousins all work on the board, staff, or are somehow directly involved. I go back to help with productions, now. I help with running small errands and just being a gofer. I’ve also written press releases before for them.

But growing up, which is the question you asked, it did impact me. I literally grew up onstage. I grew up going to rehearsals six days a week. I was just recently talking to someone about this. I didn’t play, necessarily, team sports, because when would I have had time? I used to take art classes, but they had to fit around rehearsals.

It’s pretty stunning. There’s a script on a piece of paper and then it is a group of humans who are going to make that into something that is livable and breathable and that you can feel. And I grew up a part of that theater magic all the time. Ujima does four to five shows a year? My mom was probably in four of them. So September through May, we were at the theater.

All of us would go. Me and my cousins, that’s where we grew up. We were all together. We did homework while they practiced lines.

Nico: Wow.

Carmen: I learned how to be onstage and read a script pretty much the minute I could read. In second grade, I was in my first professional production. And my Aunt Lorna, she would put me onstage and she would go to the back of the house. She’d tell me to get louder and get bigger. My monologue approach was this Paul Laurence Dunbar poem, who’s this really famous Black poet, and she had us all memorize them.

This is so boring to people who aren’t me! But she would have us all line up. And she would go all the way to the back. And we’re kids. I’m seven. I think my friend was maybe seven, eight, nine. And she would be like, “Get louder.” And if we weren’t doing it loud enough, and she’d be like, “Nope. Louder. Louder still.” And then show us how to emote, tell us, “Okay, this is what the poem means. This is what you’re saying. This is how you connect to people.” And that was a really valuable skill to learn at seven or eight.

To learn, I can stand on my own two feet. I can get louder. I can connect to people. And Ujima, which is the name of the theater company, is a Swahili word. And it means collective work and responsibility. And that’s really my whole thing. I think nothing has impacted me as much as those three or four words. How are we all, as a collective, a part of this? How are we all taking responsibility in this project? I do think in a lot of ways, what I do here at Autostraddle is also tied to how I grew up in theater, because this project, every day, we kind of make this magic too, right?

Nico: Right.

Carmen: Every day, we all try and do our roles. But if something’s going to fall, someone has to get it, because that’s what collective work looks like. I think we are responsible to our reader community and to A+ members who are maybe reading this. But we’re also responsible as like… I take us really seriously as people who are telling queer stories to queer people. And that is a responsibility to a community.

I don’t know, I really do believe that it takes a lot of fucking work to keep a community alive.

Nico: No, that was great. Okay, first of all, hear me out. I think that it’s either adaptable into a great middle grade novel, called Get Louder.

Carmen: Ooh.

Nico: That you should write. Or even a picture book, but middle grade or something.

Carmen: Yeah. Get louder.

Nico: Get Louder. Or a memoir. But oh my god, that’s such a magical story. What a magical childhood.

Carmen: It made me older at a young age, in a good way. Sometimes I think we talk about that in bad ways, but I think it was really good at a young age to have responsibility. I have a really strong ethic of putting people to work, too. And I think that’s probably where that comes from.

Nico: Yes. Really strong ethic of putting people to work.

Carmen: It sounds horrible.

Nico: It’s not.

Carmen: Yeah. That’s my thing.

Do you think that going to that kind of school, both Catholic and all girls, impacted you as a queer kid?

Nico: Okay. We’re going to stay in childhood for a moment, because another part of your childhood that I know about is that you went to a Catholic girl’s school in Detroit, right? First of all, what was it like to go to a school without cis boys? Very curious about that. Also, do you think that going to that kind of school, both Catholic and all girls, impacted you as a queer kid?

Carmen: Ok so I went to Mercy High School, which is in the suburbs of Detroit. It was super impactful for a couple reasons. And the first thing I guess to answer your question is I loved going to high school without cis boys, but I also think it took me a lot longer to figure out I was gay.

Nico: Oh!

Carmen: I think if I had gone to school with cis boys, I would have figured out a lot earlier that it wasn’t really for me. Instead, I just thought that my very intense feelings of friendship were normal. And I’m sure cis women who are straight feel very intense feelings of friendship towards their cis women friends! But I was definitely feeling them in a gay way, and I didn’t recognize it. If you go to an all-girls school, there’s very intense, almost forced sisterhood vibes a lot of the time. There’s a lot of intense sleepover culture and birthday parties and staying up late and friendship breakups and having big, hormonal teen girl feelings about all of your friends, all of the time.

Nico: Wow.

Carmen: And so many girls I went to high school with ended up being gay! But none of us were gay in high school. There were maybe three girls I can distinctly remember being gay in high school. And the rest of us were just really intense friends with each other. We went away to college and then everyone was like, “Oh, wow. You’re all gay.”

Nico: We’re just “really good friends.” Oh my gosh.

Carmen: But it’s also a culture that really supports that. Girls go in packs. I do think it was very normalized in a way that later, looking back, and I’m like, “well, okay. Maybe those things are not things all girls feel.” But yeah, I think that’s probably the biggest thing.

The second biggest thing about going to a Catholic school, I think for me especially, because I did grow up in a liberal theater family, and obviously I’m Black. So I think going to a school that was majority white and Catholic gave me a much better understanding of, well, conservative white women.

I remember really distinctly in 2016 — not to be like, “I can tell the future” — but I remember distinctly in 2016 being like, well, white women are not going to vote for Hillary Clinton. And I remember at the time, a lot of people were really shocked to learn what we all know eventually happened. Less than a majority of white women voted for Hillary Clinton.

Nico: Right.

Carmen: And I remember two months out of the election, before it ever happened, it became really crystal clear to me. And was from when I went to Mercy High School. Because I was like, this is a very simple baseline of it, but I was like, Hillary Clinton is pro-choice. And that is not a unifying factor. That is going to be a very divisive issue, flat out. And for me, that came from high school.

Nico: That is incredibly interesting.

How did you get involved in protesting the War in Iraq?

Carmen: I was recently telling the story and you were really surprised by it, that the first and only time in my life actually, only time in my life I ever got in serious trouble at school was for a protest of the Iraq war when I was a junior in high school.

Nico: I was going to ask you about that actually. Do you want to talk about that? How did that happen? How did you get involved? What was Junior Carmen saying and thinking and feeling?

Carmen: She was really against the war.

Nico: Yeah! Okay.

Carmen: In some ways I got into activism kind of young and sowed my oats in it kind of young. And that was so much about 9/11.

The towers fell my sophomore year. And then we had a school assembly that same day. Like a kumbaya, we’re going to all be okay kind of thing. And… probably we prayed? Catholic school, we probably prayed. And then everyone who is roughly our age remembers the TV being rolled in.

Nico: Yeah, the TV that got rolled in… And then you’re just watching it, like, all right. What the fuck?

Carmen: So that was the day it happened, right? But then the next day, because we had actually a good sizable portion of Muslim students at my Catholic school — which I think is probably because one, Metro Detroit obviously has a really large Muslim population, the largest in the country. But then two, I think there’s some overlaps about conservatism and purity and girls that people don’t necessarily think about — so we had a pretty sizable Muslim population at our Catholic school.

The next day, literally September 12th, we had an assembly because two of the girls had gotten spit on. That was really a radicalizing moment. It was September 12th, and before the end of the day, they brought us all in together again. And credit to my school principal though! The assembly was about “this is not what we’re going to do here.” But it was still really radicalizing to me that the next day we had to have an assembly because girls had been harassed.

Nico: Like kids at school just turned that fast?

Carmen: That fast. And I know people are going to be reading this and they’ll say, “That did not…” No, it was September 12th.

Nico: I believe that.

Carmen:  There was a group of us, all of whom came out later as adults, but there was a group of us in high school at the time that got really into anti-war activism.

It started with small things, like in my high school, my freshman year and most of sophomore year, we did not have to do the Pledge of Allegiance. And then after September 11th, they brought the pledge back. And there was a cluster of us who wouldn’t stand anymore. We would sit during the pledge. And then we started identifying each other and being like, “oh.”

And so we started an after school club called Justice and Peace. That was the name of our after school club, the Justice and Peace Club. And we started planning protests. We started with doing petitions and being like, we want to do a petition against the war. And then we went from that to…  the one that I got in trouble for was the school wanted to do a prayer to pray for our soldiers, which… I want, obviously, people who are serving to come home safe, but we were really against the school taking a political stance about the war at all. I remember that being our line in the sand. We were like, we are not doing this. This is an unjust war, we are not. And so we did a walkout. Then we got involved with some college students, like at the University of Michigan. So that’s how I cut my teeth. Those are the first things I ever did that were activism based, for anti-war protesting.

It was a really interesting time to go to a conservative school. It just was. But I also think it was a really good lesson in, even in pockets of conservatism, there’s a lot of activism because my friends and I were not doing those things. We were not going to the “red, white, and blue” themed school dance. And yes, my high school really hosted that dance.

Nico: Right. I think people think about red counties or red states as ALL red and it’s important to remember that people who are not conservative live there.

Carmen: Mm-hmm, and they’re living full lives, you know what I mean? I do think we lose track of that. And I think it’s good for me to, spending so much of my life on the Midwest or as much as Midwest as Michigan is, and going in particular to a Catholic school in-

Nico: Oh, that’s right. Midwest Catholic School.

Carmen: It’s just very… you know? I remember they sold stuff for soldiers’ families. And also some of that’s important and some of that I do believe in. I don’t want to make light. It’s never all one thing or another. I do care about families of people who serve. A lot of people I grew up with, their brothers did end up enlisting, you know what I mean?

Nico: Mm-hmm.

Carmen: It’s just never black and white. If for every conservative high school, there’s some group of weirdos who are staging a protest, I don’t know. I like to hope that they’re still listening to Rocky Horror Picture Show, but maybe that went out of style.

Nico: Yeah, I have no idea, honestly.

Carmen: Me either. But that’s what we used to listen to. We would go to Rocky, the girl I had a crush, we went to Rocky Horror Picture Show. We’d go to the midnight show and we were like-

Nico: Yeah, not gay.

Carmen: It’s a very straight thing to do. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Nico: It is very, very straight. What else would straight girls do with each other?

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Extremely straight activities.

I was just wondering what your relationship to your spirituality was.

Nico: Okay, because we’ve been talking about Catholicism, I was just wondering what your relationship to your spirituality was.

Carmen: That’s a cool question. I like it. I think I am more spiritual and devout than the average queer person in some ways. I don’t know. It’s just a weird thing to have to try and explain into words… Okay. Actually, I have a good answer. I used to describe it on my Facebook profile way back when, I know, way back when, when Facebook-

Nico: When you’re filling out all the things.

Carmen: Yeah! And they used to ask kind of personal stuff, like they’d ask about religion or whatever. But I used to fill it out as saying “I light candles to remind myself that I’m not alone in the world.” And I think 19-year-old Carmen was onto something. I think that is still probably what I would say.

My spirituality is a hodgepodge of going to Catholic school and growing up and going to mass and those parts of the things. And even in college, I used to go to mass on my own sometimes. And the witchier parts about being Latina, which really aligned with the witchier parts about being Catholic. And I took all three of those things and made this hand motion that people won’t be able to see later, that is something like a blender.

[Nico is motioning their hands like a blender.]

Carmen: I believe in God or a God. I believe in my ancestors really deeply. I believe that they guide me. I believe that when I light candles it means something and that it goes somewhere. I also believe in other spirits that aren’t a Judeo-Christian God, the Yoruba spirits. And I don’t know, I believe in belief, is really what it comes to. That is so corny! But I think, I believe in belief.

I write down my prayers, usually, I’ll put them under a candle. I’ll light it. I think a lot of brown women have been doing that for a really long time and it’s worked out for them. And I hope I’m lucky enough that it works out for me. That’s my answer.

Nico: I love that, I really do. All right, let’s see. Oh, I was also just curious because you were talking about being a really femme kid right from the start, when did you-

Carmen: From the start.

When did you really know that in relation to the world and other people you were femme?

Nico: Okay, so you were always femme, right? When did you really know that in relation to the world and other people you were femme?

Carmen: I don’t think I would’ve had a word femme when I was little, you know what I mean? But I do think the idea of gender was always really clear to me. And I don’t want to, obviously I’m not trans or speak about other narratives that are not my own. But there was a time when there were a lot of trans narratives that were like, “I first knew when I was five,” or “I first knew at X age.” And that time in the discourse made a lot of sense to me because without a doubt, one of my clearest memories from a super young age is about gender.

And that was my gender, it aligned with what I was assigned at birth. But I was hardcore femme from a very young age. And I think probably about five. I remember distinctly, like my cousins… in the ’90s, especially when you’re Puerto Rican or you’re Black, really baggy clothes was really in. And I did not want it. And that was a very tomboy era in Black and Puerto Rican culture. Aaliyah wore a lot of baggy pants and TLC wore baggy pants. And it was just a very almost androgynous moment in Black culture? And I wanted none of it. Absolutely not.

My cousins dressed that way, my friends dressed that way. I did not own even one pair of jeans until fifth grade. I would not let them touch my body. I wore dresses. I think at some point around first grade, my mother finally got me into leggings, a flouncy top. And that was about as close as I was getting to pants. And I remember very clearly… the reason I say five is because I think five was around the age when I have a very clear memory of my aunts being like, “She is not a doll, stop making her dress that way.”

And my mom being like, “Carmen picks out her own clothes, I am not.” My Mother once said, “It was a win when I got you to stop wearing princess dresses.” I used to wear Disney costume princess dresses out. So my mother was like, “It was a win when we got you out of that phase.” And I wouldn’t have called it queerness or femmeness back then, but yeah, no, I was femme from the top. Loved it, loved nail polish, loved makeup. Could do a full face of makeup by sixth grade, like full face, like foundation, highlighter, mascara, eyebrows, full face by sixth grade.

Nico: Wow.

Carmen: And in retrospect now… not like there’s any specific one way to be femme either, but those artifacts, those are very specific and heavy to draw from at such a young age in a way that feels super gay. And in ways that I think also are really passing. No one questioned it. There was Carmen’s a little weird, but sure. But in retrospect, I’m like, that is a very clear understanding about gender performance.

Nico: Like you’re performing femininity for yourself and maybe for other girls at that age, who knows?

Carmen: Yeah. But it’s very… You know what I mean? And to be so intense about it.

Nico: But you’re possessing yourself in a way or I don’t know how to say it. But like…

Carmen: No, that is a really good way of putting that, and a way that was very clear to me. And kind of in binary terms, I feel like I’ve used intense too many times in this interview, but that really almost possessive understanding of holding onto something about gender and using it as a part of your identity feels really gay, yeah. Especially because it wasn’t tied to anything that had to do with cis boys or straightness. I had no interest in them, just had none. Just wanted to be left alone with my dresses and my books and my girl best friends. All I ever wanted.

What kind of books were you reading?

Nico: Oh, what kind of books were you reading?

Carmen: So I read a lot of Baby-Sitters Club. That won’t surprise a lot of people. But it was really funny because my mom did not like The Baby-Sitters Club… or not that she didn’t like them, she was really supportive of whatever I liked. But my mom was very careful about me not seeing reflections of myself in what I was taking in. She had a lot of opinions about making sure I saw things that looked like me. And obviously The Baby-Sitters Club had only the one Black girl.

Nico: I didn’t know, actually. I didn’t read them because they were “for girls” haha.

Carmen: Fair enough. Okay, well let me tell you — there’s just one. It’s Jessie and she’s a dancer, which I’m not even a dancer, but I decided she was my favorite one.  And then Claudia was Japanese and they were the only two girls of color. And so my mom used to pepper my Baby-Sitters Club books with a lot of… I think it’s called the Coretta Scott King Award? Which is an award for Black young adult and Black children’s books.

I would go from those two extremes, I guess, which really fits my personality to this day. From a really young age my mom was like, “you’re going to have a clear understanding that your Blackness is really valued.” So I would read a lot of that kind of stuff when I was a kid. And then I would rebel by reading Baby-Sitters Club.

Nico: We all got to rebel.

Carmen: Yeah, that’s how I would rebel! I’d be like, okay, enough with this Black politics and activism, I just want to read about these middle school girls running their babysitting duties. Which I don’t know, I think I finally married those two parts of my personality.

Nico: Yeah, I think you do actually, it’s a lot of your pop culture criticism, so that’s really interesting, yeah.

Carmen: I never read Goosebumps. I bet you read Goosebumps. You strike me like a Goosebumps kid.

Nico: Oh yeah. I definitely read Goosebumps, Animorphs.

Carmen: I did not. I could not. I kind of did Animorphs a little bit. But Goosebumps terrified the living shit out of me. I was like, no. Nico was a Goosebumps kid for sure.

Nico: I was also reading all of the sci-fi and fantasy section that I could get. I just basically went into the library every day and would get a book from the middle school library before school started, on my way to homeroom. And then return my book from the previous day and just made my way through a lot of the shelves that-

Carmen: You were reading a book a day?!?!

Nico: I don’t know if it was a book a day every day 365, but there were periods where I was. I was definitely in there a lot.

Carmen: I’m going to choose to believe it was a book a day. I believe in-

Nico: It was sometimes, depending on how short the book was. A Goosebumps you can read-

Carmen: Oh yeah, because Goosebumps is really thin.

Well, I’m trying to think what did I read after Baby-Sitters Club? I don’t know. I read a lot of YA romance probably, to be honest. I read my first James Baldwin book in seventh grade, which my mom put in my hands. You didn’t ask this question, but related, we had a rule in my house that whenever there was a school project, you know the kind of projects where you get to pick your own celebrity or whatever, and write a biography?

Nico: Yeah.

Carmen: My mother would only let me pick a Black or brown person. So that’s how she supplemented public school. I never got to… I remember once I really wanted to pick Eleanor Roosevelt or something, and she was like, “I think you meant Coretta Scott King.” And I was like, “I didn’t.” And she was like, “Harriet Tubman.” Anyway, that’s how I got James Baldwin in my hands in seventh grade.

Nico: I love that. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, I love it. Well, you were just like, I don’t know, Eleanor Roosevelt’s gay, I’m gay.

Carmen: I was like, Eleanor Roosevelt seems so great. But it was cool. All these stories sound intense, but I say them with a lot of joy, and also my mother’s an A Plus member and may read this. So if we cut out other things, please keep: I’m really glad she did it.

Nico: No, no, it’s really cool. It sounds like she was just heavily involved in your life as a kid, and…

Carmen: I think that there’s a nuanced relationship that happens when you’re a single mom with a daughter. It’s a particular kind of relationship that I don’t ever see duplicated anywhere else.

Nico: That’s interesting, yeah.

Carmen: It’s like, yeah. There’s also just the only two of you in the house and one of you is a woman and one of you maybe is going to grow up to be one, depending on how things shake out. And I don’t know, it forms things.

Nico: That’s really interesting. That makes sense, that makes a lot of sense to me.

How many girlfriends or relationships have you had?

Nico: Mm-hmm, that’s very cool. All right, this is a complete gear shift.

Carmen: All right, we’re done with my childhood. Throw it out, we’re done.

Nico: Yep, yep. Yep, because I know that you didn’t realize you were gay in childhood, but I would like to ask, how many girlfriends or relationships have you had?

Carmen: That is not something I write about on Autostraddle. That is something-

Nico: I really clearly don’t know.

Carmen: Serious girlfriends? Or serious… I would say I’ve had-

Nico: Relationships maybe?

Carmen: No, I would say that I’ve had four girlfriends that I would consider serious enough that I would consider them okay, maybe we were going to, I don’t want to say get married because I don’t know if I believe in that. But maybe we were going to be long-term serious. I think I’ve had four very serious relationships.

But I only ever have two spectrums. I either super-casual-date, like a little slutty, or I have really serious relationships and I don’t have an in-between. I’m not good at the in-between is the thing.

Nico: What is the in-between? Like yeah, like casually dating for-

Carmen: Yeah, I’ve never been good at casual dating like that. I don’t know, I think about people who go on Wait, Is This A Date? or people who write for Autostraddle, our writers are really good casual daters.

Nico: Yeah.

Carmen: I’ve never been good at it. My emotions only have two poles. I’m either looking for something very serious, very long term, U-Haul mate for life, lesbian things — or super, I don’t want to say but super, I can be a little slutty, on that side of things. I don’t really have a middle.

Nico: You mean like you only want to see them once and then it’s-

Carmen: This is so embarrassing!

Nico: Oh my gosh, it’s incredible.

Carmen: Which is also part of why I don’t share that part with Autostraddle. I mean, you can publish it. I mean, it’d probably be better if I could remember more of their names.

Nico: Why are we not remembering names?

Carmen: Okay. Well, I’ve also been more or less single my whole life, except for those four times, so I don’t know, that’s a lot of people. I’m 36, it’s a long time period. It’s a lot of people, that’s my answer to that. It’s a lot of people.

That was not the answer you were probably expecting, but…

Nico: No, it’s good. I’m like, ooh, do I have any follow-ups? How do you like to casual date when you’re casual dating? Are you on the apps or you going out places and meeting people? There’s also been a whole pandemic, but like, you know?

Carmen: Yeah, that’s also the thing, too. I feel like also all my friends who were single got into really serious relationships in the pandemic and I did not. Apps now, I guess, I think it also depends on where I am too.

But also, I’m just at the age that I feel like dating apps… does anyone remember OkCupid? I feel like dating apps came up just as I was starting to date, you know what I mean? When I was in my early 20s, there was not even an OkCupid! And so if you were going to date, you had to go outside and date. You had to go out to clubs, you had to do it the old fashioned way. You had to have in-person skills. And that changed so fast.

I feel like OkCupid started to get popular when I was in my mid to late 20s, like mid 20s.

Nico: Well, OkCupid was weird.

Carmen: It was such a weird time, I did not love it. I also didn’t have a lot of success on it, so maybe that also colored my feelings on it.

Nico: I literally had zero success with OkCupid and gave up really quickly. I was like: I don’t like this.

Carmen:  So then I think I came back around on apps like Tinder, whatever. But Tinder feels, I don’t know, no offense to people who have good luck on Tinder, but I find it to be very straight. But I feel like that post-Tinder burst was when I finally started to really get into apps. No one asked my opinion about the history of dating apps! I do wish, since we’re just talking, I do wish that they had ever just made a sapphic version of Grindr that-

Nico: Everyone wants it.

Carmen: If someone was like, “Carmen, what is the one thing you could change about queer sex or dating?” The one thing I would change is I just want Sapphic Grindr because there is so much performance in apps that tires me. I just don’t have time. I’m very busy, and we are very busy at this job, and I do not always have time for that part. I would much prefer… I think there’s one thing that cis, gay men got right, it was creating an app that got right to business. I would love to duplicate that for our community.

Nico: Listen, app developers, Carmen is a high-powered editor and she just wants Grinder for Sapphics, so that she can hook up and then go back to work, thank you.

Carmen: Oh my God.

Nico: I love it.

Carmen: No one cancel their A+ subscription. I think we’re all beautiful.

Nico: I mean, it’s…

Carmen: But that is the thing I would most want.

Nico: Listen, I think it’s a great idea and I just don’t know why it’s not out there.

Carmen: Cannot fathom it. I think there’s a weird misunderstanding that maybe women don’t want to  — or not just… Obviously I don’t mean just women, but the broader sapphic part of the LGBT sex spectrum — that they don’t want to simply have sex. And that is just not true.

I’m also really quiet about my sex life, like I said, I never publish it usually. And I think I come off as very nerdy? So it’s not necessarily something that people think about, but nerds fuck. I think that that should be our slogan, just a-

Nico: No, theater nerds, theater nerds fuck. It’s very true.

Carmen: Very true. The truest thing about my personality.

Nico: Did you say the truest thing about your personality is that you’re a nerd who fucks? Is that essentially-

Carmen: I mean probably. And this is going to get published!! Yes.

Nico: It doesn’t have to get published.

Carmen: It can get published, it’s fine. I’m just going to ask people… I have a lot of very supportive family members who are A+ members, so I’m going to ask them not to read. I don’t care about the rest of y’all reading it. But I have some family members who are going to see my picture and be like, “Oh I should read that.”

Nico: Yeah. I’m like, oh my gosh. How your mom always donates and then types, “this is Carmen’s mom.”

Carmen: Mm-hmm, like that.

Nico: I love it.

Carmen: If anyone ever wonders, why doesn’t Carmen write about more of her sex life? My mom reads everything, is the thing. In case you were ever wondering. Just know it’s because my family, they read what I write here. That’s not true of everyone, but that is true of me, my family reads what I write, so…

Nico: Wow, they’re so supportive.

Carmen: They are, but it also limits, is the thing.

Nico: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And they’re A+ members. There’s no hiding.

What are you dreaming of for yourself?

Nico: All right, I’m going to zag a little bit over here. I’m curious, because I know we talk all the time about goals for Autostraddle and-

Carmen: That is a zag, Nico.

[Laughter]

Nico: I was writing these questions and I was like, I don’t know, there’s no good transition question. Anyway, you’re gay, Autostraddle gay and we talk all the time about that. I might be gay too, who knows? But I’ve never asked you what are your personal goals for yourself? What do you imagine yourself growing and going towards as you continue through your 30s and into your 40s? What are you dreaming of for yourself?

Carmen:  That is such a very real question that I have also been asking myself lately and I don’t have good answers for. I think in particular, something about the last month — I don’t know enough about “the stars” to know what it was in the stars — but something in the last month that has really been on the top of my mind lately, what are my goals for what’s next?

And I think I don’t know in part because to be honest. In my 20s I thought I was going to be a professor, which I think a lot of our readers will know. And I kind of clawed my way out of that and that was really damaging for me and I’m really glad I got out of that. I kind of soft landed from that into Autostraddle, which I’m so supremely grateful for. I did a lot of my non-academic growing up here. So that’s how I spent my 20s and the first half of my 30s.

But now I’m on the back half of my 30s, which is terrifying in and of itself. And I’m trying to figure out what that means for me. I don’t know yet, is the honest answer. But I’m thinking about it. And I’m trying to be okay with not knowing yet and give myself some space to figure it out. But there is something of — not a biological clock in the terms of a baby clock — but a biological clock in terms of I’m 36, holy shit.

Nico: In the sense of like a what? Like a death clock?

Carmen: Yeah, like a death clock, there you go, a death clock.

Nico: Yeah, that ticks for me too.

Carmen: And so I do think I’ve been trying to be like, “the death clock’s not real, you have so much time.” But there’s a part of my brain that is like, “you do not have time, you better figure out what’s going on.” So I’m trying to make comfort with the tension, is my honest answer. That’s really incomplete, I’m sorry, but that’s what I got.

Nico: No, that’s okay. Yeah, when you’re in your 30s, you really start to realize how fast time is going by and I think that’s what it is. And then you’re like, I hope I do have decades, but I also know those are going to just fly by, so-

Carmen: Yeah, and I’ll change, right? So whoever I’ll be in my 50s or my 60s is not who I am right now. And maybe that’s actually comforting, too, I guess.

I’ve been trying to figure out, well then… what do I have right now that I love? Which includes this website and this job and this community that we serve, and a lot of family and friends who I love dearly. And so I have a lot of things going for me! Not necessarily any of the things I thought I’d have when I was younger. The not knowing what comes next makes everything in me really itchy, because I like plans and paper and things I can write down.

Sorry. Have you been reading my journal? I’ve been really thinking about this.

Nico: Well, thank you. Just a couple more questions. These are kind of lighter and fluffier, just to take us home.

Carmen: We’re through the heavier parts, okay.

Nico: Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for all of your deep, deep answers, they’re really cool.

Do you have any secret talents that we don’t really know about?

Nico: Okay, so speaking of how cool you are, I’m wondering, do you have any secret talents that we don’t really know about or that you’ve never really had cause to talk about on the website very much? What have you-

Carmen: I’m a really good artist. I know that!

Nico: Aaah! You just jumped at that.

Carmen: Well, because it’s true.

Nico: Well, what do you make?

Carmen: Well, I’ve always been really good at multimedia. And I kind of mentioned this at the very start, like an hour ago when we started this, but I took art classes as a kid and part of that was because I always was really, I don’t know… visual art just always really worked for me? It calms me. I have a really good use of color and sense of color, which is like… I mean, it all sounds really… I feel like it sounds kind of pretentious. But I really love art is the thing.

I like, like I said, multimedia collage. And working in pastels and charcoal. I like line drawings. I don’t love watercolor. but I can do some stuff with acrylic paint.

My second secret talent isn’t as much of a secret because the theme of this was that I grew up a theater kid. But I think not everyone knows that about me! So my other one would probably be that. I’ve never been a great singer, but I can fake it. I can do a decent Broadway song, one that doesn’t require a lot of good notes, but a lot of attitude.

Nico: Got it. I was like, how the heck do you fake singing? Anyway.

Carmen: My karaoke song for a very long time was “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” which you do not need a good singing talent to do a good job at. That’s my hot musical theater take. But yeah, I think a lot of that Broadway kind of sound where you don’t have to be able to sing, you just have to believe in yourself an project. That would probably be my other secret talent.

Nico: Well, that was cool. I learned something really… That was obviously maybe your most unexpected answer. It’s not like I can’t see you doing visual art. It’s just like I don’t think you’ve literally ever mentioned it that I can remember. So it’s just like you’re always like, “Oh, I baked, or I did this or I went swimming.” And then you’re never like, “I did a collage piece this weekend.”

Carmen: You said a secret talent! You knew the other ones.

Nico: So secret. It was so secret.

Carmen: You know I swim, so I had to pick a new one. I need another secret talent in case Nico ever asks again in the future.

Nico: No, you can act and sing and draw and paint and collage and be the editor in chief and write.

Carmen: I was a really artsy kid. Of the arts, the only one I cannot do is I cannot dance, flat out. I have negative rhythm. I think that is a really unfortunate thing because I do think there is stereotypes of like, oh, Black people can dance. And also Puerto Rican people and salsa. And no, I can do neither. So I think I like overcompensate in the other arts.

Nico: Yeah, sorry. Not a good dancer either. I really try.

Carmen: It’s hard. I can finally hold base rhythm. And it took me 35 years to get that. It’s too hard.

Nico: It’s also like I’ve done some volunteer fundraising for a local Black-led dance company. I’ve told you about that. So often, pre-pandemic, I’d be at parties full of dancers, it is very embarrassing for me personally. I’m sort of like just doing my best or dancing the most awkardly in a room full of amazing dancers.

Carmen: Oh no, I would’ve hated that, yeah.

Nico: Just a party full of people who are professional dancers.

Carmen: I would have hated that because that would’ve totally been me. That’s my worst nightmare.

Nico: I’m like, oh, I’m dying.

Carmen: Yeah. I recently saw myself dancing in the mirror and I was like, what is that? What are you doing?

I have a question for you, though! Can I ask you a question?

Nico: Sure.

Carmen: Okay. You don’t have to include this, but you can if you want to. But I’m always curious… Do you ever worry that one day we won’t raise money?

Nico: Oh my god.

Carmen: Do you ever? Are you ever like, “We’re not going to make it,”? This isn’t-

Nico: I worry every single time.

Carmen: That is so terrifying. Holy God, your job is so scary to me. Oh my God. Well, I’m really glad that you charge the ship then, because you never let that worry show and we always make it.

Nico: For now, we will until we don’t.

Carmen: Whoa.

Nico: We will because gosh, can you imagine a world where we didn’t? That world sucks.

Carmen: It scares me so bad and I think I always wanted to ask you because you can’t ask during fundraisers. It’s like you can’t say-

Nico: So no, you can’t ask that in front of the team, when they’re all trying to rally.

Carmen: Yeah. That’s not the time… But I’ve always wondered because I know sometimes I worry about it. I mean, I’m very thankful for our community and they always show up. But those are big asks and sometimes I’m almost like, is this going to be the time when we can’t make it? And I choose to believe we will because I can’t imagine life without Autostraddle, do you know what I mean? But I also… Yeah, sustainability is real and we haven’t yet hit that utopia yet.

All right. I have a fluffy question to end on if you’re ready.

Nico: Yeah. All right. I have a fluffy question to end on if you’re ready.

Carmen: I am.

Nico: Okay, because it is Autostraddle, right? This is Autostraddle, what L Word character do you think is the most like you and why?

Carmen: I actually have a really good answer for this! Well, actually first, I want to know what L Word character you think is most like me. I’m very curious.

Nico: Oh, most like? Honestly, I thought about it a little, but then I was more trying to think of what you might try to say. But it’s kind of a weird answer because she is not part of the main cast. But I feel like you’re kind of like a Jodi.

Carmen: Oh what a compliment! Holy shit. I did not think you were say that. What a compliment, she’s a good character, I will take that, also so hot.

Nico: Yeah, it’s the good boundaries, the focus on platonic friendships, the artistic career, in control of your work life kind of thing.

Carmen: I love this for me, I will be honest with you, I wish I thought of myself as a Jodi.

Nico: Yeah, who do you think of yourself as?

Carmen: So we’ve actually played this game before on the Autostraddle TV team, where we were kind of like what are your Astrology big three as L Word characters? And I think I’m like, if Bette… This is going to be so cliche to be like, oh I’m Bette. I think everyone says they’re Bette.

Nico: I don’t think I’m Bette.

Carmen: Okay, fair. I think honestly, in terms of what a mess my personal life can be sometimes, I do think of a lot Sophie. I also think obviously there’s the whole Sophie’s really close with her family, I’m very close with my family. I think we’re both kind of in an almost  stereotypically Latina, in that way. But also, Sophie really blew up her life in a way that relates to me. And I was like, I know this mess. I’ve seen and spoken of this mess. So I think for me it’s Sophie.

But I also think a lot of me is kind of Bette. And I think for me, the parts of Bette that I think about, when I’m like, oh, I can see Bette because Bette’s a terrible character in some ways. They are not parts of me I love, to be honest. I think that I can be a little bossy in a way that reminds me of Bette. I think I can be a little type A that reminds me of Bette. I think that when things go wrong I short circuit.

I love that when you answered the question, you picked all of my best and nicest qualities and were like “Jodi.” And when I answered it I was like “here’s everything that’s really not great about my personality.” So maybe we include both answers and we get a balanced picture.

Nico: Great. And because you get to pick your top three, we’ll just put Jodi in there, too.

Carmen: I really appreciate being seen in that way though.

I do think it’s funny. I think that’s one of those things, like you know the saying  “you should talk about yourself the way you would talk to a friend”? Don’t be so hard on yourself, that meme or whatever. I think it’s really sweet that you were like, “here’s a really beloved L Word character and I see these qualities in you.” And I was like, “trash, fire.”

Nico: But I mean, also okay, so you say you see yourself in the bossiness of Bette, but there’s also a take charginess that you talked about earlier.

Carmen: Yeah. But we should be as kind to ourselves as our friends are to us is probably a good lesson.

Nico: Yes, that’s the lesson.

Carmen: That is the lesson.