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This World: Luis’ Story

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From ages 6 to 9, I lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. My parents say I would threaten to walk back to Mexico if I didn’t like it there, but I fortunately did thanks to them, my GameCube, and Noble Elementary school. My class pictures from there consisted of my teachers, my majority BIPOC classmates, and three Caucasian kids: a Russian boy, a Nurse’s son and myself.

One day during class, I argued with one of my classmates. At one point, she looked at me and said: “Shut up, white boy!” I immediately started crying which led to my mom being called in to chat with the teachers about the incident. I apparently was still bawling my eyes out when she arrived. She comforted me and asked me what color her skin was, I said white. Then she asked me to look at my hands and say what color I saw, I said white. Not much else was needed apparently, she says I accepted this realization and went back to my usual self. I don’t think what affected me was to be called out on my skin color but being clocked on how different I was from my peers.

Before I realized I was gay, before becoming aware of myself, even before this incident I recall the time my parents allowed me to sleep late when I was around 3-4 years old, big boy stuff. I played on the Nintendo64 and knocked down plastic soldier figurines using marbles with my dad. The next day, we went to the Hospital to get my brain tested, per my school’s request. I remember falling asleep with electrodes on my head, my toddler brain wasn’t scared but I don’t remember being told what was going on until I was older.

Even at that age, I was picking up signals that I was in some way different. I see now: as different as any one of us can be to each other, but maybe that’s why it hurt so much to be called out by a classmate, because that difference was real, noticeable and rejection worthy. That belief became part of how I viewed my inner world. Today, I still live that reality as an immigrant and as a gay man. I wrote this spoken word poem about how it feels to be between worlds:

I check my baggage. Dimensions and weight,
Count my hands so I can carry it myself.
The wheels spin but one doesn’t twist, great,
I put my name on it, own it, don’t let it get away.
I stress if I won’t be able to identify it amongst the rest,
Or switch with someone else’s, commit a theft.
What would they say about my belongings,
Or I about theirs, if I smelled like what he wears.
I grab a tray to place my valuables,
my clothes, glasses, and shoes.
A tray where I put all my electronics,
social media, selfies and texts I never sent you…
Thinking things through,
I grab a couple of trays for the posts I never send too.
A tray for my tongue, brain and overweight heart
And still get checked for secrets after the CT scan.
Board the airplane, take my seat, and breathe.
Look out the window at the unwavering sky,
Everything else changes except for it and I.
Swap the sandcastles out for days of snow,
The volcanoes for a mountain glow.
Takes me a second and then it hits me,
Harder than the pressure change at 35,000 ft.
How hard is it to breathe,
Through a pandemic that’s shrunken my lung,
Why am I coming back?
And not for the obvious reasons like rent and ID.
Real fucking reasons that tie me down to a city.
I don’t know where home is, the cabin shakes my core.
Turbulence truly is a test of strength.
Riding the highs and dealing with the lows,
Catching your breath while the wind blows.
And punches. And knocks the air out of your pores.
I hear echoes of the flight attendant’s instructions,
I heed their warning and focus on my own,
My lane, my life, my emergency oxygen mask.
Why did I come back?
I look out the window, realize I’m grieving.
Leaving. Blood, memories, parts of me behind.
Replacing them with activities I’ve picked up over time.
I look out the window and think I’m looking through my phone,
I slam both windows down, I don’t want to address,
That I want to impress, move on, force progress.
The flight attendant tells me to open the window, deal with the stress.
As we descend, my brain starts to decompress,
Focusing on the present so i don’t have to guess,
We touch the ground.
I can pin point my baggage before it peaks its head.
I’m at 0 ft from the sea level, my baggage doesn’t look so small.
A wheel doesn’t work, I stumble and somedays can’t seem to drag it on my own at all
But it’s mine, and full of food, colour and cuddles.
Little do I see, but smell what is beyond customs waiting for me:
The wet jackets and cologne manning the doors at the gay bar
The answers and clarity that taste like pasta noodles and corn starch.
An array of textures and sights that are unfamiliar to my immigrant eye.
But I trust in myself, what I feed my soul and the city.
I don’t have to look out the glass
To know that I already love what I see,
My eyes might see like a fractured window.
My heart broken out into different locations,
But it’s a matter of perception, staring down at the city network,
Walking through the cracks as illuminated roadmaps to all my contacts.
It’s alright that I don’t know where my home is,
if I know who the people are that I can call my homies.

I was lucky to travel with the homies to Japan just a few days ago. The amount of people, unfamiliar transport system, general overstimulation from the megacities and zero knowledge of Japanese made the cultural shock very real. The first couple of days I was dependent on my Japanese-speaking friend until I realized I did not have to meet his or Nippon’s expectations of me. I tried my best to be respectful and follow suit in most social courtesies but as a gaijin, or outsider, I remembered what it was like living in the US and what it feels to live in Canada today. Heart to heart conversations with my friends gave me insight into their lives; how being mixed race, and gay on top of that, made their upbringing difficult. Like the meme with a bunch of Spider-mans, our worlds pointed some fingers at each other.

Travelling, getting to know the world first hand, is a privilege. The first few times I left my country I remember this hunger to see everything, buy everything, experience everything in a city because I did not know if I’d ever have the opportunity again. I also wanted to feel changed by it but I’ve felt more transformed from interacting with people different than I, because of our nationalities or simply because our brains work differently. The world isn’t just a geographical location, it is also the existence we each experience. Connecting with other people’s inner lives is also a form of travel and trying to access a community can sometimes feel like visiting a completely new country. Even then, assimilation is a choice and subscribing to new societal pressures can feel very much like hiding my sexuality again, feel very much like ignoring my latinx heritage again, feel very much like masking my behaviour again.

I’d like to share another poem about coming to terms with the life I have built so far when my parents came to visit earlier this year.

I see through the same eyes.
While travelling, I often thought I’d feel different.
As if geography, culture or language would mold
Me, my image, my capacity to not do as I’m told.
I’m fonder…of faces transparent and my parents.
You’ve flown here, like me, to see what I’ve done
With your rent money and hopes I’d pull out of it.
I, unknowingly, immigrated to harder challenges,
Like making a home out of your many absences.
A home where love didn’t persist after we split,
Home came as swiftly as it left and yet I’ve built
Something you could be proud of. For once, I too
Am contempt with my roof and not pleasing you.
And it’s true, even colours mature, like blossoms
In gorgeous shades of pink I love myself as Queer,
Laying to rest my problems without fear. Secure,
Loved enough so when you leave, calm persists.
But you’re here (we at Arrivals hold welcome presents,
Proud smiles, happy tears, screaming “mi gente”,
With presence, flowers, balloons like a Televisa segment)
Wanting to be together and live loving mexicanlly.

Being queer is an immigrant experience, even amongst ourselves we face a gender and neuro diversity that often requires flexibility to foster connection. As with some societal norms, failing to bend and adapt means being excluded. One of the first social groups I joined in Vancouver used drugs to bond, and since I didn’t partake, I was left outside of the tiny PJ bathroom hangout. That led me to pursue friendships at a rugby team where I was welcome as a decent player, but didn’t quite click with the community either, because, well, I’m not a naturally aggressive person and that made me shut down around things related to the sport. I felt more connected with the team when we travelled to Rome for a tournament and saw people struggle with being abroad, I saw them feel different too.

I still find myself feeling like a foreigner most of the time. Tears fill my eyes when I feel myself in need of traveling out of one social group to look for friends. Again, because the belief that my brain is different is still strong yet the desire to connect is stronger now more than ever. I just have to remind myself to look down at my hands and embrace who I am. Enjoy the experience of this world, that is, being Luis.

This World: Helina’s Story

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In this world, who is normal?

I was out with two friends who study language for a living — both of them PhD students in linguistics, the kind of people who can spend a whole night happily arguing about a single particle. One of them mentioned that someone in their department had just gotten married.

I responded in Mandarin. “Oh?” I said. “What are they like — the couple?”

“正常的一对儿,” they said at the same time. A normal couple. The three of us realized something was off after two seconds of silence, but we just moved on with our shopping.

This is the most ordinary phrase in this world. A normal couple. But I heard it, and it snagged on something, and I’ve been picking at the snag ever since.

Because a normal couple meant, of course, a man and a woman. That was the entire content of the sentence. Not a nice couple, not a young couple, not a couple who met at a conference — a normal one. And here is what got me: it was two linguists who said it. Two people whose whole job is to notice what words are quietly doing. And even they reached for that word without a flinch, the way you reach for a light switch in your own house.

So today I want to share a bit of what that word is doing, because it took me a while to see it myself.

正常. In Chinese, that first character — 正, zhèng — doesn’t mean average. It means upright. Righteous. Proper. It’s the 正 you’d use for correct, the 正 you use for a positive number.  It’s a moral word, standing up very straight. The second character, 常, means constant — the way things have always been and ought to stay. So 正常 doesn’t quietly say this couple is statistically common. It says: this couple is upright. This couple is the way it should be.

Which means that every other couple is, by the plain arithmetic of the word, not upright. Crooked. And nobody had to say that part out loud. The word said it for them, over drinks, and none of us said a thing.

Now — I’m the kind of person who cannot leave a thread like this alone. So a few days later I carried it to my lab mate who’s gay and my bestie. He’s not Chinese; he doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin. I told him I’d been thinking about the word normal, and I asked him what it meant to him.

He said, without thinking, “Yeah — we’re not the norm.”

We’re not the norm.

My Chinese friend said 正常 and handed me a verdict — upright, correct, the way it should be. My gay lab mate said norm and handed me a map. The norm is only the middle of the graph, the fat part of the bell curve we all drew in school. To say we’re not the norm is just to say: we’re standing over here, off to the side. It’s a location, not a sentence. And he said it plainly, almost lightly — not we’re wrong, not we’re broken. Just: this is where we are. Take it or leave it.

I found out later this isn’t a quirk of my two friends — it’s baked into the languages themselves. The English normal comes from the Latin norma, a carpenter’s square, a tool for checking whether an angle is true. Somewhere along the way the statisticians borrowed it, married it to the word average, and normal learned to hide behind the math. I’m only describing the distribution. But in Chinese, it is a different kind of weather.

So, for a while I went looking for a better word. The way how would I solve an engineering problem is to propose a better solution. So, I figured, if 正 is the problem — all that uprightness — I’ll just swap it out. And I found one I liked: 见. It only means commonly seen. — to see. Not upright, not righteous, just: you see this a lot. Combined with 常, it becomes 常见，means common. And its opposite, 不常见, means only rare — uncommon. The way blue hair is rare or taste cilantro like soap. Rare, not wrong.

I was very pleased with myself for about a week. And then I realized a nicer word doesn’t dismantle the machine. Because we humans, after all, are not machine. You can rename the two piles all you like — upright and crooked, common and uncommon — but you’ve still got two piles, and someone still standing at the sorting table deciding which one you go in, and how you’ll be treated once you’re in it. A kinder border is still a border. It still has a guard.

So I don’t think the fix is a better word anymore. I think the fix is to walk away from the sorting table entirely — to stop asking of anyone, are you the upright kind, or the other kind — and to make room instead for a range wide enough to hold every so-called deviation, to embrace a wide enough spectrum. Because here is the thing: everyone is somebody’s 不正常. Everyone, from some angle, is not the norm.

I still catch the word — 正常 — in other people’s mouths, and in my own. This word is used frequently enough that it is judging every aspect of our life.

So, we, in this world, are not the norm. Who is?  The moment I began to ask “what is normal” — am I already standing at the threshold of freedom?

This World: Randy’s Story

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This world is massive. And amazing. And scary. And inspirational. There are so many different ways to experience it, to live, and to be, and they all have a strong connection to where one is in the world.

I am a true creature of habit. I love being home, and I love where I live and what it affords me. But these days, I want to travel as much as possible for the rest of my life. The bulk of our parenting is done, and my priorities are to spend time with my husband and work only as hard as I need to to cover my basic needs and to pay for travel.

I often joke that I am one of maybe 20 people who was born in Vancouver and have never left. I’m also one of those who strikes up conversations with strangers on the regular, and it amazes me how often I’m speaking with someone who has recently uprooted their life to move here – for work, for school, for a relationship, or just for adventure. I’m impressed with their courage and wish that I had been braver as a younger guy before full-time careers, parenting, pet ownership, and a mortgage kicked in.

From these conversations with strangers, my unofficial research suggests that:
1) 39% of all people I meet in Vancouver have a lovely Irish accent. 

2) This lovely Irish accent from a reasonably attractive male increases their overall attractiveness by 52%. 

3) If someone who lives in Vancouver was born in Canada, there is a 64% chance that they have moved here from Ontario.
And 4) There is a 100% chance that I talk to strangers too much, and I am on my way to becoming an overly chatty old white dude.

Other than the mild climate and access to mountains and ocean, one of my favourite things about this city is its diversity and multiculturalism. And most importantly, my feeling that as a gay man with a husband and a son, I feel as safe and supported here as I could ever imagine feeling. Nowhere is perfect, and Vancouver certainly has its problems – affordability and homelessness being key among them. But while it is not perfect, I feel like it’s perfect for me. And the more I visit other places, the clearer this becomes. No matter how long I’ve been away or how great a trip I’ve had, the smell of the fresh BC air at YVR when I’ve just flown back home is amazing.

When our son was born in 2006, my husband Drew and I committed to show Jack ten countries in his first ten years of life. This would give him a perspective of just how unbelievably lucky we are to live where we live, in a great country and in a beautiful city. That we have all our basic needs covered and then some, and not everyone is that lucky. So, what trips did we take him on in his first ten years to illustrate the perspective that we felt he should have? A cruise to Hawaii. Disneyland. England. France. Yeah, we failed miserably in keeping him humble. These were really enjoyable trips, but we did not accomplish what we set out to do.

Subsequent efforts to correct this were not successful. But Drew and I will always encourage our son to travel as much as he can find time and budget for. I truly believe that some of the greatest education any of us can get is from immersing ourselves in a culture that is foreign to us. I genuinely feel that this is where true resilience, confidence, and perspective come from, as well as the fuel to feed the human need for adventure and to open one’s mind to different ideas.

When Jack turned 18, Drew and I finally felt confident that we could travel on our own without him and that he might not burn down the house in our absence. If the pets were alive and our home was still standing on our return, we would consider that a win.

So, in 2023 after 19 years of marriage, we took our first trip ever as a childless couple and went on an amazing two-week European trip. It was fantastic and liberating. Drew and I enjoy each other’s company in general, but we have a whole lot of fun as travel partners as well.

We are now committed to taking minimum 1 to 2 trips a year. Our bucket list of places to visit is basically anywhere we have not been, and anywhere that we feel comfortable putting our gay dollars into the local economy. Sadly, that creates a complicated list. There are countries we’re fascinated by but won’t visit because of their treatment or lack of protection of LGBTQIA+ people and other minorities. And, for now, the USA is firmly on our personal no-fly list. I’m not interested in spending my vacation dollars somewhere that is actively rolling back human rights that matter to us, while threatening and attacking our country for some time now. Not with a gun to my temple would I put one travel dollar into the US economy these days, and I wish others, particularly queer folks, would feel the same about making a trip across the border.

So, the world is massive, and I want to see as much of this amazing, beautiful, scary, and inspirational planet as I possibly can. Earlier this year, we hit England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales – basically a tour of places where the name “Randy” is used interchangeably with the word “horny”. The previous few years we saw Italy and Portugal. Next up are Spain and Greece, New Zealand, and Prince Edward Island, to name just a few. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life discovering new places.

But I also know that after every adventure, I’ll eventually walk through the doors at YVR, breathe in that fresh BC air, and think two things: 1) I’m really glad I get to come home and 2) how goddamned lucky am I?

This World: Lea Love’s Story

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There was a knock at the door. 

This was always a startling sound living in a cabin in a small rural community. When I swung it open, there stood Mary with a smoke hanging from her lips. She was well known for walking the narrow roads of our neighborhood in a ball gown and heels pushing an old wheelbarrow with another neighbors Jack Russell Terrier inside. 

“Lois died,” she mumbled.

“Lois? Like Lois down the street in the cottage by the water?” I wasn’t sure if I could trust this information. 

“She didn’t tell anyone she had terminal cancer.” Mary took a drag form her cigarette and tilted her head up to exhale the smoke. “They’re having a memorial for her at Sea Bird Island on September 9 at six. Just thought you should know.” She shrugged her shoulders and headed off my porch.

I stood there shocked and confused by Lois’s death. I barely knew her, but she had the prettiest yard and always looked healthy and happy. Stunned, I shut the door and the memorial’s date and place vanished from my mind.

Weeks later my wife (now my ex) and I were having a heated argument. I was so furious that I grabbed my keys and headed for my car. I needed time to cool off. I headed east on Lougheed Highway with the September sun shining through my side mirror. My stomach growled. I hadn’t had dinner. I decided I would drive to Hope, forty-minutes away, and get French fries – my eternal cure for upset. 

I drove over the bridge spanning the icy blue waters of Harrison River and climbed the steep hill of Mt. Woodside, with the spectacular views of the Fraser and the mountains beyond. As I descended, I could clearly see an SUV on fire. The flames jumped out of the hood as the owner stood back on the side of the road. I pulled in behind the one car ahead of me and could hear the fire trucks honking their horns in the distance. There was no way in hell I was going back home. I had a plan. A mission. I put on my turn single as though I were an obedient driver and pulled my Yaris across the dotted line and into the oncoming lane. I drove by the waiting car, then gunned it past the burning SUV. When I got beside the vehicle and took a quick look, a wall of heat hit my car, came through my glass window, and smacked me in the face. Past the inferno, I swerved back into the lane. The fire trucks wailed at me wildly. My heart nearly galloped out of my chest. One part of me was chastising myself for being a reckless idiot, while the other part was cheering me on for my successful maneuver.

I continued through the beautiful summer landscape of large farms with red barns full of milking cows and fields of waving corn or rows of blueberries. I turned towards Agassiz, driving past hazelnut orchards with Mt. Cheam looming over, its glaciers still prominent on its sharp peaks. Over the train tracks I went continuing towards my destination.

Suddenly, two white horses, tall and muscly, jumped in front of my car and cantered down the street. I slammed on my brakes, pulled to the side of the road and got out. They slowed down and trotted off into the grassy ditch to eat. I checked behind me. No one. I scanned the farms on either side. Nothing. I looked for a hole in the wire fence. None. Growing up my Baba would always say to me – Lucky lucky white horse, lucky lucky me. Lucky lucky white horse, bring some luck to me. 

Back in the car, I turned on CBC Radio One to see what was playing for the last twenty-five minutes of my road trip. I passed a sign on the side of the road for Sea Bird Island Band. The name sounded familiar. The radio host spoke, “It’s six o’clock on your Friday evening.” I pulled to the side of the road once again, clutching my heart. “Isn’t today Lois’s memorial? Holy shit. It is.” 

I made a U-turn and drove into the First Nations community. I passed by houses and carved totem poles and saw a large building with parked cars. I assumed I was in the right place. I got out and looked at myself in the window reflection. I had on my gardening clothes – a baggy pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap. My running shoes had grass stains. This was not memorial attire. I did my best by tucking in my shirt and braiding my long straggly hair. 

Inside, the gymnasium was set up with rows of chairs. There was a long banquet table in the back with a feast of food. At the front was a podium and a table with blankets and hand-made gifts. People from Sea Bird Island community talked in small circles, consoling each other. From the front row, Mary waved her hands over her head. I walked the aisle and took the seat beside her. 

A man with a woven cedar hat walked to the podium and spoke into the microphone. He introduced himself as the chief. The memorial began with an elder drumming and singing prayerful songs. The Sea Bird community gave a Pendleton blanket and handmade gifts to Lois’s family. Then the storytelling began. Lois was honored again and again for her dedication to indigenous people’s healing from trauma. She was described as kind, patient and consistent. She’d driven her Mini Cooper into some of the most remote villages offering counseling. She was an Earth angel.

The last women to speak mentioned that Lois’s cat had gone missing. She’d looked through Lois’s house and yard and walked around our neighborhood but could not find him. She gave everyone a description and asked us to keep an eye out for her cat.

At home, my wife (now ex) and I made up, and I told her all about my incredible experience. In the dark of the early morning, I woke to meowing outside my bedroom window. I thought of Lois’s cat. I jumped from my bed, turned on the porch light, and pulled the sliding glass door open, but nothing was there. For the next week, I was woken in the dark morning hours by meowing, but I never found Lois’s cat. 

This World: Akhil’s Story

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If you met me today, you’d probably never guess there was a time I could barely get a few words out. I was painfully shy. If someone simply asked me, “How are you?”, I’d rehearse the answer in my head over and over before stumbling through the words, grasping at air for support. I was terrified of saying the wrong thing.

School felt like a hunting ground..
I was picked on constantly for having what people called a “gay voice.” My classmates mocked the way I walked, the sway of my hips, the softness in my voice. Some days, groups of boys would surround me in the hallway like a pack of wolves, laughing while I stood there wishing I could disappear from the world.
I had spent years wanting nothing more than to fly away.
Then, in one moment of vulnerability, someone mistook my silence for permission. They reached for something that was never theirs, and when they left, it felt as though they had stripped away the very feathers that made me whole.
They stole my voice.
I stopped trusting my body. I stopped trusting my instincts. I convinced myself that the safest way to move through the world was to be as small and invisible as possible.
Silence felt safer than speaking.

But there’s something curious about silence. If you sit with it long enough, it begins to make room for other voices.
For me, it happened to be the voices of my ancestors.

I remember it so vividly. It was half past 9pm and my mother and I were nestled in blankets sitting together with cups of adharak chai and nankhatai biscuits, watching youtube videos exploring ancient Indian temples. I wasn’t expecting my life to change that night.

But then a strange sculpture appeared on the screen. I remember leaning forward, perplexed.
One half was unmistakably Shiva—matted locks, a strong jaw, broad shoulders, a trident resting beside him.
The other half was Parvati—soft features, flowing jewellery, a graceful curve through the waist.
They weren’t standing beside each other.
They were one.
One body.
One face.
One divine form.
Ardhanarishvara.

I couldn’t stop looking. How had I never seen this before? This image had been carved into stone more than a thousand years ago, yet in that moment, I felt like it was waiting for me.

For years I’d believed I had to choose which parts of myself the world would find acceptable. To be more masculine. Speak differently. Walk differently. Tone myself down.

Yet here, in one of the most sacred images of my culture, masculinity and femininity weren’t in conflict.
They weren’t competing.
They were in harmony.
Neither half diminished the other.
They were whole.

That night became the beginning of a journey I never expected to take.
One story led to another. One temple led to another. And before I knew it, I wasn’t simply learning about history anymore.
I was seeking refuge in my ancestors.

I came across the ancient chronicles of Shikhandi, A transgender warrior who was a central figure in the Mahabharata, one of India’s greatest epics.
I saw carvings of queer love etched into the stone walls of Khajuraho temple.
Two women.
Two men.
Lovers in embrace.
These weren’t hidden away in some forgotten text.
They were carved into the walls of temples for the world to see.

For years, I tangled intimacy with shame.
Yet here were my ancestors telling a completely different story.
Not with words.
With stone.
Love wasn’t hidden.
It was celebrated, honored and part of Prakriti–nature.

One discovery led to another.
I learned about Bhagiratha, born from two mothers.
I read translations of the Kama Sutra. There was one specific passage that I could never forget. It was two male lovers exchanging flower garlands, petals embracing each other as their first shared touch.
I had never seen queer love described with such tenderness.
Maybe because it was the first time I saw intimacy without shame.

The more I searched, the more I realized something.
The world I thought had rejected me was much older—and much kinder—than I’d ever been taught.
I hadn’t just been learning about history.
I’d been finding my way home.
The stories my ancestors left behind weren’t asking me to become someone new.
They were reminding me of something I’d forgotten—that I belonged.

Today, I tell stories. Stories of my ancestors. Stories of queer south asians. Stories that remind us we’ve always belonged.

I often think about how badly sixteen-year-old me needed to see something like that.
Back then, I thought I was the only one.
Now I stand beside queer South Asians from different faiths, languages, cultures, and backgrounds. I listen to their stories. We laugh together. We cry together.
And every single time i think about that lonely kid who believed there wasn’t space in the world for him,
I tell him… he was never alone.

When people ask me what changed my world, I tell them it wasn’t one story, or one sculpture or one temple.
It was realizing my ancestors had already made room for me long before I was born.
I spent years searching the world for somewhere I belonged.
In the end, I found it by looking back.
I found it in my ancestors.
I found it in my community.

And somewhere along the way, I found refuge in myself. 

Breaking Out: Sam’s Story

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How could I have thought that the days of youthful innocence were the worst of it? Looking back now, it was easy. Life was full of the simple pleasures of childhood freedom: the smell of fresh-cut grass, the lingering haze that followed a midday shower before us kids took to the streets again, running amok with sun-licked shoulders, torn denim, and imaginations still in overdrive. Then Sundays would roll around, and my mother would force me to put on the freshly ironed clothes draped over the side of my bed for church. The image of my family was very important to her. Those little stints of angelic performance taught me how to wear different masks. I would present one way while feeling entirely different within. Much like the Gemini, June stood beneath the sun with two heads, one looking forward and one looking back. This was the month I was born.

Maybe that is why memory has always felt split to me. A collection of Polaroids carried around in my pocket like souvenirs: tangible reminders of moments I survived and experiences I would eventually grow from. But with enough time, like anything, those pictures fade. The edges blur. Eventually, even the person staring back at me became hard to recognize.

It can take a lot of courage to break free from certain parts of our lives. After constantly being labelled and dismissed as too sensitive and too emotional, I gravitated toward the other side of the spectrum: avoidance. Cramming my pain and fears into every nook and cranny. I easily confused escapism and the outward appearance of independence with genuine freedom.

My hometown was a small suburban community saturated in white privilege. With no visible examples of queer love, I never felt safe to express myself. I was a lanky kid who would cower in masculine, heteronormative settings. I wanted to peel off my skin and disappear like a shadow beneath a streetlight, barely present, wandering aimlessly.

It was only a matter of time before I found ways to cope. I am human, after all, inherently wired for survival. By the age of fourteen, I had built up walls, brick by brick, with every drink and every drug. My secret life became one of isolation and self-hatred. I was a master of disguise, portraying a life of fearless adventure when deep down, I was just running away from the queer kid I never wanted to be. I denied that kid love and connection, not just from others, but more importantly, from myself.

For nearly two decades, my addiction ebbed and flowed between multiple lives, geographical cures, absolute chaos, and blissful self-loathing. I risked it all in search of oblivion. Staggering through the alleys of the DTES, chasing the moonlight in meth-infested slums of the Philippines, or bruising my fists on a prison wall in Australia. I had found something that felt like a solution: comfort wrapped in the delicate lie of temporary relief. In reality, there was a consequence waiting on either side of that next drink or drug.

Convinced I was unworthy of love and unable to give it, I kept running. With every unfamiliar country, I hoped that maybe this time I could become myself and begin again. By the last few years of my addiction, I had ended up in a place I never want to return to. I had given up, completely defeated, carrying around a note in my wallet bearing the words “I’m sorry, I love you” scribbled in black Sharpie. I couldn’t find anything else to write.

I was exhausted; the weight of the guilt and shame had become unmanageable. Leaving me to believe that death was my only way out.

Just when I thought I was at the end of my rope, something washed through me. A flash flood of hope coursed through my veins, short-lived, yet it was still a feeling I hadn’t experienced in years. Seeing my sisters get married, start families, and build homes filled with Love and kindness made a part of me want to know what my life could be like. Could I face the pain from which I had been running? Did I have the strength to work through the guilt and shame? Did I deserve to have a life full of love? Could I accept my true, authentic self? These questions ruminated in my head for many sleepless nights, strung together like the beads of a
cursed rosary.

Thanks to the gift of desperation, surrender finally became possible. The prison I had created was one I longed to break free from. Starting with my older sister, whose relationship I cherish deeply, I began to tell my family and close friends that I was going to seek help. Three months in a treatment centre gave me the safe space to address the demons I’d been dragging across the globe. I learned healthy coping skills, laid the stones for a new foundation, and grew by shedding my old skin.

Here we are back in June, where the story started. I recently celebrated my fortieth birthday. Since getting sober, I have been living my life openly as a queer man, reaching a place of self-love and acceptance. Navigating new experiences, I have been able to let others in, form intimate relationships, build trust, and show up as my caring, vulnerable self.

Over the last eight years, life has handed me some of my most challenging lessons and led me down paths I never could have imagined. Facing one of my greatest fears, I went back to finish high school so I could get into college. In a month, I will graduate from psychiatric nursing. Never in my wildest dreams did I think this is where my life would end up or that my past would become one of my greatest strengths. It has given me the ability to relate to those who are struggling and to offer them a safe, empathetic, and compassionate space.

That imagination I abandoned in my youth has also returned in the role I now get to play with my nieces and nephew. I feel incredibly fortunate to be their gay uncle, someone who can show up honestly and help answer their questions about addiction, identity, and the queer community.

Every version of myself I tried to outrun has become part of me. They are what allow me to sit beside someone in their darkness and remind them they are not alone. Maybe this is what the two-headed June was trying to teach me all along, how to look back without turning away and how to move forward without leaving myself behind. My life feels like it is just beginning, and let me tell you, I have already lived many lives.

Breaking Out: Hans’ Story

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My name is Hans Senfuma, and I am a gay man from Uganda. Writing that sentence still carries weight for me, even today, because for so many years of my life, those words felt like a death sentence — not metaphorically, but literally.

I grew up in a deeply religious household in Uganda, surrounded by people I loved and who loved me, but who I knew would not love this part of me. From a young age, I understood that who I was did not fit the world I had been born into. Uganda is a country where homosexuality is not just socially stigmatized — it is criminalized. And in 2023, the government passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, one of the harshest anti-LGBTQ laws in the world, with provisions that include the death penalty. Growing up knowing that your existence is punishable by law does something to a person. It teaches you to shrink yourself. It teaches you that survival means silence.

For years, I lived that silence. I smiled at family gatherings when relatives asked when I would get married. I sat through sermons that described people like me as broken, deviant, an abomination. I laughed along with jokes that were made at the expense of queer people, because laughing was safer than flinching. Every single day was a quiet performance of a version of myself that didn’t fully exist. And the exhaustion of that — the loneliness of carrying something so fundamental about yourself completely alone — is something I don’t think I have the words to fully describe.

Coming to terms with my identity was not a single moment. It was slow, painful, and non-linear. There were periods of self-loathing that I am not proud of. There were times I prayed to be different, not because I believed being gay was wrong, but because I desperately wanted to feel safe in my own skin, in my own country, around my own people. Acceptance didn’t arrive like a revelation. It crept in quietly, over time, through stolen moments of honesty with myself — and eventually, with a small circle of people I trusted with my life.

Leaving Uganda was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. It was also one of the most necessary. The escalating legal climate made it impossible to continue the work I wanted to do from inside the country without putting myself and others at serious risk. When I finally arrived in a place where I could walk down a street without fear, where I could say my name and my truth in the same breath, I cried in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to cry in years. It wasn’t just relief. It was grief — for all the years spent hiding, for the community I left behind, for the Uganda I wished existed.

But leaving didn’t mean stepping away. If anything, it sharpened my sense of purpose. I have dedicated my work to legal advocacy and policy change, fighting for the rights of LGBTQ people in Uganda and across the African continent. I believe deeply that change is possible — not because I am naive, but because I have seen what happens when queer Africans find each other, support each other, and refuse to be erased. I have worked with legal teams challenging discriminatory legislation, contributed to policy frameworks that center the voices of those most at risk, and tried in every way I know how to use whatever platform I have to make noise where there has been silence.

I carry Uganda with me everywhere. I carry its sunsets, and its warmth, and its music, and the faces of people I love who are still there, still navigating a reality I know too well. I carry the responsibility of speaking for those who cannot yet speak for themselves without consequence. That weight is not a burden to me — it is a privilege.

I am sharing my story because visibility matters. Because somewhere right now, there is a young gay boy in Kampala doing exactly what I did — shrinking, hiding, surviving. And I want him to know that survival is not the ceiling. That there is a life beyond silence. That he is not alone, and he is not broken, and he is not an abomination.

He is exactly who he is supposed to be.

And so am I. 

Breaking Out: Claus’ Story

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In 1990, my teacher warned my best friend’s mom not to let her daughter, Daniella, hang out with me, because I was rarito – a Spanish word that directly translates to “queer.” Like its English counterpart, rarito means “a little strange,” or “a little peculiar.” In Mexico, it specifically refers to men who appear to be gay.

It probably wasn’t hard to see that I was gay: I never enjoyed playing rough games or sports with the other boys, opting instead to play house with the girls at my school. My teacher knew I was gay before I realized it myself. And, rather than choosing to provide support or guidance, she tried to isolate me—an already painfully shy and very socially awkward little boy— by separating me from the one person that I connected with fully at the time. As if a rarito, a queer, didn’t deserve acceptance.

I was seven-years-old.

As the years progressed, so did the insults. If I thought rarito was bad… I had it coming. When I moved to another state at the age of 10, I spent one year in an all-boys school. The insults there became more pointed – maricon, marica, joto, puto (all words for fag — we seem to have a lot of them in Mexico). I then moved to Canada at the age of 14, and was introduced to the English variants of these insults.

When I look at photos of my childhood, I see a naive little queer boy who smiled widely, unaware of the way others perceived me — when teachers called me queer behind my back, but not to my face. But in photos from my teenage years, I see sadness. Not the typical teenage angst, but something deeper. The sorrow of someone who sometimes wondered if life would ever get better.

At 42, I can look back at these snippets of my life with clearer eyes. To my teenage self, I can truthfully say (as cliché as it sounds): it does get better. But it also gets difficult in new ways, because self-acceptance, and pride, and queerdom, isn’t always linear:

In 1992, I had my first crush. His name was Mathias, a German classmate with golden hair… which is odd, because I’m not typically attracted to blonde men.

In 1996, I had a platonic bromance with my friend Jorge. I moved away the next year, and he came out as gay in our 20s. We kept in contact, but never saw each other again, and he died of Covid. I sometimes wonder if I hadn’t moved away, if he might have been my first kiss. 

In 2000, I had a crush on a girl from high school. But at the same time, I was deeply attracted to so many of my male classmates. It was a very confusing time. I was repressing my sexuality so much, that when one of the guys I was crushing on slapped my ass during PE class — not sure if he was flirting or bullying me — I responded by slamming a hockey stick to his stomach. Hard.
A week later, he returned the favour, slamming a hockey stick against my shins, which fucked up my legs for years to come.

In 2002, at the ripe age of 19, I went on my first date… with a girl from university. Sarah was also my first kiss, which I didn’t enjoy at all. That same year, I went on my first date with a guy. His name was Danny. My name was “Nick…” yes, I used a fake name, because I was still terrified that someone I knew would find out I was gay! Danny was my second “first kiss,” which was more like it. He went on to become my first of many, (many… many) boyfriends

❖ ❖ ❖

When I came out to my friends at 19, their response was mostly positive, but I did lose some friendships over it. When I told my friend Nelda, she responded by asking me: “So what, you like it from behind?,” as if that is the only thing that makes a man gay. I was a virgin at the time… but to answer your question, Nelda – Yes, I do like it from behind.

A year later, in 2003, I came out to my brothers and then my parents. My middle brother had softened the blow by coming out the year before, which simultaneously made things better and worse. I didn’t know at the time that having multiple queer children in one household is actually very common.

In 2009, while holding hands with my boyfriend at the time, someone inside a passing car yelled “faggots,” and threw a jawbreaker at the back of my head. This was on Davie Street. During Pride weekend.

In 2014, I met Eamonn, and we got engaged five years later. When I got engaged, a woman who had worked in the same office as me for four years asked, after seeing my engagement ring, “Where did you propose to her?” I thought it was funny at the time. Then I realized how much of my life I still kept private from non-queer people I saw every day. It seems I’m allegedly “straight-passing” in some circles and find the constant “coming out” exhausting. 

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My relationship with Pride has also had its ups and downs. 

In 2004, I went to my first Vancouver Pride, and over the following two decades, I’ve been to many prides and queer-centric events throughout the world. London, Cape Town, Reykjavik, Buenos Aires, Guadalajara… even exotic Winnipeg — searching for queer joy in every time zone.

In 2022, I marched in a Pride parade for the first time, with the Vancouver Queer Irish group, and then again the following year. Yet, since last year, I’ve fallen out of love with Pride parades. With sponsor pullbacks, corporate and government support of an ongoing genocide, and the rights of trans and non-binary folks under attack, I’m feeling disconnected. I know we need visibility… but I keep wondering if we need to change the method. “The first Pride was a Riot,” they say… maybe it’s time we go back to marching on the streets, rather than parading on them.

In 2063, when I’m 80 years old, I’ll hopefully look back at today, and realize how good we had it. But I also hope that things will get much better for queer people over that time, because this, still isn’t it.

❖ ❖ ❖

In 1990, when I was 7-years old, my teacher called me Queer as an insult for the first time… behind my back, of course… Cabrona.

In 1998, someone wrote ‘faggot’ on the back of my sweatshirt in high school… and I wore it that way all day, because I didn’t notice until I got home.

In 2002, I came out as gay to my friends. A year later, I came out to my family.

In 2016, I began using the word Queer as an umbrella term to refer to myself, my friends, and other 2SLGBTQ+ people, in a positive light.

In 2022, I married Eamonn in two wonderful celebrations of the most immense queer joy, surrounded by so many of our friends and family.

Today, in 2026, I stand here, in a room full of queer people, telling our stories. And I finally realize: being a little strange, a little peculiar… a little rarito, if you will, is actually something to be proud of.

Breaking Out: Phi’s Story

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Four months before my wedding, I was in full planning mode. Seating charts, handmade invitations, handmade ceremony programs, finalizing caterers and place settings, the works.

One evening, my fiancée, the man of my… parents’ dreams, was scrolling the TIVO, looking for the next show we should watch. He said, “Hey, what about this show? You heard of it? The L Word?”

My insides burned. “Sure,” I managed to say aloud.

I did not tell him I had already seen the series.

I did not tell him I knew The L Word inside out, that certain scenes were burned into the folds of my brain.

You see, long before living with him in Silicon Valley, I had lived in another valley, Lynn Valley, with my parents and sisters.

One of my sisters had brought a pirated copy of the whole DVD set back from China after a year of teaching abroad. One afternoon, sitting in our parents’ basement, I was thumbing through her giant folder of DVDs, and found this show.

With the first sex scene, my entire body responded. All the kissing. Touching. Fucking. Back then, I wasn’t registering the problematic parts of this series: how most of the actors playing lesbians were straight. White. How the sex scenes were so hetero-performative. I just saw boobs. And I liked it. I found myself sliding my hand down my pants and touching myself. Right there in the family basement. Afterwards, I was flooded with shame.

And then I pressed play and kept watching. I wondered how my sister had watched this show with her two roommates, wouldn’t it have turned them all on like it did me?

In the next episode came the next sex scene. And so did I.

Each scene whether it was sex, touching, a glimpse of something, gave me such massive, full-bodied orgasms, that getting through just one episode was quite exhausting.

All this flashed through my mind as my fiancee loaded up the show. I was anxious as shit. How was I supposed to navigate this situation? What would happen when we started watching this show and it started doing to me what I knew it had done before?

As far as anyone knew, including myself, I was straight. The fact that I’d been binging the L Word on loop since my mid-20s was not something I dwelled on.
The fact that I’d been binging sapphic erotica since my late teens in that same basement didn’t even make a dent in my mind.
Everyone had their secrets, I figured. I never once questioned my sexuality. I just locked it all away in the closet that I didn’t know I had back there.

When my fiancee hit play and the first episode showed the first sex scene, things worked out in my favor. With that first sex scene, he kinda did that straight guy thing of “ohhh” at the sight of two women having sex.
He looked at me and I probably made a face like “____” like a desperate attempt to match his turn-on without betraying the depth of my own.

After the episode ended, he began to touch me and I was all too ready to comply. I jumped onto him and came so hard and so fast it left us both shocked. I had had roughly one to two orgasms with this man in the three years we’d been together. But this too, I put away.

The next day, I went back to wedding planning. I stood in the ribbon aisle at Michael’s, contemplating ribbons for the ceremony programs that I was hand-making. Snippets of the night before came unwanted to my mind, right there in the tubelit aisle at Michael’s.

I drilled down harder: lace or satin? I could not go there. Cream or white? More flashes of the night before, the intensity of my orgasm: nope. Not going there.
I knew what I needed to do: more sequins for my invitations. And off to the next aisle I went.

That night, we watched the next episode of the L Word. Same turn on, same raging orgasm.
Night after night, we watched, I came. And the following day, back to the crafting project that was my wedding.

Finally, my fiancee asked the question I did not ask myself. “Have you ever been with a woman? Have you ever wanted to?”

I caved inward. Memories of all those years of my basement self-pleasurings burned inside me and I fought with Herculean effort to say, “Nah,” and try to sound normal about it. And then neither of us knew what to say. So we just watched the next episode.

One afternoon, back at Michael’s, I studied the cardstock: plain or textured? The question came:
“Phi,” a voice inside said, “These nightly sex romps are great and all, but should we talk about what this means?”

But here was where that vast black void kind of clouded my vision. I didn’t know how to examine this. Or who to examine it with. Everyone I knew was straight. Everyone I knew was getting married or was already married.

But each time I asked myself, “Should we examine what’s going on here?” I would think, “Welll, it’s four months till the wedding. People have already bought their plane tickets. It would be rude to cancel.”

This was the actual thought that would go through my head: you can’t cancel a wedding. I have to get married because you can’t cancel a wedding. Back then, I lived by these rules. The you can’ts and you musts and you shoulds.

But the deeper truth, the truth that I would not piece together until years and years later, was this: the idea of listening to my body, the idea of following my desire, at that time in my life, four months before my wedding to the perfect straight brown man, uh uh. I couldn’t.

Because to listen to my body, to follow my desires would make me different. And different was bad. I was already way too different: being a writer, a traveler, wanting to birth novels instead of babies. I was nearly 30 and try as I might, I was not doing a great job at following the script that everyone around me seemed to just slip into so easily. Now my body wanted to add queerness to the list? Queerness was definitely not part of the script.

But getting married? That meant I could fit in. That I would belong. That I had finally done something right. It was all right there within reach. And at that time, I needed to belong, to be like everyone else, more than I needed to be my true self.

We can intellectualize our lust, we can tell ourselves “everyone reacts to the L Word that way”, we can talk ourselves out of what we desire, but sometimes, the body gives it all away. And you can still shove that shit down, and that’s okay too.

It would be years before I would leave my marriage, before I would come out and come in to my full queer self.

It would be years before I would see QUEER community with my own eyes. People who were queer and trans and poly and kinky and thriving.

But that day did come. Literally the same day I left my marriage, I came out. To the person who would become my best friend and my greatest unrequited love. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

He was stir-frying broccoli for our dinner and I burst out with: “I think I like … girls.”

He nodded, fully accepting of this news. Over the following weeks, he guided me on my great coming out journey, starting with queer films I had to see.

“Hey, have you seen Blue is the Warmest Color?” he asked, naming an extremely sapphic film.
“Ummm… yes.”

Shame crept up my neck and into my cheeks. But he just laughed and said, “Oh friend, you’re so gay.” Not in a shaming way. In a way that felt like, “I get you, welcome home.”

Breaking Out: Beto’ Story

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COVID Made Me GAY

It was late one evening, at dinner time, when my mother broke down in tears. A first for my then 29-year-old-ass.

We don’t cry in my family unless we are watching a sad movie. Even then, it’s a game of who can blink their tears back in the quickest. We don’t hug or kiss unless outside airport terminals and we only text “Love you!” right before takeoff, just in case the plane goes down.

Seeing my immunocompromised mother cry right in front of us, chicken still half-chewed in my mouth, I knew this was serious.

It was April, 2020. We had been hearing about this killer disease and every night we saw the case numbers creep closer to our own social circles.

After consoling her by saying that this would fizzle out in a few weeks (we were a bit short), I escaped to my bedroom.

Is this it? I thought. Is this how we go?

And more importantly: Am I going to die before getting to be gay?

❖ ❖ ❖

The first whiff of queerness arrived when I was 13, in a random dream where I saw my cousin laying in bed wearing bright blue briefs. I hovered towards him, Nosferatu-style, until my hand was but a millimeter shy away from his bulge, only to suddenly wake up.

That night sealed two fates: I was going to have a fluid sexuality and I’d never see the 3rd act of any sex dream.

For the next 15 years, bogged down by toxic prejudgments and not exactly feeling “100% top, masc to masc, no smooths, no twinks,” I was like: Why even bother? I’ll just carry on as a straightie, occasionally lusting for Zac Efron’s biceps like any normal, liberal dude.

But then COVID and the threat of imminent death appeared.

❖ ❖ ❖

In January 2022, I moved to Vancouver with three goals: be social, be gayer, and marry quickly to stay in the country. (I’m still missing the third, please inquire after the show.) By nightfall, I had downloaded Grindr.

“How goes it?” a faceless profile asked.

What does that mean? How goes what? I thought. “Hi. How are you?” I replied.

Though surely thinking I was a little slow, this faceless man kept texting and before I knew it he shot: “Send pics.”

“Ok. What do you want to see?”

“Dick and ass,” he replied.

What an assertive man, I thought. I hadn’t planned in advance, so I quickly scrammed to take some pics lest I lose the attention of this prized individual. I was more pressured than aroused, so my photos didn’t represent my full potential. Even so, I must’ve charmed him because he then shared his location.

I was staying at an Airbnb near 41st and Knight. The map showed him across Duffin Donuts, south of a Shell station.

“On my way,” I sent, and my body started shaking uncontrollably. Oh – wow. Being gay is super fun, I thought.

I went outside. The wind had picked up and that Pacific Northwest mist felt a bit like horizontal rain. The weather and my nerves were wreaking havoc on my Mexican skin.

As soon as I turned the corner where this dude lived, I froze. It was a dark, damp, and scary-looking backstreet. I’ll get murdered, I thought. I’ll star as a victim on one of those Netflix exploitative documentaries about homosexual cannibals, confirming my parents’ belief that gays are ‘More passionate than straight people’!

I ran back to my Airbnb.

“Sorry. I’m actually kinda cold – lol,” I texted.

“No problem. I get it. You’re new at this. I could tell,” the would-be-cannibal replied.

❖ ❖ ❖

Even though I eventually wanted to find my legally Canadian partner, I wanted to have some fun before committing. Unfortunately, within the following weeks I discovered I sucked at hookups.

It would always go something like this:

1 – Get horny EXCLUSIVELY after 11pm on a weeknight and find a suitor after an extensive background check.

2 – Invite them over after making sure—just in case—that they knew my big, rugby-playing roommate was sleeping next room. (I live alone.)

3 – Shiver uncontrollably during foreplay. “Are you okay?” “Just cold,” I’d whisper next to my roaring heater.

4 – Say goodbye with a “Sorry. I think I’m just tired,” after failing to finish the deal. “But coffee sometime?”

5 – I’d get blocked.

My body refused to cooperate with my desire for casual sex. After a few lukewarm wins, I theorized hookups weren’t my jam. I was, apparently, a monogamous family man.

❖ ❖ ❖

A couple months after, I had moved into my current place—a garden suite located in one of those “scary backstreets” which, turns out, are quite lovely. My Grindr exploits had slowed down since I started dating this dude who, I was sure, was going to be my forever.

Being my first homosexual relationship, I unfortunately fell infatuated with the guy, which made the text he sent me one night hit like a brick:

“Hey, I think I see you more as a friend.”

“Oh—“

“And I’m also kinda married.”

“Ah.”

I was not looking to break up a marriage, but I was baffled. What happened? Am I boring? Ugly? Not gay enough? What does his husband have that I don’t? Pick me. Choose me. LOVE ME.

❖ ❖ ❖

“Can you fart all over my face? You’re so hot,” read a message on Grindr. I had gone back to the app after a couple of weeks of listening to Sam Smith, journaling, and burning letters.

“Oh – wow. How does that work?”

“Special chair. You sit; I put my face under it.”

Despite just having a protein-heavy dinner, I politely declined. I’m pretty open but wasn’t in the mood to take that kind of a dive.

“You know you can monetize this?” my brother said after I shared the screenshot.

“I don’t think my visa allows for this type of entrepreneurial venture,” I replied.

❖ ❖ ❖

Months turned into years of me being on every app and meeting random men. I got better and more confident in my hookups and dates, but something still hadn’t quite clicked. Much like snow in Vancouver, nothing stuck. I was still missing something. I kept having these brief connections that led only to me sending them off into the night.

In January 2025, my brother and best friend both moved away during the same weekend, leaving me at zero: no friends, no family, no partner. After allowing myself a two-day pity party, I got to work on a new, more critical mission: finding community.

I started attending every event or public meetup that came across my desk. Running groups, drag show events, art exhibits, board game nights—nothing was off the table. I started dancing with strangers at 1181, cheering queens at Junction, sharing beers with bears at Pumpjack. And slowly, something started to finally click.

In my limited view as a prejudiced baby-homo, I thought being gay meant being a regular dude who happens to have sex with men—which is true. But I’d missed that being anyone means being a universe of thoughts, history, connections, feelings, beliefs, perspectives; and being part of a community meant sharing these universes.

By hyperfocusing on trying to find sex and partners, I had been living vicariously through morsels of experiences men shared with me between climaxing and the door.

It is through actively participating that I’ve started to scratch the surface of actually being part of a community. Talking to people, sharing stories, and celebrating one another is what has made me feel closer to “being gay.” And what a joy it’s been!

❖ ❖ ❖

“If you ever need your pits licked, let me know,” someone texted me the other night.

“Sure,” I replied. “… but we gotta be quiet. My big, rugby-playing roommate is sleeping next door.”

I still live alone.