RADKE, theodora n.

[theodora neale radke]

theodora neale radke

"I'm trying to find my peace
I was made to believe there's something wrong with me
And it hurts my heart
Lord have mercy, ain't it plain to see?
This is a cold war
You better know what you're fighting for
This is a cold war
Do you know what you're fighting for?"

i want to be in another place i hate when you say

NAME theodora neale radke
GENDER female
NICKNAMES theo, qcue
AGE 22
MEMBERGROUP university
YEAR/OCCUPATION 1st year MA in queer theory
SEXUALITY lesbian
PLAYED BY lianne la havas

you don't understand, you'll see it's not meant to be

HI I'M THEO AND THIS IS ME:

"HELLO THERE, WELCOME TO THE BIG APPLE. UNLESS YOU WERE BORN HERE IN THAT CASE YOU DON'T REALLY NEED A WELCOME. BUT WELCOME TO THIS INTERVIEW. OH I FEEL LIKE I'M RAMBLING. MY APOLOGIES ABOUT THAT. CAN WE JUST START OVER?"

"That's fine, just um, calm down. I'm in a little bit of a rush though, I'm supposed to be down at Wall Street for a big protest tonight and I need to meet some friends at the train to help them drag our stuff to the meet up place. So if we could just sort of keep this moving, that'd be great. The key thing? Just get your questions asked and then I'm out the door. You're not reporting any of this on to the police or something? Because if you are, I'm not answering shit. You're not? Great, let's get this over with then."

"CAN I HAVE YOUR NAME A-A-AND BIRTH DATE ON RECORD PLEASE?"

"Yeah, the name is Theodora Neale Radke. Most people call me Theo though, but you can call me whatever you want. Sometimes I go by QCue, when I'm doing... less than legal art. Came into this world on July 8th, 1990."

"OH NICE. WELL HOW ARE YOU THIS LOVELY EVENING? THIS INTERVIEW SHOULD BE RELATIVELY P-P-PAINLESS. AND SPEEDY. EXCUSE ME, I GET KIND OF N-NERVOUS AROUND NEW PEOPLE."

"I'm fine, just busy. So if we could keep this moving? I don't want you to feel more terrified than you already are but you know, busy life. And I'm only doing this because Aisha down at the office said you were looking for more people to interview and it was a favor to her. Really though, keep it moving, I'm busy busy today."

"CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD?"

"Sure, yeah. So I was born and raised in the Bronx. My folks are pretty cool. Well, my mom is, my dad passed away three years ago. Anyway, so we were pretty much lower middle class growing up. Didn't starve or anything but money was usually pretty tight. Dad worked two jobs, Mom did a lot of extra work around the neighborhood in addition to her job and somehow they sort of made things work for us. Oh, right, almost forgot, I've got a little sister, Anais, she's 20 now. She and I are super tight, we always were. When we were little, we used to run around all day with the other kids around the block, always getting in our parents way and getting kicked out of the house to go play on the street. It was a pretty good life, our neighborhood was quiet as neighborhoods go and pretty friendly. Mostly on the poor-ish side, we were pretty standard for the area, but everyone sort of looked out for each other.

I did ok in school, though I was kind of a troublemaker. I didn't like the academic stuff, I just wanted to draw and paint and write. Math and history and all that shit was just boring. Plus our classrooms were packed, the school was falling apart and the teachers were always too stressed. I didn't really understand that was a problem when I was a kid but looking back? I think that really was a big problem. Plus, dad started having health problems when I was ten and that was hard on us. Anais and I were really too young to understand what was wrong and my parents struggled a lot to make ends meet since Dad couldn't work both jobs anymore. Mom and Dad tried to keep life normal for us but it wasn't hard to notice the doctors visits and how much tighter money got. My grandma came to live with us and she helped a lot, helped take care of us and make things work but it was just rough. Not all unhappy but hard."

"F-F-FASCINATING. WHAT ABOUT YOUR TEEN YEARS?"

"I was kind of an awkward teenager. I was one of the nerdy art kids, kinda shy. A lot of the social stuff in high school I missed out on. Some of that was that I was angry and resentful. My dad kept getting sicker and I couldn't do anything about it and it scared me, a lot. I was kind of in denial though, so when teachers pulled me aside to say something or ask if I was ok, I pretty much told them everything was fine. And beside all that, I was gay and just figuring it out, which meant tons of fucking confusion for me. I came out pretty much to everyone by the time I was sixteen though, which was good, just overwhelming. People had a lot of opinions and no one felt shy about telling me what they thought.

I started getting kind of better at doing school but we had all the same problems. Classes were too big, the buildings were crumbling, there just wasn't enough of anything going around. I started getting angry about that instead of angry about my life. It wasn't fair we couldn't afford to get new books or good teachers or anything we needed. I did some organizing with my friends, started getting involved with a few grassroots organizers trying to advocate for change in schools. That's where I met Tanya. Tanya was, well, fuck, she still is really, like my activist role model. She was working with an anti-police brutality group when I met her and she just opened my eyes to so much. She invited me to these meetings her group used to have and we'd just sit and talk for hours, about all kinds of stuff. I didn't understand a lot of it then, hadn't done the reading to get it but I listened to everything, took it home and thought about it non-stop. It sorta became my life.

Tanya was the one to help me out with applications for college. Mom and Dad and Grandma tried but they were busy with everything around the house and with Anais too. Tanya got me really well. She used to give me lists of books to read or music to listen to, just things she thought I should get to experience too. I learned so much, just spending time with her and her friends. My friends from school came too, it was the best. And when I got accepted into universities, she helped me find funding to pay my tuition. Got me set up right when I moved into the dorms at Columbia, I'll never stop owing her just about everything I have."

"DID YOU GO TO COLLEGE?"

"Well like I just said, I went to school at Columbia. It might not have been the best choice for exactly what I wanted to do but my parents were excited I got in and even more excited when I managed to cover the entire tuition between financial aid and scholarships. College was fun but hard. I started working as a waitress to cover my bills, working all the hours I wasn't in the studio or at in class. And I took a lot of classes in feminism and anti-racist action and got more involved with the activism and it just sort of grew into this even bigger part of my life. I eventually quit working at the diner and ended up doing a bunch of sort of odd jobs that allowed me to work more with the activist stuff. Sure, I didn't get a lot of sleep in college but I didn't mind.

I also got arrested for the firs time in college. I was a sophomore and one of the transwomen in our group of friends, she got jumped one night. When she called the cops, the guy who showed up arrested her and sexually assaulted her. We were fucking furious. When we reported it to the police, the guy basically got a slap on the wrist and we were told not to complain. So we staged a big sit in protest, blocked traffic on Broadway for about ten or fifteen minutes till cops showed up and arrested all of us. The cop who assaulted Leena never did get the punishment he deserved which is a fucking travesty. But this is how I started getting involved in the non-violent resistance stuff. I've been arrested a handful of times since, which used to crack up my professors when I'd have to skip out of class for court dates. Luckily, most of the professors I had seemed pretty cool with it and let me make up homework and missed lectures and whatnot.

I was just starting junior year when my dad took a turn for the worse. He'd been doing a little better for a few months and then... Mom called me one day, told me I needed to come home and say goodbye. We still don't really know what happened, he was doing better and then bam, his liver started seriously failing and the doctors told us there was really nothing we could do to save him. He didn't want to...." She pauses, takes a deep breath, looks away, fingers flexing and holding tight to her knees. "We brought him home, filled his room with flowers, family, Mom made all his favorite foods, even though he couldn't really eat much. Anais and I pretty much just stayed at home for four days, stayed with him as much as we could. He was so upbeat, to the very last. And..." Her voice wavers and she has to stop speaking to clear her throat and blink away tears. "He told me how proud he was of me, even of the arrests and the stupid shit I did. He told me he loved me, that he'd always be proud of me, wherever he was. We were all with him when he finally passed. I've never... I hope I never feel that way again. My dad was amazing, I still miss him every day."

"VERY NICE. SO TELL ME YOUR IMPRESSION OF THE CITY. WHAT DOES NEW YORK M-MEAN TO YOU?"

"I don't know... Home? It's where I grew up so I'll always think of it as home. Albeit a home run by the goddamned corrupt as fuck NYPD but still home. The Bronx is nearest and dearest to my heart though. I still get nostalgic about spending summers running around the block with the neighborhood kids."

"DO YOU HAVE AN EXCITING JOB?"

"I guess? I don't really have a job as such right now. My last gig working as a bartender sort of ended abruptly when the place I was working at shut down. Owner went bankrupt or something, I don't know, it was all very hush hush. So now I'm back out in the job market, looking for work. I'm hoping to find some more bar tending gigs, since they tend to mesh pretty well with my schedule but with the economy the way it is, I've been having trouble finding work. So for now I've been spending all my time painting, or playing small gigs and doing odd jobs between protests and school and whatnot. The street art I've been doing seems to be going really well lately. Like really really well. If you've been seeing things marked QCue popping up around town, well.... That's me. Wheat pasting is really one of my favorite things to do these days."

"ANY L-L-LOVE INTERESTS?"

"Not right now really. I just recently broke up with Pheobe, my last girlfriend. It was mostly amiable, we just wanted different things I guess. So now I'm back to dating around a bit. There's a really cute girl living down the street from me, she works at the coffee place I like, I've been trying to flirt with her but I'm beginning to think that she's maybe not gay. Which is really a shame. But aside from her, there's nothing of note and she's not really even anything of note either, just a bit of harmless flirting, which I'm not good at so really, it's less than nothing. At some point it'd be nice to find someone but I'm in no rush. After all, I'm only 22, there's still tons of time. My mom would love it if I'd find myself a nice girl and settle down and maybe have a few kids now but it's not yet on my to-do list. It'd be nice to have someone to spend my time with though."

"WELL, I THINK THIS SUMS UP THE INTERVIEW. UNLESS YOU T-T-THINK THERE IS SOMETHING ELSE TO ADD."

"Nothing from me, I've got to run. Wait, actually no, if you've got some time, you should come down to check out today's action. The groups pretty good and we should have a big turnout today. And if you hear some leading the "No justice, no peace, fuck the police" chant, you'll know where to find me, that one is always my favorite. Anyway, see you around, try not to worry so much, for your own health."

i want to be with the energy, not with the enemy

YOUR NAME cee!
SOMETHING AWESOME nooooo

a place for my head