I am writing this from my dark bedroom on a Saturday night. I had several plans today with friends, all of which I cancelled because even the thought of another human interaction today seemed insurmountable.

I spent yesterday discussing an idea for a new series I wanted to start at my job at a major pediatric hospital, “LGBTQ+ Office Hours.” As the Outlook invite clearly stated, “This is not a committee or program, but rather a place for employees to gather and discuss all things LGBTQ+.”

This simple idea for a virtual gathering space was rated between an 8 and 9 on the risk scale to send out by a trusted colleague, which has me time traveling to the days surrounding the Stonewall movement in 1969 where it was illegal for “homosexuals” and people wearing clothes of the “opposite sex” to gather. But let’s understand how we got here in 2026.

I once held two titles at my current institution, one of which doesn’t exist at all anymore and one that only exists in title. The former was Co-Chair of LGBTQ+ DEI Subcommittee, which won the Excellence in DEI Award in 2024, and the latter being “Program Manager for Gender Care Services,” a role which landed me one of my institution’s most prestigious employee awards and a feature on their LinkedIn.

I say this one exists only in title now because there is effectively no “Gender Care Services” anymore. Despite being located in a state where there are no care bans, my institution decided to cease “prescribing gender affirming medications”—not to be confused with “stopping care for transgender patients” —a distinction which was very important to our legal team.

I was hired at the hospital in 2020, first as a Patient Navigator, then promoted to Program Coordinator, and now as Program Manager. When they hired me there were five distinct departments providing care to transgender youth, and they asked me to make them one cohesive program. I had ten years of lived trans experience at that point, but no professional experience in a hospital setting, so I spent a lot of time learning about departments, divisions, medications, insurance, and appointment types. But a majority of my day was spent doing intakes, which meant meeting with every new family and referring them to the services that best fit their needs. I was often the first person parents were talking to about their child’s experience and counseled many of them through the broad range of emotions that comes with a child transitioning. Together we navigated their grief, confusion, frustration, and fear. I also joined all their new patient visits and got to meet the incredible young people the parents had talked about. We maintained our relationship throughout their journey, following some patients for years of their transition.

I came into the navigator role with extensive community experience, previous professional roles at some of the highest profile LGBTQ+ organizations, and two masters degrees from an Ivy-League institution where I am currently working on my doctoral degree. For the first three years in my role, I was the only trans-identified staff member working in the gender care space. I gained a reputation early and quickly as knowing my stuff despite being the only non-clinical member (although if I had taken my licensure exam I could have been, as my master’s degrees are in Counseling).

But I served an important role at my institution outside of the gender care space as well, which was to be the general go-to person for any trans related query, whether employee or patient facing. I have gotten calls from about everything ranging from “We have a new employee coming on that needs their name updated in our systems” to “I have a family friend who has a trans kid. Do you have research I can send them?”

I have done presentations and trainings for almost every department of the hospital, spanning the in-patient unit to the call center. Was this written in my job description? No. But I did it because I had expertise and people wanted knowledge. And honestly, if people genuinely want to learn, I’m always happy to share information and resources. I have the utmost respect for the people at my institution who knew what they didn’t know, and asked someone who did. About three years in it became a running joke among my team and supervisors that I could have a full-time position with just the training I was doing. Any within-hospital trainings were unpaid, although I would occasionally get an honorarium for the external trainings with outside organizations, local pediatricians, or community mental health providers.

It was ultimately my “extra curricular” work that led to me becoming a co-chair for the LGBTQ+ DEI Subcommittee. It got to a point where people were asking the DEI committee to complete tasks, which would forward the request to me, so we decided to take out the middle piece and just have requests come directly to me as co-chair.

There was always a trickle-down effect, though. When the political climate grew too tumultuous for gender care or DEI, senior leadership (C-suite) would meet to make decisions, and then our designated C-suite member would meet with me to share what the decisions were so that I could tell my team.

Here’s the part where I’m going to comb very carefully through my brain to remember what exactly and precisely said “Privileged and Confidential”, and what was more of an unspoken “This stays between us” as I never signed a NDA.

When senior leadership realized they were now not only making decisions about a community they were not informed about, but the sheer number of patients this would involve, they finally acquiesced in meeting with me directly. Those months I was in constant meetings with my Leadership, Risk, Legal, and Communications teams. There were times during those months where every one of us in the circle cracked under the pressure and sheer exhaustion. But I only joined the highest management meeting once.

I remember where I was the day in July of 2025 that I had my regular Friday call with our C-suite member and they said to me: “We’ve decided to close the clinic.” What happened to me at that point in time was akin to the moments you see in movies where someone receives devastating news and time slows as the character hears no sound other than a loud ringing despite the other character’s lips continuing to move as they speak.

I was then afforded one gender care team member to work with in the next six weeks that the wheels spun into motion, and was forbidden from telling anyone outside of that. The people in my life saw that I was always working, that I was always exhausted, that I was always stressed, that I was being completely consumed by what was happening at work. They also noticed that whenever they asked me what was going on, I would simply say that I couldn’t say.

Three months after the “ordeal” of the closure had passed, my institution gave me the award. It felt cheapened for so many reasons, and every congratulations felt more like an insult. Some of the reasons were:

1. I knew that I had received a cascade of nominations (around 20 employees), eight months prior. They didn’t know that I knew, but I told the one person who did, “That’s very kind but they’ll never pick me. It’s too public.” The fact that they waited until after the “threat of featuring me” was gone made it feel more like a PR recovery strategy than actual achievement. “See, we support trans people!”

2. The very work I received the award for was no longer in existence. Even during my recording of a video feature, I had to record two different openings. The first with my title, and another that answered the prompt “How you would you describe your role if you didn’t say the words ‘gender care?’” (Do you want to guess which one they picked?) It was also very interestingly edited to remove any mention of what my “community” was, despite me intentionally saying that I was trans and mentioning my “trans community” about 100 times during the interview.

3. The initial “announcement” email they sent out wasn’t an announcement at all. It was a feature about one of our community partners whose sports event I had received tickets and took my dad to because he had been a longtime fan. The feature was entirely about the partnership (including the “Click here to learn more” button) with the words “Award Winner Attends Game” thrown at the top. It was only after carefully reminding them that I was asking to be treated like every other employee who wins this award that they sent out an additional email and posted me on their LinkedIn.

Only the consistent and caring reminders from colleagues and loved ones that I had given everything to my professional role and deserved the award allowed me to finally feel okay even putting it on my résumé or socials. Whenever I was tempted to hide it, I would go back and read the nominations they included that were written by those that truly knew me and my work.

I now exist in this liminal space where I’m employed still, but my role is a mere shadow of what it once was, an empty title with little to no power to effect change and help the people I’m supposed to be helping. All of the joy has been removed. Employees that were part of either the former DEI committee or gender care team are distraught, mistrusting, anxious, and feel unsupported. The happy days of watching a young person cry tears of joy when they get their first gender affirming medication are long gone, and I’m only called on now to address the constant influx of transgender youth who are showing up to the emergency room in crisis. While my heart absolutely breaks for these young people that think they are better off dead than here right now, I get it. What I want to tell them is: You are needed. You are loved. Please stay.

Speaking of staying, people have asked me for almost two years, “Why do you stay there?” My answer has always been and will always stay the same: “I will stay as long as I feel like I can still help.” But the decision was made for me. A month ago, I was informed that my last day as an employee at my institution will be June 30th, 2026. For trans people, it’s not always a loud exile. Sometimes it’s slow, painstaking removal, with trophies and awards as a consolation prize.

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As a trans person working in advocacy spaces for over 15 years, Friendly Neighborhood Tranpa has had the opportunity to share his experience on local, national, and international platforms. He has been featured in Emmy-winning documentaries and was the first out trans man featured in a major fashion ad campaign. His work spans across multiple industries, including academia, research, media, and healthcare. *The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s employer or any affiliated organizations.*

It’s summer, and my friend Benvy texts to ask if I want to go with them to a Korean adoptee event.

“Will we be the only queer people there?” I respond back because I already have misgivings. “I think so,” is their answer. I sigh out loud. Something makes me say, “Sure, I’ll go with you.” I haven’t given up on the adoptee community yet. But I know what’s in store because I have been to many of these similar events before, and they are always the same—cis-gendered, het Korean adoptee women, who bring their cis-gendered, het male (usually white) partners to what is commonly understood as “an adoptee only event.”

Benvy comes and picks me up the day of. We bring booze because we know we’re going to need it. Lots of booze. I think we had six bottles between the two of us. I’m silently musing this may not be enough, depending on how many people will be there. I ask, “Have you ever been to one of these before?” My friend answers, “No, I haven’t.” I sigh again, loudly. I’m trying to be positively open-minded because it’s been around eight years since I’ve attended one these and who knows how it will go? I know.

“Well, let’s hope for the best then.” I make small talk, asking them about their wife. We are both AFAB (assigned female at birth) adoptees, born in Korea, married to AFAB white women. I have a problem with this in my marriage for my own reasons, which will subsequently lead to divorce the next year, but I don’t know if my friend does. They seem happy and secure with each other whenever I’m with them. So I am happy to support my friend who wants to attend this type of an event for the first time.

We get to the house and are the first ones there. We can’t tell if it’s the right place, and as we walk to the front door, I notice the Christian angel statue under the doorbell. Uh oh, I think and point to it. Benvy nods and looks nonchalant. I take their lead and pretend everything is normal and that we are not about to walk into Christian hell.

A middle-aged Korean woman with natural streaks of white in her hair answers the door. We’re invited in and take our shoes off. The house is comfortably and traditionally middle-class decorated. There are family pictures above the roll top desk and on bookshelves. I’m trying to get a sense of the family who lives here. There are inspirational quotes tacked up on the wall, framed; some are religious. I inwardly groan. It’s all dark paneled wood and beige carpet.

Many things are bubbling on the stove and a large pile of vegetables is being cleaned. Our host knows her way around a Korean kitchen and looks prepared to cook a feast. Everything smells delicious and rich, like nothing but home cooking can. I love Korean food. I’m instantly grateful to this woman who invited me, a fellow Korean adoptee she doesn’t know, into her home, and is making all this food for the group.

I sidle up to her and try to make comfortable, non-threatening small talk, something I loathe doing as an introvert, but am adept at because of my experience and upper-middle class upbringing. I simultaneously gesture toward Benvy who has the booze. They silently acknowledge—we need wine! Our host begrudgingly climbs a step stool and brings down heavy cut crystal wine glasses, ones I assume she uses on rare occasions because they are on the top shelf, pushed way back in a cupboard. I clean them for us as she attends to the stew that’s bubbling.

Other guests arrive. Two other Korean adoptees. And of course they bring—what else—their white, older husbands. One is distinctly much older than his wife. I try not to roll my eyes. Or make a face. Not sure how successful I am. My disdain is sharp tasting. I try to hide it and shake hands with everyone but a fake smile is hurting my jaw because my teeth are clenched. I ask if anyone would like a glass of wine. I think I’m already going for my second glass. Or third. Benvy pours me more.

I step away from the counter to give myself room from everyone, and the oldest-appearing adoptee of the group heads toward the wine to pour her husband a glass. “What can I get you? Do you want white or red? Do you want it in this glass? Or how about this glass? Which one? Oh, I think you’ll like this one.” Her one-sided dialogue at him goes on like this for a while, the obsequious oozing out. Gaud, I’m such a judgy fuck. It makes my jaw hurt even more not to say, “You don’t have to do that. He can get the wine himself. He’s a grown-ass man, for fuck’s sake.”

And then it happens almost immediately once everyone has their libation. The inquisition. Instead of having a chat together in one group, it’s the same questions over and over again, from each individual adoptee and their husbands. Who don’t even have the grace to look uncomfortable or out of place in a room full of Korean women. The two men have the relaxed body language of entitlement.

One of them approaches Benvy, who is taller than me and doesn’t glower at everyone as I do. He hones right in on them and chats them up. They are a good sport and have been in the restaurant/wine business and definitely have more daily experience dealing with cis-het men’s gross behavior. I’m irritated that the men are even here, and it radiates from my posture. Oh, I’m not making any friends tonight!

In less than five sentences, I make my views on transracial, transnational adoption quickly known to the adoptee I’m talking to, stating it should be outlawed and that white people should not be allowed to buy black and brown children. That person gets uncomfortable, and we switch conversation partners again.

The older adoptee who was catering to her husband earlier asks me all the usual questions—how was I adopted, how did I get here, when, etc. I told her I was a private adoption, meaning my adoptive parents were in Korea and picked me out personally from the orphanage, just like a car or other things you can purchase from a catalog. Literally a catalog of children in black and white photos was what my adoptive parents flipped through. Her response is assumptive in its tone: “Weren’t you so lucky to be chosen specifically.” I recoil and shake my head adamantly. “No,” I counter. “My adoptive parents were monsters who had no business raising a child.” That ends another conversation.

The food is now ready. The men are outside BBQ-ing. Or verbally jerking themselves off. I can’t tell the difference glancing at them from inside the kitchen. I refill my glass and Benvy’s. I’m exhausted but trying to behave and be polite because that’s my white privileged upbringing kicking in again. Being around heteronormativity is exhausting. Being surrounded by essentially white women with Korean faces is even more exhausting. The internalized racism and being grateful to have been adopted attitude that pervades the conversations is grinding into me, as I continually hold the tension in my jaw.

We sit down to eat, and I stuff food in my talk-hole so I won’t say anything provocatively controversial. This isn’t the crowd. They’re still in the “Status Quo” phase, as described in the Adoptee Consciousness Model, which is believing the dominant narrative of adoption that employs only affirmative or positive-based perspectives about it.

But my breaking point is just around the corner. One of the husbands says something about how he can’t believe or understand what we all have gone through. No shit! How bad he feels for us. Seriously?! Blah blah blah. And then it clicks. He’s here for the trauma porn. He wants to be our daddy and soak it all in and be exalted for what a good guy he is and how he rescued his wife from the horrors (he already alluded to the horrors) she had to endure. What a guy. Let’s all metaphorically get on our knees and suck his dick right the fuck now!

I launch into my anti-oppression, anti-imperialism semi-rant. Because I don’t care anymore. I just do not give any fucks, especially about trauma porn dude getting his jollies. I state that I’m an abolitionist. And that we were lied to, and we are still being lied to by the U.S. government and the Korean government about our records. My audience is somewhat paying attention but I’m pretty certain I’m not going to be invited back. I sense one or two might understand what I’m saying because the odds are at least one of them has done a birth search, or at least knows someone who has done one, and most likely has been told a discouraging slew of lies that is nothing of consequence about their adoption.

We finish eating. The food is great. It tastes of homemade care and is well seasoned and fresh. The other three women have already met each other and know each other well. Benvy and I are the newbies. I circle back to the hostess to let her know again how much I appreciate her inviting us/me into her home and for cooking so much food. I ask about her process cooking certain dishes because talking about recipes is the only benign small talk I can handle at this moment. She then asks me how I know Benvy and where did we meet. I told her I’ve known Benvy for over 10 years and that we met at a queer meetup in the Bay Area.

Her response is, “What’s queer?”

“Gay,” I reply. “I met them at a gay meetup.”

It’s time for us to leave.

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Talon (she/her) is a queer Korean transracial, transnational adoption survivor and found poetry paper collage artist who uses art as a form of resistance to disrupt the adoptee narrative. At the intersection of identity, lack of ancestry, adoptee sovereignty, and abolition, through her practice and writing she invites critical inquiry of white saviorism’s role in transracial, transnational adoption. Therefore her work is not just art; it is a catalyst, an attestation, and the belief in the power of transformation.

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In his Grindr profile, Eddie quoted Avatar: The Last Airbender and identified as a proud member of my chosen Pokémon Go Team: Team Instinct. In the summer of 2016, which Pokémon Go Team you were on was nearly as important as whether you were voting for Hillary or Bernie in the Democratic Primary.

Curiously, Eddie also had a cross emoji next to his name.

Maybe he was one of those cool, weird, progressive Christians. I’d been attending Quaker meetings and was starting to see a pathway into spirituality more accepting than the one I’d experienced growing up in the Catholic church. I loved the simplicity of Quaker services. On Grindr, I pontificated on my spiritual journey to Eddie, who was so curious about it. He seemed like someone I could connect with in many dimensions: gay, nerdy, and maybe even spiritual. The fact that he looked great with his shirt off was neither here nor there.

We met at a cafe. He was covered in enigmatic tattoos and was shinily bald, with a slightly retro nu metal-looking goatee that somehow worked on his sharp jawline. Before long, we were discussing religion again, now in person.

“You don’t still go to church, do you?” I asked.

“Yes. Being a Catholic man is very important to my identity. Just as important as being a gay man.”

I paused.

“How do you reconcile it though? Being gay is a sin, according to the pope.”

“Lots of things are sins. Sinning has never disqualified anyone from Catholicism. Quite the contrary, in fact. I believe gay people’s sins actually help them adhere more closely to the Catholic faith. They know how to process sin in a way that most Catholics don’t. Us gays are in less denial about it.”

He spoke with a sly confidence that made me want to test him. I attacked his logic.

Brenden: The cycle of confessing and sinning and confessing again is abusive.

Eddie: Lots of religions have a system of amends. Catholicism’s system just happens to be transparent.

Brenden: The priests’ direct line to God creates a hierarchy.

Eddie: It’s not that they’re more directly tied to God; it’s that they have more knowledge about how to access him, like a clearinghouse.

Brenden: It’s sexist that only men are allowed to be priests

Eddie: Being a priest doesn’t make someone more holy. Sure, the gender rule is arbitrary, but it doesn’t on its own elevate men over women.

Our disagreements felt tense yet synchronized; we’d both heard both sides of the argument. We’d both argued both sides. Performing the debate both liberated and frustrated us. As if to relieve the metaphysical tension, we opted for the physical. We barely made it to my apartment after finishing our coffees. We spent the rest of the day in my bedroom. He spent the night.

The next morning, he told me he had to stop by his place to let his dog out, but that he’d be back with coffee. He was back in half an hour. We got dressed and went to the nearby Pokémon gym with our phones and portable chargers and stayed there until we got hungry.

At a nearby sandwich shop, he told me he’d been meaning to tell me about something called “Courage.”

“It’s this mutual help program for gay Catholics.” He took a big bite and gazed up at me while chewing, watching me process what he’d just said.

“That sounds creepy,” I said.

“No, no!” Eddie said, sitting up and putting down his sandwich. He shook his head and held his hands out to me, like I was speeding toward him and he was trying to get me to slow down. “It’s not conversion therapy or anything. It’s about helping gay Catholics live a holy life.”

“How?” I asked.

“By helping each other remain celibate.”

I tensed, holding my sandwich in front of my face like I was trying to block eye contact. Was this all a ruse to convert me back to being straight? I went on the offensive.

“Well. Seems like we wouldn’t belong,” I said, waving my finger between the two of us and raising an eyebrow.

He laughed nervously.

“Well, I still go to the meetings. It’s not about perfection. It’s about continuously trying.”

“Wait. So you’re trying to be celibate?”

“Yeah. I am. How do you feel about that?”

“Confused,” I said, looking down at my phone to check Pokémon Go so I could hide my facial expression. I was worried I’d looked as horrified as I felt.

Later, when I got home, I thought back over the past 24 hours—the emotional connection felt real and we’d had very good, fun, uninhibited sex. But perhaps his lack of sexual inhibition implied repression? I kept getting lost trying to sort it all out and texted my friends Noah and James for backup.

“This guy is trying to be celibate.”

“CELIBATE. DIDN’T HE JUST FUCK YOU,” asked James.

“Bye girl,” Noah added.

“Well, he says that celibacy is kind of a theoretical concept. Like, it’s not about never having sex. It’s about trying not to. It’s a goal you live with.”

“It sounds like a goal homophobes would want us to have,” wrote James.

“Yeah…like, I assume straight people don’t have to shoot for celibacy?” Noah asked.

“Eddie says that celibacy is seen as a gift for gay people because it helps them identify the sin that they need to confront. Sex isn’t a sin for straights in the same way, but avoiding sin is just as hard for them. Straight people have to live in a sinful world where everything is temptation. For gay people, things are a little simpler because the focus is sex.”

Neither of them responded. I panicked when I realized I’d just written out a monologue that Eddie had delivered to me. Did they think I was brainwashed?

“Isn’t that fucking crazy?” I added, hoping to convince them I was still the friend they knew.

They didn’t respond.

My friends’ silence made me doubt my attraction to Eddie, but I kept seeing him. Being with him felt like a mystery that I needed to solve: What kept him returning to the church? What kept me returning to him? What would it take for me to rescue him from the church? Could I use logic to debate him away from its grasp?

I began seeing Noah and James less and Eddie more. I was with him nearly every day and night. I’d nearly forgotten about the Catholic stuff. One night, after finishing a movie, we retreated to his bedroom. I tumbled onto his bed. He stayed standing.

“Oh. Ummm,” he stuttered, looking down at me.

“What?”

“Well, my roommates and I have a rule where we don’t have overnight guests.”

I sat up immediately. It had never occurred to me that whenever we’d spent the night together, it was always at my place.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve mentioned it,” he said quickly.

“No, it’s totally fine. I shouldn’t have assumed. Are your roommates Catholic as well then?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t ever met them.

“No. Actually…it’s my rule.”

“What? But you always stay at my place.”

“I know. I think, for me, it’s a rule I need to stick by. I know my decisions aren’t always consistent. But I’m working toward consistency. Maybe one day I’ll propose that we end the rule, or maybe someday I’ll stop staying over at your place. I’ve been feeling confused. So my main priority is just to stand by my promises to others.”

My head was spinning. Someday he might decide to stop staying at my place? So he was still on his path toward celibacy? I realized I’d been wrong to assume that his Catholicism was an insanity he was in the process of overcoming. How could our relationship progress like this? I’d been his temptation, and he’d been fighting me without my knowing. Perhaps he’d been sharing his feelings for me with his priest during confession. While, for me, our experiences together evoked images of a loving future, for him, they inspired a quest for absolution.

A few days later, he sent me a video message that blew it all up again. The camera framed his nervous, mild smile:

“I talked to my priest about you. I told him you are a very special person to me, and that I don’t know where this would lead. Celibacy remains an important value to me, but I’m discovering new values. You’ve shown me new ways to think about the world compassionately. I see in you a way to love more people and see more perspectives. I told my priest all of this and he brought up a possibility: What if I asked you to be my boyfriend? A relationship is about making each other better people, and you’re doing that for me. What do you say?”

The sky opened. I was wrong about him seeing me as a temptation. I was wrong to think he felt ashamed of me. His priest gave us his blessing.

I said yes.

He arrived at my door fifteen minutes later, sweating from a vigorous bike ride, and swept me into his arms.

A few days later, he arrived at my place again. When I opened the door, I reached up to kiss him and he turned away.

“This isn’t right. I know that I’m going in circles. But I can’t be your boyfriend. I think I’ve been fooling myself because my feelings for you are so strong.”

“I think you need to go,” I said, turning away from him.

We decided to carry on without a label for two weeks, with one stipulation: no talking about “us.” We’d rarely gotten through a day without having an existential conversation about our relationship. We decided simply spending time together would help clarify what we wanted.

We went to the beach often during those weeks, swimming and making out in the waves. Maybe if I kissed him enough I could right his mind. My touch would slowly and progressively push the Catholicism out. He lifted me in the water and grabbed my legs to wrap them around his waist.

It was working, I thought. Look at him holding me in front of all these families. Look at them gawk. Look at him not caring.

Though we’d agreed to not talk about “us,” I was also trying to plant seeds. I’d mention the Quaker meetings I’d been attending. I talked more about them than I needed to: about the logistics, about which meetings I liked and why. I thought if we could start going to Quaker meetings together, we could meet on a spiritual plane that made sense to both of us.

A few days before our deadline, before we started talking about “us” again, we lay on the shore at Walden Pond. I was reflecting on the value of silence; how refreshing it was for no one to tell me what to do or think; to sit in wonder together.

“That’s how I feel in adoration,” Eddie said. “My church offers adoration hours on Thursdays and Saturdays. It’s a little like a Quaker meeting. Everyone sits in silence with the Eucharist. I love feeling awe with other Catholics.”

Eucharistic adoration is the somewhat niche Catholic practice of sitting in devotional silence before the consecrated host of Jesus Christ. In other words, priests bless the little wafers that become Jesus’s body during mass; then, during adoration, Catholics sit in awe of the blessed little wafers. If, during Quaker service, Quakers sit waiting for wisdom from the Holy Spirit, during adoration, Catholics sit in awe of the body of Christ.

I disagreed with Eddie’s comparison between adoration and Quaker service. The awe of adoration was different from the unspectacular humility of silence. In Quaker meetings, we simply practiced patience, whereas adoration was charged and dramatic.

But it wasn’t the time for debate now. As he raved about adoration, his jaw jutted and his eyes closed slowly. He might’ve cared for me, but it was becoming clear that the church was his true love. Or, perhaps, he thought it was, which amounted to the same thing. How could I hold any hope for this relationship if I saw his faith as Stockholm Syndrome? And how could I trust him if anytime I felt moved by his religiosity, I feared for my own sanity?

What’s unique about Catholicism’s threat to gay people is the way in which it forgives: absolutely, producing whiplash, positioning gay people—usually sinners just for existing—as suddenly even more holy than straight people. If gays work hard and with full honesty, Catholicism promises, then they can actually win the day. The sins gays commit are, of course, more severe. The church will never deny that. But our rise, when we confess, is steeper, too. Our holiness is just as triumphant as any Catholic. For gay Catholics caught in Catholicism’s net who aspire to celibacy, this system is addictive.

I had been thinking that Eddie was looking to escape the church, but here he was, reveling with me about adoration. He wasn’t looking for a way out. So I had to. I interrupted him, jumping up from my towel and running away at full speed toward the water, diving in and letting the coldness erase all the talk.

When I returned to our camp, Eddie didn’t need to ask why I ran away. I laid down next to him and he gently knocked his knee against mine. I knocked mine back. We agreed in silence that things were finished between us.

After Eddie and I split, the friends whom I’d scared away never fully returned. I now consider those damaged relationships a scar that can remind me to uphold my zero-tolerance policy regarding the Catholic Church, in case I ever feel any doubts. There is no talisman that can protect me, no way to conceptually reframe the church. I simply would stay away. And I have.

It made sense that I’d tried to position the Quakers’ unspectacular bareness as an analogue to Catholicism’s theatricality. But the Quakers couldn’t save me; all they could offer was solid, dependable wooden furniture and good, common sense. Meanwhile, the Catholics had cathedrals and choirs; they had incense burning in swinging golden thuribles. They had stained glass. As a kid, I loved to sit at the end of the pew so I could stare at the windows, watching the Sunday morning sun slowly shift its way through the stained glass kaleidoscopically. Scenes of unimaginable suffering illuminated like a Lite Brite: red, purple, green. Sometimes, even now, I can’t deny the beauty.

Watch our Substack Live Q&A with Brenden O’Donnell about his essay and how this relationship further impacted his life.

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Brenden O'Donnell is the author of Geek Out: a memoir, pedagogy, and cultural criticism newsletter. He’s been published in The Audacity, The Queer Love Project, Sitting Queerly, and more. His manuscript-in-progress is a queer millennial coming out memoir. He lives with his husband, Peter, and dog, Willow, in the Boston area.

The first time I considered the possibility of being asexual, it wasn’t the lack of desire that struck me—it was the empty space beside me where I thought someone would be, slowly vanishing.

I believe there is a huge amount of misunderstanding when it comes to asexuality, partly because it spans such a large and diverse spectrum. But by allowing myself to speak about it publicly on TikTok over the past few years, I have come to learn that everyone sees and/or experiences asexuality in their own unique way.

My asexuality manifests as a low inclination to seek or prioritize sexual satisfaction. It’s not that I’m incapable of enjoying sex, or that I’m averse to it; it’s just something of little significance for me. At the start of a new romantic relationship with an allosexual (someone who experiences sexual attraction to others), I will seek it out more, as I’ve been taught it’s the most direct way to show interest. After all, actions often speak louder than words.

All through my teens and into early adulthood, I had a very conflicted relationship with sex. I never felt an urge to explore it on my own, and it wasn’t a topic of conversation in my household. I assumed my sexuality was something I’d figure out with another person once I was older; the idea of discovering sex independently never really occurred to me.

But while it wasn’t something I was experiencing, it was present in my fictional worlds: my Barbies had sex when they paired up, my Sims were great at procreating, and I remember reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series (in secret), and thinking it all sounded very interesting, like a locked door I wasn’t supposed to open yet. It never crossed my mind that it wasn’t locked, or that I was free to explore it on my own. I never made the connection between my fictional characters’ active sex lives and my complete lack of interest.

In retrospect, I think what interested me was the secrecy around it. The taboo element made sex feel like some clandestine affair I would learn about later. Turns out, later never really happened.

I had my first sexual experience simply because it felt like something I needed to check off before university. It was lukewarm at best, so I convinced myself my disinterest in sex was just temporary—that with the right person, everything would click. Comforted by my narrative and having successfully shelved sex for the time being, I went about my life, ready to find The One.

I did fall in love at university—a big, all-consuming, it’s-you-or-no-one-else kind of love. He didn’t love me back, so I decided to wait. And I did. For another six years.

By twenty-six, I’d run out of excuses. I had a steady job and my own apartment; there was nothing left to wait for. If love was supposed to fix this, I needed to start looking for it, so I got on the apps.

I’d already spoken to my gynecologist about my lack of sexual appetite and seen a few psychologists, none of whom were particularly helpful. Except for one sex therapist I saw briefly, who gave me a concert analogy I’ve never forgotten: “Imagine you go to a concert. You need to already like the music. You can’t just show up and expect the crowd’s energy to make you enjoy it.” And that was exactly what I had been doing—believing that finding The One would somehow fix me, that another person would awaken something dormant in me that I couldn’t rouse on my own.

So I started dating someone, and with exclusivity came the assumption (reinforced by my then-gynecologist) that frequent sex would bring everything into alignment. We spent two and a half years together, and I did love them—maybe not as deeply as I could, but enough to make it matter. It was a relationship I needed to experience, a necessary step toward accepting my asexuality, though I did not know it at the time.

Sex was a pillar of our relationship, mostly because I didn’t know any better and assumed all healthy relationships looked like what you see on TV. It’s never really discussed, how much or how little sex a couple “has” to have—and at that point, no one had told me it depended on us. My partner had been in relationships before, so I took the path of least confusion and followed his lead.

It took over six months for me to realize that things weren’t evening out, that it wasn’t getting easier but was becoming more complicated for me to muster the enthusiasm I felt I needed. I was performing, and I didn’t even know it. Eventually, I decided to be honest with my partner, and we talked about what sex felt like for me and how it wasn’t doing what I thought it was doing for him. We talked for hours, and I realized our experiences were vastly different.

We tried compromising, but you can’t force a middle ground with sex; either you want it or you don’t. I set reminders to be intimate, which felt like a bad sign. Eventually, it became the reason we broke up: we couldn’t align our expectations, and neither of us was happy with the compromises. I didn’t—and still don’t, to an extent—want to be asexual, but like any orientation, you can’t just wish it away. You can deny it or disguise it, but you can’t change it.

When we broke up, I was crushed—but the grief quickly gave way to an overwhelming relief. I no longer had to perform the role of “girlfriend.” Sex is the one thing I can’t compromise on; the second you force yourself to do it when you’re not really into it, resentment builds, either toward yourself or the other person. If it’s not something I can somewhat enjoy at that moment, it’s off the table.

At thirty-one, I’m more at ease in my asexuality though it doesn’t come without challenges. Having erased the need for a “typical” relationship, the issue I struggle with now is the lack of effort I put into seeking one. I worry about the inevitable early-days conversations, and the statements that often come disguised as possibilities I’ve long since considered and dismissed as inapplicable: “Maybe you just haven’t met the right person yet,” or “You haven’t been with me yet though, so you can’t know.” I can handle them, but I’m not always sure I have the energy.

For me, sex is about communicating each other’s wants…but I don’t have any. Sex is a tool I use to establish a dynamic, not a primary source of pleasure. Sometimes pleasure does come out of it, but most romantic interests end up disconcerted by my lack of physical desire. I don’t know what it means to physically desire someone. I can fall in love and admire someone’s beauty, like someone admires art, but the urge to act on it rarely surfaces—maybe two or three times a year?

My own libido is just as low. Sex just isn’t something I gravitate toward, although it’s a huge area of interest to me. I like talking about it, reading about it, and writing about it, because it helps me understand something I feel apart from. I don’t like watching it—porn or even sex scenes in movies strike me as inauthentic.

I’m currently in a partnership with someone who identifies on the aroace spectrum, both aromantic and asexual. Over the past few years, we’ve talked a lot about what we each want from life, and we’ve chosen to move forward together.

I’m keeping the possibility of a romantic relationship open, but I’ve decided to decentralize it from my story. Shifting my focus—making romance less of a priority—has given me immense confidence. I’m no longer waiting or feeling lonely. I can enjoy the solid partnership I do have, along with my wonderful friendships that fulfill almost all my emotional needs. When I’m missing that last 10%, I’ll cry, bake brownies, watch a silly romcom, and move on.

Accepting the difficult parts makes navigating the rest so much easier. I don’t have to be 100% content with my life—who is?

When I was younger, my love life was always up for debate among my friends: “You haven’t found the right man,” “He wasn’t skilled,” and other similar sentiments. Freeing myself from these ridiculous excuses has helped me prioritize relationships that bring me joy, in whatever shape they take.

And with this freedom comes the satisfying relief of knowing that whoever wants to engage in a romantic relationship with me one day will have to accept that I’ve built a life where they aren’t at the very center. That doesn’t mean they won’t be hugely important or deeply loved; it just means I’ve created a life for myself that values other relationships just as much. And I hope they’ll find a similar sense of independence and community, too.

Asexuality isn’t something I would have chosen for myself, but I can’t deny that it has led me to reflect on things I see other people struggle with: the role of romance in a person’s life, and the importance of friendship. I might not love being asexual, but it has forced me—and also allowed me—to grow in ways I can only be grateful for.

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Mar is a 31-year-old asexual living in Paris with her cat. A devoted fan of True Lies (the greatest movie ever made), she spends her free time writing, bookbinding, and experimenting with tea drinks—most of which end up vaguely disgusting. When she's not sharing her thoughts on asexuality on TikTok, you can catch her deep in a Tumblr rabbit hole, blogging about Arcane, Severance, and Harry Potter.

As a late thirty-something adult, when I look back on my childhood, I can see all the ways in which I missed the signs of my queerness. Part of that was growing up in a Southern, Christian family where queerness just wasn’t, and largely still isn’t, a thing. The aunts were married to the uncles, or they weren’t married at all. But they wanted to. That was always the undercurrent. The women who were unpaired were just “waiting for the right man” to swoop in and sweep them off their feet.

Being queer wasn’t something spoken about and so it wasn’t something I even thought about as an option. That isn’t to say I didn’t have an interest in girls. I giggled about all the same things as my girl friends. We experimented with kissing—first pillows, then my hand, then a couple friends when we were brave enough. But I still didn’t put together that how I felt about those innocent pecks during sleepovers wasn’t the same as how my friends perceived these early-in-life kisses. It wasn’t until high school, when a crush on a girl hit me like a ton of bricks, that I realized I was something different.

Lesbian. Bisexual. Queer.

Those were all new words for me that opened all new possibilities. I started to see myself differently as I discovered just how queer the things I loved were. Especially the literature I consumed.

Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Nana were my favorite manga. I spent hours furiously writing my own fan fiction about them, always with a happily ever after where the girl gets the girl and rides off into the sunset on a motorcycle. No idea why a motorcycle since they did and still do scare me. In my stories, there was always a focus for me on that “a-ha” moment, where the two characters realized there was more there than just friendship when they brushed hands.

There was love.

Queer love and desire were subjects I moved on to explore in my own works. But even more, re-examining all the things I loved and continue to love about those characters has helped me peel back layers of my own sexuality as I put bits and pieces into the characters I create.

The pandemic, as terrible as it was (and continues to be), came with one helpful outcome in that it forced me to sit the fuck down and think. I hadn’t truly been able to since my marriage in 2011 and subsequent divorce six years later in 2017. Between working multiple jobs and taking care of my son alone, I hadn’t had a moment to do that—to think about myself or what and who I wanted. That’s when I turned to my characters.

Being an author is freeing in a way. We can explore our likes and dislikes, unique situations and challenges, and say and do things we never thought possible for ourselves. For me, although I had dated women in the past, after marrying a man and having a child, I never really thought being in a relationship with a woman was a possibility for me. My life was far too filled, too complicated for that. In my mind, I was saddled with too much baggage to be seen as a viable partner. Yet it was something I desperately wanted. So, I turned thoughts into characters.

My first traditionally published romance novel, The 7-10 Split, had a fair amount of myself in it. It explored themes I had never given voice to, namely how to handle when your life doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would. Or should. My next book in the series, The Relationship Mechanic, explores a little more with concerns over commitment when it would mean changing how you choose to live. But book three…book three is very on the nose. A single mother who has spent most of her time concerned over her family who are now moving on and doing their own things, leaving her contemplating, what’s next? Yeah…that’s me alright.

Book three in this series, The Secret Crush Book Club, has been the toughest one for me to write because I’ve poured more of myself into it than before. Through one of my main characters, I’m exploring not only how to handle dating again with a kid, but also the additional layer of coming out to yourself and others later in life. I have known for years I liked women, but that was before a child was thrown into the mix. On social media, most of the queer women I see are young or around my age but without children. The ones I do stumble across who are closer to my situation, I eagerly follow. But really, it’s my fiction that is allowing me to delve into what the experience for me might be like…should I ever decide to leave my house.

I’ve been able to ask myself questions and play around with scenarios like, what would I do if my future partner doesn’t want kids? What should I do if she does? How do I tell her I can’t U-Haul until after the first year? And even more, how do I talk to my son about this? How do I introduce my son and my future partner? It might not be much different than if I were dating a man, but for me, who never had an example of what the process should look like, I have nothing to truly emulate. My world is books, and in literature, from myself and others, I have slowly developed a plan should an intimate relationship with another woman ever pan out.

Just like literature in my youth helped me understand and explore my queer identity then, writing queer and specifically sapphic romance is helping me explore it now. It’s helping me catch up on the lingo that has changed since growing up as a Y2K kid. It’s helping me understand the difference between sex and gender in a way I didn’t while I was married to a cis man or growing up in a culture where sex was never really discussed, much less gender. Even the (very) few times I’ve read reviews has helped me adapt the way I describe attraction to masculinity as opposed to attraction to men or femininity as opposed to women, and everything in between. I now have so many tools to prepare for when or if my son decides to let me know he’s attracted to someone of the same gender. It’s also given me some suggestions for what not to say.

Writing sapphic romance, in particular, has helped solidify that my thoughts and feelings from years ago were not and are not a phase. I’ve learned I don’t have to be ashamed that it took me a few more years to circle back to the same thoughts and realizations I had as a teen. Queerness isn’t something I chose to be or chose to do. Queerness is inherent to who I am as a person and who I look for in a partner. Queer is an identity I use proudly, an identity I reclaimed for myself through years of learning how to get out of my own way and just be.

Writing queerness, and specifically, Black queer love, has given me a way to celebrate the love I hope to one day have. I find strength in writing sapphic stories and hearing how my readers fall in love with those Black queer characters, because each character has a little bit of me. And if they love different pieces of me, one day I know I’ll find someone who loves me as a whole.

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Karmen Lee is a lifelong Southerner living it up in Atlanta, Georgia, with her kid, her cats and humidity. When not packing lunches or working her nine-to-five, she can be found drinking coffee too late at night, watching House Hunters International and dreaming up ways to show her readers a good time. Find her on Twitter (@Author_KLee) or Instagram (@authorkarmenlee).

by Amy Pearl

Picture an ordinary bisexual woman of color, a middle-aged mom minding her own business at the supermarket while shopping with her tween son. He heads off to look for something he wants to get, and she pushes her cart in a different direction. Suddenly, her gay-dar goes off, as she spots a thirty-something white gay man ahead of her, near a register. It’s June, so she says:

“Do you celebrate Pride? Happy Pride!”

He looks surprised. Maybe even confused for a second. After a pause, he says, “Thank you. And thank you for being an ally!”

“An ally?!,” she replies. “What? Do I look… I… I’m part of the LGBTQ community!”

“Oh!,” he says, but he can’t continue because the cashier is ready for him to lay out his groceries. They drift apart.

So that’s me. The bi suburban mom. Barely visible to the naked eye, apparently. I mulled over the interaction in my mind. Was he lacking bi-dar? Is he not aware that people of color exist in the LGBTQ community? Does he notice gay men but assume all women are straight? Can I make my way through a Harris Teeter without having to deal with racism, sexism, and bi erasure? I sure would like to try.

Maybe it was my vaguely feminine appearance that threw him. You’ve heard of lipstick lesbians. I’m more of a Chapstick bisexual. No makeup, but I do wear dresses on occasion. Maybe if I was more masculine, he wouldn’t have assumed ally status.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being an ally. Straight people ought to be allies! But I’m not straight, and I’ve been out since I was a teen and would like to be seen as who I am. What does it mean to have—or lack—the ability to clock a fellow member of the LGBTQ community? I could tell he was gay because, well, he looked gay. I was happy to see his gayness shining through. I was excited to acknowledge it and to wish him a happy Pride. But when he looked at me, he couldn’t see what I thought was apparent. To him, I blended in with the het crowd, and, not able to place me and thus wish me the same (“Happy Pride to you, too!,” he didn’t say), he merely thanked me. And in doing so, cast me outside the circle of queerness.

Bisexual people have long been relegated to the margins of our own community— or cast out entirely. But Brenda Howard, a bisexual woman known as The Mother of Pride, was one of the founding organizers of the very first Pride event in the world, which took place in New York in 1970, one year after the Stonewall Riots. She started the event to commemorate the anniversary of the Riots, an event to say, “We won’t be ashamed of our sexualities—instead, we we’ll be proud.”

I wouldn’t have been saying “Happy Pride!” to this man in the first place if it weren’t for a bisexual woman.

Somehow I suspect he doesn’t know that history. Likewise, he might not know that the majority of people who identify as gay, lesbian, or bi, identify as bi. We make up well over half of the LGB population. So most of the time, when you meet someone who is part of the LGBTQ community, statistically speaking, that person is probably bisexual. It’s just simple math.

Then it dawned on me: my kid. Maybe he saw me talking to my son earlier and read me as straight based on my being a mom. Is motherhood a heterosexual thing? Like many LGBTQ parents, reproduction, for me, involved a sperm donor. I’m what’s called a “single mother by choice.” I used a donor to conceive my children. I pursued parenthood on my own, rather than within a relationship or with a co-parent. People become parents in many different ways. This was my path, and it works for me. But does it make me look straight, to have kids?

Then I had to ask myself, why did it bother me so much to be assumed to be straight? Many people are straight. Most of them, in fact! Heterosexual people are not inherently any better or worse than the rest of us. But bother me it did. I’m not heterosexual. I’m not monosexual at all! I’m bisexual, and that’s important to me. I’m proud to have the capacity to experience love and attraction the way I do.

I have nothing against monosexual people, but, honestly, I’ve always thought it seemed time-consuming. In order to be attracted to someone else, a monosexual person first has to figure out each individual person’s gender—and keep top of mind their own gender—and then compare the two. If the genders are the same, and the monosexual person is gay, then they move to Step Two, which is deciding if they find the other person attractive. If the genders are different, and the monosexual person is straight, then that is the point for moving to Step Two. And then they have to do this with the next person they see. And the next person. And the next person. All to determine if the other person is hot or not. Either that, or they have to turn off all desire and shut down the attraction-determination machine that lives in all of us, and just walk around ignoring their own sexuality, so that they don’t get slowed down in going about their day.

It seems exhausting! We bi folks are way more efficient. We can look at someone, think, “Wow, they’re cute!” or not, and keep it moving. We don’t have to know the other person’s gender or even our own gender, because gender is largely irrelevant to the process. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely irrelevant; some bisexual people like gender and are even into gender as a turn-on, and that’s cool if that’s your thing. But the common thread for all bisexual people is that, ultimately, gender is not a deal-breaker. It’s just a detail. Like eye color or hair color or height. I might prefer people who are tall, but I’m not going to deny myself the charms of a cutie on the shorter side.

And that’s just when it comes to attraction. There’s also love itself. Monosexuals, again, have to take gender into account in this realm, the realm of the heart.  Tina Turner asked us, “What’s love got to do with it?” My question to monosexual people has always been, “What’s gender got to do with it?” It being love. In my experience, love doesn’t just transcend gender; it has literally nothing to do with gender. I’ve never loved someone because they were a man or because they were a woman—or in spite of those details, either. I’ve just loved. I’ve loved people because they were amazing humans. That’s it. It’s not that complicated.

My friend at the store thought I was complicated. He thought I’m the type to take gender into account. He thought I’m the type to go through the time-consuming process of always having to figure out what gender each individual person is as they pass by my eyes, all the time, all day, every day. He thought I’m someone who is only capable of falling in love with another adult human if that person a) has a gender, and b) has a gender that is different from mine. He may have even thought that I had experienced love this way, and that love led to reproductive sex, resulting in children. Then, after all that thinking, he may have thought that I was nice enough to be supportive of his community.

And then he thanked me.

So to him I say, “You’re welcome… but you may be overthinking it. Next time, just assume the person is bisexual, for god’s sake. It’s the simplest explanation!”

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Amy Pearl is the pen name of a bisexual woman of color living that suburban life! She is a single mother of two wonderful donor-conceived kiddos.

The first time I visited my mom’s headstone was in 2010, two years after its unveiling. I was back in  Michigan with my boyfriend for a friend's wedding. I printed out a map of the cemetery and asked him to drive. I spotted the massive stone wall with the signage, he made a sharp right, and then braked at the gates which were locked.

I was confused. Do cemeteries have hours?  

Of course they do. And of course this one was closed. It was a Jewish cemetery, and it was a Saturday. 

What kind of daughter doesn’t visit her mother’s grave for two years and then gets locked out due to religious ignorance and bad planning? The kind that does grief all wrong.

“Do you wanna get out of the car?” My boyfriend wiped some sweat across the top of his forehead and ran it back through his hair. I shook my head. He rolled the windows down and turned off the engine.

From between the iron bars we stared at the rows and rows of slanted headstones popping out of the hills and hills of freshly cut grass. Granite, green, granite, green. I didn’t even know which one was my mom. Where do I send my hello? I studied the map I’d printed out of the 40 acres and 15,000 plots for 30 seconds, like I was someone who successfully read maps. I dropped it between the seat and my door. Another thing to throw out when we returned the rental car. Where do I send my goodbye?

“She knows you’re here,” he offered later, as he reversed us back onto the main road. 

It was a sweet thing to say, but all I kept thinking was, How does he know she knows, when I don’t even know what I know?

***
Two years later, I was moving out of the apartment my boyfriend and I shared for seven years and holding our hug goodbye a little longer. I was comforted thinking about how we would both move on, but stay connected. We had a cat together. 

Staying connected with my ex and my cat I knew how to do. Staying connected with my mom, not so much.

My spicy, gorgeous brain often participates in black and white thinking, though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing at the time. Grieving can make dichotomies feel especially stifling. You’re either connected, or you’re not. Someone is alive, or they’re dead. You move on with your life, or you believe in ghosts. Pick one lane, and make sure to pick the one that feels like you have the most control.

I didn’t know how to continue a relationship with my mom, and I got caught in a loop of “nevers.” She will never meet the next person I love. She will never come visit me in my new apartment. She will never know I’m gay.

***

I wasn’t conscious I was gay until I was 32, and I was a little pissed off when it all sank in. I couldn’t believe I’d been gay my whole life and nobody, including myself, had bothered to tell me.

“Mindy, you’re so gay, how did you not know you were gay?” – All of my current friends and lovers 

This question is always delivered as more of a statement. It’s a witnessing ritual among queer fam, it’s an “I love you because I see you” moment. 

I guess if I had to answer, I’d say something about how we all have protective parts that keep our secrets safe, sometimes even from ourselves. 

I’m 44 now, and sometimes I still grieve the gay childhood I never had and the coming out to my mother I never got. 

I romanticize myself as a queer kid in middle school. I have a large group of gay friends. I’m the president of our Gay Straight Alliance. I sing the Amy Ray part of every Indigo Girls song—not just because I love the harmony, but because it’s queer music and I’m a queer human. 

I’m out, and I don’t have to work hard to fit in. The “wrongness” about me, the instinctual knowing that something’s not quite right, the social unease, the otherness I can never quite put my finger on, has transmuted into pride, self-acceptance, and community. 

My mom is a PFLAG member. When my friends come over she buys rainbow-colored bagels and whitefish spread, and spears the lox with trans flag toothpicks. And when she glides into the room with the platter, she says wonderful-terrible things like, “I love my queer, polyamorous kid a lox.”  

Of course there was no Gay Straight Alliance at my school in the 80s and 90s, or LGBTQIA+ community where I lived. None of my classmates were out, and I didn’t know a single gay adult. But if I’m going to daydream an alternate timeline, it’s obviously going to be a queer utopia. 

When you learn new things about yourself as an adult that have been there the whole time, it’s as if the universe gives you a pair of magic goggles that allow you to see your past more accurately. 

“Wow, everything is gay. Oh, and also neurodivergent!”

It’s a bittersweet privilege to meet more of yourself, and more of your secrets, as you get older.

*** 

I came out to my mom as gay and polyamorous over fifty times from 2016-2018. It was well-timed, and crafted with a satisfying dénouement. At least that’s the feedback I got from the audience. I highly recommend coming out to a parent as part of the narrative thread of your solo comedy show. It will always go exactly the way you planned.

I create in order to meet and share my secrets. 

Here are some more examples. Let’s get granular.

• I’ve come out to my dad four times, so far. Once as gay (on my brother’s patio in Portland, Oregon) and once as polyamorous (on a Zoom call during the pandemic). The latter didn’t go as well. Then I got to come out to him two more times while performing on a Moth Mainstage show where I told the story about the Zoom call and what happened when my wife, my partner, my dad, and I all went out to dinner. I told a theater of 800 people all about my polycule, but I still find it a challenge to bring it up to my siblings.

• From 2008-2012, I performed as an omnisexual musical comedy drag character named Leibya Rogers while I thought I was straight. When I came out, I retired the act. 

• I found out I had anxiety by reading some reviews  (“The protagonist, who clearly has anxiety…”) of my young adult novel, The Symptoms of My Insanity, that was loosely based on my life. And then last year, one reader found me on social media and told me the protagonist was a queer influence. I wrote the protagonist as straight, but—like me—I guess she was queer coded the whole time.

I could go on.

I would love to say I fully processed my grief and felt all of my feelings before sharing my life via writing, live storytelling, and stand-up comedy. I would also love to know when, exactly, grief is ever fully processed.

I’m coming on sixteen years since my mom died, not counting all the years she was sick, and the process of the processing is still processing.

I used to see the things I made as crystal balls, unlocking unconscious secrets within me, as if the act of creating was happening without me. But now I give myself more credit.

I’m certain there are so many things I still don’t know about myself, massive truths my nervous system has eviscerated into nanoscopic seeds and scattered throughout my body. 

One thing I do know is that I need to feel safe in order to feel anything. Creating provides that safe container. It’s how I process. 

*** 

Twelve years after my last visit, I return to Michigan with my wife. I take a screenshot of the map of the cemetery and ask them to drive. 

We park across from a thick, leafy oak tree that shades my mom’s headstone. It’s hot but not humid, cloudy but still sunny. A perfect fall Michigan day. I sit down on the grass and close my eyes. Goodbye and hello. It’s all everywhere. Not just the memories, but the stories on stage, the words in journals, the moments in dreams. 

I used to berate myself for not being able to execute scheduled rituals or other ways to stay connected to my mom. But it doesn’t matter where I am, or what, specifically, I do. I’ve been connecting to her, in my own way, all along.

When I open my eyes, I see my wife sprawled out on the grass next to me, shadows from the leaves moving across their smiling face.

“What are you doing?” I laugh. “Are you sunbathing?”

“I’m cuddling with your mom,” they answer matter-of-factly, as if it’s not a totally batshit thing to say.

And maybe it’s not. 

The safer I feel in my body, the more I’m able to soften the edges of my black and white thinking, to expand and even enjoy all the gray. (I don’t think my mom would ever roll around outside without a nice picnic blanket and a lot of hand sanitizer, but perhaps times have changed.) 

“We’re talking about polyamory. She knows everything, and she knows you’re here.”

“I know,” I smile. “I know she knows.”

There’s no wrong way to grieve. It’s a funky, awful, visceral, wonderful, beautiful, labyrinthine process. And there’s no wrong time to meet new parts of yourself, to keep creating new things, to meet and share your secrets.

I don’t want to be “as sick as my secrets.” I want to be as curious as my protective parts. 

Here’s to meeting more.

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Mindy Raf is a critically acclaimed solo show artist, stand-up comedian, songwriter, and published author. Her comedy and writing have received accolades from BUST Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and Time Out New York, which named her solo show Not The One: a love story an “LGBT Best Bet.” Mindy co-produces a monthly comedy show Golden Spiral Comedy the last Thursday of the month at Whiskey Cellar NYC in the East Village. You can find her here on Substack, on social media, and occasionally she updates her website. 

I like to joke that my gender transition is the slowest, most ambivalent gender transition in history, but I know that’s not true. Everyone’s gender story is unique.

As a teenager in the 80s I grew up with drag queens who dressed like 1950s housewives and butch dykes who might have chosen to live as men if that had been an option when they were younger. I reveled in the gender ambiguity I saw in the media, pop stars like Annie Lennox, David Bowie, and Prince blurring the traditional social conventions around gender presentation. Classical literature normalized the idea of gender swapping. Modern women wore tailored suits with sharp angles and huge shoulder pads to the office. I was female by default, and it took me years to realize that I could reject the gender binary too.

Now, at 50, I consider myself transgender and non-binary. Usually I say queer or genderqueer, which basically means that my gender is complicated and actually, none of your business. It’s been a long journey that differs from the socio-medical model of gender dysphoria. Rather than flinching away from a gender that feels wrong, I have gradually gravitated toward a gender that brings me joy.

I’ve heard many people say that they knew their gender did not match what they were assigned at birth when they were three or four years old. My childhood was oddly ungendered, full of Toughskin jeans, Tonka trucks, and playing in the woods. I knew that people had different kinds of genitals, but I just never identified as a boy and accepted the role of being a girl because I didn’t know I had other options. My mother taught me that women could do anything, even though she chose very traditional female roles.

In my twenties and thirties I gave birth to five children and loved my body’s ability to support and nourish life. I tried my hand at burlesque because I thought that the caricature of femininity might help me gain more insight. I learned to play the role of femme fatale at parties and social events. Although I enjoyed the attention, in the stillness of my heart, I felt genderless.

I got curious about how other people have chosen to live in a gender different from what they were assigned at birth. I asked questions and they all told me to experiment. Transition is a journey not a destination. My personal path has felt more like peeling away layers of dead skin to emerge raw, vulnerable, and bigger than I was before. Or like shattering and reforming, dropping pieces that were never mine or do not fit me anymore, re-sculpting myself in a new image.

I legally changed my name to something more distinctive and androgenous than the generationally ubiquitous “Heather.” I changed my pronouns from she/her to she/they and then more recently, they/them. I got more comfortable asserting my preferences in social and professional settings. When my state changed the laws around gender markers on ID, I was first in line to change my “F” to an “X.”

My hair got shorter and shorter until I simply shaved it all off one New Year’s Eve. Some friends threw a masquerade ball for their wedding reception, and I gleefully rented a tux. I still wore dresses occasionally, yet I found it viscerally uncomfortable to put on the feminine lingerie I had once enjoyed. Getting dressed in the mornings could be challenging. Do I feel masculine or feminine today? With a closet full of clothes, none of them felt right. I bought jock-strap style underwear that made me go wet instantly. I stuffed a small flaccid prosthetic penis into the front. Rubbing that bulge against the kitchen counters made me gasp and shiver, as though the slight friction caused nerve endings to flare.

I dressed as a man and went out to dinner with my partner. No one looked twice and my initial fear gave way to a floaty sense of erotic freedom. I fucked him with a strap-on, high on the power and tenderness that suffused my body with each thrust. Over time I learned to change my sexual energy in the bedroom, to become male at will. Or maybe gender simply stopped mattering when we made love, a mishmash of projection and reception that melted into toe-curling orgasms.

I tried wearing chest binders, but they felt restrictive, hard to breathe, and my breasts were too big to hide even when bound. I sought out breast reduction surgery (my version of top surgery). I liked having breasts, but I was tired of unwanted sexual attention, back pain, and not being able to wear button-down shirts. I wanted to be able to express myself as any gender. Unexpectedly, smaller breasts evoked feminine body happiness.

I lost weight and my curves and jiggles went away. For the first time since being a teenager, I experienced the sleek physical delight of looking the way I imagined myself. I began lifting weights, pushing myself toward an inner and outer strength that was grounding and empowering.

Then perimenopause (and the pandemic) struck. I felt like I was at war with my body. Painful sex, frequent UTIs, brain fog, irritability, and weight gain became my new personal hell. So much of the ground I had gained in my gender identity was ripped away in the tumultuous tide of changing hormones. My sex life ground almost to a halt. We clung to our weekly dates, desperately trying to figure out how to increase desire and maximize pleasure. My doctor recommended oral estrogen, but I didn’t want to take it. I swallowed handfuls of supplements and used vaginal moisturizers. I grieved the loss of myself.

A year and a half ago, our youngest child came out as trans. Watching him define gender in a way that is fluid and inimitable has inspired me. When he began taking testosterone, I interrogated his naturopathic endocrinologist. The stalemate of indecision I had always struggled with when I thought of hormone treatment crumbled in the face of new possibility. I started on a dose that is marginally higher than what might be prescribed for menopause and much less than what is typically used to transition.

That first injection felt momentous, my hands slightly shaking as I watched the little needle slide into my belly fat. Some of the effects I felt within days, some have taken longer to manifest. I experienced fewer migraines, more ability to focus, greater energy, and better emotional stability. My partner started joking about me becoming a teenage boy. My voice dropped a little, cracking at awkward moments. I had peach fuzz on my upper lip, back acne, and I was sweatier.

Sex stopped hurting. Desire spread in me like a pressure on the roof of my mouth, an ache I needed to fill. I had to relearn self-pleasure because I couldn’t masturbate the same ways anymore. My clitoris went from being an innie (always tucked under the hood) to being an outie (extending just past the outer lips of the vulva). Where I could once bring myself to orgasm in a minute or two, my body now forced me to slow down and enjoy the exquisite sensation before climax.

My previously withering sex life became lush and abundant. I felt freer and more open with my partner than ever before. Erotism became my main hobby, seeking two to three orgasms a day. I worried about my lust becoming obsessive. When I expressed concern to my doctor he smiled and asked if it was getting in the way of my job or relationships. I thought about it and said no. “Then just enjoy it,” he replied. My partner told me to ride the wave of desire, and like any teenage boy, I would eventually make friends with my sexual energy and find a balance I could live with.

Embracing these changes has made my life so much richer. The thing that is overlooked in all the current political discourse about transgender people is how individual a process it is. Taking one gender-affirming step is not a commitment to a specific chain of action. Hundreds of times I have wondered if taking additional steps to medically transition would feel more authentic to my sense of gender, but I love my breasts and I don’t need my own penis. I experience so much pleasure with the equipment I have that it seems unnecessary. My gender is intrinsic and individual, not on the binary. Taking testosterone has not made me more male. It’s made me more me. I think David Bowie would approve.

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Evoë Thorne is a sex therapist who works with LGBTQIA+ clients at Lysios Counseling. They live in Washington State with their partner and children. Evoë enjoys writing, photography (WholeSexLife), travel, and naming houseplants.

In my early twenties, I was a self-appointed lothario. Living in New York City, the world was my oyster, there to harvest to my heart’s delight—and so was every woman in it, or so I thought.

I had always surrounded myself with lots of people. Friends, lovers—pawns, as I sometimes considered them.

I was having an affair with my literature professor from college. Unbeknownst to her, I was also messing around with half my softball team, plus assorted others. People I met at bars. Old friends with benefits. An ex I couldn’t quite shake.

I was offending left and right, a far cry from the monogamous relationship this distinguished woman with whom I shared fine meals and road trips and holidays assumed we were sharing. But I kept her isolated from my family and friends, only inviting her in to select groups and moments to stave off the inevitable snark and judgment from others about her age (she was 25 years my senior), and to protect my cheating cover.

It was an April weekend, late morning, the tease of spring in the air but not yet materialized. The city smelled like earth and decay, with a promise of renewed life to come. Off in the distance, the waft of bacon from a breakfast cart hovered on the edge of Prospect Park.

The season opener was within grasp, and we, a dozen odd misshapen lesbians, had taken not to an official sandy diamond for our last softball practice, but a makeshift clearing in the urban woods, replete with bumpy turf outlined by tall, still-bare maples and oaks. The queer softball league always got the last scraps of available space to play.

After practice, we planned to retreat to the neighborhood lesbian watering hole for a team fundraiser. That meant beer and girls and the promise of a night that might create electric memories, one that might not have an ending.

The bulky, masculine, but soft-faced Kristi, our team captain, cracked the bat on the worn softball and we each took our turns fielding the ball, scooping the grounders up in our hide gloves and flipping them to her sidekick, Jamie, an equally broad butch woman with a well-appointed face, who took her after-game beers as seriously as she did her field plays.

Kristi and I had been fooling around. She lived just a few blocks over from the Park Slope apartment where my professor lived. I’d cozy up in her bed after an afternoon of post-game drinking at the bar and then sneak off to the professor’s for the second showing of Masterpiece Theatre and a scotch, neat, followed by a lazy morning after with coffee, black, and traded sections of The New York Times.

Back on the bumpy practice field, it was my turn.

I wiggled my torso, spread my legs, and bent my knees, positioning myself as squarely as possible to center the ball. I heard the crack of the ball against the bat, eyes locked as the spinning white object rolled toward me at a reasonable speed. I got this, I told myself. I pressed the bottom of my glove against the edge of the earth, ready to scoop it up, already practicing the movement of flipping the ball from my glove to my left hand to seamlessly throw it to Jamie and complete the relay.

Well laid plans sometimes go to shit.

Half a second before the ball should have landed in my glove, it hit an uneven path of dirt and hopped up and bit me in the forehead, narrowly escaping my right eye.

The pain wasn’t immediate. The shock hit first. It took me a moment to register what had happened. The sheer force of the hit had knocked me flat on my behind.

I saw my team rushing toward me in slow motion, risti’s mouth agape, her softball jersey flapping.

The shame rushed into my cheeks in hot waves.

“I’m okay,” I said, refusing help as I pushed myself up into standing position.

“We’re not taking any chances,” Jamie said, dialing 911 on her phone.

“That’s really not necessary,” I assured her, but it was too late.

Not 48 hours earlier, Hollywood starling Natasha Richardson had hit her head while skiing and, to the surprise of everyone, dropped dead.

My team, channeling tabloid news, poured their misdirected concern onto me, although their obsessive care was short-lived.

As I sat leaning against a naked, beaten oak waiting for help to arrive, the rest of the team resumed their positions and continued to play.

To make matters worse, the ambulance got lost, unable to navigate city terrain that wasn’t gridded cement. It was a good thing I didn’t really need emergency treatment.

When the ambulance finally arrived, no one from my softball team came with me to the shoddy Methodist hospital in Central Brooklyn. I sat in the ER for hours, alone, watching the most unfortunate cases limping, dragging, and rolling in, hoping I wasn’t dying of a brain bleed and wondering why, with so many people in my life, no one was there with me. I felt like the loneliest social person in the world.

Two hours later, in walked Kristi. Oh good, I thought. Someone from the team was coming to make sure I was okay.

“I’m here to grab your donation for the raffle,” she said. “Do you have it?”

My heart sank as I realized that I was nothing to her, nor to the team. I wasn’t a real friend, just a placeholder on the field so they didn’t have to forfeit. A raffle prize contributor. A warm body to sidle up to in the boozy dark.

It was a sobering moment that would have made my head hurt, had it not already ached from having connected with a hard ball.

It was also not lost on me that I treated others like disposable commodities too, including someone who did care about me.

No sooner did Kristi leave than the professor walked into the ER waiting room. She blanketed me with sympathetic words and tender eyes. She sat with me until my name was called, and a CT scan was run to determine that I didn’t actually have a brain bleed and would live to see the sun set. She smirked through the ER doctor’s flirtatious comments to me that I had “really incredible pupils” while looking into my eyes with a flashlight.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that by refusing to give myself over to someone fully and in earnest, I was missing out on the full experience of human connection. It took a hit to the head for me to truly understand that there was an important distinction between quantity and quality when it came to who I surrounded myself with. More importantly, I realized what type of person I wanted to be to others—and it wasn’t someone who was always on the hunt for the next person to occupy my time.

I never did confess my sins to the professor, but she had a doctorate in decoding subtext. I didn’t have to.

I have just one muse now, my wife of more years than I can easily remember to count. The Brooklyn I romped around in, with its queer subculture and affordable brick row houses, has been replaced with high-priced steel and glass condos and impeccably renovated townhouses. The softball queers have all moved away to the ’burbs to start our own families. The professor married someone more sensible and moved to the Upper West Side.

To this day, when I run my pointer finger across my right eyebrow, I can feel the remnants of the contusion where the ball made impact. If I turn my head at just the right angle in the mirror, I can see the rounded lump protruding out of my forehead.

The only time my softball glove comes out of retirement these days is to play catch with my five-year-old. I have, though, made it a point to teach him how to put his free hand above the glove to prevent the ball from jumping up to bite him in the face. I also taught him that it’s important to treat the people we love with great care. After all, not doing so could come back to bite us in the head, or the heart.

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I’m on stage in a white, billowy, pillowy, flowery shirt. This shirt looks really good when I wear the crushed velvet purple jacket over it. Without that jacket, I am standing here with these giant 20-pound (10 pounds each) tits and a Telecaster guitar around my waist. I am singing my heart out, playing my heart out, and it is amazing. Yet I feel so uncomfortable.

I walked in here as a man, confident and cocksure, put my things on stage, did my sound check, and loaded my own amp. It’s hot in this club; the moment I take that crushed purple velvet jacket off I am revealed, and none of the revelations are to my glory. These giant sacks of fat that sit in front of me are weighing me down, revealing a side of me that isn’t me. It’s like living inside a bubble, or inside skin that doesn’t fit. I used to say people were irritated with me ’cuz they could see my balls ’cuz they’re on my chest.

But as I begin to solo, all of my confidence and prowess come through. Someone is going to say of me, “It’s Titty Hendrix,” and I will hate them for it. I walked in as a man, but I was perceived as a woman because of the mere temperature change in the room, only then to switch back to the man who plays guitar, who howls in rage and grief at Hashem, and, even in that manhood, there is a woman.

What matters is that I am singing and expressing myself, not what I look like. Music is for ears, right? Not tits or dicks or any and everything in between. I have memories of playing, albeit loudly, in a local watering hole (where all the best gigs begin) and having a grown white man step up to me, lower himself onto one, and then both, knees, and lick the high E string of my guitar while it was on my waist. I have vivid memories of soloing, eyes shut, literally in another world, and when I came to, my bassist was tonguing my boot. I loved that as a person, when I was playing my instrument, gender didn’t matter. I also loved the feeling of his long, pink tongue darting around on the cuticle and nails of my toes through the rich black leather of my motorcycle boots.

I remember playing the LGBTIA+ festival in San Diego Park, soloing around the crowd wirelessly, with a fresh bald head. I remember hearing my own voice stretched out across a huge manmade lake in Coronado, California for arguably over a thousand lesbians. We were announced, then not given enough time to sound check, so I did what I always do. I let my voice do the talking as my guitar pickup wasn’t cooperating with me or the sound person. It was then that I heard my voice stretch out over the water and I believed that as far as my voice traveled, I could be heard. As if my voice could reach around the globe.

I have the most incredible memory of chanting what is now a tattoo on my chest in Latin that says: One Light, One Lamp, One Journey, Many Paths, and the distinct pleasure of having a crowd yell it back at me. The crowd at the CD release party at O’Connells in San Diego was so loud, damn near shouting over me. The bar was not far from the waterway there. As I belted out the eight words, without music behind me, my hands raised above my head clapping profusely as loudly as possible, the crowd sang every single one of the eight words back to the three of us up there on the stage. In unison, mostly on key with me, repeatedly, until I damn near grew hoarse. That night I will never forget. I soaked all of that joy, communion, celebration, triumph and tragedy (Andrew, my brother and founding drummer, was gone by then) into my soul.

If music is HaShem’s heartbeat, then the voice must be the breath that HaShem uses. It is the significance of what is being said—which is exactly why words matter. The message my lips deliver matters; as I look back fondly on all those moments on stage, the paralyzing fear that ebbs and flows within me prior to the show falls away.

I meditate every time before I take the stage. Meditation grounds me, and also allows me to reach out to every spirit that has passed before me. I know I can call out to any spirit that has passed and they will come to me; all I need to do is ask. I have called or summoned forth some of the most influential women musical artists who have passed away to come and join me on stage and speak through me. When I do my sound check, I channel Nina Simone every time, and sing “I Shall Be Released.” To say this is cathartic is an understatement. It quells the stage fright.

The richness of my voice is such that the roughness of the man is there, yet I seek the angry, gentle side of the woman. The combination is incredible. Call it what you want, it’s mine to share, from a rich wealth of voices from all people.

My voice now is not far from where it started, and yet it is lower, rich with wisdom and more resonant than it was. With the addition of bi-weekly vitamin T (testosterone) the “reeds” or vocal chords are much thicker than they were before. I have always had a deep masculine voice (or so I was told, whatever that means) but now it feels guttural, raw, unprovoked. I am simply amazed that my voice has stood the test of time, and the ravages it has had upon me. I hardly recognize myself some days. I can best summarize it this way: The first time I performed at a little coffee shop, I said, “My name is Nicki Walker, and you can listen, or you don’t have to.” If I was singing from the head and heart before, well, now, I sing from balls to bones.

I’ve grown from that shy performer to ending up in a power trio with a powerhouse for a voice. My voice is demanding and vulnerable and melancholy all at the same time. Mostly it is just sad. That is the undercurrent of me. I am always at the threshold of crying. When I was a child, I stifled my tears, but as I’ve come into my manhood, I simply choose not to. It is an active and empowering choice.

I weep for world’s lost, the people I cherish who have died, the childhood I have provided for my kid despite growing up without a modicum of knowledge of what a healthy relationship looks like. I weep empathetically. I no longer stop myself when the tears flow. I don’t even care where I am.

It took me a long time to get to this place of acceptance with my tears. I have cried throughout my entire existence. I used to attempt to banish it, as it displayed weakness. But crying has always been uncontrollable for me. No matter what emotion I am displaying, the tears flow. Once ridiculed for it, now I lean completely into it.

I have cried on the subway, at concerts, in the streets, and while talking to people. I’ve cried everywhere, and will continue to. It is freeing and oh so necessary. I have cried onstage, which is oh so special to me. Stage is where I am the realest. All the curtains and masks fall and I am revealed in my glorious nakedness. I am absolutely vulnerable. I was once told I don’t have a singing voice. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Music is home for me and my voice is a welcomed channel. All of us, to me, have a channel (otherwise what the hell are Facebook and YouTube selling us?). Music is my path to my ancestors, a vessel that I wield, that centers me, grounds me. Singing attenuates me. It is my compass and only star that shines even on the darkest of nights. Like a pinprick in black velvet. This light is what separates us all from the dark.

Someone once said to me that I am like a magician because I can take an inanimate object and make it make music. That mere sentence stopped me in my tracks. I had never thought of it like that. That too is a gift. So every day, whether it’s my song or someone else’s, I’ll sing. Not because I need to scream at HaShem ( Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur notwithstanding), but simply because I can, and it fucking feels good. That is reason enough.

Voce.

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Nick Walker is a 55-year-old proud Brooklyn-born Panamanian-American transman. He is the lead vocalist, lyricist and guitarist for the band Dropjoy, whose albums include Situational Ethics and Dirty Virgin. Nick began his transition at age 48, and converted to Judaism in 2019 after a long and storied disagreement with Catholicism. While Nick is working on more music, he is also taking his skills as a singer songwriter to the written page as he writes his memoirs and a graphic novel. In a pinch he can carry a loaded diaper but not preferably. Nick can be reached at nswalker369@gmail.com

I was dressed in my sneakers, shorts, and fanny pack; the only thing missing was a handmade placard because I’d made a last-minute decision to attend the Lusaka Women’s March 2023. I tried to think of a good alternative for a placard; it needed to speak volumes about both my identity and the violence women face in this country. I spotted a tiny rainbow flag on my dressing room table and grabbed that.

As a queer woman who has been raped and threatened with rape, what better article would represent me other than a rainbow flag? I was a little anxious about it but I told myself it was only a tiny flag. My intentions were simple: to march for all women, including women like me.

And so I showed up. I marched. I sang. I chanted. I danced. It was magical.

We screamed slogans like “It’s a dress, not a yes” and “My body, my choice” and my personal favorite, “Keep your laws off my body.”

I spotted a few other people with flags; they made me feel like I was not alone, like I was seen.

The energy was electric. Hundreds of women and allies marched across great east road of Lusaka, taking a stance and expressing how exhausted and tired we were of experiencing sexual gender-based violence (SGBV).

Everyone was taking and posting tons of pictures and videos, eager to let the whole world know why we were marching.

In less than 24 hours, what was meant to be highlighted and seen as a Women’s March against SGBV was twisted and painted as a Pride March by the Zambian tabloids. My heart hurt; everyone knows how, other than alcohol and football, one other thing that unites Zambians is homophobia. Post after post went up in different media sources spreading misinformation about the events of the previous day. None of these “credible journalists” were fact checking or reporting on the true nature of the event.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

I have been outed to my family, threatened by randoms of the internet, and have received fake screenshots saying the police are investigating me, but nothing can beat the range of emotions I felt seeing my face plastered on a public figure’s social media accounts holding a rainbow flag.

I live in Zambia, a beautiful landlocked country in the southern part of Africa, vast in minerals and natural resources, occupied by mostly friendly people. It sounds peaceful but, in my reality, I cannot wait to leave this country because I’m tired of feeling unsafe and being treated like a third-class citizen.

I belong to a minority group that is constantly used as a tool for political gain or simply a hot topic to stir things up when people are bored. The inference is always the same, every day: We stand for human rights but not for the LGBT community, we are one Zambia, one nation, minus the LGBT community, we should allow people to be themselves so they can be happy except…do you get it now?

The people here do not accept anything to do with the LGBTQI+ community. Some of this attitude stems from ignorance. I don’t entirely blame them because a lot of people in my country are illiterate, but what I cannot stand is when people use religion, biology, culture, or legality to defend their stance.

A person will say being gay is a sin. But how can a religion that prides itself on the foundation of love equate loving another human being—yes, even of the same sex—with a sin? The religious aspect upsets me even more because the Christians in this country cherry-pick which parts of the Bible they will follow and which parts they will ignore.

My country people are promiscuous; we fornicate and commit adultery. We are also a bunch of functioning alcoholics, but there are no laws policing individuals’ sexual appetites outside of marriage, nor how we slowly poison our bodies week in, week out with alcohol and shisha. It’s also common knowledge how the people in power constantly steal from us and how we are so quick to throw in money for a “drink” or “lunch” when we are caught on the wrong end of the law. All these wrongs in the eyes of religion, and yet the same forgiveness is never given to anyone who identifies as LGBT or speaks out for LGBT people.

A person will say it’s unnatural and wrong to have sex that way. But why are you so concerned with how another person has sex, with what they do with their own body? Why does it only matter when it is two gay people, while heterosexual people privately enjoy having sex the way they want to, even in that very same “unnatural” way.

The person will further argue that it is an abomination because LGBT people cannot procreate. This reveals their lack of intelligence because whatever your sexual orientation, unless you have reproductive issues, you can procreate. Sex may be important for reproduction, but it’s also simply an act of pleasure. Not all heterosexual people have sex to reproduce; if they did why would we need condoms, the pill or abortion? Why should the LGBT community carry the burden of procreation when they can reproduce if they want to?

A person will say homosexuality isn’t part of our culture. It’s “unAfrican.” But what basis of Africanism do people use to justify that people living in Africa, born African and from African descent, do not qualify to be African simply because they love differently? The history of our continent and this country point to the fact that queer people have existed and been accepted as an important part of our culture for centuries. But you know what they say about Africans: “If you want to hide something from an African, put it in a book.” True African culture has always been diverse, inclusive and promoted acceptance, but we don’t know that because we never want to read, research or unlearn anything. We believe whatever we have been taught is the truth.

A person will say it’s illegal to be gay in Zambia. This is a common misconception because our laws only point to sexual acts being illegal. Nothing in our penal code or constitution speaks to the criminalization of anyone who identifies as queer, but people will still quote a specific statute to defend their stance. The homophobic law we cling to so tightly was brought here by the British. If you look at the map showing where LGBT people are criminalized in Africa, you’ll notice the common denominator is that most of them are British colonies. If only Zambia gained her independence after the British repealed the law that speaks to “sex against the order of nature,” maybe then we wouldn’t be here.

A person, if they aren’t able to express their thoughts well enough or realize you may have raised accurate points, will resort to slanderous, hurtful insults, words that make you hate yourself and question your existence. Some things they say make you too afraid to step out into the world and be your authentic self. So badly you find yourself hiding parts of your identity that deserve to be free.

I’ve seen many situations were queer people settle down with straight people just to be accepted. Some still mess around on the down low, while others opt to eventually divorce because the lies consume them. In some cases, people take their own lives. We preach mental health matters, but we watch and sometimes laugh as we see homophobes drag anyone different on social media, hiding behind their keypads and keyboards, saying the most hateful things. Even if they wouldn’t act on what they say, their hate can be felt through the screen and is enough to fuel someone else brave enough to resort to violence.

The hatred doesn’t end with words. There is fuel and there are flames. Some people will find you and hurt you, either with direct physical infliction of pain, or coming through your job or means of survival, just to see you suffer. All this simply for being different.

They say your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. I believe I experienced something similar. Thoughts raced through my mind: Would my family would turn a blind eye to everything, ostracize me for embarrassing them publicly, or offer comfort and support? I thought of the implications at work: Would they treat me differently or accuse me of tarnishing their brand and let me go? I thought of my partner: Did I put her at higher risk, especially since she’s less straight passing than me? I thought of the raging homophobia growing in the country. Would I have a target on my back? Would the death threats and rape threats become more real?

Of many scary things that have happened to me, this has by far been the scariest.

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Katherine King is a black feminist and activist in Zambia who fights for LGBTQI rights and women empowerment. She believes in standing up for what is right and refuses to condone any form of discrimination. She uses her social media platforms to enlighten people on the struggles of LGBTQI persons in Zambia, most of which come from a personal perspective. She recently ventured into writing. Apart from her full-time job, she volunteers at various non-profit organizations.