#clarisworks

Desktop publishing was a new idea in the early nineties, albeit Quark Xpress was started in 1981, it didn't become more widely used until the early nineties on Macintosh and Windows dominating the market share of the time. I wouldn't start using it myself until '95 somehow coping a bootleg version for my Mac SE. Previously I was using AppleWorks which later became ClarisWorks, this was basically just a word processing application, and I remember to create just one page I would have to create a text box in different positions and put them together when I printed it.

Below is one of the template pages from issue #2, there are three parts of this page, the find-a-word with its description below, Miss Moody Herself and the bits below it, and the three columns on the lower half. I didn't know how to make ClarisWork split up a page into different areas. I could easily make columns, but having something on the upper half of the page that was different than the content on the lower page had to be done by passing the document through the printer multiple times my Apple StyleWriter II.

So in my digital files for one page I would sometimes have three or four ClarisWord docs. It made for a slightly confusing organizing of an issue because one four page issue could easily have twelve to sixteen files. Quark Xpress which I taught myself, would get rid of the need for multiple documents and multiple passes through the printer. It had become the standard for desktop publishing and it was appropriate that I should utilize the industry standard for my own mass-read publication.

Sorry, I went off into a technical rabbit hole, but I think part of understanding who I am is to understand my technical proficiency throughout my adult life, and even now, its one of the things that I seriously think gave me the edge when I went to work in the corporate world, the fact that I had dabbled in so many applications and technology made me hit the ground running faster than a lot of my contemporaries.

I wish I still had that old SE, I gave it back to the friend who I purchased it from as a payment for his ripping out the old red carpet in my new apartment, the same one I am living in today. The reason I would love to have it, is I know there was a special app I used to create the type for Fashion Fag Magazine, my initial logo, which would change by my third issue.

Looking back at this production this was truly the first manifestation of my artistic voice as an adult. As I am learning of my childhood where I attempted to draw, sing, perform and write a little bit, but here I was now taking writing to the forefront as a means of expression. Albeit untrained I was designing a newsletter about my life and my experiences, I was seeking to give a voice to my identities and the struggles faced there within.

For all the wonderful things I learned at college, in this post-college queer world I was attempting to be seen for all the many aspects of my personhood, not just a body part, skin color or general aesthetic appeal. One of the backlashes of attending a primarily white educational institution, no matter had well-intentioned folks were, I was repeatedly othered. Sometimes by the people who looked like like me and had similar social-economic backgrounds, and others who loved the way I did with varying economic backgrounds but also failed to see the entire me.

Just a brief moment about the title, I have alway had a thing for fashion albeit my vision for myself and what was actually executed in the real-world wouldn't align until much later. I still felt I had the potential for a personal style that would surpass that of my peers.

Albeit the whyte queers weren't necessarily always the most fashion-forward of folks, particularly the ones I knew, I envisioned personal style being able to push the envelope and announce something more nuanced about my personality other than just being Black and queer. This voice would come to full fruition later, but Fashion Fag Magazine was precognition of what I knew would come in time.

Through my observations about my world I wanted folks to see the world in the way that I did. And through my nine issues published from nineteen ninety-three through nineteen ninety-six I attempted just that, sometimes successful other-times failing miserable, but still trying to make myself seen and heard in a world that wasn't really checking it for people like me, dark-skinned, femme, gender non-conforming, queer, well-spoken, nerdy, comic book reading, dance the house down folk.

I am going to try to translate this classic text for a new audience, who am I fooling with my twelve followers here, but I look at this mini-blog as a digital obituary for my life, and its important to include all the bits and pieces of a life, so you're are not just broken down to legal document or a one-hundred and fifty word summary. For as long as Tumblr is around which may be less than the span of my life, I at least want to make an attempt to record my thoughts and feelings about the breadth of the experiences of Trevor A. Brown.