Porkchop’s Odyssey: On Fatness, Transness, and Pants

I. Prelude

II. Lil’ Elliot and his damn euphoria

III. The Quest for The Perfect Chinos

IV. Returning to Fat Lady Land

• The belly area of the pants — right above/around your crotch will loosen throughout the day
• Your thighs will rub and so you’ve got to be mindful of the quality of the fabric between your legs.

V. Broken Promises of Online Sizing Charts

VI. Thick Thighs and Fat, Transmasc Dreams

VII. Post-script

Joy Oladokun’s “Proof of Life” Will Save Your Soul

Decades from now, I imagine I will be sitting around a campfire in the woods with my oldest friends – queerdos who have retired to the mountains with our dogs, partners, and guaranteed incomes. Wearing flannel and overalls, one of my friends will light a blunt. [Calm yourself – it will be legal everywhere by then.] Another will throw out a question to our group, “So where were you when you first heard Joy Oladokun’s Proof of Life?”

Some of us will quietly think. One of my friends, the one with the voice of an angel, will sing a bit of the chorus from the final track on the album, “Somehow:”

I know what goes up comes down
And if you stick around
Life can change with the weather
Oh, somehow things just get better

Maybe someone will join in with the chorus, and I will smile, remembering the first time I heard those words. It was another cold, gray Friday in Ohio. I was neck-deep in work, as I always was back then. The world was on fire – as it always is somewhere. I will say that I played the album from top to bottom the morning it was released. I will tell my friends about how I repeated it until the sun shined a few days later, how I knew it would be an album that I would hold dearly just as the songs held me.

I imagine my friends will all nod, smile in agreement, and we will spend the evening swapping stories and bits of Proof of Life. We’ll talk about that time in our lives – when some of us wanted to die, when others that we loved did, and when we were just trying to make it through each day while our world was crumbling. We will toast to freedom and Joy Oladokun, the queer Black Bruce Springsteen of our generation, for an album that brought us to this moment.

If you’re still reading, I recommend stopping here. I recommend getting in a car, finding a backroad to drive down with the windows down (mountains preferred), and blasting Proof of Life through the speakers. Maybe ask a friend or lover to accompany you — definitely not a hater though, this ain’t no hating music. This album is holy water.

With her fourth studio release, Nigerian-American Joy Oladokun sought to bring the world an album that sees us, everyday folks, in our struggles and offers us a glimpse of hope. In short, she succeeds. Released last Friday, Proof of Life is a collection of tender ballads, uplifting anthems, and truth-filled realities that encapsulates what it means to be “just trying to make it” in this moment. It’s music for those of us who are growing, loving, aching, and wandering aimlessly (and sometimes hopefully) through a world on fire.

Like her previous albums, the thirteen-track masterpiece showcases Oladokun’s voice which is somehow always equal parts raspy and smooth as butter. With production and songwriting collaborations from some heavy hitters, Proof of Life has got the juice to make it an instant indie classic.

If you’re a fan of Oladokun (or even just an indie music fan), there’s probably a chance you’ve already heard a few of the tracks on Proof of Life. The album’s first single, “Keeping the Lights On,” actually dropped in January 2022 right after her Austin City Limits performance. Co-written with industry titans, Mike Elizondo and Ian Fitchuk, it is your typical uplifting indie-pop anthem. In it, Joy Oladokun sets the tone for the rest of the album – this is an album that sees us fighting through the darkness. Her voice reminds us, “It ain’t easy” to keep the light on but Joy says, “we won’t let go” and it’s easy to believe her.

Other standout singles from Proof of Life include “Sweet, Sweet Symphony,” a dreamy duet with Chris Stapleton, and “We’re All Gonna Die” which features Noah Kahan. The Stapleton duet is exactly what you might expect – perfect in all of the ways. If you’re a queer couple looking for your wedding song, this might be it. I’m actually considering re-marrying my wife just to slow dance to it under some twinkle lights in a repurposed barn. As if that wasn’t enough, the video for the song is probably the cutest thing I’ve seen in ages.

When I first heard Oladokun’s duet with Kahan, “We’re All Gonna Die,” I first thought, “damn, this is so relatable.” The song’s sound is upbeat (think the aughts pop-rock), but the message definitely feels so connected to the activism and feelings of so many of us millennials and Gen Z-ers – reflective of generations screaming, fighting, and escaping our way to the end of the world.

Three years into a pandemic that has changed our lives, Proof of Life feels like one of the few albums that somehow finds a way to capture the grief and uneasiness that accompanies our daily existence. In “Changes” (first released February 2023, cowritten with Semisonic frontman, Dan Wilson), Oladokun sings, “people still don’t understand / What it’s like to hope again and again knowing / That heartache’s gonna be there ’til the end.” I have thought about “Changes” almost every day since I first heard it earlier this year. In these words (and rest in the song), Joy’s queerness, Blackness, and loving spirit shine in the raw and hopeful truth-telling. This is not the only song where this happens. On “Taking Me for Granted” and “Somebody Like Me,” Oladokun’s smoothness is backed by gospel choirs (shout out to the amazing The McCrary Sisters) that leave me feeling as blessed as my grandmama did after Sunday service. Think: Black Church vibes but queer with guitar (+ post-church brunch).

This album is worth listening to just for the last minute of “Somebody Like Me” which makes me just want to yell, “Go ahead and pass the collection plate!” Church is in session and Pastor Joy is in the pulpit.

She comes by her holiness honestly – she was raised in the church and led worship services growing up. But Joy Oladokun always keeps it real about the nuances of her journey with sexuality, spirituality, and life. Another raw ballad, “The Hard Way,” begins “​​Jesus raised me, good weed saved me.” All the queers say, “Amen!”

With the exception of one track, “Revolution,” that I’m still learning to love – Oladokun does not miss. Don’t get me wrong, “Revolution” is a beautiful song with an even lovelier message of community and change. Whenever I hear it, I think, “montage of underdog boxer training in their old gym for a big fight.” I guess the “miss” is not really anything Oladokun did, except for keeping the Maxo Kream feature on this song. I love some of Maxo’s work, but this weak verse gives “weird Christian rapper” vibes in the middle of the song. I hate to say it but… was Macklemore not available for this one? These days, Maxo is caught up in some legal trouble so I doubt they’ll ever perform it live together (which might also be a blessing in disguise).

Joy Oladokun’s Proof of Life is top-shelf gold. There’s a song for everyone (unless you’re a racist homo/transphobe – if that’s you, there are no songs for you). With soulful refrains and sounds that wrap you in warmth, this album is a reminder that we’re not so alone in this sh*t of a world and leaves us believing that somehow things will get better.

---

You can stream Proof of Life now.

“I Needed To Create Something To Save Myself… That’s What I’ve Done”

Black History Month is often focused on prolific members of the Black community throughout history who contributed to the world in the name of betterment, and while they are incredibly important to our community, we often overlook those who are still alive and continuing to make a difference. We know that much of the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation has largely been led by Black members of the community who often don’t get enough credit for their contributions. This year, the Autostraddle team decided to focus our Black History Month coverage on the Black elders who are still here and still doing the work.

We connected with Black elders through a partnership with SAGE, the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ older people. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in New York City, SAGE is a national organization that offers supportive services and consumer resources to LGBTQ+ older people and their caregivers. Autostraddle was honored to talk with five Black LGBTQ+ elders, and we’ll be publishing these interviews throughout the month of February. We welcome our readers to celebrate these members of the Black LGBTQ+ community with us, while they’re still here to be celebrated.

---

I can count the times I’ve been to Atlanta on one hand — once on a family vacation and another time, almost twenty years later, for work. Both times, I found myself wondering what it would be like to exist in a space so rich with Blackness, charm, and melanated queer community — what possibilities exist in a richness that defiantly merges past, present, and future? Last month, I got some answers and the results are shared in the beautiful transcript below.

I spent an hour in conversation with Black Atlanta’s gay uncle, Malcolm Reid — a passionate advocate and community organizer who’s spending “retirement” creating affirming spaces and programs for HIV-positive elders. Despite calling Atlanta home for the past four decades, I immediately hear New York in Malcolm’s voice when he talks of the wonderful relationship he had with his mother and his upbringing. “Atlanta is home,” he asserts though. In our conversation, we cover a lot — growing up Black, boy, and not-yet-gay in New York City, coming out, falling in love with Atlanta and his husband of 26 years, aging with HIV, and the importance of community for Black LGBTQ+ elders all over.

At 65, Malcolm Reid’s journey of finding self, home, and fighting like hell is one that reminds us that there is nothing more beautiful than building the life we deserve with the ones we love.

shea: Let’s start at the beginning – where are you from? What was growing up like?

Malcolm: So, I’m 65 years old. I was born in 1957 at St John’s Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. For the first four and a half years of my life, I lived in Brooklyn. And then my mother and father separated. So we moved to the Bronx and moved into Castle Hill Projects. In Brooklyn, we were living in Brevoort projects. Then we moved to the Bronx to Castle Hill Projects. I will say that back then the projects were the “lower middle class,” and “mid-middle class” housing for people. My mom always said that people that lived in the projects back in those days all had good jobs. They all wore uniforms to work. They were either nurses, cops, people that worked for the city or the post office, or whoever.

My mom was a nurse and it was just her. Growing up, we struggled but my mom always made sure that whatever she had to do, we (my sister and myself) were going to go to Catholic school and we were going to get the best education we possibly could. So with the help of her mother, they made sure that we had the best upbringing as kids as we possibly could. Then later on, she met a man and had my two other little sisters. So then we were a family of four with a single mom living in the projects. And I mean, we knew that we didn’t have everything, but we didn’t know that we were poor. You know what I mean?

My sister and I attended a Catholic high school, but my two younger sisters were the first kids in the family to go to the public school system. Mom was really cognizant of the fact that I was the only boy in the house and she didn’t want me in public schools. Even back then, she didn’t want me in public schools. So she made sure that we both graduated from Catholic high schools.

That was my upbringing. I was very much a typical boy – playing basketball and football, going to the community center, and all that New York stuff. I was hanging out in the street and doing all of that, getting in trouble, and all of that good stuff.

shea: You mentioned your grandparents helping take care of you. Can you talk a little bit more about the relationship with your grandparents and the intergenerational care network that helped raise you?

Malcolm: Oh yeah, I’d be happy to. Actually, I just want to take a minute to tell my grandfather’s story because it is the story of Black America. My grandfather was a twin, his name was Herman, and his brother’s name was Thurman. I never met Thurman — Thurman died. I can’t remember how old he was when he died, but he died long before I was born. But one day, my grandfather and his brother left Wilson, North Carolina, and they walked to Richmond, Virginia, got on a freight train, and ended up in New York City.

I always tell people, had the train ended up in Chicago, that’s where we would’ve been born. If the train ended up in Los Angeles, that’s where we would’ve been from because when they got on the train, they didn’t know where it was going. They just knew that they had to get out of the south. So, he got to New York and met my grandmother, and my grandfather and grandmother were together for 67 years before my grandfather passed.

When my mother and father broke up, my grandparents knew my mom was going to need help and they made sure that she was able to move from Brooklyn to the Bronx so that we could all be close together. They lived in the projects as well. Even though he wasn’t in the house with us, my grandfather was pretty much the man in my life. My father was around. He would come around and give my mother his little $30 a week or a month or whatever it was, but my grandfather was the person who taught me how to drive. My grandfather was the person who just made sure that I knew that it was about being a man — taking care of your family, taking care of your sisters, and doing all of that, because like I said, I was the only boy.

Now, I will interject and say that when I was eight years old, my father came by to give my mother some money. I think I was acting up, and my mother was always like, “I’m going to tell your father when he comes.” So she went and told him I’d been acting up and he came over and he did what parents did back in those days — he spanked my butt and then told me that I was the man of the house now. I was eight and I was the man of the house.

At my mom’s funeral, my sister reminded me of what happened next. She said, “yeah, and a couple of weeks later when you were walking around puffing your chest out, talking about you were the man of the house, mom grabbed you and pulled you to the side and said, ‘You are not my husband!’ Because I was bossing my sisters around and telling them what they should be doing. I was a bit of a terror back then!

My grandparents lived in the building directly across the street from my grade school. Their windows faced the school and my grandmother was always in the window watching what was going on. In New York, back in those days, the schools had a schoolyard, but they would also close the street so that the kids could play out in the street. If we were out in the street or in the schoolyard, my grandmother could always see. And whenever there was anything going on, she was on the phone calling my mother, “Malivene, you need to come up here after you get off of work!”

So yeah, it did take a village. Our friends’ parents and grandparents were always in the window looking out and seeing what was going on in the street. That’s how I grew up.

shea: That idea of a village just seems so different from mainstream culture today. A lot of kids aren’t outside, you don’t really talk to your neighbor. It’s so different from even the times when I grew up. Back then, it seemed like we knew everyone on the block and just living community.

Malcolm: And not only that but, Ms. Jones could come up to my mother and say, “Hey, I saw Malcolm on the basketball court doing so and so,” and my mother wouldn’t even ask any questions. She’d come home and spank my ass, because Ms. Jones had no reason to lie on me, right? Imagine telling parents today, “hey, I saw your child doing this or that.” They’d just look at you and say, “mind your own business.”

shea: Yeah. I remember growing up that if I was at my grandmother’s house or at church and one of the other old ladies saw me being mischievous, they would spank and then before I could get home, they would call and my grandma would get on me too!

Malcolm: Exactly.

shea: It was a community effort, definitely. But yeah, times are definitely changing.

Malcolm: Indeed.

shea: I want to just talk more about your relationship with your father and your grandfather, especially being a gay Black man. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Were you out to them? What were your relationships like?

Malcolm: No, I did not come out until I was 28 years old. I moved from New York to Atlanta when I was 23. And I moved to Atlanta so that I could be gay. There was such a stigma back then. My father’s favorite word was faggot. As I was becoming a teenager, he tried to be a part of my life, but he really wanted to be my buddy. He wanted to hang out. He wanted to teach me how to do all the “manly” things — how to go out to the club, how to drink, how to smoke cigarettes, how to do all of that stuff. Just feeling that stigma of growing up in the projects and the barbershop and just on the basketball court, playing basketball in school, and laughing at sissies and all of that stuff — I knew that I could not be gay in New York, so I hid it.

I started driving a cab in New York when I was 18 and those were my first sexual encounters. I would meet guys down in the Village and have little anonymous sexual hookups, but I was still very, very scared and very, very intimidated.

When I moved to Atlanta, I started to explore. My first ever relationship was here in Atlanta. After I got comfortable with him, I said, “Okay, it’s about time that I tell my folks.”

shea: And you were 28 then?

Malcolm: Yes and by that time, my older sister had moved down here as well. For me, that was kind of stressful too, because like I said, I moved to Atlanta to be gay, and now here she comes, right? I’m like, “why you got to come down here?” But she came down, and so she told me she was going to go to take the train back to New York to visit. So I wrote a letter to my mother telling her that I was gay. I also put in the letter that if she decided that she wanted to disown me, I would understand.

I wrote that in there because over those five years, between the age of 23 and 28, becoming involved in the gay community here, I knew plenty of people, especially from the south, whose parents had disowned them. Some of my best friends were people that didn’t have any place to go. They lived in shelters or whatever. So I made sure that I said that. The letter was cathartic for me because I knew that once I wrote that letter, I was free. Once I handed it to my sister, I was free. I told her, I said, “I’m going to give you this letter. Do not read it. Give it to mom when you get there.”

That was the first night that I went to a gay club in Atlanta. I went to a club called Foster’s, which then became Loretta’s. I had a great time that night. I mean, I just partied and I got home at God knows what time in the morning. Then, I spent the next day just pacing the room, waiting for the phone call.

About three o’clock in the afternoon, my mom calls me and she’s being quintessential New York mom, she’s talking about everything else but [the letter]. She’s like, “Your father’s had a flat tire. Your father decided to come to help me pick up your sister. I don’t know why he decided to be bothered, but he did. And of course, your father and his old raggedy cars, he had a flat tire,” and da, da, da. And I’m sitting on the phone thinking, Jesus Christ.

So finally she says, “So your sister gave me your letter and I read it. I have a question.”

I said, “What’s that, ma?”

She said, “Don’t you know your mother loves you?”

And I said, “Yeah, mom, I know.”

And she said, “So what’s this nonsense about me disowning you?”

I said, “Well, mom, I had to put that in the letter because I know so many people who that has happened to.”

She said, “Well, I’m not them. So don’t even!” Basically, so don’t go there with me. And then the next question she asked was, “Do you have somebody special in your life?”

And I said, “Yeah, I do right now.” She said, “Well, that’s good.”

Then we went on with the rest of the family conversation. Eventually, she asked, “Do you want me to tell your father?” I said, “I really don’t care. If you want to tell him, fine, you can.” She said, “What about your sisters?” I said, “Well, Kim and Nicole,” who were still living in New York at the time, I said, “Yeah, you can tell them.” I said, “I’ll tell Karen [the sister who moved down to Atlanta] when she gets back here.” So she said, “Okay.” That was our agreement, and that’s where we left it.

Over the years, my mom was a godsend to me because she was a nurse. In 1997, when I found out I was living with HIV, I was able to talk to her about things. A lot of my friends didn’t have that resource. She was able to tell me a lot of information. My mom is one of the reasons why I never got on AZT. My mom was like, “No, that’s killing people. Don’t do that.” She said, “They talk about it’s prolonging life, but it’s not giving anybody quality of life.” She said, “So don’t do that.”

And as my mother got up in age, I was able to move both her and her husband down here to Atlanta in 2012 and she lived down here until she died in 2020.

shea: Wow what a journey. So it sounds kind of like Atlanta is kind of home for y’all — or do you still consider New York home?

Malcolm: Oh no. I mean, sports — I’m still a Yankee fan, a Knicks fan, and a Giants fan. I will carry that with me always, so I’m a New Yorker at heart, but Atlanta is home. My whole family’s here now. All my sisters are down here. I’ve got friends and a solid community here. Atlanta is home.

shea: How did you choose Atlanta? I feel like a lot of people view New York City or San Francisco or LA as the places you want to go when you’re coming out. If you’re not in one of those places, you want to get there. So what drew you to Atlanta? How did you get there?

Malcolm: Like I said, I was driving a cab and my cousin — well, he’s not really my cousin – we grew up together as cousins. One day, he wrote me a letter. He was at Clark. It was Clark College back then before it became Clark Atlanta University. He was telling me how wonderful Atlanta was and how Black Atlanta was. Not knowing that I was gay, he was, “Man, do they got some fine honeys down here, man. You need to come down here.”

He eventually invited me to come down in September of 1980. I came down for a couple of days. I was supposed to come down for like a weekend and hang out. I ended up staying for three weeks, and really, really fell in love with the city. I still didn’t explore my gay side, but still was enamored with the Blackness that was here. It was like, not only were there Black people here, but Black people were here doing well. I also was drawn to the history. I’ve always been a political junkie. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, it was always about the Black Panthers, the Civil Rights Movement, and all of that stuff. So just seeing where Martin Luther King, Jr. had been and where all of this history happened was just amazing to me.

So when I went back to New York, I decided to drive my cab until the wheels fell off, make as much money as I could, and move back down to Atlanta. And that’s what I did. I moved down to Atlanta on December 18th, 1980. Before moving there, I did have this long list of cities that I was going to live in. I was going to explore the country. I was going to move to San Diego and I was going to live in San Francisco. I was going to go to all of these places. I parked my butt in Atlanta and never moved.

shea: I mean, Atlanta’s a great place to be though.

Malcolm: Oh yeah. Looking back on my life, I was definitely supposed to be here.

shea: That’s beautiful. Can you tell me more about your life in Atlanta and how it’s changed over the past few decades?

Malcolm: As I mentioned, I started dating a man when I was 28. I started to feel secure. The only thing about that relationship was that he was a little closeted too. He had his friends, but they didn’t go out much. They had house parties and everything else, but they kind of stayed to themselves. I wanted to explore more, so I moved on and met somebody else that had more friends, was doing more things, and was more out in the community. And so over the years, I’ve just continued to be a part of this community. Right now, if I walk into a bar with someone, they’ll say, “Dang — do you know everybody?” and I go, “Yeah, I’ve kind of been here for a long time.”

But the best thing about Atlanta is what happened in ’97 — I met the man who is now my husband. We’ve been together for 25 years. Now we’re both 65 and elder and we just have a lot of friends who feel like family.

shea: Ohhhhh! Tell me about your husband and all of the lovey-dovey things! Where did you meet?!

Malcolm: We met in the club, girl. You don’t meet a good man in the club! Well, I did. I had always been in long-term relationships. I was dating a guy for a while who was super jealous all of the time. I broke up with him, met this other guy, and he just was abusive — not in a physical way but abusive like he was trying to find himself, and quite frankly (excuse my French, there’s no other way to say this) he was fucking everybody in Atlanta. But, I was in love and so devastated.

So my friends told me, “You need to stop these long relationships. You just need to date, go out, and have dinner with guys.” So I did that. I dated a couple of people. I met one guy. He was really, really nice. We dated for a while but then it got time for us to have sex and it was horrible. So I got mad at all my friends. I was like, “Don’t ever give me advice again. I’m sick of y’all.”

After that, I called one of my friends on a Thanksgiving night and said, “I’m going to the club tonight. I’m going to have me a cocktail, and I’m going to be cute, and I’m going back to my old ways.” And he was like, “Okay if that’s what you want to do, let’s go.” So we went to Loretta’s to dance and I saw the guy that I had been dating. So I went upstairs to the bar and I was sitting at the bar all by myself — this big ole bar. They had just constructed this new bar at Loretta’s and it was huge. I looked across the bar and the bartender was on the other side of the bar talking to this group of people. When I looked at the group of people he was talking to, I saw this guy and was like, “Damn, he is gorgeous.” And he started looking at me!

The guy started walking around the bar toward me. Our eyes were on each other the entire time. He walked and walked and walked, and then was going to try to walk by me! And I was like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait — no, HELL NO!” So he’s like, “What?” And I was like, “You’ve been looking at me from way over there, I’ve been looking at you, and you just going to walk by and not say anything?” So he came over and we started talking. He bought me a drink and we started drinking. The next thing I knew, I was going down to the dance floor and I told my friend, Reggie, “Come get your coat out of my car because I’m leaving.” He was like, “You leaving? Where are you going?”

I said, “I met this dude.”

Reggie said, “You just went upstairs.”

I said, “Yeah, and I am leaving.”

We went to his place and we have been together ever since.

After we moved in together, we had a little barbecue at my house and he invited his whole family over. That night he said, “Baby, my family loves you.” I said, “That’s good. I’m glad.” He said, “No, you don’t understand. They ain’t never really seen me date anybody,” because he hadn’t really brought anybody around his family.

He said, “My nephew and my niece grabbed me and pulled me in the corner and they said, ‘Yo, Unc, don’t fuck this up. We like him.” And our families are still tight.

Working in the field I do, talking to gay men all the time, listening to the troubles that they have dating and relationships, and everything else — I realize that I’m blessed, but what I won’t do is give relationship advice. I tell people all the time, “Y’all’s problem is you keep trying to model your relationships after somebody else’s models, but you have to figure out your own path. What works for us may not work for you.” But ours does work.

shea: Amen! So do y’all have any kids of your own?

Malcolm: No, no. We have nieces and nephews. And then we literally have the Atlanta Black gay male community as nephews. I mean, if I walk into the bar, I hear “Hey, Unc!” all of the time. That’s who I am. As a matter of fact, my real nephew called me one day and said, “Uncle Kevin . . . Me and Ian are your only nephews, right?”

“Yeah!” I said.

“So how come everybody on Facebook calls you Unc?” he asked.

I said, “That’s just a term I’ve been deemed in the community.” I had to explain it to him.

shea: Yes for community! Tell me more about your work in the community and your journey living with HIV advocacy.

Malcolm: I work at an organization called THRIVE SS. And THRIVE stands for Transforming HIV Resentments into Victories Everlasting (the SS stands for Support Services). I retired from AT&T at the end of 2019. Prior to that, in 2017, I had started a program for Black gay men my age (over the age of 50) living with HIV, called the Silver Lining Project and that was under the THRIVE umbrella. So when I left AT&T, I became the program manager for the Silver Lining Project. Then in 2019, I became the Director of Programs for all of THRIVE and that’s the role I hold today. I just love being able to serve the community. I don’t get out in the street and do much outreach anymore. We’ve got more staff for that now, but I like putting together programs, making sure that the programs are working, and making sure the staff has what they need. I also do a lot of political advocacy. I’m the Federal Policy Chair for the US PLHIV Caucus. I also serve on a couple of community advisory boards and other coalitions. I try to keep my hand in policy work too because I think that that’s important.

I can’t complain. Life has been good. As a person diagnosed with HIV in the late nineties, I’m fortunate that I was diagnosed after ARTs. But let’s go back to my mom telling me about AZT. So in 1991, I read a story in Ebony Magazine about a Black man who had the “new gay plague” or whatever they were calling it at the time. I think they might have called it AIDS, but there was also HTLV-III and some other terms being used. One of the things that they said about him was that the lymph nodes on his neck were swollen. When I read that, it kind of scared me because the lymph nodes on my neck were swollen at that time. So I remember going to the phone and calling my mother. There’s a famous corner in Atlanta. There was a Krispy Kreme donut shop on the corner of Ponce de Leon and Argonne. Everybody knows that Krispy Kreme shop. It was a block away from my apartment and it had a payphone nearby. I walked to that payphone, called my mother, and told her about the article. I just started crying and said, “My lymph nodes are swollen.” She told me to calm down and said, “First of all, your lymph nodes could be swollen for a whole lot of other reasons, so let’s not jump to any conclusions. I want you to go to the doctor and they probably want to biopsy it. Let them biopsy it, let them tell you what it is.”

So I went to the doctor. The report came back a few weeks later — mostly medical jargon, but basically it was consistent with HTLV-III.

When I told my mom, she asked how I felt and I said, “Fine.” That’s when she said, “They’re going to want to put you on AZT — don’t let them do that. Just make sure you take your vitamins and make sure you eat well. It’s going to be okay. They’ll find something else.” So that’s what I did and I didn’t really think about it anymore after that. I mean I knew I had this thing, but I was feeling good and I just made sure that I kept up with my health. That was important to me.

shea: Talk to me a bit more about your policy work and organizing.

Malcolm: I’m the chair of the Policy and Action Committee for the US People Living with HIV Caucus, I am on the HIV Aging Policy and Action Coalition, and I’m on several community advisory boards for the metro Atlanta area. And you know about AIDSWatch, right?

shea: Yes, but tell me more!

Malcolm: Okay. So AIDSWatch happens every year. This year it’ll be in March. The last three years really were virtual, but this year we will be in person again — I’m looking forward to that. During AIDSWatch, we go to DC. The purpose of the convening is to make sure that we are building a community of advocates and that people know what the issues are, and what we’re advocating for — funding for the Minority AIDS Initiative, funding for the Ending the Epidemic Plan, and more, like funding to help reduce stigma, to stop policies that stigmatize gay and queer people, like in Florida for example.

I like being out at the forefront of the work and also behind the scenes, just trying to make our voices heard, my voice heard. I started the Silver Lining Project when I was working for AT&T and living with HIV. At AT&T, I had great insurance. My husband was a makeup artist with Estée Lauder, he had great insurance. We were fine. We were doing it, clubbing on the weekends, having a good time, and not thinking about anything. Then I started talking to people and they would talk about how they have to re-certify for ADAP every six months. And I was like, “What do you mean you got to re-certify for ADAP every six months? Your HIV is not going away every six months? What is happening here?” And they were like, “No, you got to re-certify to ensure your income hasn’t changed.”

I realized how that process was holding people back from life. People didn’t want to get promoted because if they got promoted, they would make more money and then lose their benefits. Other people were living on disability and then they wouldn’t come off of disability even though the medication was working and they were no longer “disabled,” because if you started working then you might reach the income level where you could “afford” your medication [without benefits]. I was like, “That’s crazy.” So I said, “Okay, let me see what I can do.”

I tell people this all the time, when you put something on your heart and the universe sees that it’s all good, the universe will send you the people or the tools that you need to make it happen.

A little bit later, I went on a Same Gender Loving Cruise and I met two friends of mine, Craig Washington and Jerome Hughes. Craig was already involved in the community and he was asked to hold a talkback at the end of the cruise about our experiences. The next thing I know, I found myself up on stage disclosing my status. When I did that, Jerome came to me and said, “Hey, I have this group that you might be interested in.” I said, “Okay, invite me.” The way he came up to me though, I was like, “Dude, is this Amway? Because you sound like Amway.” [chuckles]

So in October 2015, I went to the group — it was just all these guys in Atlanta living with HIV — some of them who I had seen on a regular basis. Half the room, I knew, because we’ve all been out in the clubs and everything else. I was like, “Holy crap. All these guys are living with HIV.” That group eventually blossomed into THRIVE. They were incorporated in December 2015. The group was founded by three Black gay men living with HIV — Daniel Driffin, Larry Walker, and Dwain Bridges. It was designed for us and by us. It’s been going strong for seven years. We are a membership-based nonprofit and we have probably the largest member organization of Black gay men living with HIV in the country.

Eventually, I started looking around, but I didn’t see anything for people my age. I would go to meetings and everything else, but everything was about young people. I was like, “This is kind of messed up and I don’t see anything for my age.” And then somebody said, “Well, there is an organization for older LGBTQ people called SAGE.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, let me go check them out.” But SAGE down here ain’t SAGE in New York [chuckles]. SAGE down here was very, very white and very, very old. It wasn’t working for me.

One day, I’m at a meeting and Larry, the THRIVE Executive Director said, “Well what have you experienced?” I responded, “Listen, I don’t see anything out there for guys my age.” He looked at me and said, “Well start it.” I looked over my shoulder, looked at him, and I was like, “Who me? Start what? I don’t know nothing about this. I work in corporate America. I don’t know nothing about no nonprofit stuff. I don’t know anything about this.”

But again, God sends you the people, the universe sends you the people. I met two guys — Claude Bowen and Nathan Townsend. The three of us sat down and we wrote a grant for the Silver Lining Project to get it funded. And it got funded, and it got funded massively. It was like a $400,000 grant for three years!

shea: Whoa!

Malcolm: And so with that money, THRIVE was able to get a building that we’re still in today and then start to gather other funds. We put together a program called Silver Skills, where we teach the members of the group about HIV and aging. What is HIV doing to your body? You may be on your retrovirals, you may feel better, but what is medical science saying about this? Why are you feeling the way you do? PTSD and trauma, dealing with growing up Black, growing up gay, growing up living with HIV, what are all those traumas? What things are you going through? Loss and depression? Many of us have lost friends and connections. Finally, the program ends with talking about stigma — what it’s about and how to overcome it.

We did that curriculum for three years. We met on a weekly basis or every two weeks with what we call Oba’s Roundtables, “oba” being the West African term meaning king or leader. We did Oba’s Roundtables on a regular basis, and then just had events and parties. One of the things that we pride ourselves at THRIVE and Silver Lining about is when you walk into this building, we don’t want you to be holding your head down and going, “Uh-no, I got HIV.” It’s about self-love. We want to have a good time. So we give great parties, we have great events. We’ve been doing that for seven years and the model is really, really successful.

Working with THRIVE and the Silver Living program, I also got asked to engage in other opportunities. I’m just known now for being able to support. I’ve turned into a policy wonk. People will say, “Okay, well if you need to know something about HIV law or whatever, criminalization, whatever, go, Malcolm has all of this stuff.” And just having the time of my life serving the people, and serving myself. And serving myself, right? Someone said, “I needed to create something to save myself.” That’s what I’ve done.

shea: Sounds like you’re staying booked and busy!

Malcolm: My husband says, “So you do realize you retired, right?” [chuckles]

Ronald Johnson, the Chair of the US PLHIV Caucus, and I joke all the time.

I’ll call and say “Hey Ronald, how’s retirement?” Ronald’s in his seventies and he’s “retired,” too. He’ll say, “Oh, it’s wonderful. I’m not doing anything.”

shea: Ah. Just sitting around. Just sitting around, relaxing — changing policy and all.

Malcolm: Yeah, we just chilling. One time, I said, “I think I’ll take up golf.”

shea: Ha! Before I let you go, I did hear you talk about just the lack of spaces and resources for gay Black men who are aging. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the lack that you see and the needs that you see. I do think in our society, so much of the funding and resources are geared toward young people, whether it’s youth or young adults. So I just wanted to know more about what you see and what you see the needs are, as more and more queer and gay people are aging.

Malcolm: Really it’s a social aspect. I remember being young and in the bar and pointing to an older guy going, “If I am in the bar at that age, please shoot me.” Now, I realize how blessed I am that nobody took me up on that because I’ll be dancing at the club tomorrow, having a good time, but I realized that having that social outlet is important. People see me and say, “No way you’re 65!” People begin to assume certain things when they age. You have to act a certain way. You can’t go out. You can’t do certain things. And that in itself makes you old. It doesn’t help you age, it makes you old.

So when we started working on Silver Lining, one of the things we said was we wanted to get people out of the house, because there’s somebody that’s saying, “Well, I can’t go to a bar anymore because I’m too old,” or, “I can’t go here because I’m too old.” And loneliness and isolation will kill you a whole lot faster than HIV will. So that’s part of our premise and goal — to make sure that people are living their full lives, enjoying themselves. It’s not just about going to a bar or a club. If that’s not you, that’s not you. But as long as you’re not sitting home going, “Oh, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” I mean, get out. Go to a museum, take a class, do something to make sure that you’re keeping your mind active, your spirit active.

A lot of us don’t have kids and you don’t have children to come over and talk to you. So we want to make sure that we’re getting the people out there and we’re doing the things.

SAGE does a wonderful job because SAGE first seized on the notion that we weren’t supposed to be here this long. Especially If you’re living with HIV — nobody thought that they were going to get to be 65 or 70 years old. We were all supposed to be gone. But we’re here and now as we are getting older, we’re starting to see more and more of this. We’re starting to see more and more groups for older guys, because people realize, “Oh shoot, we’re still here and we got to do this.” It’s just a matter of making sure that people are living their lives to the fullest and they’re doing everything that they can possibly do to make sure that they are happy, healthy, and thriving. That’s what we need most.

shea: Yes! Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule, you’re a busy person, to chat with me and share your story with me. I appreciate it.

Malcolm: Not a problem at all. I love telling these stories because, for me, it’s about letting people know there’s life after an HIV diagnosis. There’s life after 50. There’s life after 65. Get out there and continue to live your life. Don’t slow down. People ask me all the time, “When are you going to just slow down,” and everything else. I said, “I guess the day that they carry me out of here.”

Ain’t nobody trying to slow down! Life is fun. Keep doing it.

“A Darker Wilderness” Carves a Space for Blackness in Nature

A Darker Wilderness, a new anthology edited by Erin Sharkey, promises to deliver a lot in less than 300 pages — ten uniquely situated essays about Blackness and nature plus Sharkey’s introduction and a forward from the prolific scholar, educator, and environmentalist, Carolyn Finney.

When my advance copy of the book arrived last month, my phone pinged me through our building’s package delivery app — not to be confused with the resident app, door entry app, or guest entry app. These days, I am inundated with technology and digital life that demands my engagement at every turn. Amid the demands of adulting in Ohio’s winter, I find myself longing for stillness and sunshine. So when I got to the package delivery room, I climbed and combed over my neighbors’ bougie packages to get to a book I hoped would give me some of what I’d been missing since I relocated from the mountains to a midwestern college city.

I carried the book around with me before I cracked it open. All 287 pages fit into my backpack, my small Cotapaxi, and even my hoodie’s front pocket. This anthology travels well, and shouldn’t it?  It is, of course, a book about nature, stretching wide “from soil to stars.” The essays found within the pages are as Black and boundless as the night sky. They traverse oceans, roads, mountains, stretches of forested and farmed land, alleys, and even break through prison walls. On these pages, the anthology’s writers invite readers to accompany them on journeys in the past, present, future, and beyond. Betwixt most essays is an artifact offered by the author whose words follow. The addition of pictures, historical documents, art, and items gives the book a scrapbook-like feel that makes it feel more personal than other nature collections I’ve read.

A Darker Wilderness opens with a picture of Dr. Carolyn Finney’s mama. This photo, along with Finney’s story on the photo’s origin, her family’s complex history with the land they worked but never owned, and her own journey, set the tone for the anthology. It is one of reckoning, remembering, reconciliation, and love of land, water, sky, self, lineage, and community (both animal and plant). In closing, Finney writes that despite efforts to erase and minimize our relationships to nature and land, “our (Black folks) presence — is everywhere.” The essays that follow provide glimpses of this everywhere in a book you wish would never end.

From jump, it’s clear this ain’t no Walden Pond-type sh*t. Erin Sharkey’s introduction situates us in an all too familiar reality for many Black Americans — in the throes of the criminal justice system, specifically in the context of a prison nature writing workshop. Beginning here, at the seemingly antithetical intersection of carcerality and the vastness of nature, reflections the questions Sharkey (and the other brilliant voices included in this anthology) grapple with time and time again — What does it mean to be free? To commune in/with nature that has been stolen, renamed, and parsed for profit? To stretch one’s imagination and definitions of what is possible in ourselves and also in our world? To trace our histories and dreams through the formations of rocks, the roots of trees, and the currents of water? What they create in their answers is a beautiful collection where lyrical narratives meet history, memory meets imagination, and the archive is complicated, corrected, and burst wide open to include folks like us.

The answers to these questions and more come in the stunning prose on the pages that follow. Ama Codjoe’s “An Aspect of Freedom” bridges past and present, real and what-could-have-been in a lyrical essay exploring violence against Black bodies across time, protest, and the liberatory properties of water. Water — dropping from sky, eye, and bottle — binds her braided stories to that which nourishes us: earth, family, memory, and the hope for change. katie robinson’s “Here’s How I Let Them Come Close” is a meditation on fear, bugs, and how the natural and supernatural connects to the stories, people, and places that made us. It is for the curious, the therapized, and those of us who are scared as hell.

Other essays in the anthology like Michael Kleber-Diggs’ “There Was a Tremendous Softness” and Glynn Pogue’s “A Family Vacation” beautifully accompany Codjoe and robinson’s attention to the complexities of Black familial bonds and our relationship to the land on which we grow up, work, own, and learn to love. Both Kleber-Diggs and Pogue’s ability to weave narratives of grief and healing with history (both general and familial) echo Finney’s assertion that our people are (and have been) everywhere. Sometimes everywhere is an old Woolworth’s mansion converted to a bed & breakfast for Black folks. Other times, that everywhere happens while fishing at a catfish farm in southern Kansas. More often than not, that “everywhere” is land that has been stolen and repurposed with a name unfit for the wonder that is earth. Sean Hill’s “This Land is My Land” troubles ideas of land ownership and environmental relationship through a historical recollection of the land acquisition and freedom of a Black revolutionary war veteran. “This land was stolen,” Hill writes, “as were my ancestors. And like the land my ancestors, considered property, were used to create generational wealth for those who owned them.” What do we do when this everywhere feels like nowhere we belong?

Lauret Savoy’s “Confronting the Names on this Land” expertly explores naming, theft, and our relationship to land while braiding personal narrative and history lessons on toponym traditions in the United States. “Naming is not innocent, passive, or neutral,” Savoy writes, surveying the damage done by colonization, land theft, and the use of both Indigenous language and racial slurs to mark places on maps.

I held Savoy’s words close as I walked through my neighborhood in a town named after perhaps the most famous colonizer in the Americas. As I passed new construction and land waiting to be “developed,” I couldn’t help but consider the violence that undergirds so much of what we think to be true about this land. Passing brick, train tracks, and traffic, I thought back to perhaps the two most dynamic essays of the collection: Erin Sharkey’s “An Urban Farmer’s Almanac” and Ronald L. Greer II’s “Magic Alley.”

An ode to Benjamin Banneker’s almanacs of the 18th century, Sharkey’s urban farmer almanac is presently situated in Buffalo, New York (shout out to the Queen City). “Almanacs,” Sharkey writes, “feature a best days calendar, chronicling in relation to the moon’s phase which days provide the ideal conditions for different activities.” Following both Banneker’s attention to natural and scientific observation and the trend of “best days,” Sharkey’s essay employs a structure that is innately attuned to context, people, and nature. And Sharkey reminds us that the natural (and we) are everywhere.

“The hood has best days, too,” she writes. For example, October 1st is the “best day to harvest, to play basketball on the broken hoop that clangs and rings out across the park” and April 17th is the “best day to braid hair on the front porch, to stand in line at the free clinic for a ham for Easter.” Perhaps this isn’t what Banneker had in mind when crafting his first almanac in 1792 but Sharkey’s essay (along with all the others in this collection) is a reflection of the evolution of Black folks’ relationship with nature. I don’t always think of the hood as natural but Sharkey tells a truth that’s always been true — “the hood was natural before the [urban] garden grew up in the middle of it.”

Ronald L. Greer II’s essay is a miracle in its inclusion itself. A note from Sharkey precedes the essay detailing how Greer’s incarceration, COVID-19, and bureaucracy made communication incredibly difficult while drafting the manuscript for inclusion. In many ways, Greer’s “The Magic Alley” (which I argue might be the best of all the best(s) in this collection) is a community effort in both drafting and living. Set in inner-city Detroit, Greer paints a vivid portrait of growing from child to young man in an 80s neighborhood marked by addiction, everyday violence, and economic insecurity. Amid the abandoned houses, “little white pebbles that gave people super strength and speed,” needles, and “watering holes,” Greer invites us into the ritual he shares with his grandfather: tending a robust vegetable garden in the alley.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ “Water and Stone” and Naima Penniman’s “Concentric Memory” remind us of the power of intentional communion with the land, our people, and our lineage (both blood and forged). Gumbs’ lyrical essay about Audre Lorde’s archive in Audre’s office is a Black lesbian dream come true; it is a reminder of our forever connection to memory in both body and soul. In “Concentric Memory,” Penniman offers ten lessons from her childhood “devoted babysitter Mama Nature.” I read these lessons and have returned to them each day since, writing them in my journal to guide me through a season of heavy grief and work. Like all of the anthology, Penniman’s words feel especially relevant for Black folks right now. As we in the United States enter into the second half of winter already marred by police violence and injustice, I am holding tightly onto Penniman’s fifth lesson on the creation possible within darkness and letting her question guide me to spring — “How do you value darkness? What does it make possible?”

Perhaps it is not just anything that is possible, but everywhere as well. A Darker Wilderness is the everywhere I needed, and its arrival in winter makes it the perfect companion for icy midwest nights (and hot beach/hike days too).

---

A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey, is out now.

Now A+ Members Can Take shea’s “Writing Yourself Home” Workshop at Your Own Pace

From the original post about the workshop:

“Days are short as hell, snow is falling, and the damn Salvation Army is begging for our coins again. With the winter and holidays come feelings for us here in the Western world – joy, grief, anxiety, excitement, annoyance, depression, and everything in between. The darkness invites reflection and isolation. The snow brings nostalgia (and mud). And whether we celebrate them or not, the holidays invite us to return to our core. For some, it’s a childhood home or family. For others, it’s what we hold closest to our hearts – memories, connections, expectations, and dreams. Regardless of where we are, this season invites us home to a space of contemplation and celebration of who we are, where we’ve been, and the worlds we seek to create.

Writing Yourself Home is a special generative workshop for writers of all ages that honors the complexities of what constitutes “home” within and outside of ourselves as queer and trans folks, particularly during this winter/holiday season.”

And listen, it’s still February. It’s still winter. It’s still a great time to curl up with this generative workshop with shea wesley martin. The following video module is intended to be taken at your own pace. The same thing goes with the following readings. shea says at the end of the module that they’d love to know what you thought of the workshop. Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment about your experiences or to email shea at shea@autostraddle.com about the workshop.

Thank you if you were able to attend the live version of the workshop with us. You were all wonderful to see and hear from. Thank you, everyone reading this, so much for being A+ members and for keeping this space celebrating queer and trans writers and writing here for all of us.

Writing Workshop Pre-Work

Make sure to bring/have:

• Writing instrument of choice: pen, pencil, marker, iPad, laptop
• Writing medium of choice: notebook, paper, iPad, laptop (analog recommended)
• Optional: snacks, drinks, fidgets

Throughout our time together, we will use the following as mentor texts in our own exploration and drafting. In order to best prepare for the workshop, I recommend engaging with all of them and considering how the author is using craft (structure, voice, language) to explore home. Pre-work is encouraged, but not a pre-requisite for participating in the workshop!

Home as Grief: Everything That Matters Is Stuck in the Back of My Throat by Carmen Phillips, AS Editor-in-Chief

Home as Escape: The Land Dykes Of Southern Oregon Saved My Life by Vanessa Friedman, AS Community Editor

Home as Terrain: The Problem With Writing About Florida by Kristen Arnett

Home as Food: The Only Apple Pie Recipe Your Family Hasn’t Complained About by Dulce-Marie Flecha

Home as Sound: Tank and the Bangas’ NPR Tiny Desk Concert

Home as Movement: Every Queer Person Should Learn How to Fight by CR Foster

Home as Freedom: Wild, Fat, Queer and Black: How I Became Free In The Mountains And Never Left by shea martin, AS writer

The Video Module

“And I Said to God, Isn’t Being Black Enough? Do I Have To Be Gay Too?”

Black History Month is often focused on prolific members of the Black community throughout history who contributed to the world in the name of betterment, and while they are incredibly important to our community, we often overlook those who are still alive and continuing to make a difference. We know that much of the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation has largely been led by Black members of the community who often don’t get enough credit for their contributions. This year, the Autostraddle team decided to focus our Black History Month coverage on the Black elders who are still here and still doing the work.

We connected with Black elders through a partnership with SAGE, the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ older people. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in New York City, SAGE is a national organization that offers supportive services and consumer resources to LGBTQ+ older people and their caregivers. Autostraddle was honored to talk with five Black LGBTQ+ elders, and we’ll be publishing these interviews throughout the month of February. We welcome our readers to celebrate these members of the Black LGBTQ+ community with us, while they’re still here to be celebrated.

---

I am often the oldest person in the room. I have spent much of the last decade surrounded by LGBTQ+ youth – teaching them, reading with them, and researching them. Last summer, some of the teenagers I worked with labeled me a queer elder. I chuckled and gladly accepted it given my refutation of “the TikTok” and my love of “old folks music,” but I know I’m no elder yet. I save that title for legends like Donald Bell, a gay Black third-generation Chicagoan whose commitment to organizing and community spans more than five decades.

On a dreary Ohio afternoon in January, I dialed Mr. Bell’s number to chat. His hello was a bear hug that roared through the phone’s speaker like sunshine. “I’m sorry we’re not on zoom so I can see your beautiful face, but I’m sitting here looking at it on the website.” What a charmer. I smiled for more than an hour until we hung up. We talked about Chicago, growing up gay as a member of the Stonewall Generation, and what it means to bridge intergenerational differences as an aging member of our community. When we were done chatting, I was certain of three things regarding Donald Bell.
1. He is as brilliant as he is charming and honest.
2. He loves his city, his people, and his work.
3. He is [without a doubt] an absolute legend.

This is him in his own words, on his own terms, in a world that he is continuing to carve into something better for all of us. — shea wesley martin

On his activism

I have been an activist all of my life. I guess I was drawn into the civil rights movement in my youth. I was born right after World War II, and of course, I was intrigued by Black servicemen returning from the war, honoring and continuing to work towards the Double Victory Campaign. During the war, many Black servicemen vowed to fight against fascism around the world and then come home and fight segregation here. So that, along with Black parts of the labor movement, like A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Pullman Porters was all happening around me as I grew up. It was always there.

When I was six years old, Emmett Till’s body was returned to Chicago. As a child, I was not allowed to attend the services — no children were, but what I saw was how disturbed the grownups were. And this was traumatizing to me as a child, traumatizing to all of us because I mean, this was the first time I’d seen men cry in public, and the sense of urgency just reverberated through all of us. I first learned, at the tender age of six, the danger of being born into Black skin. Later on, when I was 13, The March on Washington for Jobs and Civil Rights occurred. I was too young to attend, but I did follow it all and when I started high school that year, I was part of a movement. We started what we called human relations clubs at several of the more progressive Chicago suburban high schools. So this [activism] has been a part of me for my entire life — from civil rights to all of the movements that came as a — the women’s movement, the gay liberation movement (as we called it at the time), the revival of the labor movement, and of course, the anti-war movement.

All of these things have been a part of me from my earliest youth and have carried on, not only with community activism, but with what I learned and was taught were the basic responsibilities of an American citizen. I have spent nearly 40 years as an election judge. I wasn’t interested in being a politician but I was interested in the American people getting off their butts and honoring the opportunities that they had. And that’s a huge lift. But it’s always been important to me that people get out there and they defend their civil rights by using them.

On lost histories and stories

I’m a third-generation Chicagoan. My family did not come here as part of the Great Migration; we came here long before that. My grandpa settled in Chicago just after the World’s Columbian Exposition in the 1890s. My maternal family was part of Pilgrim Baptist Church which is considered the home of gospel music. My father’s side of the family comes from another progressive Baptist church. We were steeped in that tradition. It’s very important to us, our identity, and our approaches to faith. For Black people, gospel music and gospel culture tie us to our American history because our people, African Americans, are resilient. And it has been the objective of white America from the very beginning to control us and then subsequently eliminate us. We have survived attacks on the Black body, Black identity, on the Black family dating back forever. There is no institution north, south, or anywhere else that cannot trace its legacy or “greatness” to our enslavement or the contributions of African American people. But again, that story is hidden and it impacts the way we think about ourselves but it also impacts the way that people think about us.

The first ever permanent settler of Chicago, the fastest-growing city in human history, was a Black man. We know history is whitewashed; it’s straight-washed. It’s (upper) class washed — all of those attributes of privilege are the prevailing ones that rule our histories, legacies, and our sense of belonging (or not belonging) for marginalized people.

Here in Chicago, one of the things that we’re proud of is the fact that despite New York, LA, and San Francisco being considered the “gay hubs,” we have a long and very significant history in the LGBT community. It’s here where the first homophile organization in the US was established, the Society for Human Rights. Most folks credit that to Henry Gerber who registered the organization with the State of Illinois as the secretary of the organization, but what is lost is that it was John T. Graves, an African American minister who was the president of that organization. So our LGBT library here, Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, bears the name of Gerber, but the legacy of Graves is lost. And that story — the erasure of our contributions — is repeated over and over and over again.

On Black Chicago, homosexuality, and community

Like most Chicagoans, I grew up in an immediate community of people who look just like me. Chicago historically has been and continues to be one of the most racially, ethnically, and class-stratified places on the globe. And so segregation is us in terms of history. Not all of that is necessarily bad because it also allows us to be a place of incredible rich cultural diversity. Chicago is American all the way down, from its very roots. And in its growth, it became the place that African Americans wanted to migrate to before the end of slavery and after slavery. The growth of what we call the Black Metropolis was so fast and is still going.

I currently live in Boystown, on the north side of the city, but it started on the south side in the Black community. In the 1890s, men, who were then called musical rather than gay, were welcome in the community and they could socialize. They could be in bars. They could find residences. As the (gay) community started to assemble, it started migrating north to where it is now. But that starting point and the connection to the community on the south side is lost in our histories. So many in the gay community don’t speak of the legacy and the advocacy that comes from the Black community.

These days, the Black community is characterized as the most homophobic of ethnic communities but that is not the truth of our history. The truth of our history is that gay, lesbian, and gender-expansive people were normal and recognized in the Black community. In 1938, an openly gay Black man and minister built the First Church of Deliverance. That congregation still survives, led by an openly gay man.

There used to be a cultural event that happened on the south side that included the entire Black community called Finnie’s Ball, a drag event that happened every year. Everybody went and everybody participated.

Even when my mother lost her mother, the person that she found comfort with was a trans woman who lived on the first floor of their tenement building and who was known as “Mama” in the neighborhood. “Mama” was there to comfort my mother and my grandfather didn’t have any aversion to it. He said, in the vernacular at the time, “well, you go and spend time with that sissy, I’m glad she’s there to help you.” These are stories and situations that are not portrayed in the modern community when people look at the Black community and the LGBT community. But our histories are totally entwined. And I’m sure that it’s the same in New York and LA and San Francisco and everywhere else, that the most marginalized communities are also the most welcoming for other marginalized communities.

On Chicago, the “LGBT oasis” of the Heartland

Well, Chicago was in fact the LGBT oasis of the Heartland, the middle of the country. People routinely migrated to Chicago from where you are [in Ohio]. For a long time, both when I was a student and working in my career in higher administration, Chicago and the Chicago metropolitan area served tons of students coming to universities. It is a huge place; it’s the engine of the heartland of our country. This is where our food and industrial development came from. So that oasis experience happened here too. This city was perceived as a safe ground. Of course, the political ramification of that is that Illinois is one of the few states in the union with full civil rights for LGBT people. It’s one of the few states where you can get married one day and the next day, you don’t have to fear getting fired from your job for being gay because we have full civil rights. We worked very hard at it.

The news never covers it all. The only thing that people hear about Chicago is about shootings so they’re not getting the truth about Chicago. While the LGBT community is reminded every day that there’s a “don’t say gay” law in Florida and there’s an “anti-CRT” law in Florida, what they’re not told is that three years ago in Illinois, we passed a mandate for teaching LGBT history in all of the public schools. As long as popular culture continues to treat us (and other places in the interior parts of the United States) as flyover country, our communities will never be aware of the progress that we are making.

In fact, I’m being seated tomorrow as one of the founding commissioners of the Illinois State Commission on LGBT Aging. This is a first-in-the-nation endeavor — a three-year commission to investigate the status and condition of LGBT elders throughout the state of Illinois to assess what services we are receiving, what needs we are having met, and what difficulties we are having in seeking housing and other services at this point.

In the news, we’re just in dire situations all the time. I think it is really easy right now to feel discouraged or saddened by the state of the world for LGBTQ folks, and Black folks, and there is often a narrative that is portrayed and passed on to our youth, especially that LGBTQ elders don’t exist, that we don’t grow old but we do — we’re here.

On schooling, growing up, and sexuality

Well, of course, not only was there no LGBT presence in schools; there was no LGBT presence in the world. I was born in 1949, in the middle of the 20th century. And when I was growing up, when I was maturing, I lived a heteronormative life, like many LGBT people of my age. I knew as a child that I was different but I didn’t know what that difference was. I couldn’t describe it, I couldn’t define it. And in adolescence, when I heard words like homosexual, I knew it wasn’t something anyone talked about. So I found a safe place to look into it and the safe place was usually the library. We had our nice little Andrew Carnegie Library downtown. I went to the library. They had uncensored sources of information, unlike our schools. The Webster’s dictionary sat open on a pedestal on top of the books in the reference room. Everything, of course, was print media at that time, so I also grabbed the print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. So I looked up the word “homosexuality” in both of those things to get an understanding of what it was. And I noticed that the pages in both the dictionary and the encyclopedia were smudged. A lot of people had been doing that but I had no idea who those people were or how to connect with them or to have anybody to have any conversation about this with. That was our experience.

As an adolescent, I dated. I had girls and women in my life that I loved. By the time I got to university, my high school sweetheart and I had been going together for so long that we were actually engaged to be married. It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in university that I had an experience that identified for me what that difference was. I was an orientation leader, so I went back to school early and I met my resident advisor. And when he opened the door, I had what I generally call “a Walt Disney moment,” where all of a sudden, there’s music floating through the air and there’s birds tweeting and butterflies and all of this stuff — I had fallen in love at first sight. I knew instantly what it was. I went back to my room and I had what we call a “come to Jesus” moment in my room by myself. I spent hours praying, crying, and just going crazy over this. And I said to God, isn’t being Black enough? Do I have to be gay too? In thinking through that, at that time, I formulated what would become a practice of my life — using one oppression to inform the other. I recognized that there had been no choice about being Black. There was no pre-birth line where you lined up at the table and they asked, “hey, you guys want to be Black? Come on over here and sign up!” That wasn’t an option. You were born Black and that was it. It was your challenge in life to come to a safe, emotional, and psychological space where you were okay with that. And even though society’s constantly telling you that you’re worthless, you have to free your mind from that, to value yourself, and to not be driven crazy by your own existence.

So I said, well, that must be true about this gay thing too. I decided that I was going to live my life in a headspace where I could value what I was and value all of the things that I was — this man in Black skin, this man who was attracted to other men — and I was going to be okay. I wasn’t sick, as they were saying in the DSM at the time. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t a mistake or offense to God, I wasn’t a criminal. I was just a person just trying to make it. And that’s how I’ve gone through my life. That’s how I’ve survived it.

On creating community and building a legacy

Our people had to come out. I was growing up in a time of tremendous social upheaval in the United States. All of these liberation movements were happening and communities were coming into visibility. In the 70s, the gay community came into visibility, bars moved from back alleys to front streets. We lived together and our communities grew. Places that historically have been identified as gay spaces, whether we’re talking Chelsea in New York or DuPont Circle in Washington or The Castro in San Francisco, all of those places grew into existence after the Second World War and during my lifetime. But when I was a teenager, there were no pride flags, there were no national LGBT organizations. There was no space. So during my lifetime, those spaces emerged. That’s what we developed. That’s the legacy of my generation. And I am part of the first “out” aging generation of LGBT people. When I was young, I didn’t think about being 80 because I didn’t see anybody who was 80. We didn’t even think about it. But now I’m part of the first “out” generation of LGBT elders, or the “Stonewall Generation,” as some call us. We have a legacy to pass on to our youth.

First of all, we have to identify LGBT youngsters as ours, within the LGBT community, we have to form intergenerational relationships that are similar to the ones that exist, where people grow up in their communities of origin and their families of origin. Many of us are estranged from those families and those communities. So we have to make our own. And what has to happen is that young people have to recognize us as the people upon whose shoulders they stand, the people who went from the conditions in which I was born, to the conditions that exist now. And we have to recognize as the elders, that it’s the young people who are our legacy.

It’s the young people who will value what we’ve done. It’s the young people who will receive our work product as we move on in time. And hopefully, they will appreciate us as we have come to appreciate those who preceded us, who lived under incredibly worse times. So intergenerational relationships are essential at this time in the LGBT community because there will never be another generation like mine. There will never be another generation that comes from obscurity into public prominence.

We are now part of the American social and political fabric. We are out there and we can’t go away and we won’t go away. And some people are saying, oh my God, there just seems to be more of that homosexuality, there just seems to be more just gender stuff out there. And I don’t believe that there’s more. I just believe that we are now visible. And I believe that the question of gender identity and the questions of sexual orientation are questions that all humans have to deal with.

People will tell you who they are when they come into recognition of who they are. And society has just got to get ready for that.

On aging, the word “queer,” and the necessity of intergenerational connections

SAGE is our largest organization that advocates for those of us in the aging [LGBT] community and that’s important because in our society when we age, we grow into a new -ism. And believe me, as a person with all the -isms that I’ve grown up with, I was not pleased to encounter this new -ism around 65 as I entered the social safety network. Many folks become very paternalistic, telling aging people what we should do and how we should do it. As aging people, we appreciate the support and we appreciate the commitment of our younger allies, but they have to understand that we continue to be fully functioning people up to the levels of our capacities.

All of us who are aging are human beings who need social connections to exist, and this is a basic human need. And we know it, we know that we can deliver medically viable babies all the time but if those babies are not connected, if they’re not held, if they’re not touched, if they’re not talked to or sung to, no matter what we feed them, they will struggle. All humans need socialization. Many of us [aging LGBT people] have lost our siblings, we’ve lost our lifelong friends, we’ve lost our parents. Some of us have even lost our children and that’s a loss that we as human beings are just not wired for. That’s the worst loss of all. We end up with fewer and fewer social contacts. And we need connections. We hope that both our children of origin and our children of choice, the LGBT younger generations, will help fill that need. We need that connection and hopefully, they will benefit from it too. Could I talk about one thing that I really think is an important intergenerational thing to deal with?

That’s around the issues of language and identity — I specifically want to talk about the word queer.

I believe as an individual that every person has the right to his, her, or their identity. Each of us is who we say we are. If you say that you are queer, I’ve no problems with that at all. I get it. That’s your identity. In this age, many people identify as queer but what I want youngsters to understand is that queer can be a very triggering term for those of us who are older. I’ll use myself as an example.

I was born in 1949. At the time I was born — and in the time in which I grew up — homosexuality was universally illegal in all of the United States. It was also illegal in most countries in the world. So we were criminalized. Homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in the DSM. So we were pathologized. Homosexuality was thought of as inconsistent with the designs of the creator in most faiths and houses of worship. So we were demonized and the use of the word queer was a direct reflection of the oppression that we experienced. When I was in university, if you were identified as queer and that word got to the Dean of Men’s office, you could be dismissed from the university. This is before the Supreme Court made its ruling that public institutions had to guarantee students the right to due process. You could be kicked out of school. It would not only wreck your personal and your professional life but also cost you your student distinction and you could end up fighting in Vietnam. Newspapers published “queer lists” on Mondays, listing the names of men who’d been arrested and detained in local lockups from gay bars, from police raids. And so not only was your personal life ruined but you were also subjected to becoming a social outcast. If you were identified as queer and you were harmed bodily, whether you were gay bashed or you were killed, your queerness could be a legally recognized defense and get someone acquitted in courts of the law. So what I’m saying is that for many of us, that trauma is still there, and while I respect individual identity, what I push back against is using the word queer to describe our community. Again, this is my personal stance but I try to take the time to explain it so that there’s better intergenerational communication and understanding.

From my life experience, the word queer is as triggering as the word “nigga.” And I know we continue discussions about that within the African American community too. I just think that what we need to do is gently engage one another in conversation so that we can establish an understanding of where we stand on those things. I’m not denying anyone the right to identify as queer or as a nigga. I’m just gently requesting that we not assume that the terminology for our time is okay for a collective identification of the entire community. That’s my stand on that.

I don’t know if we necessarily have to have one catchall term because we represent expansive populations of people. And I know these are difficult times. So we just have to be able to civilly and compassionately talk to one another because we don’t want to foster the idea that we are different. We, in fact, want to encourage the idea that all of humanity is the same. But just to recognize that we’ve come to this place from different paths and to honor those paths because you can’t fully come to understand different individuals’ experiences without being open to honoring the past that they came along. If we could just have this conversation amongst the generations without anyone — whether elders or youngsters — feeling that the other is wrong, then we can make progress. We have to make room, we have to make space for each other.

On what comes next

Well, I’m excited about new formal areas of advocacy that I’m moving into this year. I just got a call from the Mayor’s office with an invitation to join the Mayor’s advisory committee here in Chicago. I am serving this year as an ambassador for PRIDEnet, based at Stanford University, where they house The Pride Study, a longitudinal study focused on the LGBT community across the country. I’m really proud to be working on that project, especially as a member of the aging community, because our experiences shouldn’t be lost.

During Times Like This, We All Need Somewhere Good

Feature image by We Are via Getty Images

As I watched the slow and steady decline of Twitter last month, I compiled a non-exhaustive list of other on/offline hubs for queer tweeters like me looking for connection. To be honest, I have serious doubts that anything will be able to replace Twitter’s significance in our cultural and political landscape, but I tried to offer something. When your world feels like it’s ending, something always feels better than nothing.

When the story launched on our Instagram feed, one of our followers (rightfully) called me out. I’d forgotten something (or somewhere) that offers connection in a totally different way than most other spaces I’ve been in: Somewhere Good, a (mostly) audio social connection platform launched in 2020 by Ethel’s Club founder, Naj Austin. Somewhere Good is designed by and for people of color. I first found out about this cool app through a hometown homie, Van Newman. When Van started posting teasers and information about Somewhere Good, I was already hooked — an app designed and built by queer people of color for folks who need it most? YES PLEASE.

But when I think about Somewhere Good, I don’t consider it social media. The app (and the worlds in it) provides an unusually intimate experience of connection for BIPOC, particularly QTPOC that we don’t often get in this world. Unlike the big social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and yes even Tumblr), the ethos of Somewhere Good is rooted in intentional, opt-in conversation and connection-building. There is no scrolling aimlessly while on the toilet, train, or in that boring Zoom meeting. Instead, the platform demands your full time, energy, and attention for one minute at a time (which is harder to give than one might think). To be honest, as a grad student and educator I don’t always have the time/energy to engage deeply with folks I don’t know well — my mind is racing 10,000 miles a minute. For example, in the last minute, I’ve thought about Kehlani and Letitia, lunch plans, my to-do list, a final paper I am avoiding, my dog’s Christmas pajamas, and lunch again — ALL WHILE TYPING THIS!

I know I need to slow down. I know deep breaths and deeper conversations help me ground myself best. I know I deserve to engage in intentional connection-building and community — we all do.

Before I jump into my return to Somewhere Good, let me explain the platform for the not-yet-hip. Somewhere Good brands itself as “an app that feels less like a feed and more like a kickback through voice notes.” So, if you’re not a voice note person (I know some of us hate them), this may not be the app for you. Signing into the app, users are greeted by a variety of user-seeded (and perhaps also company-originated) worlds. Each world has a name and a theme. For example, the world “WavyWMN” invites conversations around “shifting conversations around the beauty of natural hair” while “Black Utopias” is designed as “a space for Black folks to dream thrive; feel joyful and free.” Worlds with active conversations are “open” and those that don’t have active conversations are listed as “away.” Unlike feed-focused apps, the app eases you into engagement. The home page isn’t overwhelming with content. The top features a warm invitation, “Hey friend. Join a conversation” followed by a timer counting down how much time each world has for the current conversations. The rest of the home page is a simple carousel of the conversations happening in active worlds. To “join,” users simply tap the world to view the prompt and then tap again to “Enter World.” In the world, you’ll see a path of other users’  profile pictures accompanied by respective voice notes and existing replies. Users can create a new response to the prompt and/or reply to others’ already recorded experiences. To increase accessibility, computer-generated transcripts can be edited and attached to your voice note (Not everyone does it, but I always do it to ensure more folks may engage).

I logged on on a gray Monday afternoon after reading all the transphobic chatter on Twitter. Dave Chappelle was being Dave Chappelle — still problematic, still transphobic, still trash. Elon was being Elon — still rich, problematic, transphobic, and now in charge of what once was my favorite digital platform. When I opened Somewhere Good, my mood instantly shifted. The Explore Page greeted me with the typical “hey friend” and the clouds moved across the sky behind the carousel of conversations happening. I noticed my breathing slowed and I felt lighter. I hadn’t even joined a conversation and already this place felt like exactly what I needed.

There were several conversations happening on Monday afternoon when I logged in. In WavyWmn, users were responding to the prompt, “Durags, Head Scarves, or Bonnets?” In the conversation in Griot Galaxy, a world about the power of storytelling, users created a path by sharing one song that always gets them out of a bad mood. One user offered Ari Lennox’s “New Apartment.” Another user added Chance the Rapper’s “Favorite Song” and the original path starter replied in gratitude. The last user in the path shared that she didn’t have just one song but said anything with a “smooth beat” or “anything about Jesus.” I thought about adding my current pump-up song, Demi Lovato’s “Sorry Not Sorry,” but I worried that people might think it wasn’t rich or deep enough so I didn’t and moved on to the next worlds. I scrolled through three other worlds with open conversations:

The Sustainable Chats world, asked “sea or mountains? Countryside or city?”

The prompt for FutureVision, a world that invites exploration of ideas was great: “What’s another way to say ‘I care for you?’”

Both had the potential to be enriching conversations but the paths hadn’t been started — no users had responded to the prompts. In the thick of finals season, I just didn’t have the bandwidth or desire to kick off conversations. Sometimes, it feels like the app requires a level of vulnerability and connection I’m not always ready to offer the world. The lack of engagement from others (and myself), particularly on that day, was disheartening, especially when I think back to how good I felt when I logged in. The truth is Somewhere Good is good. Sure, there are things I wish it had, like the ability to message other users and connect with them one-on-one. But as an imaginative rethinking of how we engage digitally, it is a beautiful, necessary space. When I went back to Somewhere Good, what I found was that it was exactly what I needed; what I learned, however, was that I did not have the time or energy to engage with what I needed at that moment. I imagine that’s how a lot of us feel right now — still mid-pandemic and struggling to survive in a capitalist world that demands all of us all of the time.

How do we make time and space for goodness, especially in the digital sphere? As Twitter crumbles, I hope we all end up somewhere where we feel affirmed and joyful. Maybe that place is Somewhere Good but even if it’s not, I hope we find (and make time and space) for all of the goodness we deserve.

Instagram’s New Away Message Feature Got Me in My Middle-Aged Feels

Earlier this week, Meta rolled out some new features (that absolutely no one asked for) on Instagram. Group Profiles allow users to create a collaborative profile with others in their circle while the new Candid feature (in beta) reflects Meta’s efforts to compete with BeReal. In this feature, users will be invited to post a photo of what they’re doing in the moment and be able to view the same from others (but only after posting).

The most ridiculous feature, however, is Meta’s introduction of Notes to Instagram messaging. When describing the feature on their website, Meta says the Notes “are short posts of up to 60 characters using just text and emojis.” This roll-out of concise blurbs is interestingly timed given Twitter’s recent announcement that tweet limits will soon move from 240 characters to 4000 words. On Instagram, Notes show up at the top of our Direct Messages screen as speech bubbles next to users’ profile pictures. Instagram users have two options when sharing their notes — either let everyone they follow back see them or just their close friends. When I first noticed the feature, I probably had the same reaction as most other users:

What the hell is this?
Why is this here?
This is annoying.
NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS. PLEASE STOP ADDING MORE TO MY FEEDS!

But then I scrolled across the Notes from my mutuals and cackled. My former student posted, “Keep it earnest on here, y’all.” A friend from back home wrote, “Oh my goodness. This is a mess.” One mutual posted her Venmo for fun pics. Another mutual posted song lyrics and I instantly felt a huge pang of nostalgia — Meta has brought back the away message in the most annoying way possible. 

I don’t want to like it, but damn — these notes got me in my middle-aged feels. I’ve spent the past two days longing to lock myself in my bedroom, turn on my old Gateway desktop, and patiently wait for the AOL to load while praying my mom doesn’t need to use the phone. I know we’re supposed to be too old for away messages, but growing up is overrated. In case you need some help dusty off those away message chops, here are 10 “Notes” (Read: Away Messages in 2022) I’ve crafted for all of us to use in the coming weeks.

For those who are feeling frisky, free, and in the holiday spirit:
Seasons Greetings, B*tches! I’m just ho-ho-ho-ing!!!

For those of us who hate our jobs: 

Cuffing season is here and I need a change. Let’s link up…on LinkedIn.

For those of us with parents as mutuals:

Yo mama is not as cool as mine. Xoxo mom!

For those of us trying to holla at mutuals but be (not-so) discreet:

Just here to doom-scroll, watch dog videos, and chat with cute girls/boys/enbys.

For those of us who miss the chat rooms and like to be weird:

ASLLP? Age, Sign, Location of Last Poop

For the music/movie nerds:

Now Playing: [Insert Song]

For the emo kids all grown up:

FMLINAD [F*CK MY LIFE. I NEED A DRINK.]. Student loans and grocery bills are killing me slowly.

For us with no shame and bills to pay:

[Insert Venmo/CashApp] for the best present this season

For the corny olds:

My mom’s gotta make a call. I’ll be right back.

For the shady AstroQueers who love a good horoscope:

The universe told me to tell you that outfit is not working, boo.

For the old school L Word fans out there: 

Actually, I killed Jenny Schechter.

For us just trying to get our sh*t together:

My life is a mess. BRB cleaning it up.

---

I could go on for days (and probably will on Instagram) but I’ll leave some space here for you to dream and craft your own. Meanwhile, leave your funniest (or wittiest) “Note” (read: Instagram away message) in the comments — we all could use more joy these days!

Writing Yourself Home: A Generative Writing Workshop on December 21

Days are short as hell, snow is falling, and the damn Salvation Army is begging for our coins again. With the winter and holidays come feelings for us here in the Western world – joy, grief, anxiety, excitement, annoyance, depression, and everything in between. The darkness invites reflection and isolation. The snow brings nostalgia (and mud). And whether we celebrate them or not, the holidays invite us to return to our core. For some, it’s a childhood home or family. For others, it’s what we hold closest to our hearts – memories, connections, expectations, and dreams. Regardless of where we are, this season invites us home to a space of contemplation and celebration of who we are, where we’ve been, and the worlds we seek to create.

Writing Yourself Home is a special generative workshop for writers of all ages that honors the complexities of what constitutes “home” within and outside of ourselves as queer and trans folks, particularly during this winter/holiday season. Facilitated by shea wesley martin, this 90-minute workshop creates space for participants to intentionally engage in writing, discussing craft, and building connections within the A+ community. A guided homecoming to self threaded with care, joy, and truth – for queers, by queers. – shea

---

The Details

Where: On Zoom

When: Wednesday, December 21 | 5-6:30pm PST / 8-9:30pm EST

Accessibility Notes: Live captioning available, please specify if you will need this in a breakout room in the sign-up form. There is also space on the sign-up form to let us know about additional access needs. Please plan to be comfortable and bring snacks / hydrating beverages. There will be a break halfway through the class.

How Will I Attend / Will There Be Reading? Participants will receive an email message ahead of the class with Zoom link and with the reading for the class.

Here is the sign-up form. Spots are limited!

Will this be recorded? The workshop itself will not be recorded to preserve the privacy of participants, however, we will publish a recorded video module with the readings and prompts for those who cannot attend or who wish to engage in the workshop materials on their own or at their own pace. The self-guided version will be published as a post, so you do not need to sign up for it.

Finally — A Rainbow That Feels Like Home

Feature image photos by Jane Martin (a.k.a a rainbow lover), 2022

I was in California for a conference when I heard about the Club Q shooting. I rolled over in my hotel bed, opened my eyes, checked my phone, and processed the headline in chunks of trauma, grief, and fear:

Colorado
Springs
LGBTQ+
Killed
Club
Shooter
Again

I did not cry. Instead, I scrolled for details. I texted my friends who live in Denver. I know Denver is not Colorado Springs but when fear comes, the world shrinks. Colorado became one neighborhood block, and my heart thought it possible that every queer Coloradan I knew was at Club Q. My friends were safe, but they all knew someone who knew someone who had been to Club Q once and loved it, who knew the folks who died, who were a part of this story. And at that moment, my fear cared little about these degrees of separation.

The conference had been a joyful reunion — the first in-person one since the pandemic came. Our Group Chat booked a family room designed for Disneyland families on a budget — equipped with bunkbeds, no daily housekeeping, weird hallway smells, and a free breakfast we never ate. My friend and I presented about the online LGBTQ+ youth book club we’d facilitated throughout the pandemic. I received a big award for my dedication to activism for marginalized youth through young adult literature. We saw the fireworks from an upscale restaurant in Downtown Disney. But even before the Club Q news, small cracks formed in my joy. My friend and I eventually confessed to each other that we’d both been stress-dreaming about possible transphobic violence at our session. My acceptance speech for that award was not just gratitude for the honor; it was a plea of exhaustion and the need for allyship in the fight against anti-LGBTQ+ efforts in schools. The fireworks we watched were mediocre, and I’d confessed to the waiter that I hated the chicken dish he recommended for me. He brought me my full bill moments later, and I paid $45 for three bites and a good story.

Back home, my life was shifting fast in my absence. My wife was coordinating a cross-town move by herself. “We’ve already done the hard work. It’s just the movers’ time to shine now,” she assured me. She was mostly right, but I know moving is stressful, and I love the feeling of the first walk-through of a new place. I think I might be the only person in the world who’s suffered from moving day FOMO.

I checked in with her about the shooting. “Have you checked on [friend X], [friend Y], [friend Z]?” she asked. She knows they live in Denver, but her fear cares little about degrees of separation, too. “Of course — they’re okay” I responded gently.

Okay is always relative when you are queer and fighting to survive in a world that refuses to love you back.

The next evening, I said goodbye to The Group Chat, my colleagues, and California and boarded a plane back to Ohio, a red state with efforts waging to limit trans youth’s access to care, diverse curriculum inclusion in schools, and rights for folks with uteruses. For the first time, I walked into my new apartment with my wife and determined to leave as little as possible for the foreseeable future. When trauma, fear, and grief come knocking, I don’t answer the door. I stay home. I lose myself in bad romantic comedies. I invest in making my home a place that will be beautiful and cozy while the world crumbles around me.

Returning home to an apartment of boxes, new spaces, and potential during the week of Thanksgiving break created the perfect conditions for a week of grieving the loss of life, safety, and sanctuary through nesting. As a writer and book lover, I never feel at home until the books are unpacked.

“Why don’t you tackle the books? That’ll free up a lot of room” my wife said the day after I got in.

Barely 24 hours back home and she was already lovingly throwing shade at my overwhelming (and growing) library. I looked at the stacks of boxes sitting in front of the bookcases my parents built before I was born and sighed when I remembered the compromise I’d made with my wife. Unlike all of our previous moves, our books were not in boxes labeled with letters designed to help me alphabetize upon arrival. This time, I had packed them by color.

Red/Orange
White
Purple and some brown?
Blue
Black
Black
Green/Yellow

I surveyed the colorful chaos and sat my ass back down on our sectional.

Time for some confessions:

1. I am a queer who mostly despises [human-made] rainbows. I love finding a random rainbow in the sky after a storm, but I mostly steer clear of all the corporate rainbow gear sold during June, and I definitely don’t understand why anyone would think all of these colors go together at the same time!
2. I am a Taurus book snob who is incredibly stubborn, set in my ways, and thinks books should always be alphabetized on shelves. I know Dewey had some different ideas about organizing books, but my brain remembers books by the authors’ last names!
3. I have spent years ridiculing my friends who dare organize their books by color for aesthetics because it makes no sense (See #2).

My wife is not a big reader, but she asked if we could try organizing the books by color this time.

“Like the rainbow thing on the blogs?” I asked saltily.

“Yes! It’s more visually appealing and not everyone finds books the way that you do, shea.”

My wife always reminds me that there are other ways of seeing and reading the world beyond what makes me comfortable. I am grateful for this.

I needed peer support, so I opened up our Autostraddle Slack channel and interrupted an important discussion on a very serious pie bracket for Thanksgiving:

“After years of saying no, today I am finally succumbing to peer/wife pressure and organizing my bookcases by color. Does anyone else do this? Does anyone else hate this?”

Responses streamed in. Some had and others hadn’t. Mostly, what I learned is that the Autostraddle team has beautiful bookcases and workspaces full of the most interesting knick-knacks and books.

Finally, Himani asked the question I’d been grappling with most: but the real question for all of you who organize your books by color — how do you find anything?

EXACTLY.

After more hours of lamenting, I started to unpack the boxes. I paid more attention to not just the covers of books but also the spines. For some reason, publishers sometimes make the spines of books different colors than the covers. This is very creative and cool in theory, but when I noticed it, I wished these people a lifetime of missing socks.

With two bookcases placed next to each other, I decided to let the book rainbow span across both, starting with red. When I found knick-knacks that typically went in on the shelves, I organized them by color too — if I was going commit to the chaos, I was really going to commit. 

“It looks so nice,” my wife said when she entered the living room. Hunched over, I grunted a response and sorted through green books, trying to sort them by their shades of green. “Do you think this is darker or lighter than this one,” I asked begrudgingly holding up two books. None of this matters, I thought. This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever done but it does look nice.

When I reached purple, I asked my wife what came next. “Perhaps brown would look best,” she replied. That made sense to me. “But what about the pink books that I have here?” I asked, suddenly realizing that pink should probably go at the beginning before red. I looked at the shelf, dropped the books on the floor, and sat my ass back on our sectional. Rainbows are terrible.

Thirty minutes later, my need to finish sh*t overpowered my disdain for the rainbow sorting, and I reorganized the entire shelf to make space for the pink books. I added the brown books. I put up the gray books. I sorted the white books by shades of white and added the cute white penguin figurine I’d rescued from the IKEA As-Is section last fall. I threw up the black books haphazardly because I was over it and black is black is black.

Behind me, I found one more box — one from my old office that hadn’t been sorted. It was full of greens, purples, blues, reds, and yes — even a pink one. I yelled, and my wife suggested I take another break. I looked at the books and sat my ass back on our sectional. Rainbows are the worst.

Later that evening, I sat in our flowered gray armchair and picked through the last box, holding each book in my hand, memorizing its cover and spine before I made space for it and placed it on the shelf. These were the books that I read with the queer and trans youth and the books that I held most dearly in my own work with them: Gabby Rivera’s Juliet Takes a Breath, Leah Johnson’s You Should See Me in A Crown, Akwaeke Emezi’s Bitter, Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After, Dean Atta’s The Black Flamingo. These were the books that comprised my rainbow in the storm of the past few years of grief.

When I was done, I stood back from the shelves and smiled. I would never be able to find anything I wanted but, for some reason, this rainbow was different than others. Hours into unpacking, sorting, and carefully placing books on the shelves my parents built, this chaos felt like home.

I looked around our new apartment. I’d spent a day making it feel warm, safe, and ours amid the fear and rage I felt about the Club Q attack and the theft of another sanctuary for folks like us.

“I’m never leaving this place,” I told my wife.

“We’re never moving again,” she responded.

“Done,” I said, even though I knew that us never moving again was as unlikely as me agreeing to color-code my library.

Miracles, like rainbows after a storm, happen though.

Holigay Gift Guide: Gifts for Your Favorite Dapper, Transmasc Queer

I have always loved winter — hot beverages, snow-covered trees, and the sounds of a crackling fireplace make me feel at home. And let’s be honest — dapper, transmasc queers thrive year-round, but in my opinion, we shine brightest in the winter. Wool, tweed, flannel, and cashmere look so, so good on us. A dapper transmasc in a cable-knit sweater and leather boots is a true gift to the universe (you’re welcome). As the holidays approach, you might be wondering what you should get for the dapper boy in your life who (seemingly) has it all together. In honor of all of us dapper, transmasc queers, here’s a gift guide to help you shower your favorite with some extra love.

---

Keep Them Stylish Underneath It All

Any dapper queer will tell you that style/freshness starts with the layer closest to the skin. If you know the person well, consider getting them some cute and comfortable briefs from TomboyX — I swear by them. For dapper dudes who love dope socks, a Sock Club membership is the gift that keeps on giving. For just $12 each month (or an annual rate of $132/ year), your favorite dapper queer will get a lovely pair of socks in the mail each month. Fun mail and style? Heck yes! Lastly, even dapper queers wear t-shirts (especially as layers throughout the winter). Trans Guy Supply’s heavyweight, crisp white “SIR” T-shirt is the perfect addition to a dapper queer’s stylish yet comfortable fit collection.

---

Wrap ‘Em in Warmth

Winter holidays demand warm and fuzzy gifts. Softness and style go hand-in-hand. If you’re looking to drop some cash on a significant other or close friend, consider the winter overcoat from Kirrin Finch. Their sizing is not as inclusive as I’d hoped (even if I’m sized out), but their coats come in three colors and are available in sizes up to 24. Don’t forget — our heads need love, too! Gobi’s cashmere unisex beanie is soft, affordable, and comes in so many different colors.

---

Remind Your Fav to Take Good Care

It might be tempting to want to buy your dapper friend a new moisturizer or fragrance, but I’d err on the side of not (unless you’re sure you know what they like). Your favorite dapper transmasc queer probably already has a very detailed and prescriptive morning and nighttime routine involving the perfect moisturizer, face wash, cologne, and oils. But that doesn’t mean you can’t shower them with other wellness and care-related goodies. For those dapper queers who travel, a new travel manicure set is a great, affordable gift that allows them to keep their cuticles in check while on the road. Speaking of being on the go, you may want to consider new earbuds (like the Beats Fit Pro) if you’re shopping for a dapper queer who’s often commuting, working out, or traveling. They are a great alternative to the AirPods, they come in four different colors, and Apple will even personalize them!

For your dapper homebodies staying in this winter, P.F. Candle makes divinely-scented candles. I especially enjoy the Teakwood and Tobacco (very masc). Their candles come in three different sizes (mini, standard, and large) and a variety of scents. For those who are committed to going out and still looking to fly year-round, a shoe kit is a cool throwback gift. Growing up, I remember watching my dad clean and shine his finest dress shoes on one of these babies. This box smells so good and is just a really dope piece to have in your closet.

---

Accentuate Their Drip

Every dapper, transmasc queer is defined by their intense drip. Whether they wear sweats or a three-piece suit, they carry themselves with a flyness that’s hard to miss. For your preppy fresh queers, consider one of the Tweeds, Checks & Plaids ties from Haute Butch. The website says they’re “back-ordered,” but these ties look dapper AF and might be worth the wait!

If you’re looking to drop some coins on someone special, queer-owned Automic has a 14k Butch Bracelet that will remind your favorite dapper transmasc of you whenever they look down at their hands. For a less expensive option, gift your dapper boy a solid watch. Depending on the recipient’s watch habits, this might be a risky move. Some of us wear the same watch every day and never change it. Others are intense watch collectors and only buy the finest stuff. Chances are, if you’re thinking about buying someone a watch, you’ve done your homework on their timepiece habits and preferences. That being said, in a moment where everyone’s got smartwatches, I suggest getting them a throwback timepiece that will be a fun accessory. Sure, they probably have an Apple watch with a calculator, but the Casio tells a better story and adds just a little bit of fun flair to their fit.

For dapper folks looking for accessories to hold your stuff, I recommend Leatherology’s wallet; it looks sharp, comes in various colors, and can be personalized for your favorite person. Needing something bigger? Try Bellroy’s Sling Mini — it fits a ton of stuff and looks good on anyone.

The secret to masterful gift-giving is always doing your homework on the recipient. Of course, I think all of the gifts in this guide are great, but to find the perfect gift for your favorite dapper, transmasc queer, you’ve got to pay attention to what brings them joy, what they enjoy wearing/ doing, and the go-to pieces (and habits) that make them so damn dapper. If you do your homework and use this guide as a jumping-off point, you’ll get your favorite dapper, transmasc queer a gift they will absolutely love.

A Goodbye Plan: 17 Queer Spaces Now That Twitter Is Maybe Ending

I don’t have many relationships that have lasted as long as my love-hate relationship with Twitter. I first joined the app in 2010 – early on in my gender and sexuality journey. Back then, I was not-yet butch, queer, non-binary, trans, married, or even a teacher. In many ways, Twitter has been a way for me to learn, discuss, and document my growth in real-time. On a recent episode of Vibe Check, co-hosts Sam Sanders, Saeed Jones, and Zach Stafford discussed the impact of the app, especially what it means for Black folks looking to joke, connect, and talk back to a world that would rather we not do any of it.

It’s hard to say goodbye and I don’t want to, but nothing lasts forever. 140 characters have turned into 280. Memes became gifs and gifs became voice notes (which are terrible). These days, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Twitter may crumble any day now. For many folks like me – Black, queer, and desiring connection – Twitter has served as a vehicle for dialogue, digital intimacy, and a lot of laughter. Twitter is where I get my news, where I go to procrastinate, where I look for inspiration to keep going, and (of course) where I go to connect with other queer folks with shared interests and identities. For the past week, I’ve been trying to reckon with this slow goodbye, to make plans for what comes next for me. I figured I can’t be the only queer who’s wondering how I’ll find community so here’s a list of 17 suggestions I’ve brainstormed for us all.

---

1. Slide into the poetry aisle at your local independent bookstore

Not only might you find a cute transmasc top reading a book of sonnets, but you’ll also be supporting an independent bookseller who stocks diverse books, supports new/upcoming writers, and serves as a meeting hub for your community

2. Get a big sip at your favorite local coffee shop

It doesn’t matter that you “don’t drink coffee” – most coffee shops also have tea and yummy treats (at least my spot does). 10/10 would definitely recommend bonding with a friend over a cappuccino and chocolate croissant this winter.

3. Go look for your new DJ at the record store

If you’re looking for hipster queers, you’ll find them at the record store. They will be in the 80s or 90s section trying to decide between Pat Benetar, The Clash, and Tina Turner. I hope, for your sake, your new friend chooses Tina.

4. It’s okay, we have the other popular social media apps – TikTok, Instagram, Facebook

There are, of course, all of the other major social media apps that we use today. Autostraddle is on both Facebook and Instagram, too! I know myself though; I hate Facebook and Instagram is overwhelming, but if Twitter crashes, I guess I’ll just have to post more thirst traps and watch dog videos to pass the time (maybe I’m onto something).

5. Tumblr – are we going back to Tumblr?

A queer legend. An icon. A beacon for many. Tumblr’s been out for a while, but some folks I know have been talking about going back. I was never cool enough to be really into Tumblr, but I’d be willing to entertain it. What do you think? Did you ever leave? Help me get hip in the comments!

6. Just walk your dog – we love dogs.

If you’re like me – you may be more of an animal person than a people person. Sometimes, our animals can be the gateway to great conversations with people. And even if it’s not, at least you get some exercise and get to meet other cute dogs!

7. Are clubs and bars still in?

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good drag show and dancing the night away with friends but I haven’t had good luck making strong connections (like those on Twitter) in the club scene. If this is your thing though, maybe Twitter’s death will be your invitation to get back out there and party!

8. Get a library card and go!

I don’t know about yours, but the Public Library in my town always has tons of events happening. I’ve found free library events are a nice bridge to sparking meaningful conversations with other folks who may share similar interests.

9. Host or attend a watch party or movie night!

When I was in college, watch parties were a staple in our friend group! Sure, these days we can do it via Twitter with a hashtag but maybe it’s time to reestablish (or reconvene) your friend group for a recurring watch party. Nowadays, most of the platforms offer group watch so it works for those wanting to be COVID-safe as well!

10. Maybe we’ll all end up on Mastodon

There’s a lot of talk about Mastodon being the new alternative to Twitter. After I saw a few people tweet about it, (I think) I made a Mastodon account. It looks overwhelming and I haven’t logged in since. I’m not that old, but I’ve decided that I’m too damn old to learn a completely new platform. If you’re willing to offer Mastodon tutoring lessons, though, let me know. I might be persuaded to figure it out.

11. Join the A+ Community!

I’m not just adding this in here because it’s Autostraddle and they’re making me do it. Some of the best queer conversations and connections I’ve made have been through the community on this website. It may be where I live forever if Twitter dies.

12. Try “the apps” (terrible but there)

Apps like Bumble and Lex have platonic aspects of them but they are very limited. I recently joined Lex in Ohio and even with a 200-mile radius – it is sparse and lacking.

13. Check out organizing spaces (online or in-person)

Socially conscious, fired-up folks are always wanting to meet, connect, and strategize both online and offline. Even without Twitter, this work will continue and connections can happen!

14. Go get some goodies from Trader Joe’s (or some other crunchy food place)

You’ll find your new vegan baker BFF in aisle 3 at Trader Joe’s. Go meet them there now!

15. Brunch anyone?

This is a given, right? If Twitter dies, I’ll be throwing her “funeral party” at brunch.

16. Drive your Subaru to an outdoorsy store like REI

I know for most of us, it’s getting too cold to spend much of our time outside but some of us love being outside all of the time and others of us just love cheap end-of-season clearance items! Maybe you could strike up a friendship with your rugged bestie over by the rock climbing wall.

17. Sign up for a community class or sports league

The best way I’ve found to build long-term meaningful connections with folks in my own backyard is by committing to a long-term engagement with them (scary I know), but maybe consider taking a basket-weaving class this winter or joining the volleyball team. Sure, maybe everyone won’t be queer but we’re everywhere – your people will find you.

I am a Sucker for Romantic Comedies

Thanks to an outpouring of support, we made our fundraiser goal in JUST FIVE DAYS!!! Thank you if you’re an A+ member or if you donated. This support means that Autostraddle can survive through January, that we’re okay for now. But as we look ahead to an actually pretty scary 2023, we have to acknowledge that we need more monthly A+ members on our side in order to continue to keep this space around. So many of our incredible writers and team members wrote posts for the fundraiser, and we’re going to run them through the 12th, during our Monthly A+ Member Drive. If you sign up at the $6/month level or higher as a monthly member before the midnight PST on the 12th of November, you’ll get a bonus pack of 4 stickers, too, on top of the usual perks. So, what do you say? Will you join?

Join A+!

---

Opening Scene

[shea walks through a midwestern public park at dusk. They are wearing headphones and blasting music. Janelle Monáe’s “I Like That” shuffles on. They forget they are in public and begin to dance whimsically around trees and glide gracefully across the grass. The birds stop flying to chip with the beat. The squirrels put down their nuts to harmonize with the background vocals.]

[Voice Over]
I am a sucker for romantic comedies. On my toughest days, I curl up with my pup on our cozy IKEA sectional and watch old romantic comedies in which the (usually white) guy gets the (usually white girl). Sometimes there is a dog which makes it even better (F-O-X, anyone?). The best romantic comedies, though, are the ones with surprising twists and turns that keep us guessing about what might happen and forever hoping for a happy ending. I have never tried to write a romantic comedy – I prefer to get lost in them instead but I think in getting lost I may have weaseled my way into living in one of the best romantic-ish comedies. Like most great romantic comedies, this one has a happy ending (and a dog). Unlike most great romantic comedies, the story isn’t over yet. Unlike most great romantic comedies – this one involves you.

The Beginning

I fell in love twice in 2010. A chubby nerd taking classes at community college, I spent my days working at an overpriced furniture store that filled the wet dreams of yuppies who gentrified my hometown. On the nights I didn’t have class, I spent time with my girlfriend at the moment, an older white lady, Despite living in a metropolis full of hot overachieving queers, I’d met this old white lady online because I wasn’t quite out or sure I wanted to be out – ever.

“I don’t want to be like Ellen,” I say to my girlfriend one night at Chipotle. “I don’t want to be known as gay anything. I just want to be me, a person who just happened to be gay.” Ellen was my worst nightmare – she was funny and had that cute little show on TV but she was gay and everyone knew it and talked about it. In my religious family, we didn’t necessarily talk about it but we talked around it. My cousin wasn’t allowed to see Finding Nemo because Ellen voiced Dory, a blue fish who forgets things. No one ever forgot Ellen was gay. I didn’t want to be like that, I said but I told my girlfriend a lot of lies that I didn’t know were lies when I spoke them.

I love you, I lied not knowing what love was.
I am not gay like the super gays, I lied afraid of who I might be.
I am a femme, I lied and combed my relaxed hair behind my ears. (lol we all have our journeys).

I didn’t know what love could be until that spring when I met and fell in love twice. “I got you a CD,” my mom said one day when we were sitting in the kitchen. I looked inside the Tower Records bag and found Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid. “This is that girl who dances and wears the tuxedos, right?” my mom asked, smiling. My mom and I always bonded through music – she taught me jazz, and I taught her about the dapper voice behind “Tightrope”. I played the album out and imagined the worlds Janelle sang about.

A couple of months into my love affair with Janelle Monáe’s album, I found a post about The ArchAndroid in Crystal’s Record Club series on a website called Autostraddle.

“Wait is Janelle gay? Is this a gay site? It’s a gay site! So many articles! So many people!” I thought aloud. For the rest of the evening, I let Janelle’s album take over my Itunes and I read all of the Autostraddle posts I could digest – this was (is) a place for the “me” I wanted to be, this was a place where my people were waiting for me.

When my eyes got tired from reading, I turned off the dusty desktop and sat nervously in my parent’s cold basement. My stomach lept – I needed a snack, but this wasn’t “I wonder if there are cookies left?” excitement. These were butterflies.

On the 13th track of The ArchAndroid, “Neon Valley Street,” Janelle sings “May the sound of my voice be your guide / Bring you closer to me.” And guide me it did. The dapper Black girl that danced and sang about the future had led me to a new corner of the universe and I was smitten.

This is what love could look like – loving myself and finding a community that would love me back.

Who doesn’t love a good mid-romcom montage?

[Music: “Wondaland” by Janelle Monáe]
Over the next decade, a lot of stuff happens – I dump that old woman (and my femme label). I finish college. I have tons of jobs. I move a lot of times. Janelle puts out two more albums – The Electric Lady and Dirty Computer. I get married. I start to teach. I start to write. My pronouns change. Janelle comes out as queer. I memorize every sound, word, and beat on Dirty Computer and recite them to myself when I feel like giving up. My goals change. Dogs, there are dogs of course. A pandemic comes and takes a lot of folks away from us. Through it all, I begin to love myself fiercely in public (just like Janelle).

The Middle

Twelve years later – just a few months ago in the spring of this year, I sit nervously at my computer with my stomach in knots, reading essays on Autostraddle. A few hours later, the zoom meeting starts. I wipe my damp hands on my joggers and greet Carmen from my office. I still didn’t consider myself a writer but I submitted the staff writer application anyway. “I submitted it and even if nothing happens, at least I did it – if I apply to be a writer that means maybe I might be one,” I told my wife. I am still non-committal about this label. Carmen asks if she can record the interview for Kayla who couldn’t make it and I just imagine having an archive of my nervousness for the ages. I agree though because this community and I go way back – me and this website I found back in 2010 that helped me learn to love myself. I know I am safe here.

I do not remember the questions Carmen asks me. I do not remember my answers.

“Any questions?” Carmen asks at the end of our interview.

“Yes,” I quickly respond. Forever, my mama’s child – a music buff at all times, I look up at the screen and say, “If you had to describe the Autostraddle team’s vibe using an album or song, what would you choose?”

Carmen thought for a few minutes and then said “I think it might be Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer.”

I smile and maybe say “such a good choice.” Minutes later, I thank her for her time and log off. I send a standard “thanks for chatting, this is why I’m dope” email to follow up. It’s not just formality though. I am grateful and Autostraddle (and Janelle Monáe) has taught me to own that I am, in fact, a dope m*therf*cker.

Less than a month later, I sit in a lake house my wife booked for my birthday weekend. My friends are en route to celebrate with me. “No work this weekend,” she reminds me. Mabel the Pig, our mostly-toothless pitbull kisses my leg as if to say, “yeah – no work means more play time!” I smile and nod while I check my email.

Subject Line: Autostraddle Writer Position

I got the gig! “I guess I have to consider myself a writer now,” I tell my wife.

“You’ve been a writer, babe,” she reminds me.

Twelve years after our first meeting, Autostraddle continues to remind me of what has always been true. This community continues to hold me close while I lean in and learn to stand (or even write) in that truth.

These days, I’m still no Ellen (thank goodness) but I am shea – a queer, Black, nonbinary staff writer at Autostraddle, a community/website that helped guide me to myself. For many folks like me, this place is home, a place that teaches how to love and be loved as queer folks in an ever-changing, increasingly hostile world. Now more than ever, all of us (young and old queers alike) need a soft place to land. Autostraddle is ours.

Growing old(er) has taught me that nothing in this world is guaranteed – not people, places, jobs, or my favorite shoes that my dog ate back in 2015. I know Autostraddle might not last forever but I’ll do whatever I can to make sure it lasts as long as it’s needed in this world. This fall, we’re running a member drive to help us keep running in 2023. This is the part of the romantic comedy where you come in. The person (me) is running across the city to catch the love of their life. I can not run (and neither will Autostraddle) without your help. Each new member sign-up or upgrade from you is the fuel we need to get us closer to our happy ending.

And we all deserve the happiest of endings, friends.

Closing Scene

[shea runs very, very, very slowly through a city. As usual, they are wearing headphones and blasting music. They get tired and start to give up, but then Janelle Monáe’s “Django Jane” comes on.]
“What do you need?” a passerby asks.
“Monthly A+ Members,” shea huffs out and disconnects their headphones to let Janelle’s last lines of the track ring out loud: “Do anybody got it? / Do anybody got it? / I say anybody got it?

Join A+!

Fatimah Asghar’s New Novel Is a Salve for My Reality of Grief

“We once-upon-a-time-ourselves. Once upon a time, there were three sisters. Or brothers maybe. Okay, okay: sister-brothers. Sister mothers. Once upon a time, they lived in a castle, up high. Once upon a time their father was gone.”  — Fatimah Asghar, When We Were Sisters (2022), p. 35

“Gone” is where Fatimah Asghar’s When We Were Sisters invites us to join orphans Kausar, Aisha, and Noreen in their journey of grief, growing up, and what comes after the loss of all you knew to be true and good. A queer Muslim poet, filmmaker, and creator of Brown Girls, Fatimah Asghar is a force in whatever she does. If this review (and your subsequent reading) of When We Were Sisters will be your introduction to Fatimah Asghar’s work — welcome, fam. You are in for a beautiful ride.

I have been a fan of Fatimah’s for a while. As a younger queer not-yet-writer in the mid-’10s, I stumbled across her spoken word on YouTube after meeting some of her homies at Furious Flower. Lines of her poems have held me on my hardest days and, some days, I rewatch her short creative work (like Brown Girls and her short film, “Got Game”) and find myself cackling and talking back to my screen. More than two years ago when “Got Game” dropped, our former editor-in-chief Kamala interviewed Fatimah, and I learned about this novel-in-progress. I have been patiently waiting ever since. Like all devoted fans of contemporary greats, I longed for whatever Fatimah would send out into the world — she ain’t no half-steppin’ GOAT. I knew this offering would be graceful in language, meticulous in form, and rich in narrative. What I didn’t know back then is how much I needed this book, how deeply I would exhale when reading these words, how many tears would fall on the pages of the advance readers’ copy I received at my doorstep earlier this fall.

I did not have to travel far to meet Asghar’s characters at their “gone.” Between Kamala’s interview with Fatimah and the book’s release, my own father died, leaving me and my own sister orphaned in a world continuing to crumble around and move beyond us. Unlike the novel’s primary narrator, Kausar and her siblings, my sister and I were not small children when our dad or mama died — we were grown but not quite growing. Well into my thirties, I still found myself crawling back to childhood to mourn, dream, and grow up all over again with Kausar, Noreen, and Aisha. The novel begins in 1995 with the murder of one man (the siblings’ father) and another man Uncle ▬▬▬▬▬ working toward his American dream. From the jump, Asghar’s prose urges us to embrace the complexities of family, race, obligation, dreaming, and grieving. Her characters are achingly human in ways that make life hard for the living and easier for the dead — they are layered, hurting, and doing what they deem to be their best (well mostly — looking at you, Uncle ▬▬▬▬▬). Sandwiched between the complex characterizations of the orphaned siblings and those around them are rich commentaries about religious identity and education, paternalism, home, queerness (oooh the queer depiction is so incredibly good), and desirability — oh and birds (yes, birds!).

When We Were Sisters is not just a good book from a well-established writer; it’s an incredibly stunning story. The book has already been longlisted for the National Book Award and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and fans alike. What makes it so incredibly special is Asghar’s use of language and form to distinguish narrative shifts, illuminate the book’s themes of grieving and growing up, and invite readers to experience deep intimacy with the characters (both living and dead).

Take the excerpt below from “her,” a section in the voice of Kausar’s long-deceased mother.

“there his beautiful, stupid
eyes look at me, lost
as always.

meri jaan. 

& he nods, the promise made

say goodbye to your mother. 

none  of my children move.
goodbye, my angels.

goodbye.”

Interspersed throughout the novel are reminders of the goodbyes that never seem to end — ghosts of those who once breathed and loved, who never really leave.

“Who are they going to believe?

[me] or [you].”

When I came to this page the first time, I read this over and over and wished I could reach into the novel, hold Kausar close and tell her I choose her, tell her she matters. Tell her she can take up all the space she needs, that I will love and believe her no matter what. Of course, she cannot hear me. She is only a character that Asghar has dreamt up and written on the page. So, I tell myself instead: You matter, baby. Take up all the space you need. I will love you no matter what. 

I repeat this to myself and commit it to memory while I finish reading. This book makes you want to fight like Kausar does sometimes, for Kausar sometimes, for Noreen and Aisha, for their dad so he does not die, for Meemoo and Aunty, for the people (and animals) who deserve better in the world Asghar paints for us.

You can’t though. So you may just end up remembering to fight harder for yourself. That’s the magic of When We Were Sisters — it reminds you that you (that we all) are worthy of a fight, of living, of grieving. It is full of moments and lines that you will want to hold onto for longer than you can. Amid the fast-paced news cycles and chaos of capitalism, I found myself slowing down and sitting with Asghar’s lines for days, my soul echoing them back to the pages, “make it last, make it last, make it last…” (p. 140).

Nothing lasts, though — not our parents, not our homes, not our relationships, not us. A month before my mother died in 2015, my parents were forced out of their rent-controlled house in the dead of winter. With my mom in the hospital, I organized our extended family to pack up their house of 30 years and moved my parents into a 2-bedroom apartment in a senior living complex that smelled like moth balls and peppermint. My sister came home from college to help. We said goodbye to home before we were ready. Weeks later, we said goodbye to mama. Seven years later, we did the same with our dad. I am seasoned at saying goodbye. I know that nothing lasts — even the best stories have page limits. I knew When We Were Sisters would end; I knew (like death) it would come before I was ready to say goodbye. So, I dragged my feet finishing it and then started again. I highlighted, underlined, and memorized Asghar’s lines until I could recite passages just like my grandmama taught me to do with her favorite scriptures.

“Once upon a time, they lived in a castle, up high. Once upon a time their father was gone. But once upon a time they knew their father would come back for them. Because once upon a time he was a king. And sometimes once upon a time, kings needed to do king things, like fight dragons. And wars. And stuff. But kings always came back” (p. 35).

Once upon a time, Fatimah Asghar wrote a beautiful story. Once upon a time, she wrote a story that made us cry and made us laugh. Once upon a time, Fatimah Asghar wrote a story that made us feel like breathing and fighting (like how kings fight dragons). And sometimes, once upon a time, stories make us feel both invincible and viscerally mortal at the same time. But that story also reminded us that we are still here and as long as we are still here and we have each other, we’re gonna be alright.

“My grief calls to me, and it is loud,” teenaged Kausaur tells us. I can hear it too. Lately, it is all I can hear amid the chatter of social media trends, pop culture, academic assignments, and unread messages from friends and colleagues.

Almost three years into a global pandemic, some of us know grief better than we know ourselves. We hear it when we breathe without the ones who have left this realm. We see it in the mirror when we look at our reflection and see similarities we never did before. We notice it as the calendar passes, as time goes on, as we move on and fight through sadness we were sure would knock us out cold. But death “makes you cold,” Asghar writes (p. 6). If we, the grieving and living, are sentenced to a chilled existence, may the pages of When We Were Sisters burn bright in the darkness of this cold, may Asghar’s words warm our hearts even as our tears fall, may the defiant survival of Kausaur, Noreen, and Aisha be a flame for our respective paths toward collective survival. May we make it. 

When We Were Sisters is a necessary read for all of us —
the alive and the ghosts we carry each day,
the grown and the ones not yet done growing,
The sisters, brothers, sister-mothers, brother-fathers, and siblings,
The “family” and the family,
The ones still looking for home and those who have found it within themselves,
& the grieving — yeah, especially us.

---

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar is out now.

The Polyamory Workbook Offers Practical Tips for Navigating Any Relationship

I have always loved workbooks — black and white pages prompting me to write, draw, imagine, and reflect bring me so much joy. If I think back to when eight-year-old me was happiest, it was when I was holding some sort of workbook or novel to occupy my ever-racing mind. That happy feeling tracks for present-day me as well, so I was excited to review The Polyamory Workbook by Sara Youngblood Gregory.

Like the most successful polyamorous relationships, Sara Youngblood Gregory’s workbook is a true community effort, which saves the book from being just another self-help book authored by a white woman with too much privilege and so many damn “answers” for all of us. It’s 2022, and the last thing we need is another white woman telling us how to get free, so the inclusion of other (read: BIPOC and trans) voices in this workbook feels like a breath of fresh air. Youngblood Gregory fuses reflections on her own experience with interviews with folks like Sam (Shrimp Teeth) and Crystal Bird Farmer (Black and Poly), plus dialogue with her own polycule. Nestled between these rich conversations are prompts for reflection and practical tips for engaging with the wonderful (and sometimes messy) parts of polyamory.

Almost a decade into navigating polyamorous relationships, Youngblood Gregory suggests that “freedom [within this context] looks like dealing with the difficult parts of yourself — the jealousy, the pettiness, and the insecurity — and looks toward compassion.” Her prompts, glossaries, and examples guide readers down what might be a rocky road to better understanding ourselves, our desires, and our partners. In true workbook fashion, it seems only appropriate that I leave you with a list of my biggest takeaways and wonderings after reading The Polyamory Workbook:

1. This book is for everyone, not just those interested in or involved in polyamorous relationships.

I opened up The Polyamory Workbook happily engaged, in a monogamous relationship, with a firm desire to continue in that relationship for the foreseeable future. I finished reading the book in the same place. However, the workbook provided prompts that helped me explore my understanding of monogamy, trust, and boundaries, and those insights have already changed how I approach my platonic and romantic relationships. The crux of Youngblood Gregory’s argument about polyamory is this: like most fulfilling things in life, polyamory requires intentionality, commitment, and reflection on your development. This workbook is for anyone who wants to be more intentional in how you move through and within your relationships, whether you’re polyamorous or not.

2. What if we just all operated from a place of abundance?

The third chapter, “Making the Switch from a Monogamous to a Polyamorous Mindset,” offers prompts and examples for folks wanting to truly interrogate their scarcity mindset and shift towards an abundance mindset in their relationships. Recalling her conversation with Sam, Youngblood Gregory reminds us that an abundance mindset allows us “to recognize that constraints are about perspective…You give each other freedom to choose when and how you allocate resources, knowing there will always be more opportunities to share love, time, attention.” Reading through a queer and abolitionist lens, I so appreciated this reminder of the abundant and infinite nature of love that can guide how we see, shape, and engage in all of our relationships. Living in this world, it’s easy for us to default to competition and scarcity mindsets. Youngblood Gregory urges us to “let go of entitlement, fear, paranoia, and defensiveness, and lean into freedom.” After reading this book, I’m definitely learning hard into a more liberatory mindset of abundance in my everyday life.

3. Narratives that conflate queerness, freedom, and polyamory leave little room for those in monogamous relationships to experience “freedom.”

For Youngblood Gregory, “feminism, queerness, and polyamory are inseparable.” And I get it — we all have our own journeys toward what makes us feel whole, seen, and affirmed on this wretched earth. However, there’s this growing narrative in the larger queer community of polyamory or non-monogamy as the ultimate queer freedom-dream, and I’m not buying it. I want to make clear, the author doesn’t outright say this, but sometimes her sentiments in the workbook suggest that engaging in polyamory is the pinnacle of living the queerest, freest, radical life. While reading, I found myself wondering, where do the rest of us fit? Is there room for us monogamous folks within these ideas of radical living, queerness, and freedom?

4. If we all completed the exercises in The Polyamory Workbook, life might be less messy and more honest.

There is a ton of research coming out these days about how our social skills have shifted throughout the pandemic. I have found my own social battery to be forever on “E,” and I (like most adults I know) struggle navigating the awkward terrain of moving from acquaintances to friends.

When I was trudging my way through The Polyamorous Workbook, I found myself making connections to the topics’ relevance in how I navigate friendships, community-building, and even work. For example, in Chapter 7, Youngblood Gregory invites readers to think critically about the boundaries we want to put in place for ourselves in relationships. As I completed the reflection on boundaries, I couldn’t help but think about all of the times in my life when communicating my boundaries would’ve saved me from some intense arguments, hurt feelings, or misunderstandings.

What really hit home for me was the discussing on vetting in Chapter 10. Now of course, I won’t be vetting anyone for a romantic or sexual relationship any time soon, but these days, I have a limited capacity for engaging in any type of relationship — so vetting and/or being really intentional about the people I am committed to supporting and loving is definitely something I want to explore.

I wish I could send pieces of this book to all of the people I have ever loved. We all need to learn how to communicate our needs and desires more honestly.

5. Community over everything – FOREVER.

Youngblood Gregory makes it very clear that polyamory is about more than just sex. She argues that polyamory is a way of making it (and maybe even thriving) in this world, “a way to build a network of care, support mutual investment, and aid.” This workbook is a testament to knowing yourself, finding your people, loving fiercely, and making it through.

Sara Youngblood Gregory’s The Polyamory Workbook comes out on November 15, 2022. You can pre-order The Polyamory Workbook now.

Malinda Lo’s New Coming-of-Age Queer Novel “A Scatter of Light” Shines Brilliantly

Author’s note: This review of A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo contains some spoilers, and the quotes included are excerpted from an advance copy of the book and might differ from the final version.

---

In Malinda Lo’s new young adult novel, A Scatter of Light, we are history. By we, I mean me — a thirty-something Tumblr-era millennial queer who grew up during the fight for same-sex marriage, was born eons before the Tik even Toked, and is (mostly) too tired for the club these days. Leave it up to Malinda Lo to write a stunning narrative with the potential to make queer millennials feel equal parts affirmed and ancient as hell.

Kids (and publishers) will call this book historical fiction, and I guess they are right. It is mostly set in 2013 amidst the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s 2013 rulings on same-sex marriage. Despite my ardent denial, the 90s are two decades behind us, and I’ve moved into a category of adulting where one tells stories about the “good ol’ days” at bars, bookstores, and events that have been long retired. With references to anti-Prop 8 organizing, late aughts pop music, and staples of lesbian culture (hello San Fran Dyke March, melodramatic open-mic nights, and L Word critiques), A Scatter of Light has all of the makings of an idyllic ode to the queer “every day” of yesteryear.

In 2022, an ode to yesteryear might be the salve that all of us (old heads and baby queers alike) need to keep going. Let’s be honest: It is easy to get enveloped by the darkness of our “today.” We’re almost three years into a pandemic that continues to affect thousands of people every day. Across the United States, lawmakers continue to pass legislation targeting transgender folks’ access to care and safety. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and some say they’re coming for gay marriage next. Natural disasters continue to obliterate homes and end lives without much action from our government. Internationally, organizers are risking it all to fight back against authoritarian regimes. The heaviness of today makes A Scatter of Light shine even more brilliantly.

At the core of Malinda Lo’s seventh novel is a coming-of-age/coming-out love story set in Marin County, California. The novel’s protagonist, Aria Tate West, is a half-Chinese, half-white teenager from Massachusetts who has been sent to spend her summer with her famed-artist grandmother following a senior-year scandal. In some ways, Lo follows a pretty cookie-cutter guide to a bestselling “coming out” story: Girl is “straight.” Girl meets butch and thinks “I wish you were a boy.” Girl later discovers she is not straight. But of course, Malinda Lo is no basic b*tch, and neither is this narrative; instead, it is complex (sometimes unnecessarily so) and invites a grappling with the grayness of doing the “right thing.”

With the structure of Aria’s journey, Lo bridges the past, present, and future. A Scatter of Light is separated into three sections. The book begins in 2008 with a snapshot of Aria and her grandmother Joan’s relationship. It ends with a glimpse into Aria’s future set in 2023. Through artifacts and dialogue, Lo includes more references to historical queer (and Chinese) culture and people of the past — an intentional move that is revolutionary in itself. Among a flurry of censorship of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC narratives, histories, and ideas from K-12 schools and libraries (including Lo’s books), this book is a defiant reiteration of our quotidian (yet radical) existence across time.

Spoiler alert: Aria falls for the most butch of butches to break her spell of “straightness.” Her love interest Steph is a butch gardener from the Bay Area who writes acoustic ballads based on Adrienne Rich’s poems. I found myself returning to Rich’s The Dream of a Common Language while reading Lo’s newest novel. Rich’s collection, a centerpiece for Aria’s exploration, is known for its celebration and discussion of women (and their relationship with other women).

In “XVII,” Adrienne Rich writes:

“No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.”

Following suit, A Scatter of Light is a book of crashes (and crushes) with effects that reverberate across time. It is queer in the best of ways — messy, raw, heartbreaking, freeing, and imperfect. Marketed as a companion novel to National Book award-winning Last Night at the Telegraph Club, the connection to Lo’s previous bestseller feels forced and unnecessary given the depth and complexity of Aria’s story. The narrative might have been served better if some plot points, such as the rad mention of Bernice Bing’s work, were either explored further or omitted altogether. While the book is stacked with racially diverse secondary and tertiary characters, it would have been nice to have a non-white primary love interest in narrative with such potential. Despite all of this, however, Lo’s newest offering is beautifully composed, often feeling like a peek into your best friend’s hot (queer) girl summer.

Make no mistake, though, this book is a bit heavy at points. Like many of us, Aria’s queer awakening is accompanied by some stress, heartbreak, and grief. The heaviness doesn’t diminish the light found in Lo’s novel, though. If anything, it might make readers feel even more connected to Aria’s experiences of love, joy, and pleasure during her summer adventures. In her narration of Aria using a telescope, Lo writes, “I had to let my eyes adapt to the darkness…to wait for the turbulence in the air to settle, and finally when everything in motion was in motion together, I might see something amazing.” A truly amazing gift, A Scatter of Light is a historical fiction book that serves as a love letter to all we once were, the mistakes we made, and the selves we will become.

Despite the darkness of this moment, Malinda Lo’s newest book (out today) reminds us of the light in our truth.

Queers make mistakes.
Some queers are not yet queer.
Queers are messy.
Queers are alive and free.
Queers find love.
Queers find themselves.
Queers break hearts.
Queers grow old.
We have always been.
We will always be.

It is these truths that make it a book worth reading (and also one likely to be banned). Get it, read it, teach it, hold it (and those you love) tightly.

---

A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo comes out today.

Always End Cuts

It was easy to miss her if you didn’t look hard enough. She — white, speckled, and rough around the edges — was quaint and pretty like those girls in white boys’ country songs. Graveled rocks and a wood patio welcomed you up to her, to the restaurant that will not change your life. In her vestibule, she bore reminders of those who she calls hers: baseball teams, farmers’ markets, local politicians for whom she is just another spot on the campaign trail. She was unremarkably reliable in the best of ways, like my socks I just happen to wear on Tuesdays, like the guy I always see at the park who loves to chat but never tells me his name, like sitting down and just trusting the chair will be there. She was always there, too, The Road House.

***The Road House sat approximately 50 yards from the road halfway between the town and the ski resort. It, like so many other restaurants and businesses in those mountains, was overshadowed by the nature that surrounded it. We drove past the sign three times before we stopped, and when we finally did, it wasn’t for The Road House. At six on a Saturday night, the lot was full of 4x4s, station wagons, and pickup trucks. I counted 12 as we sat in the ice cream line across the lot, a drive-thru Creemee Stand that promised the best ice cream in Vermont. Based on my extensive pandemic research of ice cream in the mountains, I would say this small frozen trailer and kids working for “college tuition tips” were lying (but only a bit). It is quite hard to compete with Ben & Jerry. We got Saturday ice creams twice before we finally made it through the doors of The Road House. It was the Prime Rib that made us do it. Outside of the building, the owners hung a bright red and white sign that reminded every person driving by that Saturday was not only the weekend but also “PRIME RIB SPECIAL” day.

Our first Prime Rib Saturday came just a month after we moved to the mountains. My wife and I were speeding through the hills of southern Vermont when I proposed a special date night. “Numbers are low here,” I reminded her. This was part of how we ended up in the mountains in the first place. She, a teacher in Boston, was teaching remotely for a year. I, a student and researcher, could work anywhere and needed to breathe without fear of dying every day. The mountains offered that reprieve. Fewer people and fresh air had brought us here; low transmission rates helped me feel better about masking up and doing the things necessary for living, like grocery shopping, getting gas, picking up medicine, and, yes, date night. “What about that prime rib place?” I asked. “It seems fancy, and you deserve it.”

I don’t know anything about red meat. I stopped eating it years before I met my wife and haven’t looked back, but I know that menu prices don’t lie. I know that prime means of the best possible quality, and I know that Adam gave a rib to make Eve, so that means it must be the best. At least, that’s how my brain justified the cost of a piece of meat when dialing the restaurant’s number.

“No service,” I said, looking helplessly at my phone. There was never any service in the mountains unless we were at home — a trait I mostly loved but hated in moments like these.

“We’re almost at the clearing,” my wife responded and floored the Forester up the hill. We parked at the top next to the gift shop owned by two cranky sisters who liked me more than my wife and charged me a little bit less for their apple cider donuts.

I held my phone outside of the car window, waving it around, grasping for service. Until I heard a ring. A gruff voice answered. It was 4:30 p.m. They didn’t open until five, but the voice on the other end of the line already seemed exhausted. “I can’t hear you,” he croaked. I have bad service, I tried to say.

No service. One bar. Redial.

“You there?” the voice yelled. I handed the phone to my wife and mouthed YOU DO IT. This is how we usually make calls. I determine a call needs to be made. I dial the number. The person answers the phone. I briefly consider talking before silently handing the phone to my wife.

“Yes, I’m here,” she replied. She made a reservation for 5:30. Reservations were required at all places in the mountains that dared let you breathe and eat inside. “Martin,” the voice yelled back, and I gasped. How did he know? Was there talk of us in the town — the fat, interracial couple who had moved into the spot across from the river just south of town? “We got a caller ID,” the voice clarified before hanging up.

We sped back down the mountain into the valley to change into our best date-night attire. My wife, a tunic and leggings. I threw on my green corduroy button-up that felt like a snuggie. It was the best I could muster for a pandemic date night in small-town Vermont. When we’d decided to move into the apartment by the river, we rented a storage unit in a New Hampshire town halfway between Boston and Vermont. We boxed and stacked our nicest clothes, family heirlooms, and furniture into the five-by-five unit that smelled like forgotten memories and mothballs. Our little place in the mountains had no dressers — and no room for dressers — so I brought only the necessary. Flannels, jeans, joggers, boots, and a few button-up oxfords for special occasions like graduate school interviews, date nights to nowhere, and, eventually, Prime Rib Saturdays.

The parking lot betrayed The Road House dining room. In the September warmth, the insides of the building met us with just enough cool to stop my wife from sweating under her mask.

The host looked like our waitress who looked like the bartender who looked like the other waitress. As they passed, they all looked at me, and I looked back and smiled. I had taken to smiling and waving to white folks in the mountains. In their wave and smiles, I heard “Black Lives Matter,” so my response was partly niceties and mostly please don’t kill me. I am just trying to breathe.

Above our table, a landscape painting lay in a wood frame that matched the wood table, wood furniture, wood paneling. Should I pour one out for the trees who we lost in the making of this place? I sipped my Diet Coke instead.

The bread arrived first. “Baked fresh today,” the waitress said as she put the basket of sliced white bread in between us on the table. “Well-baked, lightly seasoned,” I announced to my wife. She almost choked on her piece and chuckled. “Stop it, shea!” she whispered and loaded unsalted butter on the unseasoned bread, saying a prayer to the flavor gods above.

“How was the bread? What’ll it be?” the waitress said when she returned a few moments later. I ignored her first question because Black folks can’t be honest about white folks’ food when ain’t no more of us around to back us up. I ordered the blackened salmon, emphasizing the Black because it is 2020, and I want to make sure she can see me through the flick of the candlelight.

“Prime Rib!” my wife exclaimed. “An end piece, please!”

“Oof, we just sold out of end pieces a few minutes ago,” the waitress replied. Behind her in the bar area, a middle-aged man-boy played covers of soft rock songs just a little slower than one might expect, “Wagon Wheel” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” becoming soft lullabies for our table and the few others around us.

I looked at my phone. 5:35. Just 35 minutes into dinner service, and the ends were gone. I knew this would be the last time this would happen, the last time my wife would ask for an end piece and be told there were none left, bested by grey-haired gentlemen thirty years her elder. I knew we would show up early next time.

Dejected she accepted “whatever you’ve got then” and pouted the rest of the way through dinner and dessert of homemade carrot cake and brownie a la mode.

When we left, the sun promised to wait until we made it to the mountaintop to watch her set for the evening. So we drove to the peak, like we did on most evenings, and watched her. I sanitized my hands more than I wanted, checked the Covid rates for the tenth time that day, and we promised ourselves we’d do more things that made us feel safe in a world that felt more unpredictable every day, like Prime Rib Saturdays with unflavored bread, early end cuts, and bad live music.

And we did.

We went back every Saturday. We learned one hostess was our neighbor. She’d just put her house on the market but would still stay in town. We learned that most people from the town stayed and those who weren’t from here didn’t stay long. We learned our waitresses were teachers on weekdays and Road House warriors on the weekend, working second jobs through the pandemic. We met Twitter followers and were reminded of the world we had desperately tried to escape. We found out the hard way that end cuts and fish don’t travel well down the road to our own kitchen. We found predictability and safety in the people, place, and food waiting for us.

***Always at 5 p.m.
Always end cuts.
Always Black(end) salmon.
Always dessert, add the ice cream.
Always that table, that painting, that music — too slow and too loud.
Always just us, them, and her — The Road House.
Always just us, them, and her, until we left the valley and she stayed because her prime rib tastes better in that house, atop a gravel lot, on the side of the road, behind a sign proclaiming the news of Prime Rib Saturday to those who might miss it if they aren’t looking hard enough.

“Body Language” Anthology Offers Invitation To Reckon With Our Messy Bits

Two truths, no lies.

1. I am an essayist who typically hates essay collections.
2. Body Language is one of the best essay collections I’ve read in a long time.

Last month, Catapult released Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves, an essay collection edited by Nicole Chung and Matt Ortile. It took me a month to get through it and write this review. Not because it’s one of those dense “ugh I can’t believe I have to finish it” texts, but instead for all of the right reasons –– the essays demanded my attention not only to the carefully crafted sentences by the 30 writers featured in the collection but also to my own spatiality and presence in this world.

The diversity of identities within this collection is astounding in the best of ways. Bassey Ikpi writes about home, family, and skin in “Connecting the Dots.” Natalie Lima writes about the fetishization of fatness in her brilliant essay, “Smother Me.” Marcos Gonzalez’s “Papi Chulo Philosophies” is an ode to the complexities of relationships, perceptions, and tenderness. Bryan Washington’s “View from the Football Field; or What Happens When the Game is Over” tackles the nuances of the sport, Blackness, and southernness in America. Autostraddle alum, A.E. Osworth’s “In Certain Contexts, Out of Certain Mouths” is an essay on trans thirst-trapping that I have returned to over and over again since it was first published on Catapult back in 2020. Seeing it in print was just the affirmation I needed during an incredibly tough (but still hot) they/them summer. And of course, sure, I read this with all of my identities — Black, fat, queer, disabled, nonbinary, middle-class, etc. — and in many of the essays, I saw myself, my struggles, and lingering questions silently grapple with on a daily basis.

But perhaps seeing oneself completely in the wide spectrum of perspectives offered through Body Language isn’t the point. This collection isn’t just a mirror of readers’ own experiences or a window into another world. These essays in Body Language are tinted windows sitting on 24s, a fierce subwoofer booming in the back –– a vehicle demanding your engagement with its audacity, pushing you forward to a reckoning with your own body in this world. And reckon I did, fam.

In “Surviving Karen Medicine,” Dr. Destiny O. Birdsong writes about navigating the racist healthcare system as a Black woman living with an autoimmune disease. In her account of how she finally got the basic care she deserved, Birdsong offers a new take on ancestor Audre Lorde’s ideas about the master’s tools. “In some instances,” she writes, “they (the tools a Black woman uses for survival) are the master’s tools, finessed and repurposed” (p.114). I huffed at this until I read it enough times to reflect on it — on my success thus far, on how my mama and my grandmama (and hers) had survived.

I read Rachel Charlene Lewis’ “When Your Body is the Lesson” aloud to my wife as we drove across the country and abruptly paused halfway through.

“Can you imagine posing naked in front of all of those people? The vulnerability it must require just to help these folks hone their craft?” The utter confidence you have to have,” I thought aloud.

“You kind of do that though — like in your writing and teaching,” my wife responded.

Lewis’ detailing of how she contorted her body into new poses, etching her figure into the  memories (and sketchbooks) of art students made me grapple with my own contortion. I thought about how much of the work I do as a writer and facilitator requires me to use my own body as a tool for others’ learning and development. It wasn’t a new revelation, but it was one I had buried deep beneath some other thoughts and experiences I’ve decided are unworthy of dwelling upon.

In many ways, this book is a shovel that is determined to unearth all of those pieces we have deemed inappropriate, uneasy, and too hard to face. Essays from Taylor Harris and M Crane (amongst others) depict the complexities of birthing and childrearing. There are also heartwrenching essays about the other side of life too — meditations and stories about dying, death, and grieving. The late Nina Riggs’ “The Crematorium” begins the entire book with an essay about her mother’s own death and her own impending final breath. She writes, “there are so many things that are worse than death: old grudges; a lovely life; insufficient self-awareness; severe constipation; a lack of curiosity; no sense of humor; this grim parking lot” (p. 8). And maybe she’s right — I spent at least five minutes thinking about the pain that I’d suffer if I walked around this damn earth severely constipated for all of my days — TERRIBLE. Others in Body Language deal with what comes after death, the coping and grieving we do as those who are left behind. “The Small Beauty of Funeral Sex” by s.e smith challenges society’s norms of mourning appopriately. Andrea Ruggirello’s “Camino de Santiago” shows us what happens when memories of loved ones, coincidences, and our adventures collide.

But we all know life isn’t just you’re born and then you die , so the majority of the collection deals with the messiness of the in-between — how our bodies struggle, survive, and thrive throughout this human experience; how they are perceived, erased, and omitted from consideration; how we fight for them to be seen; how we reckon with new challenges, failed dreams, and get to know curves, bones, scars, and skin again and again.

---

Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves is out now.

Interview With My Wife: Jane

Hey, y’all. It’s shea. A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I drove across the country back to the East Coast for a quick teaching gig. Along the way, we ate crappy gas station snacks, belted out early 2000s hits, and yes – did this extensive interview with my S.O. which offers just a glimpse into the wild, beautiful ride that has been our last seven years together. Buckle up and enjoy!

---

shea: I’ve started. Should I do an interview, a real interview?

Jane: Sure. Why not?

shea: shea wesley martin reporting live from I-81 North.

Jane: That’s not how you do it, babe. You’re supposed to say “I’m recording, the date, who was present…”

shea: Oh, okay. shea wesley martin on Friday, July…

Jane: I don’t know the date.

shea: On I-81 with Jane and Mabel the Pig. Just outside of Mohegan Sun Arena where Jane has just revealed that she saw the great Sarah McLachlan – known to me only by the song that she sings on those animal commercials.

Jane: That was the first time I openly wept at a concert. It was very weird. But we’re not here to talk about that. Let’s get on to these questions now that we’ve had our proper introduction.

shea: This is going to be an interesting ride.

How’d you meet / get together? (Include how long you knew each other before becoming romantically involved.)

Jane: So first – I’m a queer, cis woman and my pronouns are she /her. And how did we meet? Well, actually, so we did Teach for America back in 2015. I was on staff that summer and you were just starting to teach. I actually saw you before they saw me. I went and Facebook stalked.

shea: Stalker!

Jane: I Facebook stalked, whatever. I was looking for my queer people, people who I could have friendships with. I don’t know if I was looking for a relationship or anything, but I was looking for my queer people [who were joining the program in Florida].

shea: Well, how did you know I was queer?

Jane: Well, I guessed. Actually, no. You had pictures with you and your ex.

shea: Oh, okay.

Jane: So, but at that point, I was like, “They could be a friend, even though they’re dating someone, they could be a cool friend.” And then I found out you were moving in with [roomate]. And I was like, “Okay, that [roommate] doesn’t like me, but that’s fine. We’ll see.”

shea: Can you describe my roommate to the readers, because I think that’s important… You can’t just say [roommate].

Jane: She was 65, a self-proclaimed Butch dyke who had girlfriends in all these different cities and would refer to the girlfriends by their city names, like Phoenix and Sarasota.

shea: She was an absolute mess – a legend and also ridiculous.

Jane: Indeed. So, I found you that way. We met for the first time, probably about a month and a half later but I was on staff and I was really just focusing on trying to be a good mentor. And I knew that you were in a relationship.

shea: This is a very different story from the one that I tell and you know this. I fell for you before we even talked when I saw you across that room on the first day of that institute. You were handing out lunch boxes and just being so joyful. I had no idea if you were queer, taken, or even from the same region as me, but I was like “who is this girl?!” And then you ignored me all summer while I was trying to feel you out – so rude!

Jane: And that’s why I’m here telling my story. Enough of yours because everyone hears your damn story. “I ignored you [Blah Blah blah].” I ignored you because once I found out you were interested, I was like, “Okay, this could be something real and I don’t want to f*ck it up. So I’m going to wait till we get back to Jacksonville.” Because we were in Houston, Texas just for the pre-service summer program before we got back [to Florida] and I thought, “When we get back, I’ll feel it out. See what their relationship looks like,” because I was really confused about that.

shea: I know and by that time, I thought you were not interested at all.

Jane: Yes.

shea: You were ignoring me. So when I asked you out to dinner, I asked you as a friend first. I had no idea that anything else was in the cards.

Jane: Well, so I replied – I wanted to make sure I knew. I was like, “Is this a date date? Or is this a friend date?” And whatever the answer was going to be, I was excited about it.

shea: That was the best trip to Marshall’s ever.

Jane: Marshall’s?

shea: Yeah. I went to Marshall’s to buy a lamp the day I asked you out – That gold lamp you have in your office right now. On the way out, I texted you and asked you to dinner. And you asked if it was a friend date or a date date.

Jane: Well, I had no idea so I wanted to be sure! And then you were late for the first date! That’s not part of the question, but I just wanted to say that happened.

shea: Time is a social construct. It’s not real.

Jane: [Rolls eyes and smiles] What’s our next question?

What are your three big astrological signs? How do we feel about that?

Jane: We? As two people?

shea: Yes – us.

Jane: Well, my sun is Capricorn. My moon is Aries and my ascendant sign is Aquarius.

shea: Did you look these up?

Jane: I mean, they’re on my Co-Star. I reviewed what they mean a little bit because…

shea: Today?

Jane: Yes, today, because I don’t actually care that much but I knew you would ask.

shea: Ah.

Jane: When I was younger, I was very much into astrology. I was into a lot of new-age stuff – energy work, numerology. And then I don’t know what happened but there was an invalidation of it somewhere. It was probably when I went to college because I was a scientist and this idea of “pseudoscience” is not something that [most scientists] consider to be real. So I think that’s probably when I disengaged from new-age stuff.

shea: It’s interesting because I feel like I also never really engaged in it until recently, but I don’t think it’s because of science. I think it’s because of my religious upbringing. Growing up, it was definitely positioned as the opposite of Christianity. Not Satanic per se, but I hear my grandmother’s voice in my head saying it’s evil or not real.

Jane: I also think astrology has become very…I don’t want to say trendy in younger communities but –

shea: It’s definitely “in.”

Jane: I mean, I got asked about it in a job interview

shea: That was weird though.

Jane: The person asked what my signs were and at the time, honestly, I didn’t know. The interviewer was very much like, “Oh, interesting.” I felt like I was very much judged for not having my top three right off the top of my head.

shea: These days, it feels it’s very queer. People are like, “I’m queer. What are your signs?” And I’ve met some snooty, hipster people who are like, “I don’t use that app. I use…”

Jane: I’m not that cool.

shea: I don’t even know all of the information you gave. I know I’m a Taurus. When people, mostly queers ask me, I just open Co-Star and hand them my phone. It’s so much easier.

Jane: But you are very much a Taurus though. The stereotypical Taurus – very stubborn. Not that I know a ton about astrology, but…

shea: I also like to be really cozy and comfortable.

Jane: I am very much a Capricorn. I’m very driven. I want to do what I want to do, in the way I want to do it.

shea: Yes. Which it’s interesting because I’m stubborn. And so together we are quite the stubborn combination sometimes.

Jane: Yeah.

shea: But it works.

Jane: It does.

What do you enjoy most about your relationship?

Jane: I think that I have never been in a relationship, whether it be a friendship, romantic, or even a familial relationship – I’ve never been able to be my true self with someone. And that is something that I find comes very easily with you. I am weird. I am very strange and I like to be strange. And I like to be almost like, I don’t know, kid-like sometimes in my weirdness. I’ll make weird noises and we giggle about it for a half hour and it becomes a crux in our relationship, this weird noise that I made for weeks. Like that time that we were at the market and you made a weird noise at the people when they were walking away. That’s special to me – just to be able to laugh about it and be like, “That weird thing happened.” And we use that thing that other people might be embarrassed about to say, “it’s something that we’re going to bond over and giggle”

shea: I think that was probably my favorite realization in our relationship [when I realized that you were also weird]. I just thought you were hot, really smart, and just fun and all the things. I don’t remember when it was but all of a sudden, I realized you were weird and it was like the best surprise ever. Because I was always weird. And I do think there is something so incredibly freeing about being with someone who you don’t have to mask yourself for.

Jane: Well I had to mask so many pieces of myself to feel worthy of other humans’ attention like whether it be my queerness or whether I would have to pretend to hate my body. There were just a ton of different pieces that I never got to show everyone or even show one person all the pieces. It’s nice to be able to have that now

shea: To just be and know that the person’s going to love you no matter what. It’s also terrifying to be completely raw and vulnerable, but I think it is just fantastic.

Jane: Yeah. I agree.

What hurdles or obstacles have you overcome together in your relationship? These can be within your relationship or things that you’ve faced together.

Jane: I think that this is a question that we’re still grappling with as a couple. To be totally transparent, sex has been something that has been – there have been a lot of ups and downs throughout our sex life. I think when we first met probably for about the first six months of our relationship, we could not get enough.

shea: Yes and also the first few months, but they were also unexpectedly difficult.

Jane: So I had a cancer scare and a full hysterectomy when we had just been dating for about three months. That changed a lot of my sex drive/desire. And I mean, if you’re comfortable with me talking about this part [shea nods] I think also you are learning and coming to terms with gender and your dysphoria has been challenging. Did I say that correctly?

shea: Yeah.

Jane: There’s been a lot of shifting and you learning or understanding what your wants are combined with my pulling back of sexual desire because my chemistry was completely off. We have had a lot of ebbs and flows that haven’t necessarily aligned all the time. And I mean, that’s probably been the hardest, I think we’re also learning about intimacy in other ways beyond sex. And at the same time, I mean, our sex life isn’t dead. In fact, we’re going to go have sex in a couple of hours.

shea: Ha yes definitely! But I do think that’s been difficult. Really hard. It’s almost as if we both are having to get to know our bodies again and redefine what it means and doing that in a society and even in a queer culture that wants to define what good sex is or “a good sex life” is or “healthy” in a certain way. It’s complicated. I also think that even though it’s been hard, I’m grateful that I get to do this with you because we have such a solid foundation.

Jane: But I think that also goes into the next question, which I believe is about monogamy and polyamory. Correct?

Where do you locate your relationship on the monogamy/polyamory spectrum? What philosophies do you have around how you handle monogamy/polyamory? How do you feel this impacts your relationship?

shea: Maybe. Yes. It is. Look at you memorizing the questions.

Jane: No, I just, I mean, they’re so very closely related. I think that one of the most difficult times in my whole life was when we opened our relationship because I think you had some exploring to do and also needed to be affirmed. I just wasn’t able to do it. We did that for – I don’t know what, probably about seven, eight months? You were exploring. I attempted to talk to someone and I think she and I might have had a genuine connection, but I felt like I was cheating and I could not get past what the social construct that I grew up in was. And that was really… I mean, it was really, it wasn’t me just in my feelings. There was consistent stress in my body. I went on to some medications to try and counteract what was happening with my body. And I think that was important for us to do. But we’ve also talked about like, I am not built for that. And I am envious of people who can tap into that part of their mental clarity, but I can’t get through what I’ve been socialized and that’s okay. And I think that was probably a step we needed to take. Do you want to say more on that?

shea: No, I think that it was, and it was also when the pandemic was happening. It was heavy and super complicated.

Jane: Because we didn’t know how to do it.

shea: And the world was falling apart. We also got that couple’s therapist who was horrible and not.

Jane: She wasn’t horrible.

shea: If you’re reading this, you’re not horrible but just not for us.

Jane: Therapy also gave us pathways to heal a lot.

shea: I think that everything is a learning process or not even learning but unlearning. I learned a lot and I look forward to continuing to grow and develop with you in our sexual relationship together.

Jane: To be continued in a few hours. Just kidding. Anyways, what’s our next question?

What’s your living situation like? How often do you see each other and why?

Jane: Well, we live together in the same apartment with Mabel the Pig, our pup.

shea: She’s old. And she has like six teeth.

Jane: We spend a lot of time together. We eat meals together on a regular basis. I think that was something that was instilled in me as a child — you eat meals as a family.

shea: Same.

Jane: And then it was also instilled in me that when something was broken, you stop spending as much dedicated time together.

shea: Interesting.

Jane: Yes, very interesting. And I’m not saying that is the fact, but that was what was instilled in me. That’s what I saw in my family. When we stopped having meals together, I started to see the splintering, But while working mostly from home during the past two years or so, we’ve got to spend a lot of time together. We got to have a lot of work dates.

shea: It was really interesting. Because I feel like if you were in a relationship during the pandemic during isolation, it either broke you or –

Jane: Made you.

shea: Yeah – solidified your bond. I think I enjoyed – most of the time I enjoyed being at home with you during the pandemic – getting to see you teach, moving to Vermont, and being able to go see the sunset after. Before the pandemic, we were both teaching and just didn’t have a lot of quality time with each other. And so it was almost as if we’re given this gift amongst a ton of… in a shitstorm.

Jane: But it also gave us the space to work through a lot of that stuff where if we were both teaching and we had opened our relationship, we probably would’ve wound up divorced because we weren’t forced to have tough conversations or be in uncomfortable situations. [In the pandemic], we couldn’t escape them.

shea: You woke up and the problems were still there and you couldn’t leave the house. And so it was like, “either we’re going to break up or we’re going to fight through it together.” And that’s what we did. I think more so than just partners or a married couple, we’ve been best friends for the past seven years because we started dating in Florida and got married three days after Trump. And so it was like, you were my person in Northern Florida who I felt safe around when we had Confederate flags and Trump flags going up around our neighborhood.

Jane: Yes. And I think that living situation probably when we first started dating was codependent.

shea: Absolutely.

Jane: And I mean, I think I maybe even still a little touch codependent but at the same time, we are not afraid to venture out and try new things. Like you being involved in the writing community in Columbus and the creative community, a coffee shop that you love. And that is a very separate thing that you have compared to my creative community, which I tend to maybe bring you along, but.

shea: Just because you need help putting up a tent.

Jane: No one can put up a tent by themselves or if you do, please let me know. Put a YouTube tutorial up. I’d love to learn how.

shea: So we live together but we have separate [home] offices.

Jane: Yes which is really actually great – it’s like my own little haven to go into and paint and be creative.

shea: That’s beautiful.

How do you all share expenses or work out finances? How do you share or split up labor in the relationship? Can you talk about why that is?

Jane: Everything is together. As for Finances?

shea: I think we just –

Jane: We communicate constantly about it.

Jane: We don’t do that.

shea: But we keep it together and I think that my relationship before you was very abusive, emotionally, financially, all the things.

Jane: Financially abusive. Absolutely.

shea: I think that I was really nervous about combining everything with you. I was very nervous about moving my stuff in and feeling like I had my own space and everything.

Jane: You needed to make sure you had independence because you’d never had it before. And so that was something that I think we were very intentional about. As far as splitting up labor, it’s just about who has the capacity. We discuss it. Like if you don’t have the capacity, you let me know. And then we figure it out because nothing can be 50/50 all the time. You’ve got to be able to figure out if you’re partners with someone. Sometimes you have to give 70% when they can only give 30%. Or sometimes things just don’t get done and you’ve got to accept that. But they will – when you’ve got the capacity again.

shea: And I think there’s a lot of learning and working through trying to remember not to harbor resentment when you feel like you’re doing more or you’re offering more and just communicating about it.

Jane: Yes. [You] folded a lot of laundry the past couple of days as we were getting ready to go on a big trip and I think if there was like a, “I need you to do something,” you would have told me or said, “I can only do this for this much longer and it needs to get done. Can you help me out with that?”

shea: It’s taken me a while though because I don’t like asking for help.

Jane: But there’s that safety there. That when you do ask for it, it’s well received and I thank you for telling me.

Do you have kids, pets, plants, all three? Do you not currently have, but want any of these things? Why? Are you in agreement?

Jane: We have Mabel the pig, who is a six-year-old adopted little pibble that we have. Please make sure that you spell P-I-B-B-L-E. That’s very important. Mabel is awesome. We’ve got an abundance of plants.

shea: We do. We just procured quite a few.

Jane: And your favorite plant is a tiny little cactus. No bigger than a thumb. And you’ve named it…

shea: PEENELOPE.

Jane: Like penis e, but Peenelope. Anyways, we have lots and lots of plants. No children at this moment. I think this is something where we are constantly putting our careers first and that’s okay. Because that’s what we’re choosing.

shea: Eventually, we want to adopt – we’re very adamant about adopting – school-aged kids who are older, more than one kid. Siblings because we know that they’re less likely to get adopted and –

Jane: So they can stay together is really important because familiarity is important.

shea: But I think that the last thing we talked about was not necessarily our careers, but ourselves. Basically prioritizing taking care of ourselves – physically, emotionally, mentally, all of the things before we bring children into it. Because I know myself and I know you as well. And I know that if we had children in our house we would put them first and not prioritize our own wellbeing, which is…

Jane: A newfound thing that we’ve just started to learn how to actually put ourselves first.

shea: And I do think when you have children. that’s often your responsibility – to take care of that child.

Jane: And that responsibility becomes greater than your feeling for yourself. And I don’t think either one of us is ready to say we are prepared to take care of someone else over ourselves.

shea: But I think that we would.

Jane: That’s the problem though.

shea: I think that if someone said, “Tomorrow you’re going to get children and you need to take care of them,” we would drop everything and we would take care of those children.

Jane: But that’s the problem. And I know that many parents out there will be like, “You don’t get to take care of yourself fully again until…”

shea: They’re 18 and out of the house.

Jane: I mean, but realistically how many kids really leave at 18? Either way. We’ve also decided that we want to wait because we don’t know what part of the country we’re going to be in after this. And if children have familiarity and comfort in one part of the country where we adopt them, we don’t want to move them two years later.

shea: Uproot them.

Jane: Yes. So we will wait to find out wherever you, my brilliant partner, get a tenure-track position. Fingers crossed. We don’t need fingers. You’re really brilliant. Of course, we need our fingers. Why would I say something like that?

shea: I’m just crossing my toes instead.

Jane: Yes.

shea: Do you want to talk about LilyPad?

Jane: When we met, one of our first conversations before I invited you over to the house was about LilyPad. I was like, “How are you with dogs?” And you were like, “Great.” And then I say “ I have this 60-pound pit bull. She is red-nosed. She is very cute. Her name is LilyPad.” And LilyPad comes to meet you of course, she is very skeptical the first time.

shea: It’s also 1:00 AM.

Jane: It’s very early in the morning. I usually don’t stay out very late.

shea: No. Never.

Jane: LilyPad was our first dog and she moved with us from Florida to Massachusetts, to Vermont. And two days before we were supposed to move [to Ohio], we found out she had cancer and had to be put down that day. And it was the hardest thing. We’d both lost parents. And for me, this has been the most significant loss of my life because…not significant; it’s the most painful. Because it was just absolute, pure love. There was no complication to our relationship. There wasn’t a question about whether she loved me or she loved us. She was our baby.

shea: I also didn’t grow up with pets. I mean, besides the fish that died really quickly. I think I just… Whenever we talked about kids, we would be like, “LilyPad and the kids.” I just always assumed that LilyPad would be wherever we were. And I know that’s a very naive assumption as now a person who has experienced dog loss. But it was just kind of weird. I had known LilyPad almost as long as I’d known you.

Jane: Well, and I think that also now, as we’re talking about adoption in three years, we have to be realistic that Mabel might not be around because she’s already six. She might not meet our children.

shea: And I also think that LilyPad seemed really spry and Mabel does not.

Jane: Mabel’s a little lump. Mabel’s like, “I will nap for the next three hours.” And she’s fine. Anyways, there’s our children and pets and plants.

How would you describe the sex you have together (if you have sex)? Do you believe in lesbian bed death, and has it or do you think it will visit your relationship? What haven’t you done together but want to?

Jane: So I think we talked about it earlier, we were very active.

shea: It was just…

Jane: It took over our lives. There was nothing, but, it was like, “You’re going out to dinner, sex in the car before you go.”

shea: Oh my gosh. You know what it reminded me of, remember in Twilight when Bella first gets…when they first get married and they’re like, “We haven’t seen you all in a month or whatever?” That’s what it reminds me of. Our friends were just like, “We’ll invite you, but we know you’re not going to come or you’re going to come late.”

Jane: Because we’re cumming. Sorry, not sorry. I think as we talked about before, that has shifted and we’re learning about intimacy in different ways.

shea: And I honestly think, I mean, I think that the sex feels better to me.

Jane: Because we both know.

shea: Because we know and we’re giving ourselves time to process and actually acknowledge the feelings that are good and the feelings that feel unsettling and trying to work through that. And I think that sex – it just feels good. I don’t feel as much pressure as I did early on in our relationship or before I met you to perform a certain way or to show up a certain way in sex.

Jane: And I think because of that, I don’t think we’ll ever have bed death. I do think it is real. I definitely think that there are real things that keep people uncomfortable, from having conversations or the ability of… We talked about it before, giving so much to other people. I think that one of the things that came out of our conversation is we give so much to other people that we don’t save time for ourselves or each other. And especially when it comes to intimacy and or sex. We need to make sure that we’re intentional, that we are… If, we have to get to the point that we schedule a time to have sex or we schedule a time for intimacy, we have to do that because the world doesn’t give a shit. Corporate America, capitalism doesn’t give a shit whether we want to have sex or not. The world says, “No, you need to get done what you have agreed to do for X, Y, or Z.”

shea: And I think that “bed death” could be a thing, but I don’t think it’s just lesbians.

Jane: No, I don’t either.

shea: And I think that’s something that I just want to make clear.

Jane: I think that people who are queer have a very strong self=understanding and therefore probably name it more than cishet people do.

shea: And I also think that… I agree. I think that there’s self-knowing, frankness, and clarity when it comes to queerness and sex. But I also wonder if that’s because queerness oftentimes is kind of released from the idea of having to think about sex as procreative activity.

Jane: It’s about feeling good and about making your partner feel good. Or partners.

shea: So, how would you describe the sex that we have with adjectives?

Jane: Adjective is a…

shea: Describes a —

Jane: Yes. I know what an adjective is. Damn. I mean, it’s fun. I think that depending on our mood, it’s very steamy. I think that, how do I put this into an adjective? I think it can be very royal and I think electrifying. Because whatever.

shea: Oh my gosh. Do you remember Iceland?

Jane: Oh my God. Yes.

shea: You just said electrifying. And I just thought about that.

Jane: Well, so we used to have this Hitachi wand. We do not have it anymore. This is why. It was a knockoff, Hitachi. It wasn’t real.

shea: Wait, it wasn’t real? You had a knockoff?

Jane: Well, of course, I did. Because those things are expensive.

shea: What?!

Jane: And I probably had that for a very long time.

shea: Oh that was a newer one.

Jane: Anyways. So when we were in Iceland for Christmas right before the pandemic started, we needed a… What is it called? A converter [for the Hitachi].

shea: We had the converter!

Jane: But I think that something happened when we plugged in. The converter would short-circuit, but it didn’t just short circuit in our hotel room. It was the entire floor! And so I think we probably tried two or three times to try and get it to not short circuit the floor.

shea: So we just kept changing the outlets.

Jane: And we’re like, “Maybe this time it’ll be better.” No.

shea: So basically we’re in the middle of sex and the power goes out and then obviously the vibrator stops working.

Jane: But I would call down to the front desk and I would be like, “I don’t know why, but our power is out again.”

shea: And then it turns back on. And then instead of being like, “It turned back on, we’re not in trouble. We’re good.” We’re like, “Okay. It turned back on. Let us now plug the vibrator into another outlet in Iceland, in this Icelandic hotel.”

shea: We’re not going to be allowed in Iceland anymore.

Jane: That’s fine.

shea: No, it’s not!

Jane: We’ve been twice.

shea: I know. All right. So, yes it is electrifying. You didn’t answer what haven’t you done together, but want to? Is there something that you can think of?

Jane: I can’t. Can you? I think all the things we want to do, we’ve done before.

shea: I don’t necessarily think that what I was going to say is actually something I want to do. So now I’m trying to think. No, I don’t… I don’t think there’s anything that I would like to do with you that we haven’t already done.

Do you think your relationship will more or less continue to exist as it currently is? Why?

Jane: I mean, I think we’re in a growth stage, so I think we will continue to grow together. We continue to learn about ourselves. And therefore our relationship has to evolve because we need to accommodate the new pieces of ourselves and of each other that we’re learning. But I think that we’ve done that pretty well for the past two, three, four years. Before that, I think we might have even done it together, but I think there’s been a significant jump in that learning curve since the pandemic started.

shea: I don’t ever think we said this? But we’re married. So we’ll continue doing that!

Jane: Yes – we got married three days after Trump..

shea: So we met in 2015. We got married in November 2016.

Jane: Wait, can I tell them about the proposal?

shea: Yes. Sure.

Jane: I proposed at a Valentine’s Day dance with your students who brought over roses with a little memory attached to each one. And then I came out with a white rose and the ring and I couldn’t even say anything. I just opened the box and I was like, “Will you marry me?”

shea: It was so adorable and Mariah Carey was playing. It was really cute.

What would you say are your most fundamental differences?

Jane: I think that when it comes to processing, learning, teaching – you tend to be very drawn to words, written words. While I tend to be someone who is more auditory and kinesthetic. I need to do things hands-on and I need to build something while you’re like, “let me write this beautiful piece of writing to process.” Would you agree with that?

shea: Yeah. It’s funny because when you started off with processing, I thought you were going to talk about the way that we process conflict, where you are a person who…

Jane: I need to have a conversation.

shea: You want to have an immediate conversation and talk out your feelings about what just happened. And I’m like, “I’m just going to be quiet.”

Jane: You’re like, “I need to figure out why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling.” And I think that’s probably due to the abuse that you suffered from your past partner.

shea: And actually I think part of it is when we first met. I still had a guard up and was really scared, angry, and also grieving my mom’s death. When I would get into conflicts, my tendency was to try to throw a dagger immediately to hurt the person before they could hurt me. I learned that if I don’t say anything, just sit, and try to process why I’m upset then I can better articulate how I’m feeling.

Jane: And at the same time you don’t have to hurt the person.

shea: So, I don’t just spew out hate because I’m hurt. I sit in it and then later I’m able to have a more productive and honest conversation, not just trying to think “how can I protect myself?”

Jane: And I think that wait time also has given me the same opportunity to process what I’m thinking about. I agree. I think that’s a big difference for us.

shea: You did not mention the biggest difference.

Jane: That I am white and you are black. That’s it. I mean, yes. That’s a thing.

shea: There was this one point where we were working together at the same school and…

Jane: I was substitute teaching while I was in grad school.

shea: And the kids would call us the Black Mrs. Martin and the white Mrs. Martin because that was the only difference.

Jane: At the time you hadn’t come out as non-binary and we are both round.

shea: …both teachers with the last name “Martin.” So they would just be like, “No, the other Mrs. Martin.” And I’d be like, “But what do you mean the other one? What?” And the kids would say, “The white one. The Caucasian lady.”

Jane: Oh yeah. They called me ‘the Caucasian lady.’ “Is that Caucasian lady your wife?”

shea: It was very cute. I’m going to call you Caucasian for the rest of the day.

Do you all have any shared dreams/goals for the future or each other? What are these?

Jane: I think we do have a shared dream. I just think the culmination of it is, I don’t know. We want to have space. Whether it be a school, a retreat center, some space for queer kids to be able to exist and thrive. I think we were listening to a book on tape earlier.

shea: Bitter.

Jane: But what’s the author’s name?

shea: Akwaeke Emezi.

Jane: Thank you. And this author was writing about this place.

shea: Eucalyptus.

Jane: Yes. Eucalyptus. Where kids were able to be their creative selves and hold their identities true and not be afraid. And that’s the kind of space that I want to create. We have talked about so many different iterations of what that looks like a Christmas tree farm where you can have ice skating…to a school, to a maker center, to a summer camp, to fostering kids. Just having a place where queer kids are able to be in this space that we hold because neither one of us had that as a kid. We didn’t have a place where we were fully ourselves.

shea: Well, I mean, obviously [most spaces] weren’t designed to be.

Jane: No.

shea: I agree with that shared dream. I think I just want us to thrive separately and together and figure out how to do that holistically because there’s so much in this world that doesn’t want us to do that. The setup for us not to be able to do that. And I feel like, yeah…

Jane: We’re both very creative and nurturing. And we’re both very equity centered when it comes to how we interact with other people and just to be able to have hold and become a part of a community., because I know how driven we are and I know that will be something that happens in our future.

shea: That’ll be really cool.

Jane: It will be whatever it is.

shea: Whatever it is.

Jane: Watch out.

shea: The Martins are coming for you.

What piece of pop culture do you share or what piece of pop culture reminds you of your relationship? What’s your movie or your show or your book or your song?

shea: We really liked watching Sex Education and Love, Victor. I mean, but the thing that’s like… We don’t really watch TV like that. Sometimes we do the choreographed or non-choreographed dances to Justin Bieber. Is that pop culture?

Jane: Yes. But I also think social media presence, which clearly you have a bigger social media presence than I do, but I also think that’s part of pop culture. Twitter is pop culture.

shea: Is it?

Jane: But do you think that you’re a little trendy, hipster starting something new?

shea: No. I feel like I never know about [new] things. People will be like, “Did you see so- and-so’s new outfit?” And I’m like, “I don’t know who this person is.” Or they’ll be like, “Did you hear about this show getting canceled or this song?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.”

Jane: You are a content creator. You don’t absorb other people’s stuff. I know.

shea: No, but I feel like just normal TV shows, people will live-tweet a TV show or a movie or whatever. And I’m just like, “I don’t know what that is.” And I have mostly attributed it to the fact that I am as the kids call me, “an old” or “an elder.”

Jane: I agree.

shea: I mean, I think we like Justin Bieber. We don’t really agree on which albums are better.

Jane: You like his new stuff. And I like –

shea: No, that’s not true. I like swoosh-hair, old Bieber. And you like the “Boyfriend”/”Holy” Bieber.

Jane: I like “Peaches” Bieber, but I only like his music. I don’t like his politics.

shea: His politics? Is he a politician?

Jane: Never mind. You know what I mean. The appropriation is a lot.

shea: Well, people always call you a cartoon character.

Jane: No. You call me a cartoon character.

shea: And other people have agreed with me. And I feel like maybe we are already the characters. Maybe, we are pop culture. Maybe this is all just a movie of our lives and we’re just living in it. Okay, okay – what’s our movie or show or book or song?

Jane: Well, let’s start with our song. Talk about the three wedding songs.

shea: We have three wedding songs. We couldn’t decide for a while, but we have this song that’s really special to us that came out I think right after we started dating.

Jane: We were lying in bed and we had just said our “I love yous.”

shea: We heard the song. We were like, “This is so sweet.” That ended up being our wedding song. And that is, “Like I’m Going to Lose You” by Megan Trainor and John Legend. And then two other songs that maybe I like better than that song. You also like them better.

Jane: Well, yes, now I do.

shea: So, one of the other songs was “Adorn” by Miguel.

Jane: It was just very trendy at the time we had a lack of comfort with having a song that was very common for other people to have.

shea: Yes. My favorite song of all three is one of the final tracks on an album by Corinne Bailey Rae called “High”. It’s beautiful. Now, what about our books or reading?

Jane: I love when you read me books when we go for long drives because I tend to be the driver because I like to be in control. Surprise.

shea: Oh my gosh. We’re circling back to your little, what do they call? The stars sign.

Jane: Yes. A Capricorn. Astrology. That’s what that’s called. Now movies or TV shows. I mean, when it comes to TV, I think… I don’t know.

shea: We don’t watch the same thing.

Jane: We really don’t.

shea: I watch literally the same thing over and over again. And you like to watch things that have suspense. Whether it’s the baking thing –

Jane: I do like The Great British Bake Off.

shea: But it’s not ours. This is not an interview about you.

Jane: Damn. I would tell you about all my little favorite shows.

shea: Is there a movie?

Jane: A movie.

shea: Oh my gosh. The Winnie the Pooh movie – Christopher Robin.

Jane: Oh my God, that actually is it because I am Piglet and you are Pooh Bear. shea. Always like, “Naps and honey.”

shea: First of all, I don’t eat honey like that.

Jane: I know, but for you, it’s like snacks. Snacks and naps. And I’m over here just cheering everyone on. I’m like, “Yay.”

shea: You are really cute.

Jane: I’m adorable.

shea: You are.

Jane: And I’m pink.

shea: Well, sometimes.

Jane: You are not yellow.

shea: I feel like I’m close enough. I’m also a little cuddly.

Tell us a funny story about your partner!

shea: Wait – what…I’m so scared of what you’re going to tell or just the story.

Jane: [Cackles]

Jane: I have the best story. It’s always when I come back to like something funny that’s happened in our relationship. I always come back to this. [More cackling]

shea: Why are you laughing?!

Jane: Okay – shea and I were at a conference one time and it was very early in our relationship. I don’t think we were engaged yet. Or if we were just engaged. We had had some type of argument and I had to find you. You were in the hotel room taking your time to process and we talked it out and had our moment. And then we had great makeup sex after. And I don’t know how it happened.

shea: I think I was reaching for my phone.

Jane: Yes. Well, you fell off the bed but didn’t just fall off the bed anyway. They fell off the bed in between the wall and the bed. And large people, well, we get stuck easily. So there’s shea’s naked butt. I just kept taking pictures.

shea: Because you’re an asshole.

Jane: You were just really stuck there and really –

shea: I know, but you were not helping at all.

Jane: Because I couldn’t stop laughing. I would say that’s probably one of the funniest. I mean, we laugh all the time, but that was one of the times that I just laughed at you. Imagine a little naked brown butt staring at you. It’s not a little naked brown butt, it’s sizable, two planets.

shea: Are you quoting Jason Derulo?

Jane: Absolutely.

shea: “Two planets. Ham sammich.”

Jane: No, we’re not doing that. No snacks Poo Bear. All right.

shea: I don’t know if I have a funny story.

Jane: Are you kidding? There’s a bajillion of them.

shea: And I think it’s funny because when they’re like, “Tell a funny story about Jane.” I feel like every day something funny happens. And I’m just like, “This is just a part of normal life. This is just my wonderful existence with you.” Oh, what about the first time you passed gas in front of me and you were afraid to?

Jane: Gasp!

shea: And I was like, “It’s okay. You can do it.” I tickled you so much to get it out. You were fighting it so hard. Oh my gosh. That was the day when I learned that you were weird like me.

Jane: That was the day!

shea: Well this is us. Thanks for the interview.

Jane: Thanks. I had a lot of fun. I was nervous about it, but no need. It’s just us.

shea: Great!

Jane: I love you.

shea: I love you too and thank you Mabel for your support. This has been shea wesley martin interviewing Jane Martin, as we drive across the country to Connecticut, accompanied by Mabel the Pig, in our Subaru, because we are queers.

Jane: Those kind of queers.

The Five Drinks You Taste in Heaven: How a Coffee Shop Became Home

“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

The Black, queer-owned pop-up was nestled on a corner betwixt a gas station and brewery, in a neighborhood where rich folks’ homes sit on cobblestones just blocks away from corner stores and public housing. The space was small but two walls of windows, simple furniture, and green plants expand the world inside. Music streamed through the shop inviting you to leave the noise of the world behind as you enter — Sade, Janet, Stevie, Frank, or some new voice you have never heard but instantly love. The name on the door betrayed the heaven that once filled the mornings inside but those who came looking for it, those who needed it most know it was there — bold, tender, and waiting.

After grasping for the feelings of home for years, I stumbled right into it on a summer day. And it, the pop-up coffee spot with the good drinks and better people, kept me alive this past year.

If heaven was a place, it was there. Them folks were angels and those drinks — the coffee (hot or iced) handled with care and power — were miracles. But nothing stays the same — not even heaven on earth. Octavia wrote, “the only lasting truth is Change.” People leave, menus shift, leases end. In the end though, we have moments — just tastes of what once was holy and perfect. These are the moments that I can still taste, still feel on my hardest days.

I. The Welcome Committee: Lavender Latte with Oat Milk

In an early morning session, my therapist asks how I’m settling in. It is my second week in Ohio and she knows I have been searching for home longer than I’ve known her. I tell her I’m still working on it, remind her that it’s new and I’m just trying to figure out this town. “But,” I say, “I met a new friend and we are meeting for coffee again today.” She smiles and wishes me luck.

When I arrive at the coffee shop, it is more crowded than expected but I spot my new friend at a table just past the bar — her pink hair and colorfully patterned shirt popping through the sea of unknowns. She greets me as if we have been friends since grade school. I reciprocate because the world is open again and I am in a new city — everyone I know is both stranger and family at once. “Did you already get a drink?” I ask. I am not sure if the rules of meeting friends for coffee have changed since 2020. Do we order together? Do I pay for her coffee? Should I have ordered before I approached the table? Making new friends in adulthood is the most complicated endeavor (besides of course navigating health insurance and just surviving in this country). Before she can respond, Janet Jackson’s “All for You” blares through the shop’s speakers. A spry, cinnamon-skinned boy bops around me with ease carrying a cup and saucer.

“All my girls at the party, look at that body
Shakin’ that thing like you never did see”

The boy puts the drink down on the table and spins before popping into quick twerk on the way back behind the bar.

“Ahhhh yeahhhhh,” my new friend hypes him up and bursts into laughter.

“Welcome in friend,” the twerking coffee boy says as I follow him to the register. “Is this your first time?”

“It is, I just moved here from –– well from Vermont,” I respond, still unsure how to explain to new friends that I am not from Vermont, that I just lived in the mountains of Vermont to breathe for a year, that before that I was in a stuffy Boston suburb but I’m really from the DC suburbs even though nowhere feels like home these days.

“Oh snap, well welcome! I’m Jeffrey. We’re so glad you’re here,” he exclaims over Janet’s rhythms.

I tell the crunchy white girl in line behind me that she can go before me and she quickly orders an iced chai. I promised myself I’d try new things in this new city so I tell Jeffrey I want a lavender latte but with oat milk, because my stomach has proven that trying whole milk is forbidden. He gives me my total and asks if that’s okay with me. I say yes because this is America and it has to be okay (or so I think). I wait to add my tip to the bill — it’s a coffee shop and we’re in a pandemic so tipping is non-negotiable (or so I think). But twerking Jeffrey tells me that all I have known is wrong. He says the shop is “pay-what-you-can,” that if I couldn’t pay I’d still be good, that everyone should be able to get coffee if they need it and they don’t accept tips. “Gratuity-free,” he says and tells me about how he and friends opened up this pop-up the year before, how they dreamt as the world crumbled around us, how they believe in people and community first. I leave the counter and hope the coffee is as good as the story behind it.

When I sit back down across from my new friend, she is engrossed in work but pauses to chat. “So this is the shop…” she says with a grin. “It’s great right? Like really great?”

A few minutes later, Jeffrey slides my latte onto the table, careful not to disturb the art on the surface of the drink. I take more pictures of the coffee than I want to admit and raise my cup to my lips — not too hot, not too sweet, delivered with care from a stranger introduced to me with a twerk. More Janet plays overhead and I think maybe it is time to redefine home — maybe home tastes like lavender and feels like this.

II. Liquid Courage: A Shot of Espresso

I drop off my wife at a job that eats her alive before the sun rises on Wednesday morning. I have memorized the miles and minutes between the charter school and the coffee shop. The sun promises that one day she will beat me to the shop. I sleepily tell her yes because I know these early mornings won’t last much longer — more sleep or daylight savings will relieve me soon enough. I park my car on the street adjacent to the shop and wait two minutes until they “open.” At 7:01, I turn the corner and open the door — James Blake’s mellow voice and the smell of coffee grounds greeting my weary soul.

“Ayyyyyy,” Ben yells with a grin that wakes my spirit just enough to make it to the counter. “I’ll start with a shot of espresso,” I say. “Got you,” he says. I wonder if he can read the insomnia in my eyes, if he can hear the grief in my voice. I sit down at the counter and break out my stack of articles, highlighters, notebook, and pen. The shot goes down bitterly with a hint of soul — like a desperate old soul’s breakup song with a girl who did him dirty. I chase it with the soda water. As the sun arrives, Ben cranks up the volume on the Lenny Kravitz track he’s just put on. He runs to the middle of the empty shop and does a circular dance move with his tongue out. Bryan and I share a glance and I shake my head. We all laugh and this is how we will make it today — strong coffee, Lenny Kravitz, and moments like this — outshining the world in ridiculousness.

III. Holding Me Close: Cocoa Butter Mint Latte

Winter in Ohio feels exactly how it sounds. It is not as bitter as Boston, not as beautiful as Vermont. Instead, she is mostly grey and miserable with overly dramatic threats of snowstorms. In the mornings, I coerce myself out of bed with the promise of coziness in the uniform I have adopted for the season — a hoodie, soft beanie, and fleece-lined joggers. It has been a year since my dad became an ancestor and the world around me continues to burn — more mass shootings, stress, grief, and hate than I can digest fills my feeds when I wake each morning. I wake up and hold my phone above my head, scrolling until I remember that my wife said I should stop scrolling before I get dressed. She knows the phone has become a double-pronged fidget toy for my anxiety, fueling and easing it at once. She knows that getting out of bed has become increasingly harder for me since the new year. She knows scrolling won’t help.

“I just need to make it to coffee,” I tweet before locking my phone again. I don’t mean just any coffee, of course. It’s Thursday which means I’m going to the shop again. Two weeks into the semester and I’m grateful I’ve intentionally scheduled my courses around the hours of the shop. A grad student moves across the country to get their doctorate and ends up planning their academic schedule around the hours of a coffee shop. Sounds like the beginning of a really bad rom-com that ends with co-eds making out on the lawn (or perhaps outside the front door of a coffee shop). Instead, I was just trying to dodge disaster — being another casualty, another Black academic lost to a system that will never love me back. Everyone told me the same thing — make time for yourself and find your people. The Black ones I asked were more specific with their warnings — take care of yourself because academia will kill you, find your people because academia can kill you if you don’t.

So because it is Thursday, I get out of bed knowing my calendar says “@ the shop” and my coffee is waiting on me. I throw on a graphic t-shirt that reads “Ohio” in white block letters and cover it with a sweatshirt that reads “Ohio State” just in case the universe didn’t get the memo the first time. As I look in the mirror, I tally the number of Ohio-branded shirts I’ve acquired in the previous six months. Stop counting. This is a distraction, shea. Get your ass out of the house. My dog hates mornings more than me. I can tell by her side-eye when I dangle her harness to wake her. But I know the cold January will slap us in the face and wake us both faster than we want.

When I finally reach the shop a half-hour later, it’s still quiet. Jess greets me when I walk in. She wears a green flannel and a smile that cuts through the bitterness of a dreary winter morning in Columbus, Ohio. I remind Jess that she is my favorite. I tell her that she is the Employee of the Month. I tell her this every time I see her. She chuckles and shakes her head. I skip my espresso because I need something that will wrap me tightly and hold me close. “Cocoa Butter Mint Latte,” I say, surprising both Jess and myself.

It is too pretty to drink, but I taste it anyway. The cocoa butter coats my throat and the mint bites back against my imposter syndrome that tries to creep up when I open my laptop to write. In a pandemic, I have learned to redraw the definitions of intimacy. I sip the drink again and call it a hug.

IV. Adulting: A Cortado

When it comes to coffee, I am a pre-teen mucking toward adolescence, just barely graduated from too-sweet frozen drinks that are more dessert than fuel. When you are young in experience, all unknowns blend — you just want to wear “makeup,” taste “beer,” get “a girlfriend,” drink “coffee,” — unaware that not all foundations, drafts, girls, and beans are made equal. Coffee is coffee, I had thought. I ordered lattes like I ordered drinks at bars — the same drink each time. I have mastered the art of pretending I know what is good — what to do, to drink.

The smooth cat who sometimes sat next to me at the bar on weekdays ordered cortados. Built like an Ivy Park model with cropped pants and ankles showing even in winter, he sipped the drink like it was gold. I imagined he drank gimlets while holding expensive cigars, too — like a suave protagonist in an Ernest Hemingway plot. We talked about podcasts and politics. I mentioned his bare ankles and he chuckled nonchalantly, too cool for mother nature’s temperaments.

“I’ll take a cortado,” I say one brisk morning after paying my rent on time for the 8th month in a row and remembering to take my medicine again. It is a day for adult shit. I open my computer at the bar next to the smooth cat and pour myself a glass of water. I make a to-do list of my work tasks. I confirm my therapy appointment by email. I text my wife I love her. Bryan slides my four-ounce glass across the bar — half espresso and half oat milk with a layered heart on top.

First sip and the door opens behind me. The air hits my bare ankles and it is cold as hell.

V. Birthday Guest: Blood Orange Shrub

They say eventually everything blooms. In Ohio, I call BS until late April when spring finally begins to make herself known. The rain comes more often than not and in between the downpour, we get teasers of what is to come — sunshine, budding petals, faint scents of freshly cut grass. As my birthday approaches, my wife asks what I want to do. I say it is on Friday so I will go to the place that feels more like home than most places I have been since my mama died. When I arrive at the shop, my sister and friends have decorated the front table with pictures of my face. Jeffrey hands me a present — a new journal. More friends show up to the party — most of whom I’ve met right here or by way of this place. The end of the semester looms and my work is piling up, but today I remember the advice of those who have come before — take care of yourself, find your people.

So I celebrate my survival. Everyone dons the paper crowns my wife brought. We play Jenga until one of us loses. We play Cards Against Humanity until we tire and then feed ourselves cupcakes and more coffee. We laugh and tell stories. They sing the birthday song and I wish that the shop will always be here even as the world crumbles around us. Surrounded by the ones who have kept me breathing, I raise a glass of the Blood Orange Shrub and cheers to my (our) existence.

Before I leave, I request my theme song be played through the speakers. Ben eventually relents and “Knuck if You Buck” blasts in the cafe. I leave the rest of the cupcakes with the boys behind the bar and say “thank you for everything.” For today. For every day before it. For dreaming. For building. For helping us survive. For holding us close. For this pop-up heaven with coffee fumes and good music. For something better, smoother, beyond what I knew could ever be possible.