Last week, Xtra!, Vancouver's Gay and Lesbian news, published a story about Winter Pride. Along with this coverage, they threw in a picture of my in my swimsuit worn during the Mr. Gay Canada competition. I'm also wearing the MGC sash.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been in the newspaper. Ten years ago, I was volunteering as a research assistant on a sea turtle monitoring project in Coast Rica. It was six months of arduous all-night marathon beach patrols, early morning nest surveys, and near-total isolation. When crew came from the national newspaper to photograph us tagging nesting sea turtles, I remember thinking that the team of Latin-Americans who I worked with were getting all the limelight as they were the only ones being interviewed. Sure, I could hardly speak Spanish at the time, but I automatically assumed that reporters would be interested in a cute, hirsute Canadian who had come so far to live in a coastal town of 300 people, accessible only by boat and small airplane. Grudgingly, I brought a photographer along on a night patrol.
The first thing you learn about nesting sea turtles is that they are sensitive to light. Extremely so. If you approach with a flashlight, they will actually turn and run back into the sea. I have been trampled by a sprinting turtle. Aesop obviously never bothered tagging wild sea turtles. Turtle patrollers use special red filters on their headlamps that are less visible to reptiles. So now imagine this isolated beach. There are no lights anywhere. And with no moon, it’s dark. However, when you’re working in poor light, your pupils naturally dilate to let in more starlight. Your other senses are heightened; I came to be able to smell a turtle on the beach before seeing her. A rather strong combined odour of sea and egg.
It was dark on that night with the reporter. I located a nesting female and started to work with her. Tagging a 100 kilo turtle requires a certain amount of dexterity to avoid the swinging flippers and associated flying sand. It also requires the ability to read the tiny numbers etched into the metal identification tags used on the animals. Taking photos on the beach at night is not allowed without a permit, so as not to disturb the endangered animals. The photographer who came out on the beach that night had permission to snap some photos. You know how, when someone takes your picture with a flash, you see spots for a while? Imagine your eyes at their most sensitive and dilated as you’re working on a Costa Rican beach in the dead of night. When a big, professional strobe flashes right in your eyes, there is no way you’re going to be seeing much of anything, let alone little numbers on a shiny metal tag. Forget seeing even the turtle. I was rendered absolutely blind and utterly useless on that beach. I don’t know if we collected any usable data on that patrol, as I could only see spots and, every time I knelt down to get a closer look, another series of flashes would be set off in my face. The poor turtle must have been terrifically confused. And is now potentially blind.
Several days later, when our supply boat arrived, I was shocked to see that my picture had made it to the front page of the national newspaper. Oh, but that wasn’t the only surprise. Inside was a several-page story detailing the turtle project, with huge colour photographs of myself working with the nesting female. If you look closely at the pictures, you’ll see me squinting and feeling my way, surprisingly effectively, around the reptile in the sand.
This time around, there is no beach in the photograph in the newspaper. However, in a rather ironic twist, I am wearing a swimsuit. Along with a sash. And nothing else but my smile.
