ABOUT ME

Hey, we're Ander and Lance.

Lance is a bi-racial, queer trans guy currently staying with his partner, Ander, in Toronto. The two of them share a space in a co-op: home to nine rad roomies, in all. They're a chill bunch, and are often up for houseguests. Lance and Ander are a couple of queer kids in their twenties: Lance is a sort of femmey trans guy, and Ander is a femmey boyish non-binary trans person. Lance uses the pronouns "he," "him," and "his". Ander's pronouns are "they," "them," and "their", or whatever gender neutral ones you are used to using.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Lance is just starting to get involved with Couch Surfing, and Ander both surfed and hosted lots of times under a previous name in a previous life. Their co-op has also hosted folks through their housemate Marine's profile, who is fairly involved with the CS community in Toronto.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Ander and Lance have each couch-surfed on their own, as well as together. Mainly, they've stayed with friends knew from different cities, but Ander's got a pretty impressive list of couch-surfing experiences with new folks, as well. Just ask them, if you want some stories!

Interests

Lance has a lot of experience with youth work, but he just moved to Toronto, so he's still looking for work here. At heart, he's a community organizer--but he just left his community, so he's looking for a good campaign and good people to organize with in his new city. In the meantime, he does volunteer work, plays violin, and spends the lion's share of his days working on a book he's trying to get published.

Ander is a freelance graphic designer and website programmer, a painter, a film buff, and a totally badass cook (they did vegan, organic catering professionally for several years). They're also the founder of "the cleanest anarchist co-op that has ever existed." Seriously.

We're both activists, who've done a lot of work around queer youth stuff in the past. Right now, Lance is interested in doing stuff around gentrification and queer youth of color, and Ander and Lance are teaming up to start a community group oriented towards folks who don't fit neatly into the gender binary system. We're also thinking of teaching a class on gender at our local anarchist free school, and I'm gonna present a workshop on trans youth of color in youth services and programming at the Philly Trans Health Conference (www.trans-health.org).

We're both total art fags and animal lovers.

We know how to have a good time, but neither of us really drink much - in fact we're basically substance-free just out of personal preference, but aren't bothered by other people doing what they like of course.

We don't take up much space, will leave any new place cleaner than we found it, and would be happy to cook you a yummy vegan meal, if you us crash.

• animals
• arts
• books
• design
• graphic design
• coloring
• cooking
• vegan
• drinking
• volunteer work
• violin
• surfing
• freelancing
• software
• volunteering

Music, Movies, and Books

Lance's Movie Picks:
But I'm a Cheerleader, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Lord of the Rings, Waking Life, Fight Club,

Ander's Movie Picks:
Adaptation, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Brick, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, There Will Be Blood, My Beautiful Laundrette, Half Nelson, Lost in Translation, American Beauty... generally they enjoy movies by Wes Anderson, Pedro Almodovar & the Coen Brothers.

Movies We Both Loved:
Being John Malkovich, Harry Potter, Napoleon Dynamite, Ma Vie En Rose, Dirty Pretty Things

We like a lot of the same books. Our favorite authors are bell hooks, audre lorde, MATTILDA AKA Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Robin D. G. Kelley, Howard Zinn, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ali Smith, Jeanette Winterson, Virginia Woolf, Tolkien, JK Rowling, S. Bear Bergman, Julia Serano, Leslie Feinberg, Kate Bornstein, and the list goes on.

Lance is also real big on children's novels, where someone learns the true meaning of friendship.

Ander... not so much.

Ander says Lance's taste in music proves he was raised by lesbians. If you like Chris Pureka, Ferrin, Le Tigra, Dark Dark Dark, Tegan and Sara, kimya dawson, or Tracy Chapman, Lance probably wants to be your friend. Add to that list any bad 80s or 90s music, political rap, classical violin, and what Ander likes to call "elevator music," and you've got a pretty good picture of the situation.

Ander's a fan of way too much music to list, but of the top of their head David Bowie, Dirty Three, Final Fantasy, TV on the Radio, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Moody Blues, Portishead, The Dears, The Shins, Sigur Ros, Santogold, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Nina Simone, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Bloc Party, Baby Dee, The Irrepressibles...

We both love Antony and the Johnsons and Diamond Rings.