In case you didn’t notice on Twitter, I’ve announced the upcoming release of my newest book, BRIEFLY BUDDIES!
Full of laughs, sexiness, a bit of angst, and a lot of fun, it’s an LGBTQ+ New Adult Erotic Comedy that you’ll surely love if you enjoy those genres even a little.
But the day for pre-orders is finally here! You can pre-order the book on Amazon here (paperbacks and hardbacks will be available to order a few days before the ebook drops).
BRIEFLY BUDDIES tells the story of Dustin Blanchard, an 18-year-old new adult who just graduated high school and is in his last summer before university, who has never been laid. One drunken night, he and his best friend, Miguel, decide that if Dustin couldn’t get laid through his own skills and swagger, he should turn to a professional. What ensues is a slight comedy of errors–heavy on the comedy.
This marks my first return to erotica since BULLY–so I hope my readers enjoy it just as much…or more! I definitely think it’s just as exciting and sexy!
To help you decide if it’s something you might love, here’s the official blurb:
Being a gay teen can be difficult, but for Dustin Blanchard, it’s been pretty boring, actually. In less than twenty-four hours he’s going to graduate from high school. His parents and friends have always given him their full support and unconditional love. He’s always had plenty of friends in school, he’s attractive, always gotten good grades, and he’s headed into a new chapter of life—university after his last summer of working at a local ice cream joint. His life has been…blessed.
There’s just one thing. He’s never had a boyfriend. Never gotten laid. Never even been kissed. Well, not like that, anyway. So, life has been good, but it’s been boring. When he came out, Dustin imagined his own rom-com, teenage, coming-of-age scenario playing out, finding a boyfriend in high school, and being crowned dual Kings of the Prom.
Nothing ever works out the way he imagines, though, and he’s getting pretty tired of it.
On the night of his graduation, Dustin and his friend, Miguel, come up with a plan while sharing a few beers swiped from the neighborhood barbecue. If you can’t get laid through skill and swagger of your own, you can always turn to a professional. All you need is the internet and a device.
So, buzzed from the beers, Dustin logs onto Briefly Buddies to find the perfect guy to help him achieve his first real gay experience.
And that’s where everything really started to go wrong…
BRIEFLY BUDDIES drops on August 6th, 2021 and will be available in ebook, paperback, and hardback formats.
A.J.: I really do feel optimistic about it. I think with increased visibility/understanding/acceptance, many people are opening their minds to the reality that there are LGBTQIA people everywhere, whether out or not. I’m especially seeing this in the younger generations, who will be the lawmakers, leaders, and influencers someday soon. Let’s get the Equality Act passed ASAP!
You can beat us down, imprison us, disown us, take away our jobs, homes, or even kill us. You won’t stop us. Ever.~ Allen
Allen: I do. I have faith in our LGBTQIA community leaders and community members that we’ll fight until there’s nothing left to fight for. Some days the world seems incredibly bleak for LGBTQIA people—especially in massively conservative countries. We’re a resilient people, though. You can beat us down, imprison us, disown us, take away our jobs, homes, or even kill us. You won’t stop us. Ever. I think it’s so important to listen to our LGBTQIA elders. Hear their stories. Learn our history. So we know how to continue to fight effectively for equality and to stamp out persecution in all of its forms.
Anne: I don’t know. I want to feel optimistic. But the discourse around PRIDE becomes more toxic every year. It’s heartbreaking to watch people from our community align themselves with the transphobic evangelicals to exclude trans people, especially trans People of Color and trans children. It’s like those who would make that devil’s bargain are blind to their own exploitation.
Charlie: Mostly, I would say I am very optimistic, although I think the Trump administration set us back big time, because it really brought out the bigots in ways that we have not seen in decades. It’s seems as it beyond ok to be so bigoted, that it comes across as the norm when it is not. I think we still have big progress we have to make, and especially in the arena of religious attitudes. There needs to be huge progress in regards to trans rights including but not limited access to surgery, medications and a myriad of issues so many are unaware of.
David: In the West, yes. Although the laws and acceptance gay people have fought and strived for over the past 50 or more years can easily be overturned by rogue authoritarian governments or influential people in power. In other parts of the world, where stigmatizing minorities as the harbingers of doom and all that is wrong in their societies, will continue until those regimes relinquish their grip and the wealth they cling on to is driven downwards and the lives of ordinary people are improved. In some countries the laws their governments use to implement homophobia are, ironically, based on old laws introduced by us in colonial times.
Dee: I do. There is representation for the community and intelligent upcoming speakers that speak change. Fact based education is flowing freely and that in itself will spark change.
But with every push we make, there is going to be a push back.~ Estebán
Estebán: Very much so. Just looking back over my life and seeing how far we have come. In my youth, I couldn’t even imagine us achieving what we have. When I was in my 20s, Civil Ceremonies were the thing. It felt like that was the best we were going to get, so we made it work. The idea that marriage between two women or two men was inconceivable. There are all these amazing out Trans performers out there being lifted up and supported. Granted there is still a lot of work there that needs to happen still. But, seeing a Transwoman receive an award in Hollywood is breathtaking. 20 years ago, I never thought something like that could ever happen. But with every push we make, there is going to be a push back. So, it won’t be easy and the further we get along, it will get tougher, because many people don’t like change. They see everything as an attack on themselves, when realistically, the things we want and deserve, really won’t have any impact on their lives. So yes, I do believe 10 years from now, things will be better than they are now, and 20 years will be beyond my imagination at this moment. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to experience that when I was younger, but I would not want those who come after me, to ever endure what we went through growing up.
Eugene: Yes. Politics is downstream from culture, and I believe that for the most part, the culture is changing in ways favorable to us.
…as trans people are in the crosshairs, our whole community is in danger, because none of us are free until we are all free. ~ Hadrian
Hadrian: I am cautiously optimistic about LGBT rights. A majority of the country now feels that gay marriage and many other basic rights are acceptable. But the current wave of anti-trans legislation shows there is a strong desire to persecute trans people. And as long as trans people are in the crosshairs, our whole community is in danger, because none of us are free until we are all free. There are many signs that democracy itself is under threat in this country, and if democracy is undermined by American fascists, the whole LGBT community will be in danger, because fascists will always hate queer people, because we undermine the rigid gender roles that are so important to fascism.
Jean-Christophe: Right now if I base my feelings on what’s going on in Europe, I can only be hugely pessimistic. No action was taken – except for private initiatives – to save Chechen gays who were assassinated right and left by Putin’s puppet there. No action was ever taken by the European Union in retaliation for this horrendous murders. No one reacted when Chechnya’s most celebrated pop star came out and was pushed from the top story of a building by his own family! Right now Poland and Hungary, two members of the E.U., have enacted homophobic laws (not to speak of dictatorial actions taken against their justice, media …). So far, neither the European Council’s Chief, nor the President of the European Union have had so much as a press release on those issues. The European Union is a waste and as we had as a community hopes that it would help us grow in a protected environment it is exactly the contrary that happens. In Nigeria gay hunting is a reality (and I won’t even report the horrendous way some are murdered). In Turkey, a French citizen has been imprisoned for drug possession … and was outed to the general population of the prison where he is. I let you imagine his ordeal. What did effectively Macron do? Nothing. He even went last week to kiss Erdogan’s ass. In Morocco it’s fine to spend hundreds of euros on street hustlers (and that’s a large part of the black maret) as long as you don’t make too much “noise” or else you are being sent to jail under some Islamic rules you’ve “broken” or trumped up charges. (Just as a reminder: some of the best known Persian poets of the Golden Age dedicated their work to boys and/or even celebrated gay love).
I admit that the Trump years and influence have scared me. ~ Kevin
Kevin: I admit that the Trump years and influence have scared me. It felt like we were maybe moving backward instead of moving forward. I am very hopeful, though, because of the generation coming of age now, who don’t seem to care if someone is LGBTQIA+. To my nieces, having a gay uncle was normal and no big deal.
Lyndizzle: Well, I’ve been pessimistic about it all my life, and I’m very aware that if fascism makes a comeback then we’re all very vulnerable. (Berlin was the gayest city in the world in 1929). But, there’s not much joy in worrying. So, I think I do feel optimistic. I never thought I’d see gay marriage, but here we are. Things have changed amazingly in my lifetime and I’m not even that old. Young trans people have the language to explain their feelings, and in many places can be who they are. People in the Pacific, Africa and other colonized regions are working to overturn colonial-era anti-gay and anti-queer laws. I’m aware, though, that in the UK and many parts of the US, backward steps are being taken. Things are still terrible for queer people in many countries. We need to keep standing together.
Marcus: As long as there are bigoted people out there (i.e. until eternity), there will always be setbacks, but at the end of the day I do believe the long arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.
Maestro: Yes. I think that the progress we’ve made will be difficult to turn back. But I do worry about the Supreme Court swing to the right.
Matt: YES. Because look at how far we’ve come in even just the past 10 years. A hell of a way to go still, but…. And KIDS: they are the future and a majority of them are accepting. The societal norm reinforces acceptance now (more so…), I believe we’re hitting critical mass on this.
Anti-trans laws have been passed, queer story books destroyed, and there is an overwhelming conservatism rampant with far-right movements which is going to make it very difficult for LGBTQIA youth to thrive.~ Maxime
Maxime: Possibly in some countries, but not where I live. Anti-trans laws have been passed, queer story books destroyed, and there is an overwhelming conservatism rampant with far-right movements which is going to make it very difficult for LGBTQIA youth to thrive. With the new law they have passed, young people under 18 will not have any access to information on LGBTQIA topics, and educating them on this is forbidden.
Melissa: I don’t. We have an election coming up and if the Conservatives get in, it’s going to be a shit show. Their leader is a Trump wannabe who thinks women shouldn’t have control of their own bodies and that conversion camps are a positive thing.
‘Nathan: I think it’s a long, ongoing, exhausting road and we will—as always—have to right for every step we end up making. I worry about the influx of TERF rhetoric within the community (as well as without) will harm our trans queer families. I worry about the way BIPOC queers and especially BIPOC trans queers are so often the target, and how many levels of systemic changes need to be made to make forward motion there. And I worry about queer people elsewhere, in countries where we are still killed just because we exist. So, “optimistic” isn’t the world I’d use, no, so much as I hope we can remain determined, focused, and retain the joys we have while not forgetting our anger, outrage, and how to use our power—especially those of us in places and positions where queer voices do have power—to keep pushing forward.
The kids are alright. ~ Owen
Owen: Yes. The Boomers are increasingly accepting and dying out anyway. The older Gen-X are sometimes bigots and are worryingly taking so many countries of the Global North down more problematic paths at the moment. But Millennials and Gen-Z are surprisingly queer themselves, and generally accepting and supportive when not. The kids are alright.
Phaeton: Oh, I am the poster child of hope for queer progress. We have come so far, I dare say that the social justice movement could take a page from our book of success. If this civilization continues, and there isn’t a major setback, we will reach equality, and transform the world into a better, more inclusive space.
It’s clear to see that the far right is preparing one last battle.~ Rob
Rob: I AM optimistic. I think we’ve passed the tipping point of general acceptance, but it’s clear to see that the far right is preparing one last battle.
Roberta: I do because history shows positive progress in furthering the rights of minorities. For instance, women and Black voting rights.
S.A.: Yes I do. The younger generations are starting to remove labels and restrictions on themselves and I hope that it is something that they will pass on.
Shai: Absolutely. The majority of people are realizing they know someone LGBTQ+ and that their friend/coworker/relative’s rights matter. There is backlash, but that is just the stage we are in. I am, unlike my younger friends, pleased by the corporatisation of Pride. I want to see that rainbow shit at Target! For me, visibility is a sign of acceptance. We are getting there. So much has improved from my childhood. This does not mean that there aren’t plenty of people in religious or rural areas who struggle just as much as I did. But now there are online communities. There is mechandise. And to me, that means the scale has tipped to where supporting queer communities is more profitable than rejecting them. And it absolutely was not always that way. And although the backlash is strong, trans folk are being acknowledged as existing. We are seeing people getting tired of “all rep is good rep” in movies and we are demanding our share of happy endings. So we are headed down the right path. It just takes time.
Urban: I do in the Western World, even though the US stands out here being so religious with all the bad implications of that. In Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa things are too bad or worsening.
Vince: I truly do!!! Just the changes I’ve seen since the 70’s have been amazing and it’s only getting better!! To be able to get married, openly serve in the military and to not be so easily discriminated against….we’ve come a long way, baby LOL
We must continue to hold our leaders accountable.~ W.D.
W.D.: Based on what I have seen in this country over the past four years, we cannot become complacent and take those rights for granted. We must continue to hold our leaders accountable. At the end of the day, this is a journey, not a destination. We may have come a long way, but there is still much work to do.
A.J.: Discrimination, violence and equal rights.
Allen: Two things – government and ourselves. It is so important for LGBTQIA people to seek out positions of leadership and power so that we can direct the course of our own destiny and stop people who would abuse their power to discriminate and persecute. Governments across the world don’t do enough to fight for and protect LGBTQIA rights, so we have to get in their faces and demand it all day every day. Additionally, the biases and prejudices we have in our own community must be addressed. The racism and transphobia are of the utmost importance. Most of our progress as a community can be traced back to Black Trans women, Black queer people, and Drag Queens. They deserve our respect and love. We cannot be truly free from persecution or seek equality in this world if we can’t first love each other for whoever and whatever we are.
Anne: The biggest issue facing the LGTBQIA+ community is the fracturing of the community surrounding intersectionality and liberation. We are so much stronger together. Our detractors, those who wish to see us ostracized and shut out of public life, are working to make us enemies of one another. But to make that happen in our community, each of us must recognize our privilege.We also must confront the systems within and outside of the queer community that reinforces oppression. We must learn when it’s our turn to speak and when it’s our responsibility to shut up and support those whose experiences need to be heard.
Twenty-nine trans people have been killed this year already and where is the rage?~ Charlie
Charlie: I think the trans issue is the one that needs addressed most, as most people tend to look the other way or not even want to address it. Twenty-nine trans people have been killed this year already and where is the rage? Where are the protests? I think what needs to have happen is something with the power that became ACT UP, or even the Compton Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco in August 1966, three years before Stonewall but was the very first “focused” gay riot in the US. Until something of that magnitude happens we have a real fight ahead of us and I think the majority of it is the lack of understanding about gender identity issues of the standard populace. It doesn’t help matters when someone involved with the Stonewall organization goes on Twitter and says that Trans rights are NOT gay rights. I mean seriously, does she think the T in LGBTQIA+ is invisible or what?
We need more independent LGBTQ+ bookshops and small presses, and exclusively LGBTQ+ spaces otherwise our voices will simply disappear, unheard.~ David
David: Its divergence into the mainstream and loss of our culture. Equality is great, don’t get me wrong, but we mustn’t let our unique queerness be taken over or watered down to fit a commonality that isn’t ours. Where have all the exclusive gay bookshops and small publishers gone? They have been sucked into the homogenized heteronormal. All publishers have a few openly LGBTQ+ authors on their catalogues, and the relative niche commerciality of such authors mean that publishers and agents do not need anymore. We need more independent LGBTQ+ bookshops and small presses, and exclusively LGBTQ+ spaces otherwise our voices will simply disappear, unheard.
Dee: I believe in God but organized religion that spreads hidden hate based messages can do a lot of damage. And they have. I think this is the biggest obstacle the Gay community faces.
Estebán: Religion. Now, let me clarify, I am not against religion. I understand how it can be important to people and a big part of their culture and identity. Where the problem comes is with specific people who use it to mask their agendas. Both politically and socially. This is not a new concept, look back at history. People in power have always used it to justify their actions, especially when it comes to pushing people down into submission.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.~ Eugene
Eugene: Preventing our gains from being rolled back. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Jean-Christophe: Being recognize for what we are: different, many, diverse … and not going anywhere now or ever! Not tolerated as you have to tolerate rainy weather, a flat tire or your cell phone battery dying on you.
Kevin: I find myself mostly concerned with the rights of my transgender brothers and sisters, and I am horrified by the killing of transgender women of color. I think there lies our current battleground.
Lyndizzle: We have a tendency to gatekeep, squabble and get up our own asses when we need to keep working together to make the world a) safe and b) wonderful for all queer people everywhere. If you are of European descent, that means also taking an active interest in supporting local people trying to overturn anti-queer legislation and practice that is a colonial legacy.
Marcus: Bigotry and a lack of unity. If you love your gay rights but don’t support trans rights etc., GTFO.
Maestro: Division among itself.
Matt: The vitriol still being spewed by religions and politicians, all currying influence. They keep finding new ways to try to poison minds.
Maxime: The same rampant hate and exclusion talk we get from “straight” people, and it is saddening. That you are not “queer enough”. As somebody in a “straight-passing” relationship, and being bisexual, I got a lot of discrimination if I came out to people, so I basically stopped. The constant bad jokes and the teasing are probably the worst. I am not hiding it though, and if somebody asks, I will give an honest response, but I got tired of justifying myself.
Melissa: The fallout that’s being felt around the world by Trump having been in office. It’s given the bigots more confidence.
‘Nathan: I can answer this with a lot of specifics, but I think all those specifics come back to the non-inheritability thing. When we come out as a queerling, we often don’t know what we don’t know. It feels like we’re inventing everything from scratch, because our history and our culture isn’t passed on to us the way it is in many other marginalized identities. And given how non-queer history tends to bury our stories, remove our voices, and even actively un-tell our truths (anyone who read queer obituaries in the 80’s and 90’s can remember well how biological families untold the most basic truths of so many lives) learning about what came before becomes a self-directed activity that’s hard work and endless and exhausting, especially when a queerling has to focus on the basics of survival, as so many of us do. So I think fighting past that exhaustion, making sure our stories are told, noting the difference between “there were no queer books when I was a kid” (which isn’t true) and “no one ever told me there were queer books when I was a kid” (which is the truth), for example, is a huge deal. We have to figure out how to tell our own histories, understand how our language and labels and movements and organizations got us this far, and build on what came before, even while we educate in the other direction as well, learning from these brilliant young queer people who are out and proud and doing the work—and maybe have no idea we even existed.
Owen: The religious right is pouring its money into fomenting transphobia as a wedge issue to divide cis-queers from our trans family — and into culture wars more generally. Particularly in the UK and US, this means that trans people are being driven out of the public sphere and having gender-affirming healthcare removed as an option. This can only lead to further trauma and, frankly, losing people to suicide.
The future of queer rights is dependent on democracy. We must defend it with our lives, for they depend on it.~ Phaeton
Phaeton: The same danger that threatens the Free World… conservatism. The political dissension that is fueled by nefarious totalitarian governments around the world (not in question, an unfortunate reality) using social media to divide and conquer democracies. The future of queer rights is dependant on democracy. We must defend it with our lives, for they depend on it.
Rob: We have a tendency to eat our own. This can mean just the simple way new people enter the community without mentorship, but it also means sometimes holding people to a much higher standard, which isn’t necessarily bad, but we do have much more dangerous enemies. Let’s eliminate them, then work on a progression to perfection.And addiction and mental illness are an epidemic we are not fighting strong enough
Roberta: One hundred percent, complete acceptance. Being able to fill out gender or family status on forms, seek medical treatment, any regular, day-to-day tasks, and not having one person question or give a negative look, or treat a member of the queer community differently from someone not queer.
S.A.: Rights will always be an issue.
This “not good enough” has transferred to people’s gender identity.~ Shai
Shai: Infighting. My son does not like being part of the LBGTQIA community because he sees Ace exclusion online and feels people are gatekeeping and undermining someone’s right to define their own identity. There are tough questions that still need to be worked through. When I was younger, it was the notion of “bicurious,” that to be bi you had to take action…attraction wasn’t good enough. This “not good enough” has transferred to people’s gender identity. Are they in transition, or just messing with what words “really” mean? Being agender, I don’t always get why it is so important. But I see this as the next battle already in progress.
Urban: The biggest threat to LGBTQIA rights is religious people of faiths/sects that are anti-LGBTQIA rights. They need to be liberalized and/or the societies secularized for big changes to happen.
Vince: Unfortunately I feel the biggest issue is and will be the Trans Community. They have everything the hardest! They’re even frowned upon by their own LGBT community in some cases and it seems most of the straight world has some sort of issue with them. It’s very sad and doesn’t seem to be getting better.
…the LGBTQIA community has yet to seriously address the racism within it, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.~ W.D.
W.D.: Many strides have been made in terms of support groups/organizations, Supreme Court decisions, and visibility, to name a few. However, as one who has experienced it, the LGBTQIA community has yet to seriously address the racism within it, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Talking the talk is not the same as having those difficult conversations and walking the walk. In a town hall meeting held in Minneapolis last year immediately following George Floyd’s murder, the four steps whites must take in regard to anti-racism are: Read. Listen. Listen. Learn.
A.J.: Given the fact that no one really knows me, even some friends, this is a complicated question. I keep lots of things to myself mostly for self-preservation and also because of trust issues. I’m not out to my family, and even though they are mostly toxic to my mental health – incapable of unconditional love or any love for that matter – I’m not ready to completely give them up. Getting there though. I truly feel that having romantic love in my life is not in the future for me. I have trouble finding friends who are accepting for some reason, at least IRL, my online friends are the best though, and I treasure them! For someone to get to know me and understand me as a queer person, they would have to be willing to ask me the hard questions and stick around to understand and accept me after I answer them. This hasn’t happened yet, and I’m not optimistic that it will.
We all say the phrase “Love Is Love” but when a person who truly embodies that sentiment dares to be in a relationship that doesn’t necessarily look queer, we dismiss it.~ Allen
Allen: I’m married to a woman. I don’t necessarily label myself Bi or Pan, just queer. It’s the label that feels right to me. A lot of people don’t understand that I can be in my relationship and still be queer. I’m part of this community and pretty fucking vocal about it. To dismiss me as “ex-queer” or “not really queer” (though I do joke that I’m a “retired queer”) is insulting and counterproductive to what our community is about. We all say the phrase “Love Is Love” but when a person who truly embodies that sentiment dares to be in a relationship that doesn’t necessarily look queer, we dismiss it. “Queer” is not just Gay or Lesbian. “Queer” is about covering everything on the sexual and gender spectrum that isn’t 100% strictly heterosexual or binary. Learn it. Live it. Love it. My wife and I make each laugh all day every day. We care for each other. Support each other. She’s the first person I think of when I wake up each morning and the last person I think of before I fall asleep each night. People should simply wish that for each other and stop worrying if it’s “queer enough” to count.
…if you say you love me, then you love all of me, including my queerness.~ Anne
Anne: The most important thing to know about me, to understand my queerness, is that if you say you love me, then you love all of me, including my queerness. I don’t have space or energy for people who are not invested in the liberation of marginalized peoples. As a disabled person, I have just so much energy available to me each day, I’m committed to spending it on growth.
Charlie: First is this concept of full acceptance by those who are around us as either friends or family. Next is my commitment to my friends and “created family” as my blood family shunned me when my mother died four years ago, without my realizing she was the glue that made them civil. Next I think is when my friends and “family” need me I don’t give a cookie cutter response but this very broad based 360 degree response from all angles that is nonjudgmental, non-confrontational, and very open minded as who am I to judge l, anyone when I’m living in a glass house. I think the life I’ve lived and the things I’ve lived through also help me be that way as, henny, as they say I’ve been THROUGH it! But it gives me unique insight to anything anybody comes to me with.
David: As an older single gay man, I am still looking for that special someone. I have not given up, but I realize my opportunities for meeting a long-term partner are diminishing as the pool in which we swim becomes smaller and smaller. Getting older, i.e. beyond fifty, is a great life achievement in itself and I still have the same passions and interest in people, art, writing and life, as I always have – being gay is just a part of who I am. The vessel I’m sailing in is just not what it was. Gosh, when I look back on photos of me at 25, I cannot believe how unconfident I was in how I looked and what I had to offer. If I could go back and tell that kid anything, I’d say, don’t be afraid.
Dee: I think it’s important to understand that I have a honest love for my family and friends.
We would ask someone if they were family. Straight people wouldn’t understand, but LGBTQ knew what we meant. ~ Estebán
Estebán: Though I am sexually attracted to men, I love being around people. When I came out, people were still using code words and phrases to recognize each other in public. For example, today we use They/Them as pronouns for people when they ask us, which is great. But in my youth, we played the “pronoun game.” We used They/Them as code when we wanted to talk about our relationships, but were still in the closet and didn’t want to share that much information. But the code that held the most meaning to me then was “Family.” We would ask someone if they were family. Straight people wouldn’t understand, but LGBTQ knew what we meant. Because, when you came out, you would inevitably discover your new family. I have my blood family; they exist in this world. They are not all a part of my life, which is fine with me. But my family is those around me that I care for and care for me back. They are friends, they are blood, they are those who endured challenges along with me. Family isn’t a thrown-around word for me, family is those people who have come into my life and I love, with no judgment. Found family is a reoccurring theme in my writings.
Eugene: Like everyone else, I am a multifaceted person shaped by individual experiences, including, but not limited to, individual experiences that happened because of my sexual orientation. Being queer is not the sum total of my existence, any more than being cishet is the sum total of yours.
Kevin: The most important thing is that it’s not a choice. It’s not anybody else’s business who I love or how I identify. It’s also important that we’re not that different from each other, regardless of our sexuality or how we identify. We’re all human beings doing our best to live happy, loving, and productive lives.
Lyndizzle: I’ve always just wanted to be able to be ordinary but I strongly support the space for people to be wonderful if that’s who they are. Being queer has shaped my choice of career, whether or not I had children, and quite a lot of learnt behaviour, helpful and unhelpful. It’s also meant I’ve met loads of people I wouldn’t have met, and has given me a better understanding of why safe spaces exist and how to behave if you are invited into someone else’s. So… it’s been an important influence that has shaped who I am.
My struggle and experience of oppression is what has given me compassion for others.~ Maestro
Maestro: Being gay, although not the only defining factor of who I am, is inextricably bound to my life experience. Reticence to express love and affection in parts of the country and world for fear of violence remains a part of my psyche. My struggle and experience of oppression is what has given me compassion for others. It is what prompts me to pursue kindness in all I do. In that regard, being gay is a tremendous gift.
Matt: As with anyone/everyone, I am more than the sum of peoples’ assumptions, expectations, and what makes them comfortable.
Maxime: As I said, only a few select people know about me as a queer person. There is no point trying to explain any of this to my family, they would not understand. What people need to understand about me as a queer person is that this is how I feel fully myself, how I want to live my life, not lying to myself anymore. I lived in lies long enough. Whatever I have left of my life, I want to live it true to who I am. People need to know that I am loving, kind and accepting, and that I am just the same person they’ve always known. Just love and let people live their true life. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.
Melissa: I’m absolutely no different than a straight person deep down. I still get up in the morning and go to work. I pay my taxes and need to shop for groceries. HOWEVER…I do belong to a marginalized community that they will never understand.
‘Nathan: The freedoms of queerness are a strength I value so much, especially in how it lets me look at “how it’s always been done” or “tradition” and come to the conclusion, so often, that both are incredibly over-rated at best, or flat-out dangerous. Being queer cracked the glossy coat so much of our society puts on “the normal.” Family isn’t inherently good. Friends won’t necessarily—or even often—be lifelong. Love will not solve everything. None of those statements are jaded, or bitter: they’re good things: you should escape bad families, you should change and grow and sometimes let go of people who will be happier elsewhere, and putting the onus on love to heal trauma isn’t fair to anyone involved.
What I do not openly reveal to the people around me, is that my empathy is all-consuming within me.~ Phaeton
Phaeton: Being queer is not the only thing I am, but I will say it is the foundation of my consciousness. Not because I would have liked it to be this way, but because the world around me sculpted me into this shape, making me understand that as I stepped outside of the mainstream, I achieved a view that is rarified, and unique. What I do not openly reveal to the people around me, is that my empathy is all-consuming within me. I will bleed out to help people, but that is also a handicap in a world of vampires, whose needs will drain you past your reserves. I think many queer people will read this and understand it instinctively.
Rob: My gayness permeates all aspects of my life. It isn’t a defining factor in who I am, but it has shaped all those other factors. I choose the people in my life, be they family or friends. We are not obligated to have anyone around us except those we choose (yes, this speaks to my privilege).
Roberta: Everything about me is not typical. I’ve discovered truths about myself later in life, which means I may have made decisions in the past that weren’t authentic and that have lasting effects.
S.A.: I will always stand up for what I believe is right, even if that means I’m in the line of fire. We can only change when we become more comfortable with pushing our comfort zone and learning other’s stories.
Shai: Me? Probably that I am in the gray area on just about everything. I don’t always identify with a certain gender, romantic alignment, feeling regarding sexual activity. My family cannot understand not seeing everything in binary terms, and so little of my life is like that. They see gay people as someone with mixed up wiring. Not their fault, but not what it is supposed to be either. This is why I do not like “born this way” rhetoric. It implies no one would be gay if they could be straight instead. I simply cannot stand that logic.
Urban: That I am a man like many other men, a part of me just happens to be that I am married to another man; I fall in love with other men, I find other men attractive and when I have sex it is with another man.
Vince: Another tough one, damn you!! I fall in love easily (hence the Poly) and hard. I love my husband dearly and I love my friends almost as much if not more than my family. Straight or gay, it’s just the way I’m wired. I don’t think there’s a most important thing to understand me. I just am what I am and I happen to be gay while being me. I wouldn’t be much different if I were straight, other than probably having a wife and a few girlfriends on the side instead of all my partners being men!
W.D.: I am blessed to have a wonderful husband and son (yes, we are a modern family), a positive relationship with my family of origin, and even some LGBTQIA relatives. Know that I will demand respect. People need to know that where it counts, we are far more alike than we are different, and that comes from sharing our stories. It’s important not to judge someone before you get to know them, for what we give is what we receive.
You never have to prove your queerness, you are who you say you are full stop.~ A.J.
A.J.: Don’t worry about labeling yourself and then changing the label later if it no longer fits you. Gender and sexuality are spectrums for many people and can and do shift over time. You are NOT locked into anything, in fact you don’t even have to label yourself if you don’t feel comfortable doing it. You never have to prove your queerness, you are who you say you are full stop. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, it’s only for you to decide.
Allen: Move away from the gatekeeping—especially with labels and terminology. Focus on how you’re treated, not the terms used. Open your minds and hearts to the diversity of your community. The LGBTQIA community is one of the most diverse, most loving, most exciting, and welcoming communities to which you can belong. It’s okay to prefer certain terms and labels for yourself, but allow others the same privilege. Life’s hard enough, especially as a queer person. Don’t make it harder. Approach new relationships in the community with empathy, compassion, and 100% commitment to listening without judgment. You’ll be amazed at the humanity you’ll discover and you’ll make friendships that will last a lifetime.
Anne: Loving yourself and liberating yourself as a queer person is one of the most incredible journeys you can take, and it as terrifying as it is delightful. But most importantly, it is your journey. No one else can take it for you. It is a lifelong experience of change and growth.
Charlie: I think my biggest is something that Latrice Royale said on RuPaul’s Drag Race that in so many ways has become my mantra, “I want people to realize, it’s okay to mistakes, it’s okay to fall down, get up. Look sickening, and make them EAT IT!” Which says to me… be your self, be as fierce as you need to be and if they have an issue with it as my Gram used to say, “there’s the door, don’t let it you in the ass on your way out.” There’s no reason for their drama, and I realize that is the biggest issue to overcome but when we can then comes true freedom and release from all of this “stuff” nobody has any time for.
David: Don’t worry about losing people you think are terribly important in your life right now if you come out, because, chances are, even if you don’t come out, many of those people will disappear from your life altogether in a few years, and the ones that don’t will be the ones who will stick by you through thick and thin AND when you come out to them. They will love you for who you are, not who you happen to fancy.
You are exactly who you are suppose to be.~ Dee
Dee: Always stay true to yourself within yourself. Make the time to shut out the outside noise and appreciate your worth. You are exactly who you are suppose to be. When you choose to come out is up to your judgment and everyone has their own journey. I know the day is coming when coming out will no longer be a thing…you’re just who you are.
Estebán: Discovering who you are is not a simple process. It is an ongoing thing that never ends. Don’t feel like you arerequired to know perfectly who you are when you come out. Sometimes it is a process. Sometimes you learn new things about yourself and adjust. That is fine, just make sure you stay true to who you are and not what others want you to be. Pride at its core is about being yourself and standing up, being heard, and being proud of the person you are. And for those who think it is a daunting struggle, just remember my favorite quote from LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series. “Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
In case you find yourself wondering whether you are the only queer [fill in the blank], it is extremely unlikely that you are. ~ Eugene
Eugene: You are yourself and should be true to yourself. There is no one true way, and if being the “right kind of gay” does not come naturally to you, you owe it to no one to try to pretend otherwise. Queer communities can be as conformist as any others that you may have encountered, but you do not have to let others try to remake you in their own image. In case you find yourself wondering whether you are the only queer [fill in the blank], it is extremely unlikely that you are.
Hadrian: When you come out, don’t expect your parents and other loved ones to accept it right away. When you come out, you have usually spent months, if not years, processing and coming to terms with your identity. But for many parents, your coming out is only the beginning of their process. So they are where you were months or years ago. Your coming out may force them to rethink their ideas about who you are and who you will be, what kind of life you will have, and what kind of family you will build for yourself with a partner. So give them time to work through whatever feelings they may have and don’t expect them to fully accept your new (to them) identity. In an ideal world, they will get comfortable quickly and be able to show you that they still love and respect you, but our parents are not always ideal people any more than we are. So give them the time and patience that they need to fully process the news.
And for God’s sake–VOTE! ~ Kevin
Kevin: Life is short, so live it loud! Be there for each other. And for God’s sake–VOTE!
Lyndizzle: This is your life and your journey. Don’t be constrained by what other people expect or buy into a rigid orthodoxy of queerness. Love who you want, how you want, and stand with each other.
Maestro: Love yourself as you are. Don’t judge other LGBTQ+ people because they respond differently than you. Understand that we all have a unique story to tell, and we are the only ones who can fully understand our own journey. Know our history and upon whose shoulders you/we stand.
Marcus: Be yourself and love yourself. If you don’t love yourself, how can you expect somebody else to love you?
Matt: Don’t listen or give credence to voices that are anti-You. Being yourself is not a bad behavior like theft, it is not a sin like adultery. If you’re not hearing/reading/seeing pro-You messages, seek them out. There are a million people ready to talk. There are books, sites, groups, etc. For me books gave me a window to myself and made me feel seen and accepted before I ever said the words out loud.
Maxime: Just be you and be true to yourself. Even if you are not out. Deep in your heart, self-acceptance is the first step to live a true life. The only life you have.
Sprinkle some glitter on that shit and go be you!~ Melissa
Melissa: You’re exactly as queer as you’re supposed to be. Do NOT let other queers gatekeep you. Sprinkle some glitter on that shit and go be you!
‘Nathan: Once you’re safe, once you’re in the position, go find out the things you don’t even know you don’t know. It’s a never-ending quest, but start with your own country. Who was the first queer (fill in the blank) in your country? When was the first PRIDE (if there has been one)? Who organized it? And pay extra attention to who is telling you the answers, because so much of our past gets sanitized. Similarly, language—especially the words we use to describe ourselves—has changed a lot over the decades. Understand that queer people in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and older aren’t using the “wrong” words, they’re using the words they fought tooth and nail for. Queer. Dyke. FTM. These were banners we marched under, these were rallying cries and open arms for others like us. These were words often used against us in hate, yes, but the same could be said of nearly every word we’ve got, and while I understand some of those words might not be ones you’d ever use yourself, or maybe you even feel they’re the wrong word now, or that there are better words now, but they still matter, and they still have powerful meaning to queer elders.
Phaeton: Understand, you are the future of humankind’s evolution. You are the next step that will lead humanity to a new understanding in sociological interpretations of our potential development. Continue to challenge the boundaries of gender, for the conditions/restrictions placed upon humans to conform for no reason other than to fulfill the desires of others to oppress, is the profound lesson we are here to teach a future civilization.
You didn’t struggle through coming out to try to fit in or to change yourself to be like other queers.~ Rob
Rob: There’s no one way to be queer. You didn’t struggle through coming out to try to fit in or to change yourself to be like other queers. Be the best, authentic you that you can, and listen to yourself, because as time passes, that you will evolve.
Roberta: Do research and talk to other queer people because you may discover something about yourself you wouldn’t have otherwise.
S.A.: Listen to other’s stories, don’t seek to find something to add, just listen. Remind yourself that the most important relationship you will ever have is the one with the person you will have the longest relationship with: you.
Be unapologetically you. ~ Shai
Shai: People will find the stupidest reasons possible to not like you. There are people out there who won’t like you because your first name reminds them of their ex. Keep in mind that that is their problem, not yours, and do not change yourself for someone else. There are people out there who will like you as you are. More people than you think. Be unapologetically you.
Urban: Be yourself in all the ways you can be, safely, you don’t need to be in a certain way to be gay, they are just stereotypes that you don’t need to follow unless you want to or feel that it’s you!
Vince: Be true to yourself and be whatever you want to be, but only when you can do that comfortably and without risk of repercussions! It’s not worth the cracked ribs and bloody nose just cause you wanted to wear that dress out to the club!!!!
Always remember where you came from, and the people who were there for you from the beginning; cherish them.~ W.D.
W.D.: As a guest columnist for Wyatt O’Brian Evans, I wrote an article about what I could tell my younger self. Hence, the following:
It gets better.No matter how long it takes, never give up on your dream. It’s never too late and you are never too old to achieve it.God loves you. He knew you before you were even a thought, and He doesn’t make mistakes.Follow your passion. Your gifts will make room for you.Challenges and adversity can and will arise. The difference is in how you respond to it. If God can take you to it, He’ll take you through it.Treat people the way you want to be treated. What we give is what we receive.In kindness and success, find a way to help someone else. Pay it forward.Always remember where you came from, and the people who were there for you from the beginning; cherish them.
A.J.: I have not gone to PRIDE (yet), mostly because of wondering if I belong in that space due to not figuring myself out until I was older. Many of the LGBTQIA people I personally am acquainted with have known most of their lives they’re queer, and unfortunately, in my area of the world, some/a lot are judgmental. Like having to somehow ‘prove’ queerness to be in that space. Or that only certain labels are acceptable, and those are not my labels. I had a negative experience at a ‘Fruit Fest’ (queer music fest) a few years ago that really drove home the issues for me.
Maybe we’d be okay. Even if being queer meant we had to break away from what we were born into to form new families. ~ Allen
Allen: I was almost 16-years-old, so summer of 1995. Overwhelming. Colors and sounds and voices and wigs and music and rainbows and glitter and confetti and, just, everything. The thing I remember the most is the laughter and love, though. And drag queens and the older members of the community calling me “baby” and looking out for me a lot. Endearingly, of course. Queer people ON THE STREET walking up to other queer people they’d never met before to form friendships, share stories, give support, hugs, tell jokes, and just feel comfortable being queer for one day a year at the very least. I don’t have an annual tradition of going to Pride, but I will always remember the sense of community and non-judgment at my very first Pride. It was truly the first time I’d ever felt accepted for who I was. The thing that sticks out in my mind the most, though, is the 70ish year old mother of an older gay man, there with her son, giving “Mom Hugs” to other queer people who had been disowned by their families (or worse). Seeing queer people crying because it was the first hug they’d had from a mom in God knows how long was heartbreaking, but also gave me a little hope. Maybe we’d be okay. Even if being queer meant we had to break away from what we were born into to form new families.
Anne: I was 27-years-old when I went to my first PRIDE celebration. A few weeks before the actual day of PRIDE, my partner and I had been assaulted by a pair of men who had thrown lit cigarettes through our car window. We were both nervous about going to such a significant, public event. Both of us knew hateful people would be there to disrupt the parade. It felt important, though, to face our fear and support our community. It was a fantastic experience. Even walking to the parade route (we didn’t march our first year) was like being surrounded by family. And something was compelling about joining in that experience.
What makes that Pride so very special to me is by July 16th, 1991 I was diagnosed HIV+, now thirty years later, this year! ~ Charlie
Charlie: My first Pride event was 1991 in Cleveland, and actually the cover of my memoirs is a photo from that day. What makes that Pride so very special to me is by July 16th, 1991 I was diagnosed HIV+, now thirty years later, this year! But right after Pride I was so gravely ill. Passing out at work and my first attempt at college. I lost 70 pounds in a very short time frame and fell to 100 pounds soaking wet, and at five foot ten inches tall it wasn’t pretty. It was rather ghastly. The photo was actually taken by a photojournalist from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and I ended up buying a few of them. I was twenty-four at the time as well even though I had known for so long, but it wasn’t until being in Cleveland that I went to my first Pride parade and festival. I had done Pride drag shows in Fort Lauderdale prior to that but nothing else.
David: I’ve never been. I think this is because I have never had close friends who I could go along with. In the early days, of course, it was seen as a protest, an event to attend as an activist – and I just couldn’t, for many, many years. I do hope to go one day. I think I should.
Dee: I have not gone. I think too soon for my wife, I came out about 4 years ago and she still struggles with it. I do want to go at some point.
At the time I couldn’t believe a world like that existed... It was such a great experience the three of us returned the following year along with a friend of my cousin who had recently come out.~ Estebán
Estebán: I went to my first pride when I was 18. Now I know I mentioned the college group when I was 19, but the first pride I attended was not with a group of friends. So, as I mentioned earlier, my cousin Danny had died from AIDS complications. At his memorial service, I sort of came out. It was not intentional. Long story short, I was upset about some family stuff and my uncle came over to comfort me because he thought I had come out to my grandmother. I hadn’t, but now everyone knew. My mother’s family was cool with it, as I said before, I was the third person to come out on that side of the family (this is the white side of the family). My uncle was a former rock star in the 80s, so he wasn’t like the rest of my family. I ended up spending most of the service hanging out with him and his wife (he had remarried and I had just met her that evening). Growing up, my parents didn’t like my sister and me hanging out with my uncle because of the lifestyle of bands in the 80s. Anyways, my aunt and a family friend, who was gay, offered to take me to pride. My uncle lived in Berkeley and San Francisco was just a BART ride over. So, I went with the two of them. It was amazing. I walked around in wide-eyed wonder. We got there before the parade and I was in awe of the floats and seeing people being free and comfortable with themselves. Women were walking around topless and no one paid them any mind. Men were dancing around barely dressed. At the time I couldn’t believe a world like that existed. When I was a kid, the only image I got of gay culture was the Blue Oyster in Police Academy. But my favorite moment at the pride was, there was a group of women walking dressed as Xena and Gabrielle carrying a sign that read, “Xena Loves Gabrielle.” Later that day after the parade, we were walking around the festival and we saw one of the Xenas. She looked just like Lucy Lawless. Sort of shy me walks up to her and says that Xena is one of my favorite characters. I ask her if I could have a hug from Xena. The woman smiled and opened her arms and pulled me towards her. It was such a wonderful moment for me. It was such a great experience the three of us returned the following year along with a friend of my cousin who had recently come out. It was fun walking around with him and seeing him be exactly how I was the previous year.
Eugene: My first PRIDE was in Washington, D.C., in 1986. The pastor of the local MCC had described it as an event where people got drunk and cruised, but I found that not to be the case, or perhaps I had directed my attention elsewhere. I could have done without all the floats whose riders threw strings of beads to onlookers, but other than that, I found it affirming just to be around that many queer people.
Jean-Christophe: My first Pride took place as I was 18 and living in Germany. It took place in Frankfurt, and even if I did not make it to the parade itself, I was soon in charge of serving beers at one of the bar tents called “Gay village” in one of the largest parks of that city! I had already started to drink heavily when I was still underage (and my inner hatred resulting from my complete inadequacy resulting in failing at making any kind of meaningful relationship was fueling it, and I don’t remember anything after the last people left the park to go to one of the many pride events taking place at quite a few clubs. What I remember is that it actually smelt like freedom and that people you had never met, and would never meet again were like member of your extended family. I met with some other volunteers of the AIDS-Hilfe and I felt exhilarated by this sense of “communion”.
Kevin: There aren’t any Pride events in a reasonable distance from where I live. I also have no one to go on a road trip with, so I always celebrate Pride year round by supporting LGBTQIA+ artists, authors, and performers, and by donating to worthy causes.
My (nice) colleague saw me and told me he was disgusted. “AIDS is self-inflicted.” ~ Lyndizzle
Lyndizzle: My first PRIDE was when I was about 35. It wasn’t a big one. I went with my partner. Before that, there wasn’t much in my city and I would have been scared of being “seen” in my 20s. I did go on various protest marches in the late 80s and 90s and I did AIDS street fundraising in London. My (nice) colleague saw me and told me he was disgusted. “AIDS is self-inflicted”.
Maestro: It was my first year in SF 1990. I was singing with the SFGMC and we performed. Then afterward, my new friends and I meandered all over Civic Center plaza. Everyone was so ebullient. I can’t count the number of times people wished me “Happy Pride!” Before that moment, I never felt who I am was something to be celebrated. I felt valued, loved, and safe for the first time.
Matt: I haven’t. Living in denial and being so unaware, I never felt this was my community until this past year. That I belonged or that that was me.
Maxime: No, I haven’t been to a Pride yet, mainly because the Pride parades here are always accompanied by a heavy right-wing protesters’ presence, and it could be dangerous. We might go this year if safety is guaranteed somehow.
Melissa: My first Pride wasn’t a good experience. My ex-wife insisted on us being in the parade. It was nothing more than putting us at the center of attention for her own narcissistic needs. It put a damper on ones that came after. I have attended one since our divorce and I had a blast. I went by myself and made all kinds of friends and hung out with complete strangers.
‘Nathan: I worked! I’d come out once I got to University, got disowned, and picked up any and all jobs I could find to get by, including a gopher-style job where I ended up handing out magnets and coupons for time for gay chat lines to parade watchers. By then, I was lucky enough to have found a chosen family mostly of drag queens and the bear community, alongside some queer university friends, but I didn’t actually “go” to Pride as a celebration that year.
It was the first time I ever felt quite so affirmed and it was amazing.~ Owen
Owen: London, 1994, at age 18, a little while after I came out at university. The sense of not being alone, of being among thousands of people like me, was almost overwhelming. It was the first time I ever felt quite so affirmed and it was amazing.
Phaeton: Wow! No words. 1981, Denver Colorado. Pre-commercialism, raw emotion, motorcycles, floats, banners, and rivers of people. The heady camaraderie, something often missing in queer people’s lives at the time. The next (Western) generation can’t understand what it’s like to suddenly be the majority in a world where you are excluded. Queer people at the time were outside of the herd, and there was that one day, where the numbers and presence didn’t just give you a sense of acceptance, but safety…and power!
Rob: 1997 Calgary. Seeing the parade, being invited to march along in the parade, was such an overwhelming sense of community and inclusion.
Roberta: I haven’t gone to PRIDE because I hate crowds and going outside. *laughing*
S.A.: I haven’t gone to PRIDE yet. I was planning to go just before the pandemic. I have plans to go next year.
Shai: My first pride was in Boulder in 1992. I was very much a bystander but it felt remarkable seeing people march and sell goods. My first time actually marching was in Denver two years ago with other people in education.
Urban: My first Pride was in Stockholm 2000. This was a fantastic time because it was just a month after I came out and suddenly gay guys were everywhere. Also this is when I met my husband as he is now.
I’m extremely shy so to have strangers just come up to me and chat and dance and flirt, it was really special!!~ Vince
Vince: My first was Philly Pride, probably around ‘92-93. I missed the parade itself as I worked every Saturday but the parade culminated into a huge dance party right on the riverfront. It was a beautiful day and everyone was just so nice and friendly and it felt like everyone became friends by the end of the night. I’m extremely shy so to have strangers just come up to me and chat and dance and flirt, it was really special!!
W.D.: I checked out my first PRIDE parade in the late 1970s; the parade was festive and celebratory. Some 30 years later, my son and I were on a float in the parade itself, and it was empowering.
A.J.: Accepting myself (and others) and being proud of who I am no matter what.
At its heart, it’s a protest. It’s a rebellion. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it. Or you can take a brick to your fucking face.~ Allen
Allen: The demand for equality and to be free from persecution. Pride isn’t just a colorful, loud, joyful event. Though it is also those things. It’s also a remembrance of all of the queer people who came before us, demanding we be treated equally and that we have the same rights as everyone else in this world. It’s a lot of fun, because us queers love a good time. We love a party. But at its heart, it’s a protest. It’s a rebellion. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it. Or you can take a brick to your fucking face.
Anne: PRIDE’S meaning has changed for me as I’ve grown in my awareness of my own queerness. It has also changed as I’ve witnessed the exclusion that exists in our community. The first several years I attended PRIDE, it was for the celebratory aspect of the event. And that was all I wanted to see. But as I’ve aged and become more aware of how PRIDE celebrations exclude, denigrate, and ignore members of our community, I’ve become more cautious about the event. Now, I feel that PRIDE is a time to reflect on the journey we’ve taken as a community, celebrate where we are, and look forward to the spaces and fights we must engage in to realize our liberation. It’s not just a time for sparkly hand-fans (of which I have several) and parades. Celebration is part of it, but recommitment to honoring every member of our community and their journey should be part of that experience, too.
Charlie: First of all Pride, for me, marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and those brave souls who stood up to the cops and fought back. Without those brothers and sisters on the very fringes of society we wouldn’t have anything that we have today. Pride also, ironically, marks the death of Judy Garland the day before the riots, and Judy has always played such a huge part of my life that I can’t leave her out of this equation. Pride also means that we are still fighting, to this very day, for our most basic rights that so many of us still do not have. Especially trans rights, that so many feel that should not be part of the gay rights movement, based on what is being said on Twitter this year during Pride. However, trans rights are gay rights and until we all are equal, none of us are equal. Pride, to some degree, is a protest demanding our equal rights, it’s part party, of course, for the ground we’ve gained, part memorial for a lot of us who lost so much and so many because of the AIDS Crisis.
...it is extremely important for the LGBTQ+ community to unite and proclaim their presence to the world… ~ David
David: I think as a month-long events platform, it is extremely important for the LGBTQ+ community to unite and proclaim their presence to the world, and for the rest of homonormative society it is important for them to acknowledge our existence and think about how they can do better to include and not discriminate against, or attack us.
Dee: A celebration of acceptance and strength in numbers–true love.
Estebán: It changes for me constantly. It is affected by my mood and what is happening in my life and what is around me. But at my core, it is about being yourself. Standing up and allowing yourself the freedom to be your true self. It also means being the strong one for those who need help standing up. I learned early on the history of Pride and what had happened to have sparked it. Before coming out, I knew nothing of Stonewall or Harvey Milk. But once I came out and I would talk about things, my father would reference remembering seeing stuff on the news about it. But it was like these small news bits that he got from the paper that was buried behind other news items. It should be a time to celebrate who we are, but we shouldn’t forget why we are celebrating and the price those who came before us had to pay for us to have what we have. In my 20s, I would see many other young queers being disrespectful to the older generation and it would infuriate me. Each generation of LGBTQ does have it a bit easier than the one before. It shouldn’t be forgotten and the fight to be equal should never stop until we truly are equal.
Eugene: It does not mean that I’m proud of an attribute that I did not select. It means that I am not ashamed of who I am, including that attribute, and that I am proud of what I have made of my life despite the impediments.
Hadrian: Pride events are a moment when I, as a gay kinky man, get to set the parameters of society and when straight vanilla people have to take a backseat and be the uncomfortable ones for a while. It helps balance out all the rest of the year when I’m the weirdo who has to blend in. Pride is a moment for me to blend out.
Jean-Christophe: It should be a time to celebrate our few victories but also remember that these victories have never come without a fight. That our “allies” are only interested in us as long as we mean potential votes. That what we have today can be taken away from us in a glimpse. That in 2021, almost everywhere on this planet, LGBTQIA+ are being molested, killed, and persecuted for being just who they are. When we move one step forward, other members of our community are still nowhere near even a semblance of freedom, and even that step we took can lead to even more hate. Places like Iran execute teens for being gay. Russia, and now Hungary, are fighting to put all gays back in the closet, forbidding any kind of so-called “homosexual propaganda.” The Catholic church is still persecuting our community everywhere it can as does many other faiths. It should be a time to remember all those who have come before us, have given any form of comfort and sometime their lives for us to have better chances at happiness. It should be a time to educate younger ones who in safe places can be themselves and come out at a very young age. LGBTQIA+ history should be taught to all in school from an early age and we should make sure to put up websites or other mean of communications so LGBTQIA youth can see what it was like and oftentimes what it is still today to grow up gay. Many teens today don’t even have a clue why we celebrate Pride.
It’s about celebrating the diversity in our community. It’s about equality. It’s about love. ~ Kevin
Kevin: Pride means remembering those that came before us, blazing the trail, risking and often losing their lives, to forward the cause of freedom, equality, and love. It’s for every bullied kid, every couple who had to hide their relationship, and every person who had to pretend to be someone they were not. It’s about celebrating the diversity in our community. It’s about equality. It’s about love.
Lyndizzle: To me it means claiming our space as full people. To say: “here we are, all of us, outrageous, ordinary, fun, boring, people you relate to and people you don’t.” To me it’s so important to have queer rep – I grew up without pretty much any. Everyone should be able to see themselves in books, movies and in real people, and everyone should have a chance to get together with people like them and celebrate. That’s why I think there should be space for all queer people, for kink, for allies (some of whom are queer people who haven’t come out or are still finding themselves out), for everyone.
Marcus: I’m grateful for the people who fought for queer rights early on and who took many a beating so those who came after them don’t have to. If people want to celebrate that by dancing down the street half naked, I’m all for it. If it annoys queer-phobic bigots, even better. Also, the history of PRIDE needs to be taught in schools.
Maestro: A Safe Place to love without judgement.
Matt: Living your truth and authentic life; acknowledging the suffering, but also the progress by brave individuals, of the past. Standing up with pride for yourself, vs cowering (even if only internally).
To have the freedom to be who I am. To be proud of who I’ve become.~ Maxime
Maxime: To have the freedom to be who I am. To be proud of who I’ve become.
Melissa: It means I get to be around people I can be myself with. I don’t have to try to act “normal” to get anyone’s approval. I can just be me and there’s no negative repercussions.
‘Nathan: A protest, ongoing remembrance, a continuation of queer culture and history, and a celebration, in pretty much that order.
Owen: A celebration of our difference, of our identity. A “fuck you” to cis-hetero-normativity. A protest of the discrimination and hate we still face.
Pride will evolve, as it should. By evolution, queer people prove their adaptability, our ultimate survival traits. ~ Phaeton
Phaeton: What Pride means to me…that has gone through an evolution within me. At first, it was revolutionary. Then it slowly morphed into the massive protest movement, trying to raise awareness about the AIDS crisis. Then that changed, into an open effort to integrate/assimilate. I find no fault with that, assimilation was very controversial in my day, but it did lead to equal marriage rights, the most profound victory in queer activism. But in the end, our rainbow flag flies around the world for a reason, we fought and didn’t back down, and we never will. Pride will evolve, as it should. By evolution, queer people prove their adaptability, our ultimate survival traits.
Rob: Pride means celebrating our accomplishments as a community, and committing to continue to fight.
Roberta: It means celebrating diversity and strides the queer community has made toward political and personal acceptance.
S.A.: Being comfortable with myself in my own skin. Being a part of something bigger than myself.
Shai: The absence of shame. A public declaration that we exist in numbers and could be anyone you meet.
Urban: It means that one month we are in focus, and the rights we have fought for and still have to fight for is in focus. They easily drown in the news-flow and so other times of the year but are (more) in focus. Also it is a time to show that we exist right next to all the people who don’t know us and that we are proud of who we are and will not hide or excuse ourselves. In Sweden this isn’t as big a thing as in e.g. the US. I attended Pride in Charleston, SC in 2019 and that was very moving because of the Pride events being held in such a not-so-liberal part of the country. Also seeing all the anti-LGBTQ+ people and religious fanatics was an interesting but scary aspect of the town’s parade.
Vince: Pride in the sense of the parade/party has unfortunately turned into a giant, drunken mess here in Philly. But the word itself has a lot of meanings. I don’t actually consider it to mean the textbook definition as I don’t know that anyone is really “proud” to be gay but rather to NOT be ashamed to be. I mean, straight people aren’t necessarily proud to be straight and I think most queers anywhere on the spectrum aren’t proud but rather just happy that they can be accepted and respected much more so now than in our recent past. Just my thoughts as I suppose some people are actually proud of their queerness.
It means writing my own narrative rather than have it written for me by the “dominant culture.”~ W.D.
W.D.: It means living my life authentically each day, embracing all of who I am. It means writing my own narrative rather than have it written for me by the “dominant culture.” Hiding significant portions of one’s life out of guilt and shame is both stressful and exhausting, and the price is high. I wear many hats—African American, Native American, son, father, brother, husband, Baby Boomer, cousin, author, child of God, and being gay is one of those hats. In the words of Rev. Jesse Jackson, “I am somebody.”
Allen: I’m a white cisgender queer male. Massively privileged as far as race and gender go. I haven’t been to Pride since I was in my early thirties, so I’ve never personally experienced age discrimination. However, I’m fat. The queer community—especially queer men—can be very judgmental about body type. You either have to be a toned twink or a muscle queen to be accepted by some queer people. However, I also don’t give a single fuck about that attitude and make space for myself, so the body negativity hasn’t really affected me personally. I see it, though. I see the ageism. The body negativity. The racism. Transphobia. It’s all very noticeable if you don’t have your head up your ass when you go to Pride. I do have personal experience, not necessarily with discrimination or hate, but with judgement for never fully committing to just men or just women. That kind of sucks.
I’ve had my queerness questioned and been told outright that my “straight” relationship wouldn’t be welcome at some community PRIDE events… ~ Anne
Anne: PRIDE is a vastly different experience based on the type of PRIDE event you attend and your race, Ethnicity, age, physicality, sexuality, and gender. It feels like more mainstream, corporate-sponsored PRIDE events are explicitly and implicitly hostile toward anyone who might jeopardize what those organizers consider “respectable.” BIPOC experience racism, open hostility, and exclusion. Disabled people often find events physically inaccessible. And those that don’t fit into what the dominant white culture considers family-friendly are often shunned (for example, transgender individuals and specific kink communities). Community PRIDE events, which may be more open to BIPOC and disabled folks, are often hostile toward folks outside binary sexuality (gay or lesbian). I’ve had my queerness questioned and been told outright that my “straight” relationship wouldn’t be welcome at some community PRIDE events because my spouse is a cisgender male, and I’m a femme-presenting nonbinary person. My relationship with my spouse, who identifies as grey asexual, shouldn’t have to pass a visible queerness test to be accepted. Still, I recognize as a white, femme-presenting person, I carry a tremendous amount of privilege. And I see that privilege as conferring even more responsibility to fight for inclusion of the BIPOC, disabled, and transgender people in my queer family.
Charlie: Well, I was going on three years old when the Stonewall Riots took place, so it’s literally my lifetime. A time and place that we had so very damn little in regards to anything. Hell, drag queens were arrested for not wearing one article of men’s clothing! I think age wise, Pride has evolved so much over the years, that so much has been gained, that there are out big time celebrities across many arenas when there was so very little in representation. Age also impacts Pride once again because of the AIDS Crisis. I was fourteen when that very first article about the five gay men in San Francisco and the “Unknown Gay Cancer” broke, and between 1986 when the first person I knew who died of AIDS and 2002 when my husband at the time died; I kept track of every single name. 600 names, and ironically I sat shiva (the period of mourning for Jews) it’s unfathomable the loss, and I thought for the longest time my own name would be among the dead. But I feel to a large degree that AIDS brought out this big time activism for rights that to some degree propelled our overall rights. The community had enough of people doing nothing, not responding to our deaths let alone our lives, and ACT UP was a huge part of my life for the longest time. My gender and race I think play a big part in how the gay community is viewed sadly. As a gay, white, man it seems so many still equate that to a large part of our communities visibility, but it is not necessarily the case as people of color play a HUGE part of our community, and the barriers for coming out are so very different for them from race to religion, to discrimination, to unemployment and so many others. Race affects and compounds so many issues and being gay and of color compounds the issue of even more so as I feel it divides them even further from their own community. We as the LGBTQIA+ members of our community I feel could be doing so much more than what we already doing in regards to race and other issues. It seems that we can be our own.
David: Personally, I don’t feel excluded or that it is a privilege purely for the young.
Dee: I want to think it’s the same for everyone. acceptance is acceptance.
After years of seeing what we have gone through and still need to go through, you reach a point where enough is enough. ~ Estebán
Estebán: Being older, Pride has become more internal. I haven’t been to a Pride parade or festival in years. I would love to go, but something seems to come up and it doesn’t happen. But having grown up in the 80s, I did grow a thick skin. Even to this day, being called a slur has no effect on me. I have heard them all, and they are even less impressive now. There is a certain joy watching a homophobe struggle to try and hurt you with words when you can throw it back in their face. People who know me now, can’t fathom the person I describe to them in my youth. I am more outspoken now and speak out against injustices. Even if it means hurting myself professionally. But, after years of seeing what we have gone through and still need to go through, you reach a point where enough is enough. For physical traits, when I was in college, I had a lot of friends who had genuine concern for my physical safety out in the world. I would often be asked by my straight friends if I worried about being jumped. My response to them was, and still is, “Who messes with a 6-foot tall Mexican?” There is this notion that pride, especially pride events, is catered exclusively to gay men. Which, I can see why people see it that way. But having been to the parades, I never saw it as the exclusive gay men’s club. I would see all parts of our rainbow. I do feel there is a need to be a united Pride. I understand wanting unique pride experiences. But I think, in the long run, it hurts us more to be separated. There should be a united front that in the past couple of decades I fear has fractured. It is going to end up falling to the next generation of LGBTQ youth to bring us back together. As for racial and ethnic identity, that would be a whole separate conversation. Being biracial has a set of issues in itself. Throw in being gay and it can be even more challenging. From the Mexican community, I have to deal with not being Mexican enough. Lacking in heritage, because I was raised like a “white kid.” My mother was from the South and raised us the way she was raised. Something people, who have not endured it, can never truly understand.
Eugene: The booths serve a diverse enough crowd that I do not believe it is. One year, however, many people showed a double standard on horseplay by lesbians as opposed to gay men.
Hadrian: I am old enough to remember when being LGBT was something shameful, when it was a necessary counterbalance to the constant drumbeat of shame that we used to face in most aspects of our lives. It’s wonderful to see so many younger LGBTs for whom their queerness isn’t something they have to struggle for. But I worry that many of them don’t understand that the world was quite different even just a generation ago and that it wouldn’t take much for them to lose the rights we’ve fought so hard for.
Jean-Christophe: I think that it has a lot to do with where the Pride takes place. In Paris it had become a huge commercial event where I would not feel welcomed as looks are almost everything. These last few years a huge effort was made to make Pride – again – a time to fight for complete equality and not just be a way for bars and clubs to make people dance. Stonewall 25 was a huge cultural, art, literature, political, activist event along with the Gay Games. It lasted 3-4 weeks and I felt that anyone could feel welcomed. But that’s somewhat easy as a white gay guy who had sufficient means to stay at the Marriott Marquis to say. On top of that I was accredited as a CC student journalist and a junior member of the NLGJA.
Kevin: Pride wasn’t such a huge event when I was growing up. I think people of my age were still afraid of being so open about everything. We were also in the middle of the AIDS crisis, and we seemed to focus our attention on getting the powers that be to acknowledge what was happening and to do something about it.
Being a privileged white person in a job that won’t sack me because I’m queer, is a massive privilege.~ Lyndizzle
Lyndizzle: I didn’t go when I was young because I was intimidated by the “tell me how you’re queer” vibe. Now I’m old I’m not really intimidated by much. Being a privileged white person in a job that won’t sack me because I’m queer, is a massive privilege.
Marcus: Young people who, unlike me, didn’t come of age in the 80s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, might otherwise not be able to appreciate how much it took to get us where we are today.
Maestro: My generation saw the decimation of millions of gay men. In the SFGMC, I sang at countless memorials. Gay men were vilified and AIDS was used against us. Not only did we battle the disease, but we battled the prejudice and misconception that we deserved to die, that we were carriers and should be isolated. It’s strange, but my cohort of friends was multi-racial, multi-ethnic. What united us back then was our mutual struggle. We didn’t play the “who’s more oppressed” Olympics. We were fighting for our lives.
Matt: I’m not sure I feel like I’ve earned Pride yet, but accept that’s my own issue to overcome. But also know as a white and middle class male growing up in an overall liberal and accepting area and family, my privilege has shielded me from much.
Hungary didn’t have Pride at that time and being queer had to be hidden. ~ Maxime
Maxime: I grew up without internet, in a post-communist conservative country, so knowledge of anything Pride-related was almost non-existent. Hungary didn’t have Pride at that time and being queer had to be hidden. I guess that made it something of a novelty when the first Pride happened in 1993. I was in high school then. I remember having this distinct feeling, watching it on TV, that something new was starting, a breath of freedom, and was amazed at the number of people marching there. Maybe the first realization came then that there were others like me, that I belonged somewhere.
Melissa: It’s definitely different for me based on my age. I’m giving out Mom hugs now instead of getting them. I love it though.
I had this incredible swath of queer elders who helped me come into myself, but those same elders are so often gone now, or, not to put too fine a point on it, exhausted.~ ‘Nathan
‘Nathan: I’m a cis white queer guy, so really, when it comes to queerness, I’m playing the game on a much easier setting than other queer people, though my (invisible) disability comes into play. I’m also in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, which changes things dramatically (for example, I’m not in a smaller town in the much more conservative Alberta). My age, though—I find myself straddling two generations. I came out (privately, with a smaller group of people) quite young, and then more publicly once I was away from my family. I was lucky enough to meet so many people who were taken from us by violence, hate, and ignorance, but I’m also sometimes “young enough” to exist in the circles of queerlings coming into their own in the present day. I find myself trying to build bridges over the gaps of history and culture that exist by virtue of queerness not being an inherited marginalization. The vast majority of us don’t have queer parents telling us about their queer grandparents, but quite the opposite, growing up isolated and without even the language at hand to even start asking questions, let alone know what we don’t know. I had this incredible swath of queer elders who helped me come into myself, but those same elders are so often gone now, or, not to put too fine a point on it, exhausted. I find myself, in most Pride settings, trying to find ways to connect all these generations of queer people.
Owen: I’m a cis-gender white man with a passport from a G7 nation, a relatively stable income, a regular roof over my head and people who love me. That I’m multiply-disabled and queer doesn’t change that I have a lot of privilege that is not shared by a lot of our queer family; the discrimination I face is never due to the colour of my skin, my passport, citizenship, religion, gender identity or presentation. While my life has rarely been easy, I am definitely one of the people Pride is designed for; I’m not from a part of the queer family that is so-often overlooked and discriminated against, even within the Scene.
Phaeton: I’m a white male, the difference in Pride between myself and someone visibly ethnic, is vast. But the difference in Pride to a queer woman is even greater. I truly believe queer people get the idea that our differences make us stronger. Women have always been my beacon when it comes to activism. More than 50% of the population, women remain oppressed around the world. I feel that women activists know the importance of accepting all under a Big Tent more than anyone.
Rob: Cis white gay guys are fairly mainstreamed. We can get complacent and forget the struggle is ongoing for many in our community.
Roberta: Honestly, I kinda feel like PRIDE isn’t for me as I’m straight-passing and I don’t experience the prejudice and struggles other queer people do.
Shai: I do still feel somewhat uncomfortable about skimpy clothing and overt sexuality, even though I absolutely think sexuality is part of the queer experience. After all, it is what defines us as queer. But being Ace, it often serves as a stark reminder that I am not “normal.” Mind you, I would feel this way at something like Mardi Gras as well. But I don’t feel part of that sort of community and would never go. I was upset not to find Ace rep at Pride the last time I went.
Urban: I don’t think so. It is for us all to be out, proud and happy together!
My coming out was much more difficult than young people have it today… ~ Vince
Vince: This is a tough one and I’ve given it a lot of thought! I suppose being male and white is definitely different than being a person of color or a female and being gay. I think white men just have everything easier than non-white, non-male people, in every aspect of American life. I won’t get political but it’s just the way it is. As far as my age…being almost 60 is certainly a lot different than for thatr of a 20 or 30 year old, in every way! My coming out was much more difficult than young people have it today and just being an old dude compared to young guys….well, you know what I mean.
Even in 2021, the overall perception of the LGBTQIA community is that it is predominately white… Intentionality is required in order to change that narrative.~ W.D.
W.D.: It is different for me because representation matters. Even in 2021, the overall perception of the LGBTQIA community is that it is predominately white. As someone who stands at the intersectionality of African American and LGBTQ, I’ve seen this perception reinforced far too often in media coverage, given that the “Mothers of the Movement,” Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, were transwomen of color. Intentionality is required in order to change that narrative.
If you follow me on Twitter, you know that earlier this month I asked members of the LGBTQIA community who are over 40-years-old to answer 10 interview questions. The response was…incredible.
In my opinion, older members of the LGBTQIA community are not seen as the valuable resources they are. So much of our history is not passed down–and when it is, it’s not listened to by younger queer people. Our older community members should be cherished, listened to, and valued. There is wisdom, history, and lessons we all need.
To remember who we are, where we came from, and how we got here.
Complacency and a feeling of “well, things are fine now” have infiltrated the LGBTQIA community. Many younger queer people don’t have respect for the people who got us to where we are today, nor do they understand why we must keep diligent in making sure the rights we fight for daily are not taken away.
I think reading the thoughts of older LGBTQIA members will help us remember our history and see a clear path to our future.
Having said all of that…I’ve broken this blog post up into three parts. The first one will be today, the second one will be Wednesday, and the third will be Thursday. Not every participant answered every question, and I am providing the names and demographic information as was provided by each interviewee. For the sake of brevity, not every response was used in these blog posts, though I’ve done my best to use the most intriguing and enlightening and made sure every participant had at least one of their responses used in each of the 3 blog posts. If any changes were made, it was for spelling/grammar/clarity. These are THEIR words. So…let’s get started!
Interviewees:
AJ Urbanek– 47yo/Caucasian/Wisconsin, USA/Enby, Demi-Pan Allen St. Clair (a.k.a. Thomas Allen, author of THE LEGEND OF THE KEEPERS SERIES) – 41yo/White/DFW area Texas, USA/Queer, cis-gender male Anne Stagg – 50yo/White/Ohio, USA/Pansexual, Genderqueer, Non-binary, Trans Charlie Dale (author of FREEING MYSELF: ONE MAN’S JOURNEY WITH AIDS) – 55yo/White/Small town near Canton, Ohio, USA/Gay male, pronouns: they/them/her David Ledain (author of GAY DAD and other gay non-fiction books) – 60yo/White/British, UK/Gay Dee – 59yo/White/suburb of Dallas, TX, USA/Bisexual Estebán Q. Mathieus (author of STICKS & STONE) – 44yo/Scottish-Mexican/Los Angeles, CA, USA/Gay Eugene Galt (pen name) (author of THESE WORDS ARE TRUE AND FAITHFUL) – 59yo/White/Mid-Atlantic, USA/Gay Man Hadrian Temple (pen name) – 53yo/White/Milwaukee, USA/Gay Man Jean-Christophe (John) HENEL – 50yo/White-Caucasian/France by the Belgian border/100% Gay Kevin – 49yo (almost 50)/White/West Virginia, USA/Gay Lyndizzle – 53yo/Pākeha (New Zealander of European descent)/New Zealand/Gay or Lesbian depending on the day, Demi Marcus Herzig (author of HEARTMATES and CUPID PAINTED BLIND) – 51yo/White/Germany/Gay Man Maestro (pseudonym) – “Over 40″/Caucasian/USA/Gay Matt – 47yo/White-Caucasian/New York State, USA/Gay Maxime Jaz (pen name) – 44yo/Caucasian/Hungary/Queer, Bi, Genderfluid (it’s a work in progress) Melissa Power – 49yo/Caucasian/Nova Scotia, Canada/Pansexual-Queer ‘Nathan Burgoine (pen name – apostrophe is intentional) – 46yo/White/Born in Britain, live in Canada, now Canadian/Queer and/or Gay, depending on who I’m talking to Owen Blacker – 45yo/White/United Kingdom/Queer (or mainly-gay) Phaeton (pseudonym) – 55yo/Anglo-Saxon/Los Angeles, CA, USA/Gay, cis-gendered Male Rob Browatzke – 44yo/White/Edmonton, Canada/Gay Roberta Blablanski (pen name, author of RETURN TO SENDER and ADDICTION) – 41yo/White/New Orleans, Louisiana, USA/Aroace, AFAB, non-binary S.A. Crow (author of INTO THE FIRE) – 42yo/Native American/North Texas, USA/Bi-sexual Shai Porter (pen name) – White-Ashkenazi/Denver, CO, USA/Queer, Asexual, Bisexual, Agender Urban – 54yo/White-Caucasian/Sweden/Gay; he/him Vince (or “Vince H”) – 56yo/White/Philly Area, PA, USA, born and raised in DelCo/Gay or GayPoly or PolyGay W.D. Foster-Graham (author of the CHRISTOPHER FAMILY NOVEL SERIES) – 68yo/African American/Minnesota, USA/Gay; he/him
AJ Urbanek: I realized I was queer around the age of 40ish. After figuring it out, the biggest thing I felt was relief that I finally understood why I felt weird and out of place my whole life. Then I just had to figure out how I was going to handle it, which I am still doing.
I just felt really confused for a long time, but also had a sense of fear that it was something that I couldn’t really ask anyone about.~ Allen
Allen: Pretty young, though I couldn’t give you an exact age. Before puberty, though. I just knew that I was “different” than all the other boys my age (or so it seemed at the time). I just felt really confused for a long time, but also had a sense of fear that it was something that I couldn’t really ask anyone about. I didn’t understand why I felt that way until I realized what being queer meant and started noticing people (especially my family members) making derogatory comments about queer people.
Recognizing my queerness, seeing myself as a part of a larger community, was informed, in part, by what felt like was the inevitability of HIV and AIDS.~ Anne
Anne: I was born in 1970, a year and a half after the Stonewall Uprising. The idea of being queer, part of a larger community, wasn’t something I had access to growing up. Sure, I had dizzying crushes on both girls and boys and ached to understand why the word “girl’ felt less like a descriptor and more like a lie. Keeping silent was a means of survival in my family. If you didn’t talk about things, they weren’t real. But I’ve always been a mouthy little shit, and I chaffed against it is the only way I knew how, through writing. I penned stories that centered my hurt, my loneliness, and my queerness and transness. Any creative writing assignment in school became an opportunity to create characters whose gender and sexuality didn’t fit into the social expectations crushing me. By the time I hit high school in 1984, HIV and AIDS had swept across the country. My family lived in a relatively small town in Vermont. The epidemic’s impact wasn’t anywhere near the crises in New York or Chicago. HIV and AIDS weren’t at the forefront of my lived day-to-day experience. The idea of dying of AIDS before I turned 25 ran in the background of my thoughts all the time. It was terrifying, and I spent most of my teens and twenties bouncing between trying to shove away my queerness and embracing it like the world was ending. Because a lot of times, that’s how it felt. Recognizing my queerness, seeing myself as a part of a larger community, was informed, in part, by what felt like the inevitability of HIV and AIDS. Acceptance was something I sought through books and a small circle of friends. Celebrating my queerness and community didn’t become a part of my life until I was in my late twenties.
Charlie: I knew very early on, like 4 or 5, that I was very different from other little boys but didn’t have the language or the exposure to gay people growing up. The closest thing was Paul Lynde in the center square of “Hollywood Squares”, a closeted Rock Hudson, a closeted Jim Bailey who appeared on the “Carol Burnette Show” as Phyllis Diller and Barbra Streisand. Things were very different then growing up; especially for me as the child of Southern Conservative Baptist parents. The language for all that emotion, feeling and angst came in high school when the bullying started, and for me it was severe. But hearing the words, “sissy, faggot, queer, homo, fruit” and others it all made sense in a sad but real way.It was a very lonely, confusing place growing up the way I did. Wanting to play Barbie dolls and not allowed. Playing dress up when my father wasn’t home. Religion, of course, didn’t help in the least, and in many ways, made it so much worse. I was very introverted growing up, very “girly” in my activities helping my mother with her daily housework and such. Even growing knowing at a very early age I too wanted to be a “housewife.” The pain, sadness, confusion, anger, non-acceptance from religion for many years led me to a path of addiction I wrote about in my memoirs, “Freeing Myself: One Man’s Journey with AIDS”
David: Knowing and affirming my sexuality didn’t come for a long time, but I knew I was ‘different’ from everyone else around me from a very early age. I played with dolls and had a lovely handmade dolls’ house. Given that this was the early sixties it seems a very progressive way of bringing up your child. My parents are no longer around to ask, but I did ask my ninety-year-old aunty ‘how was that ever a thing? How did I come to have dolls to play with? Whose idea was it?’Even my cousin, who is a year younger than me, remembers me having dolls, though I outgrew them and moved on to Lego, cars, and soldiers fairly quickly. The dolls lost their charm. I just don’t understand how my parents, who were otherwise strict disciplinarians and not at all demonstrative in their affections, would have agreed to allow me ‘girls’ toys. It will remain forever a mystery. I knew myself, however, that when I reached school age it was time to give up the last of my girly toys and we gave my dolls’ house to the gardener’s granddaughter. ‘Are you sure you want to let it go?’ I remember my mother asking. I reluctantly agreed. In my head I wanted the dolls’ house but I knew I wasn’t a girl. The dichotomy and turmoil had begun.
Dee: I always felt different even in elementary grades but I was sure around 17. I had a crush on my friend who was completely straight.
I responded with, “I’m gay, too.” It was the first time I had uttered those words out loud. It is a moment that stays with me.~ Estebán
Estebán: I always knew I was different from the other boys growing up. I had an attraction to the other boys on the playground, that I knew was not accepted. Most of my friends were girls and I was most comfortable around them. It took me a while before I understood what I was and accepted myself like that. I grew up around Spanish gay slurs being thrown around. Even though I didn’t know what they translated into, I knew what they meant. By the time puberty hit, I understood my attraction but did everything I could to try to suppress it. I grew up in a small farm town. People called me gay and other words in school, but I did everything I could to prove them wrong. I feigned interest in girls in junior high school. Then in high school, I dated a lot of girls, but unknown to my friends, between them I was hooking up with boys. Even then, I still wouldn’t admit the words to myself. Looking back there is a lot I missed out on because I wasn’t able to be open with who I was. By the time senior year rolled around, I had a moment of clarity. I knew that once I graduated high school, I would be moving away for college. The hang-ups and issues that I had through my teenage years would be behind me. So, I stopped trying to hide it. I didn’t come out to my friends, but they knew and showed their acceptance in a way that let me know they were cool with it, even if I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I officially came out to both myself and two others when I was 17 years old, 3 days before my 18th birthday. By then I was in college and I was with a group of friends at an event. One of the girls made a joke that I didn’t catch or understand. When I asked for an explanation, she smiled at me and said, “Didn’t you know? I’m bi.” The other friend on the other side of me came out to me as a lesbian. Without giving it a second thought, I responded with, “I’m gay, too.” It was the first time I had uttered those words out loud. It is a moment that stays with me.
I was concerned for my safety.~ Eugene
Eugene: It became obvious when, once I hit puberty, I started having erotic dreams about my male teachers and other adult men. Living in a blue-collar suburb in the seventies, I was concerned for my safety.
Hadrian: I was attracted to men sexually from the moment I started thinking about sex, which was about 13. I didn’t want to be attracted to men because I was raised in a conservative religion and my father was a minister. I spent about a decade struggling with this before I was able to accept it. Now I’m very happily gay and wouldn’t be straight if I could. I find being gay quite freeing.
Jean-Christophe: I started realizing I was gay when I was around 10 years old. I had met, through the Boy Scouts, a 15-year-old apprentice butcher and the least I can say is that I could not keep my eyes off him when he was around. When he was not, I could not keep myself from asking other scouts who knew him what was going on, if he was delayed or could not make it, even though we were not supposed to have any kind of interaction as I was with the Cubs and he was already a Scout.
Kevin: I was very young when I realized I was different. I live in a very rural, conservative area with a deeply religious family. I grew up thinking I was going to Hell, and I prayed a lot that I would change. I had also experienced sexual assault by a family member, so I was a pretty miserable teenager.
Lyndizzle: Hmm, sometime around about 13. But it was a gradual realization over a few years not a Damascus moment. There was very little information in the olden days pre-internet, and I didn’t know a single out queer person. (Later in my teens there was a gay couple who had a cooking show on TV. They didn’t say so, but they were obviously a couple). Other than that the only information I had was at the public library. Most of the books ended unhappily.Oh, and I remember seeing an Agatha Christie on telly that had a middle-aged lesbian couple as characters. I felt fine within myself, but also isolated, afraid that I was letting people down, afraid of receiving violence, and sad that I wouldn’t get a “normal” life. Even at university, it seemed that the lesbians there were all conforming to a new orthodoxy. I felt strongly that I wasn’t finding my own way just to buy into someone else’s idea of how I should be. And a guy in my class, who I was pretty sure was gay, used to come to class with bruises quite often. I only realized there was a word – demi – for that part of me, when I was about 50. I just thought I was weird before that.
I didn’t think anything was wrong with me until I reached puberty and I realized society expected me to like girls and cars and soccer.~ Marcus
Marcus: I guess deep down I always knew, even before I knew there was such a thing as being gay. I remember frequently kissing my best friend (on the cheek) when we were seven or eight years old and the older kids would laugh at us and say, “They’re gay!” It was the first time I ever heard that word, and I didn’t know what it meant. But surely, if it meant being affectionate toward other boys, it couldn’t be a bad thing. I didn’t think anything was wrong with me until I reached puberty and I realized society expected me to like girls and cars and soccer. I only liked soccer, but, being gay, I wasn’t very good at it.
Maestro: I first realized I had feelings for other guys in high school. I was already called queer and faggot, so I felt even more isolated—as if they were right by bullying me—that perhaps I was depraved.
Matt: Uh, as a sheltered kid in the 80s, it was a process. I knew I was different by the time I was 11 or 12, and probably not in a “good” way, it seemed. I would say I “knew” by age 15 – but with no acceptance of it, I rejected, repressed, and denied, beginning my decades of smoke-screening and doing anything to not appear to others (or myself) as anything other than straight. I didn’t fully actually accept it myself until 44, telling people starting at 46.
Maxime: This is not easy to remember, as I was raised in a homophobic family, according to Roman Catholic values. I had always wanted to be a boy, though, when I was a kid (I’m AFAB although I’m not even sure this is a correct term anymore?) and got mocked for it too. Family members saying that I should have been born a boy because I was mostly interested in horses, action movies, and playing outside. Anything related to same sex attraction was a crime and a sin, and homosexuals were always mocked in my family. I knew I was different from early on, but it was terrifying and shameful, so I hid it. Around 13-years-old, I had a crush on a girl in my class and we made out in her room, and it was wonderful and terrifying at the same time, because I was convinced that I was going to die because I had sinned. Maybe this is the first moment I sort of realized I was queer (but the only available words for it then were “lesbian” and “gay”). I was always a man though, in role playing games, DnD sessions, and videogames when they came into existence. That was pure freedom. Later, I put the label bisexual on myself, when I realized I was attracted to men and women (in those times, there were no other terms available to describe gender). I might have realized that I was fully bi when I had my first sexual experience with somebody of the same sex, as an adult already. I had no notion of being genderfluid at this stage, just that mild feeling that I had a man’s soul in a female body. At the time in post-communist Hungary, there was no notion of queerness, nothing to cling too, no support, so I was flying blind.
Melissa: I was about 21 when I realized I was queer. It made me really uncomfortable, because I didn’t know any queer people. I had been raised Catholic, so I knew I’d have to hide who I was. I only told my best friend (who said she knew since we were 10), and later my son’s father, who always accepts everyone for exactly who they are without judgement.
‘Nathan: The first inklings hit somewhere around fifth grade, which was for me about age nine, but it was more of an amorphous “something isn’t right, I don’t like the things I’m supposed to like on many levels,’ and realizing I was drawn to, say, superheroes or actors in a different way than my fellow boys were. My home life made it 100% clear that queer was bad—no end of dialog on that front, be it as “jokes” or otherwise—but I didn’t entirely connect that I was one of those people they were talking about right away, until somewhere closer to about twelve-years-old, when it really became clear—the language of attraction was being used pretty commonly all around me—that my attractions were running counter to expectations. By virtue of the family around me, and my “friends,” and school and pretty much every facet of the world around me, the main fact I knew about queer men was they died, so mostly it terrified me.
Phaeton: I was very young, pre-teens. I remember the exact moment well, when I finally put it together that the names other boys were calling each other on the playground applied to me. A boy that I knew showed me and his brother where his father hid his pornographic magazines. It was just a stack of playboys, with one Hustler magazine mixed in. The centerfold had a naked man standing in front of a woman. This was the first time I had seen a grown man nude, much less aroused. One of the two boys saw my shocked look and barked out, “What, are you a fagot or something?” And it all came together at once. My nature, the name-calling, they were one and the same. I’ll never forget it.
Gay was a punchline, and I was the joke.~ Rob
Rob: I started coming out when I was 15/16. This is the early 90s so there’s no such thing as GSAs in school, no internet. There were no gay role models in entertainment. Gay was a punchline, and I was the joke. My family had a lot of religious people in it and I was terrified of being cut off from my family. None of that really ended up happening, but that was the fear.
Roberta: Roughly 5 or so years ago, I came to realize I’m asexual. I didn’t feel part of the queer community because, at the time, I identified as straight. As I’m married to a person of the opposite gender, most people automatically assume I’m not queer and I was a rider on that bandwagon for quite a while. The more I got to know people in the queer community and discovered different labels, I came to realize that I don’t fit neatly into one box.
There haven’t been a lot of Bisexual role models. ~ S.A.
S.A. Crow: I was in 5th grade when I realized that liking both girls and boys wasn’t the norm for everyone. I remember the moment so clearly. It was gym period and I was sitting on a bench with a bunch of girls that I knew. We were watching the guys play basketball and talking. They all made comments about a cute guy when he walked by. I joined in because he was attractive to my 5th grade sense of attractiveness. Then there was an attractive girl walking by and I started to say she’s pretty and made a comment about her attractiveness and realized that I was the only one saying anything so I quickly commented on her shoes and was quiet the rest of the class period. From that point on until I was 19 I thought I was alone in the world where other women didn’t find both men and women attractive. There haven’t been a lot of Bisexual role models.
Shai: I grew up thinking everyone was bisexual. I think I became aware of this at around 10-years-old when I really didn’t care about anyone’s sexual identity, although it wasn’t a true sexual attraction (I still don’t really have that even now) The kicker was when I realized other people *weren’t* that way. I guess that was around 17 or so when my boyfriend made it perfectly clear he was straight. Absolutely straight. To make it clear, I didn’t expect that everyone was to be out about being bi…I just thought they all secretly were and that they were told by someone it wasn’t okay (parents…church?). I felt smarter than everyone else at first, not gonna lie about that. But then I accepted that there is an infinite range of things people like and don’t like…including sexual attraction.
Urban: For me the coming out took a very long time. Too long in hindsight. I knew I was sexually interested in boys from age 13 I guess, but I never admitted it to be “being gay.” These were other, harsher times for gay people and I didn’t want to be that. All thorough my teenage years I never had any interest in girls, in any way, all my friends and the people I hung out with were boys and I always became friends with the cutest ones when I changed schools, and I was crushing on them, friendship being the only way to be close to them and have them around the whole time. When I started high school I had a short friends with (small) benefits with a guy I was so into. He was straight or maybe bi, but unfortunately, he moved to the US after six months. After high school I became an Army Officer and being gay there at that time was not okay so I buried it deeper again. Not until 2000 when the Armed Forces in Sweden embraced LGBTQ+ officially did I come out. And boy was that a relief! I could finally be open and quickly was to all the people I knew. So back to the real question, how was I feeling. In my teenage years I felt okay, not lonely, but lacking sex like my (straight) friends had. In my twenties I felt quite lonely, though, when everyone else got into serous relationships, getting married and having kids. Like I wrote, coming out was a great relief, like I stopped holding my breath.
Vince: I think I always had a feeling I was, starting around the time I started to understand sexuality but knew I was for sure around 14 or 15. It truly didn’t bother me as I didn’t know how or what it was like to be straight…if that makes any sense.
W.D.: I was aware at a very early age, but I didn’t have a name for it until I was in my teens. All I knew was that I was different from my relatives and classmates, and the fact I was both quiet and a nerd didn’t help matters. It was a lonely space to be occupying.
AJ: I’m not out to my family (only out to a few friends IRL and online friends), and when my sister asked to read my WIP, when I mentioned there were queer characters, she made a disgruntled face and then changed her mind about reading it.
Allen: I was probably 11 or 12-years-old (maybe younger) when my mother told me in an incredibly nonchalant manner that she would rather I brought home an n-word than another man as a partner. The implication being that both Black people and queer people were lesser than and I would basically be disowned if I dated someone who was not white and cis-gender female. I’m married to a white cis-gender female now because that’s who I fell in love with and wanted to be partners with for life, but Mom died before I got married and didn’t get to see her wish fulfilled, so I think we all know who won.
“It’s your own fault. I’ve told you two to tone down the gay or that stuff’s going to keep happening.”~ Anne
Anne: My first steps in embracing myself as a part of the queer community coincided with the beginning of a serious relationship. I was 27 and fell in love. For the first time in my life, everything seemed possible, including surviving my twenties. It was the first year I celebrated PRIDE. My partner and I had festooned everything with rainbows, including bumper stickers. One evening, early in PRIDE month, we were driving to meet friends for drinks. The night was warm, without sweltering, so we had the windows down and the music up. It was that magical time of day in early summer when the shadows paint the ground with darkness, even as the sun gilds the horizon with fire. We were stopped at a light, chatting about our expectations for the night and listening to ridiculous sappy love songs, when two white men walked into traffic toward our car. The closer they got, the more afraid I became, even though they were smiling. There were cars behind and in front of us. There was nowhere to go to get away. They leaned down, shoving their faces through my open window, yelled “fuck you, dykes,” flicked their lit cigarettes into my lap, and walked away. The entire event took less than a minute. I flew out of my side of the car and shook the cigarettes out of my skirt. I wasn’t physically hurt, but it was a horrifying, helpless experience. No-one stopped to ask if we were okay. What was worse was that when we arrived at the restaurant to meet our friends and told them what happened, a friend shook his head and said, “It’s your own fault. I’ve told you two to tone down the gay or that stuff’s going to keep happening.”
David: Regret is a terrible thing to take with you through life. I don’t regret the course my life has taken; my twenty-year marriage to the woman I still love and my beautiful sons, now grown up and leading their own lives. We are still very much a family. But I do wonder with some sadness what became of the gorgeous model I met in Grannies nightclub in Portsmouth one Wednesday (gay night) in 1982. We spent the night together and he gave me his telephone number, but at that time I was frightened and lacked confidence, and I really didn’t know who I was or how I thought my life was going to be. I let him slip away. With some ceremony and severing of any ties, I burned his phone number and never saw him again. Until a few months later when he appeared in a fashion shoot spread in The Face magazine. I only bought it because Bowie was on the cover. I still have the magazine, of course, and often wonder what became of Simon the model. That memory, and George Michael’s ‘Different Corner’ (about a different boy), fill me with sorrow.
Dee: Being told that if I turned out to be gay I could not remain friends with my best friend.
It was as if, to them, being gay meant I was inevitably going to have something horrible happen to me.~ Estebán
Estebán: Growing up, both my parents were quite homophobic. It was the 70s and 80s. Being gay was very much considered wrong. My mother would refer to gay people as “Those Funny People,” with that offensive wrist wave. My father would get tense around anyone who showed any gay tendencies. I was terrified to come out to them. In my mind, the moment my father knew, I would be kicked out and on my own with no support. Even though, I wasn’t even the first in my family to come out. I had two older cousins from my mother’s generation that were out. One who I only recall meeting once was lesbian, and my cousin Danny, who sadly passed away in 1995 from AIDS complications. What was upsetting about all this was that I was a freshman in college afraid of what my father would do. By this point, my parents had separated and I was living with him. For months I agonized about what to do, I had been out to my friends in college, who were mostly straight. His girlfriend at the time knew I was gay. She had approached me about it and we were on good terms. She had tried to encourage me to come out to him, but she understood my hesitation. After several months of my father asking me over and over again why I wasn’t dating and didn’t have a girlfriend, I came out to him. I hadn’t meant to, but it slipped out in the middle of an argument. I used it as a weapon to try and hurt him. I didn’t give him a chance to respond and left. I spoke with his girlfriend later that evening. That was when she informed me, that she had told my father months beforehand. I had been agonizing about it and he had known. He had been told, she had wanted him to reach out to me and talk to me about it and he didn’t. That hurt and in my mind at the time proved my thoughts about his feelings about it. Later that evening he called me and asked when I was going home. I asked him if I was welcome at home. There was sadness in his voice and he told me yes. He did accept me, but it took him time to accept what being gay meant and what my world was going to be like. He is much better now, has even met a few boyfriends. Some he liked, some not so much. But those are stories for another day. The most frustrating thing that I found when it came to coming out to family members, was every time they would say the same thing, “be careful.” That phrase makes my skin crawl now. Why should I be anymore careful that my straight cousins? It was as if, to them, being gay meant I was inevitably going to have something horrible happen to me.
Eugene: I was fag-bashed in junior high school. I knew that I would have no recourse and that those in charge of school discipline would likely side with my attacker or at best pretend that nothing had happened.
Did my father really think it was necessary to tell me I was going to hell in his funeral sermon, the last thing he ever had to say to me?~ Hadrian
Hadrian: My father had a medical crisis about a year before he died. When he was in the hospital he was extremely concerned that he outline his funeral sermon before he died. He recovered, and gave Pastor Scott very extensive notes about what he wanted said at his sermon. He built his sermon around St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, using Paul’s structure to lay out an argument that all people have sinned and justly merit God’s wrath, but that salvation is available to all through God’s love and grace. My father was a skilled theologian and from a Biblical perspective it was a very smart sermon. My brothers and I were in the church and Pastor Scott explained that he was preaching a sermon that had largely been written for him, based around 4 passages from Romans. And then he said, “This is a very unusual passage to include in a funeral sermon, but theologically I can’t fault him for this.” And he proceeded to read the second half of the first chapter of Romans. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” So, yeah, my dad’s funeral sermon opened with a passage about homosexuality that was only tangentially related to the message of his sermon and which could have been left out without making a difference. My brother Peter was sitting right next to me, and I remember his body stiffening and his face getting flat with thinly-concealed anger. A decade later, he still hasn’t forgiven my dad. I spent several months trying to understand why my father had done this. Did my father really think it was necessary to tell me I was going to hell in his funeral sermon, the last thing he ever had to say to me? I don’t think so. My father was, for all his faults, a loving man, a man who could only express his emotions through the code of religion. I prefer to think of that sermon as another step in the conversation that we had begun about my sexuality, an effort to express a concern he had and to urge me to think more about the issue. It was, in a rather ham-fisted way, an attempt to tell me he loves me. I just wish he’d found a better way to say that.
Kevin: I was with a guy I was seeing at Walmart. As we left, we briefly held hands. Three young men saw us and began yelling gay slurs at us. They followed us, screaming threats and chases us in their car on the highway to the next red light. They got out of their vehicle and came toward us. My friend got out of our car to face them. He was a large, well-built man, and he intimidated them into back off. I was very shaken up, and it took me a long time to get over it. It brought up memories of my abuse and of the severe bullying I received in school. I don’t think I ever got over it.
Lyndizzle: When I was about 16, my country went into an extended frenzy over gay law reform; that is, to make sex between consenting male adults over 16, legal. The Catholic church and many others put pressure on people to sign a petition against it. There were large “anti” marches and much smaller and braver “pro” marches. AIDS was a thing and the rhetoric was hateful. The (heterosexual female) MP who proposed the legislation in Parliament received death threats. I wore a badge on my school uniform “I support homosexual law reform”. I felt like a coward when I covered it up on the bus or when my friends’ dads were around. They would yell obscenities at the TV when the news covered the issue. It passed, by one vote. The sky stayed up. The Civil Union Act in 2003 was a little better but still brought out the homophobes in force. In the 80s and 90s and even 2000s you never knew when someone was going to say something hideously homophobic even at work. The first 5 people I came out to (all friends) were horrified and thought it was Sinful or Disordered. Gay Marriage in 2013 was all hearts and rainbows and singing in Parliament. Amazing how far we could come in 30 years. I never thought I’d live to see it.
Marcus: My brother, a homophobic and generally unpleasant POS, always discouraged close contact between me and my nephew because he thought I was out to molest him. Because, in my brother’s opinion, that’s what gay people do.
In my first week in San Francisco, I was pelted with eggs. I was crushed. ~ Maestro
Maestro: Getting bullied in high school was a great fear of mine. But I suppose a memory that sticks with me is from adulthood. I moved thousands of miles from family and friends to San Francisco because I didn’t have to courage to come out back home. I felt free at last as I walked down Castro Street believing I had finally arrived in Mecca. Then a carload of high school boys drove by screaming faggot and queer while throwing eggs. In my first week in San Francisco, I was pelted with eggs. I was crushed.
Matt: The biggest to me is a general – deep regret that at the time I was realizing I’m gay I didn’t get anything I needed to know and be myself. No role models, no (positive) representation, no one noticing anything and speaking to me. I can look back now and see all those times I could have been ok, if only there was something/someone to give me an indication it was and would be ok.
Maxime: Probably that awful feeling of guilt whilst living in religion, that you are flawed and a sinner. It was suffocating during all my youth. Having to listen to homophobic rants during family reunions were deeply hurtful. Thinking that I would burn in Hell.
Melissa: When I came out to my parents at the age of 37, my mother drew back from me as if I was contagious and called me “disgusting.” I’ve never really recovered from that.
That story is perhaps not as impactful or immediately distressing as the time I was beaten by bigots, but in many ways, it’s closer to the daily reality: small reminders, over and over, of how we are “lesser than,” and how it erodes joy.~ ‘Nathan
‘Nathan: Canada has three major parties, politically speaking: the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the NDP. Mostly, the government has been made up of Conservatives or Liberals, and the NDP are the more socialist/left-leaning party (the Liberals are honestly pretty darn moderate at best, and the Conservatives, well, they waited ten years after marriage equality to decide their platform shouldn’t refer to marriage as “a man and a woman.”) I’d love to vote NDP, but for years, the candidate who would come to my door, when I asked her about queer issues, would tell me that given her faith, she’d abstain from voting/taking part, but her party was pro-queer. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t a single-issue voter where my single issue wasn’t “does this person/party think I’m a human being and have a better chance of beating the party that outright admits they do not”? That story is perhaps not as impactful or immediately distressing as the time I was beaten by bigots, but in many ways, it’s closer to the daily reality: small reminders, over and over, of how we are “lesser than,” and how it erodes joy.
Phaeton: When my mother found out I was gay at fourteen, having read notes I had passed to a young lesbian friend, she placed me into a Mormon church-sponsored program that was basically reparative therapy. The head of the program was a man that was abusing the boys under his care. This led me down a destructive mental path, culminating in my trying to take my own life. When my family turned on me I realized that, unlike any other minorities, gay people can find themselves completely alone, with nowhere to turn. It is most often a trait not shared by your family, the closest people in your life.
Rob: The year was 1996 and friends and I were walking along the seawall in Vancouver. I had zero worries, Vancouver was some gay destination for a gay boy from the prairies. But that just made the sudden appearance of a group of drunken straight boys, hurling bottles and yelling “faggots,” all the more troubling. It could happen anywhere.
Roberta: I get criticized a lot for being in a straight-presenting relationship and for having a kid. Some people discount my attraction to people of all genders and asexuality because of these two things.
Shai: When I came out to my now ex, I thought it was no big deal (because i thought nearly everyone was bi). He didn’t take it well and assumed I would cheat on him and gave me “permission” to so long as I never told him about it. I was horrified he would think our relationship (always monogamous) meant so little to me. He was constantly telling me my definitions were wrong because they weren’t in line with what most people thought, so I should change to meet their expectations or use different words because they were right and I was wrong (ie: bisexuals sleep with more than one sex and aren’t faithful and can’t be and everyone knows that, so if you are with me you are straight).
Urban: When I was dating a younger guy in the early ’00s we were clubbing but went outside for air and started to make jokes about me being an older perv and him being a poor innocent boy. This was overheard by a gang of guys who came over and started to push me around telling me to leave him alone. He assured them we were only joking but they were probably just looking for a reason, hanging around outside a gay club so I was beat up by them, I fought back as hard as I could but they were three so…
Vince: Other than the endless, horrific bullying, I think just the hateful humiliation was probably the worst. I was physically beaten and hurt countless times but the degradation in public in front of peers and teachers was by far the most unbearable!!
As one who stood at the intersectionality of Black and gay, I felt like an outsider. ~ W.D.
W.D.: My freshman year of college was in the fall of 1970, a time when all the movements of social change were happening simultaneously—civil rights, Vietnam, Wounded Knee, women’s rights. The Stonewall riots had only occurred the previous year, and homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. As one who stood at the intersectionality of Black and gay, I felt like an outsider since 1) the liberal arts college I attended had a majority white student population whose exposure to African Americans was limited to television 2) the small Black student population was distant to me once I came out that year.
Allen: My grandfather (mother’s father) telling me a year or two after my mom made horribly homophobic and racist remarks that he knew of a few men who were queer in the Navy during WWII. They were incredibly discreet then, but he knew they were queer. He “didn’t understand it,” but they were “good men” and “people should just be allowed to love who they love” because they “weren’t hurting nobody.” It let me know that all hope was not lost as a queer man.
“Honey, I love you. This has always been a part of you, and I’ve loved this part of you, too.”~ Anne
Anne: Finding the language to describe my experience of my gender was a journey. I didn’t come out as genderqueer (trans/nonbinary) until I was 49, and at the time, I’d been married to my spouse for 13 years. He’s a fantastic person, open, sweet, and he’s loved and seen me since the day we met. Still, coming out to a long-term partner is terrifying, mainly because, for as many lovely stories of acceptance as there are, there are also stories in which the other person can’t reconcile their sexuality and gender with their partner’s revelation. I was scared he’d think I’d been lying to him or that I was just a blithering idiot for not coming out sooner. We have a daily practice we call a family meeting. It’s a daily check-in. Each day when he came home from work, we’d hang out in our bedroom, no phones, no TV, no music, just us, reconnecting. We talk about anything and everything, including using the time to discuss issues that may have come up between us. How’s this marriage working out for you? is a common question we ask each other regularly. I chose our family meeting to broach the subject. We were cuddled up, and I just dove in feet first, saying, “Hey, so, you know, I think I’m, I mean I know I’m, I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past year, I’ve felt like this for most of my life, and yeah, so I’m genderqueer.” When I was finally trailed off into a mumbling nervous mess, he smiled at me, this loving, beautiful smile full of all the warmth and acceptance, and said, “Honey, I love you. This has always been a part of you, and I’ve loved this part of you, too.”
Charlie: My mother use to tell this story that in 1970, at the tender age of like 3 and ½ years old Judy Garland’s variety show was in re-runs, as of course she had died the year before, but she had Barbara Streisand on her show with their iconic “Happy Days” duet. Later in the show Ethel Merman joined them and my mother said I was RIVETED to the TV the entire show. My mother said then she knew I was very different than little boys. It’s also my favorite memory as a little boy.
My sons were instantly accepting and had no qualms about what was just a part of who their dad was.~ David
David: This has to be the love and support my two sons have given me. Telling your children that their dad is not the person they thought, is an excruciatingly difficult moment and one that can only be done when you and they are ready. My sons were instantly accepting and had no qualms about what was just a part of who their dad was. They have been brought up to be accepting of other people. They are well-travelled and have experienced many different cultures around the world. Deep down I knew they would not be anything other than understanding, but still, it is a very difficult thing to do. As for heartwarming and realizing that living authentically is the right way, I took my youngest son along with me to an event hosted by Queer Britain Museum, and I heard him talking to a group saying that he was there supporting his dad. That is Pride. I almost burst.
Estebán: Not sure if this would qualify as heartwarming, but it is amusing. It is one of my favorite stories to tell from when I was a pretty young gay boy in college. Freshman year of college, I knew very little of what it meant to be gay. This was in the mid-90s. I literally went to a gay bookstore and found books on gay history to even try to understand what it meant. That was when I learned about Stonewall, Harvey Milk, and tons of other gay history. By my sophomore year, I had joined an LGBTQ club on campus. It was simply called the Rainbow Club. It was the first time I had felt emerged with a group of other LGBTQ people. Everyone was welcoming and I finally felt like I had found my people. There was going to be a stand-up comedy show in town and we decided to go as a group. Now I loved standup, I would stay up late at night as a teenager to watch Evening at the Improv. So, I had a rough idea of what it would be like at a live show. We got there and one of the people in our group insisted we sit in the front row. Now, having seen comedy standup on TV, I knew that was the worst idea. But I went along with it. Between the acts, the emcee would come out and entertain the crowd. He was older, probably close to my parents’ age at the time. He kept glancing down at me, the pretty wide-eyed gay boy. During one of the mini-sets, he pauses and looks down at me. “Aren’t you the cutest little thing? How old are you?” I respond, “19” He does this pose and sound and then says, “Aww, I have cockrings older than you.” I was mortified. I seriously thought I was going to die on the spot. Looking back, I find the whole thing hilarious, and I wouldn’t trade that memory for anything.
Eugene: The acceptance that I found in my spouse’s family as his significant other and later as his spouse.
Hadrian: After I came out to my father, we spent 20+ years not talking about it. But when he was in his 80s, he came to visit me and I finally decided that we needed to have a discussion about it. So I brought up the subject and he rather predictably threw the story of Sodom and Gomorrah at me. But I was prepared for that. I gave him a very in-depth analysis of the passage and what it says in the Hebrew. After several minutes of that, he three Leviticus at me. And I did the same thing. We slowly worked our way through all the Bible verses, and for each one I was prepared for him, and he couldn’t really respond to my analyses because I was going into way more depth than he was. Finally, he said, “I can see I have to do some more thinking about this.” I replied, “I don’t expect you to say you think I’m right. But I hope you can see that I’m approaching this as a serious and faithful Christian, the way you raised me to.” “Yes, I can see that.” And that was my win condition, the best outcome I had been able to picture. The next morning I dropped him off at the airport. As I was getting his suitcase of the car, he said, “At my age, I’m not going to be traveling any more. So if you don’t come out to Oregon, this is the last time I’ll see you.” That sounds manipulative, but he was just being a good pragmatic Scandinavian Lutheran. And then he shook my hand and said, “The Lord be with you.” It felt like he was an Old Testament patriarch giving me his blessing. It was his way of saying “I don’t agree with your choices, but you’re doing ok.” I cried all the way home. And he was right. That was the last time he ever saw me. The next time I saw him, he was comatose in a hospital bed from a heart attack and the nurse was preparing to turn off his life support. My father was normally a very emotionally obtuse man—growing up among Scandinavian Lutherans in rural Minnesota during the Great Depression will do that to you—and I have no idea how he knew exactly what to say in that moment at the airport. But it was one of the most healing moments of my life.
Jean-Christophe: It was the “year” (around 7-8 months in fact) I spent with the AIDS-Hilfe Frankfurt e.v. volunteering in the needle exchange program (yes a needle exchange program in 1987-88!). At the very beginning I just made coffee and was doing mainly menial chores. But rapidly I took a real interest in talking with some of the “patrons” who came thrice a week to exchange their used needle and syringe, take a coffee made for 40% of sugar and milk (as heroin makes you crave for sugar) and was so strong that if anyone but the addicts had drank it they would have not slept for a week!, and/or meet with one of the social workers who were also part of the team. I had a crush on one of the recovering addict. He was turning his life around (I could tell that as he was always clean and wearing clean clothes when he came to the bus) and had plans. We spent one bizarre night, just walking in central Frankfurt, he told me everything about heroin, the market!, the price of the different sorts of heroins and where it came from … I guess when you’re 17/18 you don’t really care you are walking with a junkie in some of the most dangerous parts of a city (known then as the European Heroin Mecca), saying hello to armed dealers, prostitutes and their pimps, talking freely about being not interested because you are gay and the prostitute or the pimp giving you some advice as to where to go to find someone interesting or exciting whether free of charge or on a paying basis!
He told me he wished my life wouldn’t have to be harder because I was gay, but it didn’t change the way he felt about me.~ Kevin
Kevin: When I came out to my late father, he was very supportive. He told me he wished my life wouldn’t have to be harder because I was gay, but it didn’t change the way he felt about me. He passed away in 2012, but this memory always makes me feel loved.
Lyndizzle: The first affirming straight person I came out to was a nun at the Catholic chaplaincy at university. She was awesome about it. The feeling of being accepted without judgment by someone I respected was stupendous.
Marcus: I had pretty much come to terms with staying single for the rest of my life and stopped looking for The One when fate brought me and my boyfriend together. We’ve been a happy couple for 13 years now and I will never love anyone the way I love him.
She said it made her feel so sad because I had been struggling with being gay all alone… ~ Maestro
Maestro: When I came out to my immigrant Italian mother, I rambled on not letting her speak. I was afraid of what she would say. The first question was whether I had AIDS. Then she said it made her feel so sad because I had been struggling with being gay all alone—that I was afraid she’s stop loving me. She worried for my struggle, loneliness, pain. I’ll never forget her tight embrace following that conversation.
Maxime: When I came out to my husband as genderfluid/genderqueer, I had to explain to him, the best I could, what it meant. But my husband is a pragmatic French, so he just said, “Should I call you George from now on?” It had made us laugh. Then a couple of days ago, we had a chat about trans people and being trans, and I just sort of told him my thoughts, and of not being sure if I were trans somehow, maybe… He just said that he would love me no matter what. To me, having his acceptance means more than anything.
Melissa: My father was looking at a picture on my wall that was hanging crooked. He said: “It’s not straight.” My reply was: “That’s okay, neither am I.” He stood with his back to me for a solid minute, his shoulders shaking with laughter. Then he turned around, grabbed me in one of his trademark bear hugs, kissed me and asked if he could tell people because it was one of the funniest things he’d ever heard.
She whispered into my ear, “I was never that brave,” and that was how I learned she was a nonagenarian queer woman. When we speak up, we find each other.~ ‘Nathan
‘Nathan: When I worked at a bookstore, I had a repeat customer who was a lovely, older woman in her nineties who was an absolute treasure. She was originally from Eastern Europe, and we became good friends partly over her assumption that my name, ‘Nathan, meant I was Jewish (I’m not), and she would often tell me about some of the terrible things she survived, though rarely with any specific details. She’d followed me from store to store when I got transferred and promoted, and we even gave each other small presents (she’d give me a gift at Christmas, I’d pass her a gift at Hannukah). When the laws changed, and I proposed, she saw my ring and gasped. “You’re married?” I explained I was engaged, starting to worry how this might go, and she asked, “you found a lovely woman?” and I just… couldn’t. I’d promised myself that unless my safety was involved, I wasn’t going to lie about my impending marriage. So I said, “A lovely man, actually.” She burst into tears. I wrapped her in a hug, with no idea what else to do, and she whispered into my ear, “I was never that brave,” and that was how I learned she was a nonagenarian queer woman. When we speak up, we find each other.
Phaeton: When I came to terms with being gay, it was a grand epiphany. As a young man, I could be right and the whole world could be wrong! Stunning. It freed my mind and gave me confidence that has been like a suit of armor I have worn my whole life serving me well. The fire that springs up in my eyes when I defend not only my rights but more importantly to me, other people’s rights, is an all but physical force. I know in the deepest part of me that queer people really are special because they come to this understanding on their own. I have seen the empathy this realization has generated in queer people over and over again. I truly am proud to be gay, on a fundamental, indescribable level.
Rob: I have found a great group of friends and family. We celebrate together, we grieve together, we’ve laughed, we’ve lost, we’ve loved.
Roberta: Finding out a friend from high school (whom I still keep in touch with) is also ace was nice.
Shai: My son is Ace, just like me. We bought a big Ace Pride flag for our apartment window. We joke that he was a product of asexual reproduction.
“I have always held the conviction that we all should love the people we love, regardless of who they are, so that’s something you shouldn’t even have to ask.”~ Urban
Urban: When I came out and had a new Commanding Officer I told him I was gay and asked him if that would be a problem between us. His only response was “I have always held the conviction that we all should love the people we love, regardless of whom they are, so that’s something you shouldn’t even have to ask.”
Vince: I have several but probably the one that’s most special would be on my wedding day…outside on a beautiful patio at a popular local restaurant, gorgeous sunny day. When people realized it was a wedding ceremony taking place and a gay one at that, there were OOOO’s and AAAHHH’s and people cheered (quietly of course) It really touched my heart as I was terrified of hecklers ruining the entire day.
W.D.: Growing up in my church as a teenager of the 1960s and a young adult in the early 1970s, I felt invisible, which has often happened in Black churches in regard to its LGBTQ members. I moved away from my hometown and stayed away for 26 years. I am back at that same church now with a husband and a son, serving God in authenticity as a Black gay man, with the respect and support of my congregants, my fellow church officers, and our pastor.
This isn’t the most profound or revolutionary advice–what I have to offer today–but let’s talk about universal links.
Recently, an author friend and I were talking about promos on social media, and I mentioned that a universal link is always important inevery. single. post. It seems so simple–like everyone would just know this, right? Trust me, there are a lot of people who don’t even know what a universal link is.
Why should they? Most people don’t work in tech or fully understand most of the technology they use.
There’s absolutely no shame in not knowing anything. Almost anyone who has used the internet has clicked on a universal link at some point but they had no idea. They weren’t meant to know. There’s no reason for a website to indicate that any of their links are universal links. So…your average person, while maybe having a vague idea of how URLs and links work, doesn’t really give it much thought. There was a time that I had no clue about universal links.
So…what is a “universal link?”
A universal link is like a URL in that it directs an internet browser to a specific website, however, it matches a URL to a group of URLs and is coded to take the internet user to the site that fits their needs. For example, a book link I share on Twitter will take the person who clicks on it to the Amazon website for their specific country.
Why is this important?
Imagine that I go to the Australian Amazon site. I live in the United States. If I try to buy something from the Australian site, it will give me a message that a book I want is not available. Because I do not live in that country. I need to go to the U.S. site in order to purchase the book.
Amazon doesn’t give customers messages telling them they are on the wrong site.
So, if a customer sees that a book is unavailable, instead of checking to see if they’re on the right site…they might just give up. Lost sale. Sad author. Bad times.
But why would someone be on the wrong Amazon site to begin with? Who pulls up the Amazon site for a different country???
Good question. Many people looking to sell things through Amazon will simply cut the URL in their browser (from their product page) and paste it into their tweet or post. This link is for the product in their country because they are on their country’s version of that website.
So, it’s not the customer’s fault they ended up in the wrong place. It’s the person who made the post. The seller.
By having a universal link, this oopsie is avoided. An author/seller can simply paste a universal link (which is generally shorter and uses less of the maximum characters allowed) and they can rest assured that the potential customer is directed to the best place for them to buy their book/product.
I know you’ve been asking since the first sentence of this post: “Well, where do I get a universal link for my book/product???”
Some of the more popular services to make universal links are:
But there are tons of free and not-so-free options out there. A simple Google search will help you find the one that is best for you and your product(s).
Lastly, let’s talk about the psychology of this situation. And, by “psychology”, I mean facts that I’ve totally made up based on my experience as a reader and customer.
In my experience, if an ad for a book catches my eye and the author/publisher has drawn my attention with an amazing blurb or cover, it will make me consider buying it. I don’t buy every book that catches my eye (I don’t know what you’ve heard and I’m offended), but maybe 33% of the time, if an ad is great and the book looks interesting, I’ll click on the link and at least add the book to my wish list.
If the link takes me somewhere else…for example, another landing page where I have to search for another button to take me to a bookseller, I’m probably going to lose interest quickly. There are maybe two authors I would put that much effort in for, but someone I never heard of is probably not getting that courtesy. Does that make me a douche? No. It makes me a customer with a life. I’m not going to waste 10 minutes searching out a product I’m not even sure I want.
Make it easy for me to give you my money.
One of the reasons Amazon is a huge international business worth fuck-tons of money is that they make it easy for you to give them your money. One click purchase? Yup? Buy Now button? Yup. Saves your shipping and payment info so you don’t have to enter it each time? Yup. From a product page to having the product, customers sometimes only have to click a single button on the site to get their product. Want an ebook in your Kindle? Click “Buy Now” and it’ll be on your device in seconds.
Don’t make customers beg you to take their money.
A seller has to catch a customer’s eye…and then they have a set timeframe to keep that interest and make a sale. If you can get the person whose eye you caught to your product page in under 10 seconds by clicking a single link, you’re much more likely to get them to click “Buy Now.”
Some exceptions to this are – some customers prefer to buy from an indie bookstore. Or a brick and mortar store. Or they want to order from their local bookshop. These customers are GOLD and will put in extra work. You don’t have to worry about them. If your ad is great and they want your book, they will get that damn book. However, that is not how most internet shoppers (or shoppers in general) behave. They want what they have an interest in easily accessible and they don’t want to have their time wasted.
Some customers like to comparison shop as well. They’ll check every bookseller website to see where they can get it cheapest. These customers are amazing, too!
We don’t have to worry about these customers. As small-time authors or merchants, we have to focus on the customers who are used to what big corporations can provide–convenience, ease, rapidity.
I’m not proud of this, but just to give you more insight into how our brains work when we’re in “customer mode” – one time, I wanted a particular notebook. I was going to buy it from a stationary store that specializes in, well, stationary. I wanted to buy from them online because it was the pandemic, they were a small business, and I wanted to support small businesses when I could–especially when they were relying on online business so heavily.
However, I could not find where the actual purchase page was.
I kept getting redirected to the product description, product ad, blah blah blah. Finally, I gave up and bought it on Amazon. At a higher price.
I paid five dollars extra because time is money and I’d already wasted $5 of my time (in my mind) trying to buy from the stationary store.
So…in summation, universal links make it easier for customers to give you their money.
Use them. Customers will thank you with clicks and (hopefully) sales.
Today, I decided to take the easy way out of writing a blog post. This last week, I’ve shared the book trailers for 3 upcoming books in 2022 on Twitter. For those of you who don’t have Twitter, or just don’t follow me, I’m sharing them here today, along with any blurbs/information I can share at this time.
It’s a short post, but hopefully, it will get you all jazzed for 2022!
THE WARMTH OF OUR CLOSEST STAR – The long awaited sequel to BETWEEN ENZO & THE UNIVERSE. I don’t think this one needs much explanation. However, we’ll all get to revisit Enzo and Peter, and find out what happened after their one perfect night in Montreal. Spanning nearly a decade of life after that one night, WARMTH should leave readers satisfied.
POSSIBLY TEXAS – Jordan Burke has spent much of his life on the road with his wannabe actress mother. When his mother decides that he just can’t keep traveling the country with her, he’s sent to live with his stepfather in the quirky, mysterious town of Possibly, Texas. They don’t immediately hit it off. Left to his own devices, Jordan has nothing to do but acquaint himself with Possibly. Almost immediately, Jordan begins to wonder why the town is so weird, why Possibilians are even weirder, and what the boy with Poliosis is building in the big red barn by the creek.
TGatDC – Title and full cover reveal coming soon…watch Twitter for more information.
I can be happily walking my dog. Taking a shower. Eating breakfast. Watching a movie. Riding in the car with my husband. In the middle of a damn REM cycle.
And the voice comes.
“What if…,” It says as an opening.
The voice is a book trying to push its way through the birth canal that is my brain. Okay, so that elicits a pretty graphic mental image of blood and viscera and a lot of heavy breathing and grunting–and those are usually things people don’t want to imagine when thinking of the creative process.
But it’s a pretty good analogy, honestly. An idea popping into a writer’s head is almost like a birth. And it’s the best kind of birth because it comes with the best gender reveal party.
Congratulations! It’s a book!
Just sayin’…
Regardless of the oogey feelings this analogy elicits, a sudden spark of an idea that pops into my brain suddenly is where almost every book starts. It’s where the book first starts its life. It’s not when I create the Word file (yeah, come at me), or type the first word, or start outlining. It’s a single thought.
Some of my books have started with a fully formed plot popping into my head. Or a wish to write a type of story that everyone loves, but make it queer. I guess, when you think about it, that’s how my writing career began.
Not that I’m even close to being the first writer to think of just taking a traditional Young Adult trope and making it Queer AF, but that’s how I started. The simple idea that I loved a story I had read, but wanted to see it with leading characters who were queer is a good start.
So, any idea that pops into my head–regardless of when or where that happens–can lead to great ideas. I just need my brain to give birth to a book baby, and I can start the rest of the steps.
A non-comprehensive list of simple thoughts that have popped into my head in the past that have led to published books:
Can anyone really plot out their coming-out?
What if two boys could only be friends during summer?
What would a celebrity do if they were worn out and had to return to their sleepy hometown?
Can Othello be made queer?
Can I explain how one night can become an epic love story?
Mistaken Identity: Sex Worker Edition.
All of these thoughts have led to whole ass books being written and then being published. Sometimes, a simple, intriguing thought can get me more excited to outline and/or write an entire book more than a complex, fully fleshed out one. In fact, it can be more exciting simply because there’s so much possibility. So much discovery to be done. I’m going into the story completely blind, willing to let the characters tell me what needs to happen.
I give myself over to The Muse and just go with it.
Often, those are my favorite books. The ones where I don’t think about “does this work” or “does that work” or “will people like this” or “is this going to be an issue?” I just run with the idea and write it the way it unfurls as I go. It feels completely free, uninhibited, and thrilling. I feel like a real creative. A real writer.
I’m not just some guy writing a story because I think it might sell a few copies. I am actually creating for the sake of creating.
So, next time the Book Stork™ slides into your brain and deposits a brain fetus, don’t fight it. Just go with it. It might turn into some of your best work.
Some people may say today is the first day of June; I say it’s the first day of PRIDE!
Lately, there has been a lot of discourse about PRIDE, how the community treats its members internally, how PRIDE should and should not operate, and lots of other spats I just don’t find very productive right now. Not that many conversations shouldn’t be had–particularly, how people in the LGBTQIA community treat each other–but the way these conversations are being conducted (particularly where… *cough* Twitter *cough*) just isn’t very productive.
I was going to write an entry addressing all of this before I got to the meat of the post, but I decided against it. Today, I just want to celebrate one of my favorite times of the year. Regardless of everything–all of the discourse–PRIDE is a wonderful time to me. Not that I don’t love my LGBTQIA community 365/366 days a year–but during PRIDE, that love and respect takes on a magical feeling. It’s like Christmas for the queers.
I love seeing the twinks in their manties dancing on floats, the Dykes on Bikes, the pet parade where all the animals wear rainbow kerchiefs and the like, the elder gays marching together and reminding us of our history and who got us where we are today, THE DRAG QUEENS AND KINGS, the muscle gays, the leather daddies, the queer families bringing their babies in strollers for their first PRIDE, the trans community coming out, the black, brown, white (and everything in between), my non-binary siblings, the allies coming to show support, all of it. I love all of it. I love the sterilized family friendly events–such as the parade and marathons and pet parade. I love the naughty side where shirtless men dance around and leather and straps and harnesses are abundant. I love the concerts and the speakers and the older members of the community sitting around near the parade site, willing to tell anyone stories about our history.
I’m not particularly interested in some of the things PRIDE offers, but I support it all because it’s all part of US.
PRIDE, a long time ago, was the one day a year where all of us “freaks” could take to the streets and be exactly who we are–before being stuffed back into a box for the other 364 days of the year. We had that one day where we kind of didn’t have to worry about losing housing, jobs, healthcare, our families–or worse–over our PRIDE. We had to be kind to each other but we didn’t police each other because it was all we had.
I’d hate to see that spirit squashed.
I wish PRIDE was broadcast like the Macy’s Day Parade at Thanksgiving. Alas, that’s probably asking too much. For now…
Regardless, today, I wanted to jump PRIDE off with list of my favorite queer media. Movies, music, books, and the like, that you can enjoy during PRIDE. Media that can help you connect to your LGBTQIA roots. Granted, this is far from a comprehensive list (it’s extremely short compared to what is available, actually), but these are just some of my favorites.
Hopefully, you’ll all find something new to watch, listen to, read, or whatever, that you’ve never seen or heard of before. Something to help you enjoy PRIDE even more this year–especially since we’re living in a time when it may be difficult for most of us to attend an event in person.
Now that I’ve said that–don’t forget–if you do go to in person PRIDE events, wash your hands, observe social distancing rules, and wear ya’ damn masks! But have as much fun as possible while being safe!
I realize that all of these books may not have been written by queer authors. Regardless, these are books with queer characters and queer plotlines that I enjoy.
Regardless of how you are able to celebrate PRIDE this year–maybe you stay at home and watch queer movies and make rainbow cookies?–or you strap on your mask and hit the parade, I hope you are proud. I hope you spend time reflecting on our history, our community, and how we all need to respect, accept, and love each other more and more each day.
This PRIDE, speak truth, speak to power, and, most importantly, love yourself and each other.
Today’s blog post isn’t really a blog post, I suppose. It’s more like a long-form “Chase’s Diary” entry. Just a little “here’s what’s happened, what’s happening, and what’s to come.”
May was an exciting month for me! Hopefully, it was for all of you, too!
MURDER AT THE RED ROOSTER TAVERN (A Point Worth LGBTQ Paranormal Romance Book 7) was released on May 7th. I’ve already had numerous people ask me: “what the hell is actually going on???” Which is always fun for my evil little soul. Honestly, I’m kind of shocked that no one has figured it out yet. Or maybe they have and those are the people who haven’t chewed me a new butthole? Regardless, I can’t wait until Book 8 (MURDER AT THE DIME A DOZEN) comes out and everyone reads the first chapter. That will answer ALL of your questions. Tee hee.
On May 18th–in the last blog post–I released A SPECIES OF SPECIAL CONCERN, a FREE follow-up story to A SURPLUS OF LIGHT. So far, that has received a warm welcome. Hopefully, for my reader-friends who have been with me for 3 years, it was a nice treat.
Next month, PRIDE is coming. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, my friends! Pride Month always makes me happy, even though I wish there wasn’t a need for such a thing. I’m looking forward to a month of celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community, doing all the (socially responsible) activities, and just being my queer little self to the queerest I can be! I think I’ll celebrate with food (natch), outdoorsy stuff, lots of rainbows, and some queer literature.
How do you plan to celebrate?
Since PRIDE is next month, I don’t really have much planned as far as writing goes. Don’t expect any super exciting news from me during PRIDE. However…early July might bring some exciting news. Who’s to say?
I am putting together a Street Team currently, so maybe that’s a clue of what to expect…hmmmm?
So, I guess two things I should point out (yet again) to all of you are:
chaseconnor.com 