Artist Lauren Quock writes of the first of many incidents that inspired her Modified Bathroom Signs series, "I vividly remember the first time someone asked whether I was a boy or a girl. I was five years old."

Public restrooms are just one of many social spaces where we're pared down to just one part of our identity. Man, or woman? What if there are days when you feel like neither? Like both? We try to understand each other through such limited categories, based on how we look, who we sleep with, the color of our skin. But we are so much more.

How would your bathroom sign look, if it welcomed you for who you truly are? What's missing from the gender binary?

Come to CUAV's Open House tonight to see Lauren's powerful artwork, and the unique bathroom signs that some of us created during yesterday's Wellness Wednesday. It's also a chance to learn more about CUAV's work to transform cycles of violence in LGBTQ communities. It's taking place from 6:30-8:30 pm, at CUAV's office. Visit CUAV's website or the Facebook event page for more details.

Here's a silly poem I wrote a while ago. I might've posted it here before.

unidentified

i need to take time out to say this only because
sometime between the latest recorded bloodshed
 and my mother’s latest investigation
into my dating life, it occurred to me that all
those dire happenings in the world, the war, the
disease, the suffering, is all because you don’t
know enough about my sexuality. and how selfish
of me. it’s only just been brought to my attention
due to the urgency of your inquiries, and
i can assure you that had i known world
peace could be achieved simply by revealing
the details of my pussy’s history, i would
have done this much earlier. here’s hoping
it’s not too late. as to the most common
question, of whether i am gay or straight,
the answer is neither. if there are no options
in between then i am nothing more than a
figment of your imagination. fluid, they call it,
like water, so that you can pretend that like
water in a glass, i’ll remain clear and unseen,
and while we’re on the subject of putting irregular
humans into regular shapes, let me set out
describing my type. after all, in this game we
should not call dating, but repeating our
mistakes, we’re not really playing unless
we’re making all the same moves, landing
in just the same place. our asses. and speaking
of asses, aren’t i supposed to say the parts
i like, the tits or the ass, isn’t that how this
type thing works? when i’m asked what part
of my lover i think is sexiest, i say, her bottom
lip, when bitten. that is, unless i say, his
fingernails, with dirt beneath them. i like bodies
that tell stories, skin with traces of where it’s
been so when we make love, i close my eyes
and it’s not you i’m thinking of, but the parts
that create you, it’s your hair, heavy with smoke
that wasn’t your own but came from strangers
smoking around you, strangers whose breath
has found me. and that’s when i feel sexy, when
i feel like i’ve been found. but there i go again,
talking about me, forgetting what this means to
     you. if all you want to know is how i
feel about body parts, the truth is this: if i paid
half as much attention to my lovers’ gender as
anyone else did, i would know more about their
genitals than their mind. and i have a hard time
believing that i’m the cause of some kind of unrest
because i don’t pick a side in terms you can wrap
your black and white boxes around. and i have a
hard time speaking of love in our language. but
let’s give it a shot. now you know a little more about
me, and maybe now the world can have its peace.
    or maybe we’ll just go on.