Niki: Single Playing Cards, Fortunes & Chick Tracts

I don't know if collecting is what I would call it, but I have two bags of hand tatted lace that look exactly alike and one is from India and one is from Iowa and I have to label the bags, which family they are from because they look identical. They are from the same eras. If I didn’t keep them separate and labeled, I would never know which was which.  

ZOE: You're from Oklahoma?

NIKI: Yea. 

Z: And your mom is from?

N: Iowa/Illinois area. 

Z: And your dad is from?

N: India, well actually, at the time it was India but now it is Pakistan. He was born in Lehore. It was British colonies when he was born and so he lived through the independence of India. He's in his early 80s. They went just across the border to Kashmir and eventually ended up in Delhi. His father worked for a British bank and when they moved to Delhi, they basically went from having a car and driver and servants to having like a 3-bedroom apartment for 9 people but it was actually really good digs compared to other people who had no homes at all. My sister and I went to India in 2008 and we saw the apartment. 

Z: Do you speak multiple languages?

N: No. My dad was very much I'm going to be an American now. When my dad came to the US he came on Fullbright and he was at Old Mis in 1966-67...so not a good time to be not white. It was an odd placement. 

Z: Where do you identify ethnically then?

N: Well if asked to just pick one, I will say Indian. If given options I would say mixed race or I'd identify with both white and Indian. My Mom is very German and Swedish, farming stock, stoic hard working folks. 

Z: Do you notice in either of those heritages a proclivity for collecting?

N: I don't know if collecting is what I would call it, but I have two bags of hand-tatted lace that look exactly alike and one is from India and one is from Iowa and I have to label the bags, which family they are from because they look identical. They are from the same eras. If I didn’t keep them separate and labeled, I would never know which was which.  

Z: Do you think there are any connections between queer culture and collecting?

N: Maybe not collecting so much as gathering things to ourselves. So maybe it is collecting of an object you can see and have some sort of connection to and then maybe it’s collecting friends, found family, but I think there's a way in which gathering things to us might be common across queers, some sort of sense of belonging. 

Z: Did you grow up Hindu?

N: A little. We would do Devali every year and we would do some other small things, but my dad was not super religious. Hinduism is kind of like Judaism where you can be lax and still sort of ok. 

I did grow up with a lot of Hindu and Buddhist art in my home, religious art. My dad collects it and I have a small amount of it. I grew up knowing the stories and knowing the gods and goddesses and what they meant and symbolism behind things. My dad has quite a few almost relic like pieces of art. 

Z: So that's his collection? 

N: Yeah that's a lot of his collection that sort of stuff. I’ve inherited bits and pieces over time. 

Z: He's not overly religious but appreciates the art?

N: He might be very religious in his own way, but never forced us to do anything and there just wasn’t a way to do it. We had to drive about two hours to find other Indian folks doing the Devali thing. We grew up in a place that was incredibly conservative and Christian so being outwardly different in any way was not OK. 

Z: Do you think that gave you more of an ability to be outwardly different? Did it make you comfortable with being different?

N: Yeah, it is both good and bad. I’m very accustomed to being an outsider, so I have a lot of observational qualities, but at the same time it’s harder for me to feel part of a group. 

Z: It seems like you had a very individual upbringing, because you had all of this culture but lived in this small-minded place. It's got to create a lot of interesting dynamics. 

N: YEAH. A lot of crazy dynamics. Like we stopped having people in our home because they were convinced that we were Satan worshippers. They just didn't understand the artwork…and Hindus use swastikas—turned differently—and my dad did Native American bead working as a hobby but he would do Hindu designs with it so we would have these pieces of artwork that he created and people would be like, Why do you have a swastika in your home, and why does it look like a piece of Native American art?

It started when I went to Houston to visit somebody that I had a relationship with, of sorts. We went out for Chinese food, and he told me to save the fortune that I got, and so I did and that started it. I took it as save all of them, so I saved all of them from that point on. 

Z: Do you feel like your collector-ness comes from your dad? 

N: Yes.

Z: What are your collections?

N: So…there is every fortune from every fortune cookie since I was seventeen. 

Z: They are all in this bottle?

N: Yeah. 

Z: Do you ever take them out?

N: I haven’t cause it's really hard to take them out. That's sort of the point of them being in the bottle. Every once in a while I take a stick and push them down a little further. Sometimes they are not ones I get out of a fortune cookie. Sometimes I find them places. Like if I find them on the street or something like that, then I feel like this is a fortune meant for me so I'll take it. 

When I order Chinese food, I don’t pick the cookie. I make other people pick their cookies and then I take the one that's left. That way I feel more like fate has left me this one. 

Z: This is your bottle of fortunes, essentially.

Every summer there'd be these big youth revivals, which are like a recruiting center and they are pretty decent for a community where most of the people are working class or poor because they provide food and a place for kids to be. Our family was the only family that didn’t attend church. So, it was a big deal if folks could recruit us to go to the youth revivals. I found out from somebody else that the churches were offering a special prize if they could get my sister and I to come to their revivals.

N: Yeah and it’s gone with me from high school. It started when I went to Houston to visit somebody that I had a relationship with, of sorts. We went out for Chinese food, and he told me to save the fortune that I got, and so I did and that started it. I took it as save all of them, so I saved all of them from that point on. 

I also collect Chick publications. They are all written by this guy, Jack Chick. They’re little comic book morality tales. Essentially all of them end with the same thing, that you have to accept Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, or you’re going to hell. Like all of them. Some of them are in English and some of them are in Spanish. I think there might even be some in Chinese in there, but they are handed out all over the world. I don’t pay any money for them. I don’t seek them out. They have to be given to me or I have to find them. 

Z: Can you give me some examples of them being given to you or you finding them?

They hand them out at 16th street Bart. I've found them thrown on the sidewalk outside Polk Gulch which is a porn shop. They are really terrible. There is one about Dungeons and Dragons players that go to hell. They condemn Halloween, the Devil's night. They condemn every other religious practice…even other Christian denominations like Catholicism. 

Z: That seems like its kind of more promoting Halloween.

N: Yes! The point to me when I look at them is, look at all the shit I could do and then the only thing that I have to do before I die is say, “I accept Jesus Christ my lord and savior,” and all of that is wiped clean. I tell people all the time that if I die, the last words that I say will be, I accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior, just to make sure I have all my bases covered. 

Those types of religious people are the types of people I grew up around and so to them it was very serious. I grew up in a really small town in Oklahoma. It was less than two thousand people but there were probably two dozen churches.  Methodist, Southern Baptist and Assembly of God… 

Every summer there'd be these big youth revivals, which are like a recruiting center, and they are pretty decent for a community where most of the people are working class or poor because they provide food and a place for kids to be. Our family was the only family that didn’t attend church. So, it was a big deal if folks could recruit us to go to the youth revivals. I found out from somebody else that the churches were offering a special prize if they could get my sister and I to come to their revivals. The prizes were like a candy bar or a happy meal or something tiny and terrible and hard to come by...like Mcdonald’s was half an hour drive away from where I grew up, so it was sort of luxurious. 

Revivals were basically pretty fun. It was games and activities and sometimes they'd take us roller-skating. You’ll make lots of God's eyes but you'll make those at camp anyway. I played along cause I like crafts. Towards the evening they'd have the actual revival part where we’d go from the youth center to the chapel where the youth pastor and the rest of the congregation would start with the "come to Jesus stuff." The Assembly of God, in particular, would do things that were humorous on purpose I felt, because they also believe if you giggle or react in an odd way that you were taken by the spirit and then they would pull you to the front and have this whole moment with you. It generally involved getting on your knees. It was really...kinky. 

Z: Did your sister and you find out at the same time that there was a special prize being offered?

N: I found out. I usually found out anything cause I’d be in the last stall in the bathroom and people wouldn’t notice. I would hear girls talking. For someone who is noticed a lot, I can often go unnoticed. 

Z: And then you told your sister?

N: I told my whole family. I thought it was hilarious! My sister was devastated cause she wanted to have friends and be normal. We fought a lot because she was like, Why can’t you just be normal?

Z: What is exciting about Chick Tracts when you get a new one?

They have to be a single thing that is meant to be part of a greater whole. And they have to be alone. If I pick up a card and then I see another one later on the block, I’ll put down the card I picked up. I like the aspect of it being something that belongs to a set that is not in that set.

N: Some of it is where I find it. Some of it is like, Oh My God, I found this outside of the porn shop! I like the way people will pick me out to hand them to me. People are selective about who they hand them out to. And I'm so tickled when people make a point of handing one to me. You can see the sin all over me and you are saving me. They feel like they are doing a very good thing for me, so in some ways, I'm touched because I'm like, You care about me! 

The people who will just sort of randomly leave them places is also interesting to me. So you took out all of the Bart maps and replaced them all with Chick publications. What was the reasoning behind that? Nowadays they are not as ubiquitous. Maybe people have to pay for them. Maybe Jack Chick died. I’m not sure. 

Z: So chance is a big part of your collecting…of the chick publications and the fortunes…

N: Also, I collect single playing cards that I find on the street. They have very specific rules. 

They have to be a single thing that is meant to be part of a greater whole. And they have to be alone. If I pick up a card and then I see another one later on the block, I’ll put down the card I picked up. I like the aspect of it being something that belongs to a set that is not in that set. I don’t really care what shape they are in. Some of them, I've literally peeled off the sidewalk. They are often sort of wet cause the world is a wet place. If it's clearly got piss or shit on it, I wont pick it up. I put it in one particular pocket in my purse until it’s dry enough to the point that I feel that whatever's on it isn’t gross anymore. 

Some of these cards are not regular playing cards. There's one that has Halt Hungry Angry Lonely and Tired on it. There are some flash cards, lots of playing cards, some Uno cards. There are a couple of Tarot cards. Some of them are religious tracts. There are a lot of dirty cards, an astounding number of naked cards in a variety of orientations so its not just naked ladies; there's naked anime—Oh my goodness, the things that I find! I’ve found them pretty much everywhere I’ve ever traveled. There’s an Apples to Apples card; there's a Magic: The Gathering card; there's a Star Wars game; there’s a goddess of truth card and children's matching games. I have mood cards; there's a card from a wine deck that teaches you about wine (but is also the 8 of spades); there's an old maid...some of them have a significant meaning when I've found them. I'd be like, Wow. I actually keep the Strength card separate. I really like this one and I'm a Leo and it has a lion on it. 

Z: Do you remember the first one you picked up?

N: I don’t think so. I started collecting them when I moved to SF, but I don’t remember the first one I picked up. Most of the other stuff, I sort of remember the first time, but the cards I don’t remember doing it. For a little while I was taking photographs of them when I picked them up and documenting where they were found, but it got too tedious and I realized that it just wasn’t fun for me to do all that work. And so I stopped. 

I thought about doing a project with them but then if I do something with them, then I have to stop collecting them because I'd want all of them to be in the project and I still find them every once in a while. Like I think there's a new one that I found up the block in front of JFK; I added it to the pile once it dried. 

Z: Do you ever treat them like tarot or some kind of divination?

N: I’ve thought about it. There is a way the regular deck is made to match up with the tarot card deck. But I've never really looked it up and then thought about it like, how does this relate? When I find it on the street, is it some sort of divination? There have been days and times where I've found heart cards, that to me felt like they had a special meaning to them, but I don’t have any sort of official way of reading it. 

Z: How often do you find them? There are easily 150 cards here. 

N: Sometimes I'll find them as often as once a week and sometimes I won’t find them for months. 

Z: Do you think you'll ever stop collecting any of your three collections?

N: I hope not. I think they're so easy. I've been doing them for years. 

Z: They're pretty contained. 

N: Yeah, so I can travel with them or take them different places. I don’t think I ever have to give up doing it and it's so thrilling cause I started collecting them before I traveled and then to find playing cards while I'm out in the world traveling is really fun. I know there's like a bazillion of these that are from Asia and just the fact that I've picked them up in London, sort of gives me that thrill. 

{Zoe examines Devil card}

N: When you find the devil card sitting all by its lonesome… 

{Niki Chuckles.} 

N: They are small. They don't take up a lot of space, but they are large in their way.

Niki's father is from India; her mother is from Iowa and she grew up in Oklahoma. It was weird and hard and is interesting to talk about at parties.  Niki is a half-dozen of one thing and six of another. She's White, Asian-Indian, Intersex, Femme and Queer.  Niki has studied Critical Theory, Gender, Literature and Psychology.  She has taught Sex-Ed and Rape, Sexual-Assault & Intimate Partner Abuse Prevention. She is currently working to become a Psychotherapist. She finds people both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. So, naturally, she has two cats.