Tag: gay

Celebration!: JJ’ Story

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“Please report the video. I hate that your faces are on there with no consent. Getting everyone to report it.”

It’s 2023 and I’m at a bar on a first date. He’s in the bathroom when I get the text from my work wife; it’s accompanied by a Twitter link, posted by an account I’ve never heard of, Libs of TikTok, with the caption: “Elementary school in Vancouver held a pride parade today. Homeschool your kids!”

Even before playing the video, I recognize myself in the thumbnail. 

The video starts with me walking by shouting “Happy Pride!” followed by my students and several parents, waving, cheering. A few more clips of students walking by, smiling, waving rainbow flags, before it ends.

My date sits back down, and I show him the video, and proceed to chuckle about some of the comments. 

“Give me an S, Give me an I, Give me an N, SIN!”

“Those boys look “sissified” to me”

“It’s a free for all, next is orgy day”

And my personal favourite, the one that, to this day, I still lowkey want to get tattooed on my body: “Homeschool > homoschool”

Already the video has hundreds of thousands of views. I want to keep reading the comments, but don’t want to be that guy, so I put my phone away, and break the tension with a quip.

“How does it feel, knowing you’re on a date with a queer icon?”

The next day our staffroom is buzzin’. Coworkers tell me they’ve reported the video, my principal checks in to see if I’m okay. The video quickly balloons to 1.4 million views. In the comments, someone posted a screenshot of me from the video, wearing a rainbow cape and shiny cowboy hat, with the caption “Found the groomer!”

Another person comments on my picture, “He’s just a flat-out molester. He doesn’t even bother with grooming.”

My friend at the union reaches out, says there’s a lawyer on staff if I’m interested in trying to have the video taken down. We all report it, but all that does is hide the video on our accounts.

Repeatedly, I say I’m okay. That we’re celebrating Pride for the kids who don’t know they’re queer, or don’t feel comfortable being open about it yet, and if it makes things easier for even one of them, then it’s worth it. 

But writing this story and revisiting that video in 2026—thankfully stalled at paltry 1.7 million views—my whole body still burns.

I scour the video’s comments section for the funniest pull quotes, trying to discern what’s awful in the entertaining-let-me-read-this-out-loud-to-strangers way and what’s awful in the oh-boy-I’ll-probably-have-to-talk-about-this-in-therapy way. The margin between them is narrower than you think.

I was bullied and called gay before I even knew what that word meant, but I knew that I was supposed to vehemently deny being it.

In sixth grade, I received a friend request online from the email account “jjisgay99@hotmail.com,” one of those memories that’s hilarious now, but at the time, felt like someone had ripped the uvula from the back of my throat.

I’d stay in the closet for almost two decades longer, dating women, participating in casual misogyny. Talking about which actresses I thought were “hot,” but really, I probably just thought they had a nice smile. 

It wasn’t until 2020, when, after having my first session of therapy, I knew I was ready to start living authentically. The next day, my 30th birthday, I came out to the majority of my close friends at a socially-distanced pie-themed hang in the park, scrawling “I’M GAY” on the inside of a pie box—the pie was peach-cardamom, obviously.

The atmosphere was one of compounding disasters: sitting on blankets six-feet apart, unknowingly about to embark on the second wave of the pandemic. The sky was muggy and thick with forest fire smoke and a recent looper moth infestation surrounded us with thousands of fluttering bugs.

It was one of the best days of my life. 

After coming out during lockdown, I struggled with how to relate to the queer community I suddenly found myself identifying with: my main connections being gay meme accounts on Instagram and a parade of COVID-safe dates that always ended back at my apartment. Dr. Bonnie Henry would certainly agree our activities involved a curve, though none flattened.

One first date, after a guy spent most of the night talking about how much he wanted a boyfriend, we ended back at my apartment, carnally making out on the couch, before he climbed on top of me, squeezed my cheeks together, and hawk-tuahed a single oblong strand of saliva slowly into my mouth. “Sir, we are in a pandemic here, you can’t just spit in people’s mouths, especially without asking first.” We still had sex, of course.

Fucking this rogues’ gallery of strangers felt necessary at the time. Fleeting connections to the gay community, sharing coming-out-stories with cum still leaking out. Hearing about Internet chatrooms and early cruising. I was a cultural anthropologist, absorbing every detail and mentally cataloguing to better understand where I fit.

Later that school year, I was recruited to help organize my school’s first-ever Pride celebration. Starved from no parties in almost 15 months, I brought a finely-curated selection from my personal tickletrunk for my kindergartens. Flamingo sunglasses, a taco hat, sequined fans, an inflatable telephone.

Suddenly, at 30-years-old, I was marching in my first Pride parade.

For the past six years I’ve helped organize and grow school Pride celebrations, each with their own lil’ moments. After our neighbourhood parade in 2024, we headed to the school’s backfield and performed a flashmob to families, all to the song “Born This Way.”

When I’d talked to my kindergartens about what other Pride celebrations involved, my students globbed onto the idea that people sometimes dress up, and asked if they could wear costumes—which is why, in videos of that flashmob, you can see Disney princesses and superheroes dancing to Lady Gaga.

I want these to be the stories I share about school Pride, but it’s important to know it’s not all rainbows and five-year-old Captain America dancing to Gaga. 

Like when kindergartens from my class are noticeably absent the day of the parade, because their family “doesn’t celebrate Pride.”

A parent’s venomous email to a colleague, calling everyone at the school pedofiles; the same parent who, later that month, smiled and cooed to me about how she hoped her son would be in my class next year.

The idea that schools are somehow brainwashing youths by showing support and normalizing words like “bisexual” and “trans.” 

“I’ve been teaching for decades, and I can barely teach these kids math. And I’m a math specialist!” a colleague shared with me, exasperated. “They think I can somehow influence these kids enough to change their whole ideology or gender?!”

Knowing teachers who’ve been doxxed, received death threats—putting themselves at risk while trying to make things safer for queer youth.

There’s decadent irony that, in tandem with writing this story, I’m helping organize this year’s Pride at my school. 

We’re going bigger, bolder, louder. A coworker designed a Pride 2026 logo with our school’s mascot, and managed to get custom stickers donated. We’re inviting neighbouring schools. We have a whole spirit week planned, a dance party, a photobooth. We’re getting T-shirts made as a fundraiser. I get giddy thinking about how amazing this year will be. Usually that excitement drowns out all the what-ifs. 

I’ve been working on a handout, highlighting statistics about queer youth, for families to help understand the importance of Pride. Pulling from Statistics Canada empirical gut-punches like how queer youth are twice as likely to describe their mental health as being poor; they’re more likely to be targeted for bullying, experience homelessness, and twice as likely to consider suicide; how trans and non-binary youth are twice as likely to experience cyberbullying.

I triple-check my sources with a diligence I wouldn’t have dreamed of during my English undergrad, knowing these stats will be scrutinized with the vigor that only a bored, privileged suburban parent can muster. 

I hate having to take the more thoughtful high road. Having our “We want every kid to feel safe being who they are” met with “You’re all pedofiles,” coming from zealots whose churches, businesses, and governments knowingly protect actual predators. But I digress.  

Progress can sometimes feel small.

The odd joy of when reading a book to my class, a student refers to someone as “gay,” and my body seizes up like they’re using a slur, when in fact, the book has a family with two dads. Gay as a descriptor, not an allegation.

It took until my mid-30s before I saw being gay as a gift. A hard-won title after a lifetime of being teased for liking things I didn’t even know I liked yet; the finally-satiated hunger of someone who spent years eating what they weren’t craving. Let’s hope the next generation gets to feel this lucky some day.

And if you need to contact me or have any questions about this story, you can always reach me at jjisgay99@hotmail.com.

Celebration!: M.’s Story

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I’m turning 30 this year.
When I found out the theme for tonight was “Celebrate,” I started thinking about that word. Celebrate. And I realized, I don’t think I really know how to celebrate myself. Which is weird, because I’m gay, Lebanese, kind of a drama queen, and emotionally attached to both Arabic and English pop music. On paper, I should be excellent at it.
And I genuinely love celebrating other people. I love showing up. I love planning. I love hosting. I love making people feel loved. I’m good at it too. Maybe too good. I will plan the timing, the food, the vibe, every small detail and pretend that it’s no big deal, but emotionally, there is a very serious project plan.
But when it’s about me? I become aggressively casual.

A couple of months ago, I “celebrated” two years in Canada by going to a St. Paddy’s gay party at the Junction. Very convenient: one of the biggest celebrations of the year was already happening on my anniversary. The universe forcing me to celebrate my milestones.
Fair play, universe.

But birthdays are worse. Because birthdays are the one day of the year where you’re allowed to be a little self-centered, and I still don’t know what to do with it.
Last year, on my actual birthday, I scored tickets to Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball.
Picture this: A gay Lebanese boy, now an adult, watching Lady Gaga sing “Born This Way” live. And then the words: “You’re Lebanese.”
I’m not even that patriotic. But so many of my early queer moments happened with that song playing secretly through wired headphones, pretending I was just listening to music, when really, I was trying to feel seen.
And if Lady Gaga, mother of monsters, said “Lebanese,” not Middle Eastern, not Arab, Lebanese, then she was clearly speaking directly to me. That song was celebrating a part of me before I knew how to celebrate it myself.
It’s going to be hard to top a Lady Gaga concert as a birthday celebration. But this year, I’m turning 30. And there is a version of me who wants the balloons. The cake. The friends. The photos. The whole shebang.
I know he exists, because once, he fought very hard for a birthday party.

I’m the youngest of four boys, which means by the time my parents got to me, the parental sparkle was running on low battery.
But the photos were there. Printed albums. My brothers with their friends. Finger food. Cups of Jell-O. A big cake made by my mom. Awkward parents in the background. Kids playing arcade games and mini golf at this place called Putt Putt.
Putt Putt was everything: Arcade games. Skeeball. Ball pit. Chaos. If you had a birthday there, you were basically local royalty.
Every brother got Putt Putt. Except for me.
To make things worse, my birthday is in August, which is terrible timing if you want a big party as a kid. School is out. Everyone disappears. Half the class is at their village, the other half is at the beach, and suddenly, your birthday is a logistical crisis.
So I made my parents feel bad about it. And it happened that my dad did business with the owners of PuttPutt, so it didn’t take much convincing.
I may have also pulled the “you don’t love me as much as my brothers” card. Bold strategy. But hey, it worked.
And somehow, I convinced my parents to let me do it two months early: June 9, 2006. The day after the last day of school. Also, the first day of the FIFA World Cup, so almost exactly twenty years ago (Very convenient time to tell this story… And very organized of my trauma).
And because it was the World Cup, the theme chose itself. Football.
Now, did I play football? No. Did I care about football? Also no. In fact, I kinda hated it. Playing football as a closeted gay kid with straight boys going through puberty? Not fun.
But it was football season, and you have to understand, people in Lebanon take that very seriously. And I wanted to look cool, so football it was.

I had the party. I had the place. I had the theme. I had the friends. Basically my entire class. This was my moment. I was wearing a Ronaldinho Brazil football costume, because obviously, I LOVE football.
Everyone came, (Well, everyone I invited. I had just gone through a huge fight with my best friend at the time, and I decided not to invite him. I don’t remember what the fight was about, but I was very firm about it. I remember my dad looking at me and asking, “Are you sure you don’t want to invite this boy?” And I said, “Yes. We’re not friends anymore.” I was so sure I didn’t want him there. But for someone I apparently didn’t want there, I kept noticing that he wasn’t).
The party itself was going really well. I remember parents walking in with their kids. I remember the mountain of gifts. I remember my mom’s cake, a forêt noire, with a chocolate football-shaped ganache on top. Keeping it on theme. We’re committed.
Because again: I LOVE football.

Everything was happening exactly how I wanted… then came the piñata. Yup, I had a candy pinata at my birthday party. What shape was the piñata, you ask? A football, of course.
You have to understand, back then, a piñata was a big fucking deal. At that point, I had only seen piñatas on TV in cartoons. So having my own piñata, one I got to choose the candy for? Hell yes.
They hung it up. The kids gathered around. Everyone got a few hits. People were screaming. The energy was rising. And then the birthday boy got the stick.
I started hitting it. I’m going at it. I’m ripping it apart. Everyone is screaming. And then eventually, it breaks.
And the second it broke, it was no longer a birthday party. It was capitalism.
Kids dropped to the floor like wild cats. Hands everywhere. Candy flying. Elbows out. No morals. No friendships. No birthday etiquette. It was my Hunger Games. And I had lost.
Because there I was. The birthday boy. Standing with nothing. I remember looking at my hands and realizing they were empty. And I tried to hold it in. I really did.
But then people started noticing. Kids looked at me. Then they looked at their bags of candy. Then back at me. Suddenly everyone realized, OMG… the birthday boy didn’t get any candy. And because it was my birthday, everyone started offering me some of theirs.

Aww. That’s so sweet.
It was HORRIBLE, because somehow that made it even worse. Now I wasn’t just the birthday boy with no candy. I was the birthday boy everyone felt bad for. And I couldn’t hold it anymore. I started crying. Hard. Not cute crying. Full meltdown. Birthday drama queen.
And if you’re thinking, “Oh God, poor kid, that must have been so embarrassing,” well, there’s more. Even through the tears, I had a plan. What? I’m just gonna stand there and let people feel sorry for me on my fucking birthday? No way José.
I looked at everyone, face fully wet, probably snot involved, and said: “Everyone… throw the candy back on the floor. We’re going again.” Which, looking back, is insane.
Imagine being a kid at a birthday party, and the birthday boy is sobbing, demanding a second round of candy distribution, after going through WrestleMania with at least 20 other kids. Very socialist of me, honestly.
But hey, I was ten. It was my birthday.

Now, I’m not saying this one piñata is the reason I don’t know how to celebrate myself. That would be too easy.
The thing is, when the celebration is for someone else, that works. I get to focus on them. But when it’s for me, suddenly I can’t just enjoy it. I have to manage it.
Is the food enough? Is the music right? Are people bored? Is the lighting homophobic?
And I think that’s the part I still negotiate with. The embarrassment of wanting the day to feel good…. And by good I mean, perfect. Obviously.
Because even now, when someone asks, “What are you doing for your birthday?” I feel this little panic. Like I need to have an answer that sounds casual enough. Not too sad. Not too planned. Not too desperate. Something like, “Oh, nothing big.” Which usually means, “I would love for it to be big, but I’m not ready to be responsible for wanting that out loud.”
But one day, I would love to have a big party that is actually for me. Maybe for another age when I become more chill, because honestly, just saying “my 30th” spikes my anxiety.

But I want to try anyway. And I don’t think I need to top Gaga. I think I’m just trying to find whatever version of that feeling I can make for myself. It could be a big party, with a giant dick-shaped piñata, just for me.
Or maybe it’s quieter than that. A little stoned. Surrounded by people who love me for who I am. Without having to pretend that I like football.
Looking around and realizing I’ve built a life that younger me would not believe.
And honestly, for now, that feels worth celebrating.

Beauty: Luis’ Story

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Watch this video of Luis telling his story!

When I was young, I went through a collage phase. I probably looked all around my house for whatever magazine I could get my grubby hands on. I specially recall the damage to a beautiful special edition magazine of Princess Diana.

I know this because my mum told me after asking her about this botched magazine she, to this day, still keeps around. I can only imagine how my mum felt after I destroyed it. Our relationship has had its ups and downs, but in my mind, my mother is deeply associated with the image of Princess Diana and their admirable capacity to be graceful to those who need it most.

I grew up as a pretty happy child up until late middle school when I became depressed, as many other gay men have at some point in their lives. Again, my history with mental health has its ups and downs. I’ve banked my share of hours with therapists but recently I’d plateaued in my progress. Last year, I made a breakthrough. I honor my story by highlighting the importance of taking yourself to therapy. 

The DIANA Magazine in Question
The DIANA Magazine in Question

One symptom I keep a look out when gauging my state of mind is my capacity to find beauty in life. I believe a sense of beauty is a psychological skill we can train or lose. To see it, notice it, name it, replicate it. At my worst, I stop watching TV shows, I stop eating sweets, and I isolate myself. Inversely, I write more poetry when I am processing negative emotions, this skill has allowed me to tap into my sense of beauty and pull myself out of a downward spiral. I’d like to share a spoken word poem about what I think psychological beauty is:

I’m on my knees. The congregation says Grace.
I look up towards high ceilings, the tainted glass,
Dramatic imagery in art, stone, oil, wood, brass.
Engulfed in what they say is beauty, yet I don’t see your face.

My favourite part of going to mass is leaving.
Outside, street vendors sell all types of food.
Outside, what is actually a religious experience
Tastes like fried, steamed home cooked goods.
Outside, I eat sugar just to help boost my mood.
My sister and I resist the Sunday public shaming,
My parents show us grace, your beautiful face.
I’m not asked to go with them again, embraced,
and still picked up for a meal, my soul’s soothed.
Coming out decades later, I still seek sanctuary.
The figures I look up to had a wardrobe change:
tiny underwear, leather jockstraps, tails, fangs.
I’ll say it again, out of one patriarchy and into another.
Penis penance. Men moan confessions to each other,
Some carry a cross, others prefer to be tied to it,
Time’s still spent on my knees doing other things
Giving or receiving Gay Communion. I don’t sing,
But what comes out my choir has a similar ring,
The sound of falling icons and featherless wings,
The premium and peace speech therapy brings.

Confess.
Humbling, paying alms to sort unclaimed shit out
Going to counseling cause someone else did not,
What’s that about? Tinted glass bias, guilty eyes
Projecting self esteem into simple average guys.
Confess…
People can be “nice” but very unkind in thoughts
Because that’s how people pleasing comes across.
Truth is I’m scared of a drag queen’s entourage,
Cunty vibes encouraged, community sabotage.
Confess!
I don’t trust men to be a secure emotional space
I’m afraid that’s a reflection of what I do, am too,
If I use authenticity to camouflage my true face,
Interpersonally challenged with a deep lack of self awareness.
At least that’s my impression.
Doctor it’s been two weeks since my last session
Our last convo has become my confession, I pray:

Grace. For lack of a better word, I ask you for air.
Begrudgingly, as a child you brought me despair,
Betrayed at how empty your brand made me feel
If your love depended on God, others to be real.
I prayed the gay away for years. I couldn’t dare,
Be associated with such a strong feminine name.
And still you’ve forgiven me, as is in your nature,
To mold me as a kid, teen, adult, with true nurture:
Not idealized under judgment but understanding
Of my delicate features, my edges, how I feel injured.

Dented by your many falls from grace. Disgrace
Means facing that which lives in the dark, fowl,
Scowl, I crawl and brawl and embrace them all.
My beasts take a breath as I feed them a meal,
My demons are cordial if I listen and let them be
My hells are manageable, if I show myself ways
To renounce a saint’s life, see myself face to face.

The point was never to climb back up to Grace,
But to hold you as we go down and into the ground.
I found, we can find sanctuary in this hellscape,
Through a loving, poised, graceful, headspace.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and depression has a way of placing a gray filter in front of those who battle it, which makes asking for help a bleak task. As a gay man in therapy, I’d say most of my work depended on unlearning behaviours, overcoming trauma and learning to embrace love, uncertainty and the freedom to be my best queer self. It’s messy, trying to figure ourselves out; I know I struggled with not knowing who I could be. I documented my journey of self discovery using social media, each post made me value the beauty of being able to find beauty in a life lived. Each post’s a puzzle piece with rough edges and contradictions, each attempt gave me clarity about who I was not, diversifying my self image whilst unifying my confidence. I welcomed the New Year with the following poem:

One choice makes me larger
Another makes me small. Decide: do or do not. 
Two parties playing tug of war on a dance floor.
What would secure men do in this circumstance?

Get down, boogie, focus on the tempos for once, 
Be the baddie that gets low, create my own flow.
Try to understand men’s body language: a glance.
Eye contact. Hello. After that you’re on your own.

Quick turn to see if you’re still looking. You know, 
I wrote a spoken word poem about this moment,
But there was dialogue, actions, scripted truths.
The countdown starts, fumble, miss my queue.

I’m putting pressure on myself to not perpetuate
That which was done to me. I hesitate and wait,
For impulse to shake the electrodes off my head.
Regress to make progress, act before I overthink.

If it’s still within me. I’m sure. I’ve gotten this far, 
276 [281] posts later yapping of the glory and gore
Of being gay in 2026. Now for a new resolution:
To give myself the grace I’ve always needed, evermore.

Despite synonyms, I was conflicted with resonating to the word “grace”, I knew of her but talking to her, through therapy and poetry, made me feel like I was being reacquainted with an old, healing, friend who knew I could be my worst qualities, and still saw me as a person worthy of love. If I try, if I succumb to my fear and bail, if I get depressed again, grace can be a colorful filter to feel aesthetic, confident, even regal. And that feels sourced from within, feels like me. Like an inverted vision board, my life regained value because I prioritized this feeling whilst posting about travelling, cooking, existential, surviving or in the words of another incredible graceful figure, Catherine O’Hara:

“[Taking] a thousand naked pictures of [myself] now. You may currently think, “Oh, I’m too spooky.”, or, “Nobody wants to see these tiny boobies.” But believe me, one day you will look at those photos, with much kinder eyes and say, “Dear God, I was a beautiful thing!” Oh, and make sure you submit those photos to the Internet. Otherwise, your own children will go looking for them one day and tragically, they won’t be there.”

What groundbreaking conclusion psychological help has bestowed upon me is realizing that I find the capacity to look past “the cringe” with the love and kindness my mum, Princess Diana or even Catherine O’Hara would have given a loved one quite beautiful. Counseling, speaking, writing, sharing my thoughts, gives me a space where I can see beauty, notice it, name it, and replicate it by being more graceful to myself and hoping it’ll make me more graceful to others. Changing my point of view so that the world might seem changed, too.

Season of the Witch: JJ’s Story

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If half of the snake oil remedies my mom believed in were real, the average life expectancy would skyrocket to a thousand years. Minimum.

Her bold statements were frequent  in the Gibb household, always followed by a “I guess we’ll seeeeee,” as if she knew more about oil of oregano than she was letting on; as if she’d been given a top-secret briefing on the all-powerful benefits of celery juicing, to which none of the world’s health authorities had been privy to.

We never know how unique our upbringings were until we’re comparing notes as adults. Like, what do you mean you didn’t come home from school to find large amethysts on the doorstep, charging in the sunlight? Where did your family charge their amethysts?

Okay, but before every meal, you all said grace, right? And then you followed that by three long hums, meant to charge the food with positive energy? You didn’t? So you just ate uncharged food like a bunch of schmucks?! 

How—to this day—she refused to have Wi-Fi in her home because of the negative ions or some wild shit like that. During every visit home, my limited data plan engaged in a Herculean effort to let me browse Instagram on my parents’ couch. Refusing to have Wi-Fi in your home while simultaneously being addicted to your cell phone is a rich combination, but if you pointed it out, all you got in return was the “I guess we’ll seeeeee.”

Well, here’s what I saw: 

The water pitcher on our kitchen table, filled with rose quartzes and other “healing” stones, so anytime you went to pour yourself a glass of water, you were treated to a clink-clanking of gems sliding against the pitcher.

How I confided in my mom that I was self-conscious about the amount that I sweat, and she took me to a naturopath, who told her that she was unloading too much negative energy onto me—though in retrospect, it was more likely a generalized anxiety disorder.

There were appointments with a Nucca doctor, who claimed that re-aligning your neck cures basically everything from fibromyalgia to—in my case—low foot arches. Water bottles filled with homeopaths, YouTube videos playing “healing vibrations,” crystals, mystic channelings in the basement, throwing out the microwave because of the toxicity, naturopath visits, daily supplements from a company named Juice+ (which in my adulthood, I learned is an MLM), enrolling us in weekend-long seminars about the power of attraction, psychic readings where they told her my wife’s name would start with a J.

How she regularly boasted about her three sons being “Indigo Children,” a supposed new evolution of the human race with greater emotional capacity and intelligence, but when you looked up the term Indigo Child as an adult, you learn this was a pseudoscientific term often used by parents to describe neurodivergent children, so they can avoid pursuing a proper diagnosis for their kid.

“Mom, do you think that you labeled us as Indigo Children so you could avoid the reality that all three of your sons had raging ADHD?”

“Oh, I guess we’ll seeeee.”

Yes, my mother, Particia Gibb was essentially the resident witch doctor of Sturgeon Country, Alberta. She grew up on a small farm outside of Barrhead, with my dad’s family on an adjacent farm. They were high school sweethearts, which I think used to be a romantic term. I find it kinda horrifying, the idea of marrying the first guy I kissed. She went to university for teaching, and spent almost two decades as a Home Economics teacher, though after having three Gibb boys–myself being the last, when she was 41—she gave up teaching to stay at home with us.

Her love for us burned as bright as her anger. The kind of mom who pulled an all-nighter working on a model of Uranus for my grade six science project and sewed us homemade Halloween costumes every year. She was also the mom who frequently “canceled” Christmas, or one time, when the dishes had piled up in the sinks over a week and everyone refused to wash them, she packed all of the dishes into storage bins and hid them from us. Having dishes was a privilege, not a right.

It’s impossible to pinpoint when my mom’s descent into alternative medicine began. It truly wasn’t until well into my 20s that I realized how deep her wellness rabbit hole went, or even that the rabbit hole existed in the first place.

My mom’s belief in the alternative hasn’t always been a harmless secret punchline for my friends. Recently, when one of my brothers struggled with an ongoing psychosis, mom started taking him to an energy healer, convinced it was trauma from a past-life causing these episodes., Ultimately, he needed proper medications. 

Or how my parents always seemed on the brink of financial ruin, yet my mom always had enough money to blanket the kitchen table in bottles of pills and supplements. My mom lets me use her Amazon Prime account, and I see the hundreds of dollars she spends every week on supplements. She’s apparently really into colloidal silver and kelp right now. But I’m a guest on her Prime account, so I honour our unspoken agreement. I don’t ask about the kelp capsules, and she doesn’t ask about my inflatable sumo suits. 

An unintended benefit to having a parent steeped in the alternative health community is I’ve had a front-row seat to the latest conspiracies. For years, my mom has told me she’s going to become a billionaire soon because of this thing called NESARA. Look it up online. It’s this conspiracy theory that’s been around for decades, some people call it a cult. All I know is she’s signed a bunch of NDAs and funneled an unknown amount of money into this. Which is why I don’t feel bad about what I did in the spring of 2021.

During lockdown, when rumblings of a COVID vaccine began emerging, I encouraged my parents—both in their 70s, and in relatively poor health—to get vaccinated as soon as possible

When front-line workers (including teachers) were announced to be some of the first vaccinated in BC, my mom had a grave tone to her. “You’re… you’re not going to get vaccinated, are you?”

“Of course I am, and you all should too.”

“But JJ, it’s so dangerous. It could kill you,” her voice quivered.

A week later, she texted me asking how much the upcoming semester of my graduate program cost, and offered to pay for it as long as I promised not to get vaccinated. 

“Absolutely not,” I said immediately, refusing to give her theories any credibility.

After our phone call, I talked to my friend who worked at the CDC and had been redeployed to the COVID task force. My friend had also been on the frontlines of hearing me complain about my family’s anti-vaxxer shenanigans, and she was naturally my first stop after my mom’s ridiculous offer.

“My mom just tried to bribe me into not getting vaccinated. She said she’d pay for my next semester of school if I didn’t.”

“So you’re just going to lie and take the money, right?”

Despite being in the closet for the first 30 years of my life, lying isn’t something that comes naturally to me. It never even occurred to me I could lie about this; I’d been dead-set on making a stand and leading by example, hoping to inspire the rest of my family.

“How will she ever know? It’s not like she would ever ask for a blood sample or anything, would she?”

So lie I did. I came back with a pseudo counter-offer that I would “delay” getting vaccinated until next year.

“Good,” she said, “by then they’ll know how dangerous that vaccine is.”

“What difference will a few months make on knowing the long-term effects of something like this?!”

“I guess we’ll see…”

She sent me an e-transfer for $1,800, and two weeks later, I got a COVID vaccine.

Writing this story, I set out to highlight all the zany shit my mom practiced and peddled over my life. A borderline cathartic practice of retracing the Gibb timeline, but instead of milestones, they’re snake oil treatments for real problems my family endured over the years.

And as medically disputed as all these practices were, and as frustrating as her parade of “I guess we’ll see”s throughout life have been, I realized something else: that they ultimately come from an earnest place of love. She believed the rose quartzes in our water pitcher helped us, just like she believed that paying a person to perform reiki on me from a province away helped me as well.

Like a new-age pseudoscience miracle drug, we don’t pretend to understand how a mother’s love works, but we believe in it all the same. And how will it all play out in the end?

I guess we’ll see.

Season of the Witch: M.’s Story

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Where I’m from, the first drag queen I ever heard about was a saint.

In Lebanon, our Halloween is St. Barbara: a young woman fleeing a controlling pagan father who, legend says, disguised herself as a man to escape and devote her life to Jesus Christ. Holy drag in the name of survival.
To remember her, kids dress up in Halloween costumes, knock on doors, sing a little song about her, and people hand out money or candy, or tell you to go away. 
It’s our Halloween, but the origin story is about a woman who beat patriarchy by cutting her hair, smearing mud on her face, and throwing on some farmer’s clothes.

I was around ten the year I decided I was going to be a witch. 
Not a wizard, a witch. Wizards feel like homework. Witches have more flair.

The plan was simple: repurpose my brother’s Zorro cape as a black dress.
I walked into the living room where my mom and aunt were talking and pitched it like I was on Project Runway: “so I’ll be wearing a dress, the belt in the middle, I can pin it here, with a pointy hat, done.”
My aunt didn’t giggle. Didn’t even try to soften it with a different idea. She went straight to mocking, sharp, voice raised. “A dress? For you? Absolutely not.”
I can still feel the heat in my face, that hot, swallowed-your-voice feeling when you didn’t think you were doing anything wrong. 
Five minutes later the cape was back in the closet, and so was I.
I told my friends I felt sick. I didn’t go out that night.

It took a long time to understand what that moment did. 
Not just “no costume this year,” but a message that landed somewhere deep: 
There are ways you’re allowed to exist, and ways you’re not. 
Not because you want to be someone else, 
but because people panic when you look like you might.

In my family, masculinity came with a manual, enforced by catchphrases. 
My dad’s favorite, شد براغي تمك or in English “Tighten your mouth screws.” 
Don’t talk like that. Don’t sit like that. Don’t say those words.
Great way to teach a kid to make himself smaller.

Cut to middle school, catechism class, religious studies. A Catholic priest gave a Very Serious Talk about “the problem of effeminate boys,” (apparently, top five on the Vatican threat list). 
His solution, and I kid you not, was to send them to work with “real men” on construction sites for the summer, so they would come back “macho.”
Even as a kid I thought, Father, that is literally the plot of half of gay porn.
Part of me was like, “Maybe I should be more femme.”

A few years later came my first real Halloween party as a teenager. 
I was old enough to make my own choices, young enough to still want a mask to cover my face.
The kid who didn’t get to be a witch remembered. So I did it properly. 
First accessory: fake tits. Big ones. Two balloons and a silky robe. 
When I walked in that party, something in my body unclenched. People kept asking, “Who is she?” and honestly, I didn’t know.
But whoever she was, she was thriving.
It wasn’t a kink. It was a relief. 
Proof that wearing a dress and fake tits doesn’t threaten who I am.

As is grow older. I collect small rebellions. 
A few summers ago, on vacation in Rome, I walked into a piercing studio right by the Vatican walls and got my earlobes done, just the lobes. 
I almost fainted from the pain; I did not expect that, LOL… but stepping back out onto that street so close to where the pope is, felt deliciously on theme, and a little poetic. 
There was a small residual sting in my ears and it made me happy, like my body had a tiny built-in reminder: you did a thing just for you.
A small spark of self-expression I could feel with my fingertips.
Every time I touched them, I felt that small pulse of yes.

Then last year I tried a few more things. 
A couple of drag nights with friends, which was so much fun.
I experimented with some Dollarama makeup. Got my nails done at a salon a few times, even paid extra for Gelish! Sky blue looks amazing, by the way, and Gelish ruins your nails.
I also changed my Instagram profile photo, nothing wild, just me flaunting my nails. Not a post. Not a story. Just the tiny little circle.
And a few days later, my phone buzzes. A DM from my aunt, the same one.
“Hi Malek, how are you sweetie? I hope you’re good and work is going well. I miss you a lot. Habibi, this is not a good picture on your profile. I do hope you can change it. I know you will say that this is not my business, but I am still your only aunt who cares too much about you and loves you dearly, and I am, after all, your godmother. I doubted for a while, I don’t know what to say to you (dot, dot, dot).”
I wrote back, “Why? What’s wrong with the pic?”

We both knew what she meant. 
Same living room message as when I was ten, this time wrapped in “I care about you” and “I’m your godmother,” with “that’s not for boys” tucked inside.
And here’s the part that surprised me: I didn’t spiral. I didn’t write a defense essay. I didn’t change the photo. I just let the message sit there and went on with my day. Not because I’m brave, but because the scale finally tipped. The joy outweighed the fear.
And that’s the part I wish I could tell my ten-year-old self:  
You’re not broken for wanting what’s fun. 
You’re not dangerous for wanting to be different. 
You can try a thing, decide you like how it feels, and that can be the whole story.

And here’s the plot twist, the pushback doesn’t only come from family. 
I hooked up with a couple from L.A. who were visiting Vancouver eariler this year. After a short while, they saw a picture of me with nail polish and texted out of nowhere, “nail polish doesn’t suit you.”
Which, first, literally no one asked for your opinion.
Second, it’s wild how fast masc4masc energy turns into policing. Like, babe, I don’t even remember your first name. 
Even inside the gay community, a little color on a nail can make internalized homophobia jump out and wave.

But Somewhere along the way, masculinity stopped feeling like rules and started looking like options. A menu, not a manual. 
Some days I want plain jeans and a T-shirt. Some days I want a little swish. Neither day needs permission.
Do I still hear the old lines? Sure. 
They pop up in a joke at a family dinner or in a DM about a photo I chose because I liked myself in it, from a relative who confuses worry with love. 
But my perception shifted. Those reactions aren’t commandments; they are just data. They tell me who can walk with me comfortably, who needs time, and where my boundaries should live.

Every Halloween season, I still think about the year I didn’t go. How quickly excitement turned into shame. How one reaction canceled an entire night.
I don’t hate anyone in that memory. I just wish someone had looked at that cape and said, “Okay. If it wants to be a dress tonight, just let it.”

And that brings me back to St. Barbara, probably one of the very first drag kings. 
She cross-dressed to survive, and all I wanted was to cross-dress to have fun. 
If a saint can do drag to get free, surely a kid can do it to feel free for one night.
So that’s what I do now, in small ways that add up. 
I keep the earrings. I wear nail polish sometimes. I say yes to the version of me that feels most like me that day. 
And when someone tries to hand me a manual for how I should look or present, I hand it back and say:
“Keep the manual. I’m ordering the whole menu.”

Season of the Witch: Claus’ Story

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The shadows never waited for me to fall asleep. They watched me from the moment I got into bed and the light was turned off. There were always two of them: one slightly taller than the other, both standing by the door in my room, as if to make sure there was no way for me to escape. The shadows simply stood there, watching. They never moved… at least not while I was awake.

I was seven years old when my middle brother, whom I previously shared a room with, graduated to his own bedroom. I should’ve been happy then, as I got my own space too. But the truth is: I HATED the dark. 

We lived in a big house on the grounds of an old ranch that was developing too slowly, so all the plots around our house were empty fields, and our closest neighbours lived far down the street. Being so secluded, we had the most amazing views when I lay on the lawn with my brothers, looking out into the star-speckled night sky. However, that same solitude meant that my room was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness when I went to bed.

In that deep darkness, I shouldn’t have been able to see the shadows, but there they were. Always two. Always watching me.
I would lie on my stomach with my arms crossed under my body, and hold on to the opposite sides of my blanket, with the naive impression that my bedsheets could protect me from whatever these beings that stood in my doorway were. I held on so tightly that my hands would sweat, and my arms would go numb under the weight of my body, but I wouldn’t let go until I eventually fell asleep.

The house I lived in was beautiful. A spacious two-story with more rooms than we needed for a family of five, and a massive backyard. My parents had built it, so there was no history for the house to be haunted. But my overactive imagination was always on alert. Whether it was the weight I felt in the air when going up the stairs, the flickering figures I saw out of the corner of my eye, or the voices that escaped from the concrete walls at random intervals, there was always an energy I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
The stories our housekeeper told us probably didn’t help: tales about witches flying through the sky as fireballs, or appearing in mirrors with bloodied faces. El Coco, coming to take away misbehaving children, or La Llorona, who wandered the streets at night in search of her children, whom she had killed in a moment of madness, before taking her own life.

Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and have to pee, but I would hold it until the next morning (which embarrassingly meant I peed my bed more than once). But mostly, I just lay in the dark, the silence in my room so quiet that it pressed into my ears like a scream. I held my blanket tightly, with my arms crossed under my body, imagining the witches and El Coco, and La Llorona. Knowing that the shadows were there, even when I didn’t look towards the door.

My family moved to the coast when I was 10 years old, to a beachside apartment, where I once again had to share a room with my middle brother. From there, we moved to Canada, and although I had my own room again, I didn’t fear the dark the same way. The shadows had been left behind in the old ranch, maybe to haunt the next family, or maybe to die as the area developed. 

But at some point in my late teenage years, I had my first episode of sleep paralysis.

I wake up suddenly, lying in bed. It is the middle of the night, so the room is swallowed in darkness when I open my eyes. I try to raise my head, or move my arms and legs… but I’m completely paralyzed. Panic begins to build inside me, and I try calling out for help, but I’m unable to make a sound.
And then, I see it: standing by my door, there it is. A single shadow now, but this time it doesn’t just watch me, but begins to move slowly in my direction. I try to scream, so my parents or one of my brothers will come to my aid, but I still can’t make a sound. I can’t move my hands to turn the bedside table on, or knock it to the ground to attract someone’s attention. I can only lie there, frozen with fear, looking at the shadow as it drifts to my side. It leans over me, stretching its hands towards my paralyzed body. The moment it touches me, my body shakes violently, and I wake up – for real this time.

Apparently, 1 in every 3 people will experience at least one episode of sleep paralysis at some point in their life, although it’s not always accompanied by the wonderful addition of hallucinations of the so-called “sleep demon.” Lucky me, for I got the paralysis AND the demon: my wonderful shadow-friend from childhood coming back to haunt me in my dreams. And I got to see it more than once, too!
Over the next decade and a half, my sleep paralysis became so regular that I learned to anticipate it, for see, it was always preceded by a nightmare related to darkness. I walked into a room at night, locked the door, and flicked the light switch, but the light wouldn’t turn on. I tried again and again with no result, and the more I tried, the more fearful I became. It was always a different variation of the same dream; always a losing battle against the dark. I would then wake up in bed, only to realize I was paralyzed, with the shadow slowly moving towards me. And when it reached out to grab me, my body convulsed, and I woke up again.

As an adult, I have a complicated relationship with the dark, and the terrors (real and imaginary) that hide within it.
To this day, I don’t like confined dark spaces… but I once went exploring a flooded cave in Guatemala, with only a candle for light (and this was after watching The Descent movie, by the way).
I sometimes feel anxious when I walk down a dark, empty street alone… But I also have been cruising at night – and I’m not talking about the relative safety of a dark room or a sauna. I’m talking about wandering around the trails of Stanley Park (just how La Llorona wandered the streets of Mexico in search of her dead children, but sexier). I guess there is a certain thrill now, when the shadow walking towards you has an equal chance of being your next trick, a nightmarish ghoul, or someone who’s going to stab you to death.

Today, if I need to pee in the middle of the night, I can make my way to the bathroom without turning on the lights… that is, of course, when my husband is at home. When I’m alone, I still turn my bedside table lamp on (but we’ll keep that between us, because it is kind of embarrassing). I also still never look at mirrors in the dark.

It has now been at least five or six years since I experienced sleep paralysis. But sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I raise my arm or move my leg, just to make sure I can. And then I look towards the door, half expecting to see a shadow or two there. 

But I am 42 years old, so I know these shadows aren’t real.
Or, are they?

Season of the Witch: Matthew’s Story

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The first Halloween costume I can ever remember wanting to wear, but which I thankfully never got the opportunity to wear, was Mr. Mistoffelees: the magical cat from the 1988 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Cats. Something tells me that for a wee gay boy only starting to figure out how different he was from all the people around him, and who was trying desperately to hide that fact, a one-piece black leotard and top hat probably wouldn’t have been the best choice. Not to mention the magic wand.

The next Halloween costume I remember is a nerd, a “couple’s” costume with my best friend Brayden, that I can only imagine was both the last costume in the world I probably wanted to wear, and also, being that my 10-year-old self was madly in love with Brayden, was simultaneously the best costume in the world. If I had to guess, I was probably having dreams about dressing up as Michelle Pfeifer’s Catwoman and waking up in tears that I couldn’t make that happen. I assume my decision to dress up as Brandon Lee from The Crow the following year, complete with black hockey tape wrapped around my torso and black makeup around my eyes, was my way of trying to render that. I really just needed the ears and a whip, and it would have been Catwoman all the way. I remember something feeling so off about dressing as an ass-kicking dude from an action flick. I was already failing desperately at that role in my real life; the last thing I needed was to highlight that fact on my favourite night of the year.

It’s slightly ironic that Halloween is my favourite holiday, since I don’t think I have ever really felt comfortable in any costume I’ve worn. In my younger years, I almost always wanted to be something I couldn’t. Whether it was Catwoman, or Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, or Winona Ryder in Heathers, or Bette Midler, things never really went the way I wanted. Luckily, costumes aren’t my favourite part of Halloween. It was never even the candy, although who doesn’t love a giant pillowcase filled with candy?
My love of Halloween has always been my lifelong passion for the macabre. I love Ouija boards, and seances, and witches, and horror movies. I read somewhere that the reason so many gay men love horror movies so much is because we somehow primally identify with the villains.
Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, all outcasts who take revenge on the ones who wronged them. I’m not too sure that theory tracks, or maybe I’m just scared to think too deeply about it. However, I will admit that in elementary school I invented a game called ‘Murder’, where all my friends (all girls, of course) and I would pretend to be guests on a luxury cruise ship, a role perfectly played by our school playground. All the girls would check-in to different rooms, then venture out to enjoy their fabulous vacations. And then I would slowly stalk around the ship and kill each one of them. Make of that what you will.

Anyway, back to costumes. As we all know, there comes a time when Halloween suddenly shifts from being about dressing up fun and scary, and becomes entirely about dressing up hot and slutty. Especially, and some might say necessarily, if you plan on ending up at the clerb.
Which is probably why I started throwing annual Halloween parties so that I didn’t ever have to end up at the club, since a strong mix of shame and body dysmorphia mixed with just a twist of toxic culturist kept me from ever wanting to try to be sexy on Halloween. Unfortunately, in my 20s, I still wasn’t comfortable dressing as Winona or Bette, and usually found myself scrambling to figure something out.
The one year I was convinced to go to the gay bar with my new boyfriend, I decided I’d be what I imagined would be some version of a Disney Prince, thinking it could still be funny while, maybe, hopefully, being slightly hot. What we ended up with was yellow tights, shiny pink bloomers, a puffy pirate shirt, and a terrible wig. And a tiara. Don’t ask me how it happened, but also maybe don’t decide to accessorize after you’ve already started drinking. All I know is I found myself wasted on a dance floor surrounded by hot cops and cowboys, wondering how long my lovely new relationship was going to last.
Another year, my bestie Amber and I decided to be Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. These costumes were actually great. But my one stipulation for wearing them was that we did not end up anywhere close to the club, especially not the gay club. Cut to us wasted at midnight waiting in a freezing cold line (this was Calgary, by the way), surrounded by half-naked twinks in angel wings. There are numerous pictures of the two of us from that night in the club, but something about wildly teased wigs and white makeup dripping down our drunken, sweaty faces in the flash of a camera didn’t really do anything for us. Especially while swimming in a sea of abs. Trust me. There are pictures that somehow simultaneously catch the glow of perfectly sculpted abdominal muscles next to the gaunt, ghostly face of sweaty 2am Sweeney Todd. At least the miserable look on my face perfectly matched the character. I went home alone that night.

I’ve always and will always love Halloween. But dressing up in costumes almost always kills me. Like a few years ago, when I had finally, for the first time, dedicated enough solid hours at the gym that I was starting to feel ok about my body for maybe the first time in my life. This was going to be my year. And I had the perfect costume idea that would show just a bit of skin and, maybe, finally get me in on slutty Halloween: Jesus Christ Superstar. So hot, right? (I’m not going to lie, the largely Broadway theme to many of my costumes didn’t really occur to me until I was writing this essay.) It was great. I had a gold glittered crown of thorns. I had glitter all over my beautiful, flowing Jesus wig. And I had a tiny slutty sheet draped around my body. I was feeling good. So good that it seemed like a great idea to smoke a big fat joint outside the big gay party before going in.
I apologize again to my boyfriend and friends who were there with me, since it was barely half an hour before I had a slight panic attack on the dancefloor after ruthlessly comparing myself to the countless ripped torsos around me. Sometimes the ghosts we thought we’d finally exorcised come back to haunt us at the worst times. Half an hour later, I was home on the couch eating poutine as glitter tears rolled down my face.
I guess if I look hard enough, I could find some sort of deeper truth to all of this. The way so much of my life has felt like wearing a costume that I don’t quite fully belong in. How much of my life I spent trying to hide myself behind masks that never really did their job the way I needed them to.
I spent years trying to be anything other than who I really was. Wanting to be fitter than I was. Butcher than I was. Constantly warring with my body and the way it didn’t conform to the standards of my culture, and the way that made me feel like an alien even amongst all the other aliens. And while it might seem like wearing a costume could be a great way of escaping all of this, spending one fabulous night a year getting the chance to be somebody else, ironically, somehow, it has always felt like wearing costumes only ever exposed the parts of myself I was trying to hide.

Luckily one of the gifts of getting older is that the feeling of needing to be something other than me has started to ease up, the edges of my self-criticism slowly wilting away. Finally, it feels like all the roles I’ve played and costumes I’ve tried on in my life have started mattering much less than the fabulous little gay boy buried underneath it all.
So, maybe this year I’ll do something different for Halloween. Maybe this year I’ll be courageous and finally be the one thing I’ve always been the most scared to be… Mr. Mistoffelees.

Season of the Witch: Randy’s Story

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Me and my husband Drew, our son Jack, and our pets live in an old house that’s over 100 years old. It’s in a nice neighbourhood on the west side of Vancouver, which is home to most of the Jewish folks that live in our city. We once had a conversation with someone who had knowledge of the neighbourhood’s past, and they told us that they believed that many years back, our house was home to the area’s Orthodox Jewish butcher. This is notable because the highly-observant, Orthodox, meat-carving spirit might not take kindly to their ex-home being occupied by an atheist and a converted Jew, who are both gay and vegetarian. So, if our guess was correct that there was a minor haunting in our home, we likely had one pissed-off and resentful ghost.

In the first years in our house, we noticed odd things. One morning, I walked into the kitchen and the heavy, leaded glass light fixture over the counter was swinging. It was winter and the windows were closed, so there was no breeze. Everyone else in the house was asleep, including the pets.
On another day, Drew was in the basement and heard the dog’s footsteps in the TV room next door to where he was. He then heard the sound of the sofa springs as Charlie got up on the couch and curled up. He called out to her and, strangely, he heard her bark from upstairs. Then she came running downstairs to where he was (and where the demon on our couch was, apparently).
Things kept being odd. When I was taking down a thick wall that separated the kitchen from the living room, we noticed that the insides of the wall were covered in large scratch marks that looked to have come from an animal but were much too large to be attributed to a rat or a mouse. 
Over the years, we have had many, many things go missing (of course, this could possibly be due to the fact that we are fairly messy people and that our haunted house is where clutter usually goes to die). But still, many things are still missing years later.
Then, our neighbour from across the street told us they witnessed what looked like a solitary female standing still in our front yard at 4AM, staring at our house for quite a while, Blair Witch Project style. 

With no hints or direction from us, a friend who claims to have a connection to otherworldly forces has pinpointed a space in our house that had odd and creepy vibes. This is a room in our basement that always feels significantly colder than other rooms down there and has a door that doesn’t seem to stay closed, no matter how often we close it. Being lovers of scary movies, we had recently watched the movie Paranormal Activity, and were 82% sure the demon from that was living in that basement room.

The incidents that we had noticed had been amusing and only slightly creepy… That is, until 2015, when one bad thing after another seemed to happen to me, and my life went completely to shit. I needed someone to blame, so I figured it must be the uninvited guest in our home. You know, the demon from the movie Paranormal Activity.
Given my work and career issues, money problems, parenting struggles, and extreme self-doubt, I felt like I was cursed, and it was going to take multiple appointments with my longtime psychologist, a medication review, and additional self-examination to get myself out of the deep hole I found myself in. And, of course, significant sage smudging and a house exorcism administered by a flaky but entertaining specialist who had long grey hair and carried a tie-die backpack and a cloth bag of candles. You know, a good, science-based mental-health plan.

We went out and bought a bundle of dried sage. We lit it up, blew out the flame and the smoke from it smudged that old house within a centimetre of its life. The potent smell of the dried herb permeated our nostrils and every corner of every room. And then the specialist did their work as well. With eyes closed, mumbling to themselves and reeking of patchouli, they went about supposedly ridding our home of spirits who were annoying, occasionally frightening, and about as welcome at our place as a right-wing Albertan who wanted to discuss book banning and their views on the validity of medical vaccines.

Over time, things normalized. The sun came out. My outlook improved. I was able to see clearly that things were not nearly as grim as they seemed. It was a huge relief. It might have been the meds, maybe the time with my psychologist, but likely just that things got better all around. It probably wasn’t the smudging and the exorcism. If our guest is still cohabitating, it seems like maybe they’ve found a way to be cool, have stopped the annoying behaviour, and have remembered that they’re staying in our gay vegetarian home rent-free.

Having said that, over 20 of our forks have gone missing in the last few months. It could be lingering supernatural activity, but it’s more likely the fact that our teenage son continues to be not great at putting dirty dishes away.

On December 31 of the year in question, as a precautionary measure, I took the calendar that had hung in our kitchen all year, put it in a wheelbarrow in our backyard, and lit it on fire. It was fairly therapeutic to watch the damned thing burn.

Summer Loving: Camille’s Story

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This is not your typical steamy summer romance (although trust me, I have tried). My story is more of a love letter. A love letter not to a person, but to a place. This place. Vancouver.And it’s a story that spans almost two decades, from my first visit as a first grader to my moving here just last summer. If you have watched The Summer I Turned Pretty, this is kind of like that. But queer. And hopefully, with better writing. Do it for the plot, as they say.

Now, I haven’t done this sort of thing since university so I’m a little out of practice. In this essay I will… no, I’m just kidding.

A little bit of context. Like some of you, I am not originally from here. I grew up in Belgium. I went to catholic school, sang in the church choir, etc, etc. I can confirm that the catholic school to queer pipeline is real.
And don’t get me wrong, my love for Vancouver is not the same as dislike for Belgium. I love it there and I’m proud to be from there. I talk about it pretty much all the time. The people I miss, the food, the history, and culture. The fact that Belgium was the second country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003. And yet it’s a perfect example of how different legislation can feel to daily life.
Because. Growing up there for me also meant growing up with a lot of baggage. I lived and went to school with mostly white, cisgender, straight, conservative people. My home life was a crash course in emotional survival. This and other factors made it feel like I was keeping more and more inside as the years went by. Naturally averse to any type of confrontation, I kept my head down, twisted and bent myself so I wouldn’t cause any waves, trying not to catch any attention. It was a survival strategy, something I wasn’t always aware I was doing, but, over time, it shrinks you.
Now, it’s not like Belgium doesn’t have queer people. Trust me, as someone who got a liberal arts degree, sometimes it feels like I have met most of them. And although I attended university with plenty of rainbow merch and queer friends, sometimes it still felt like I was playing a part. My real, true, queer self was starting to make appearances, before I commuted back home at the end of the day and faded into that washed-out version of myself again. I was learning how to use non-binary pronouns in French and then going home to hear how queer people shouldn’t make such a spectacle of themselves.

Something I have left out until now is that me and my sister were lucky enough to spend many summers here in Vancouver while growing up. Something I definitely did not understand or appreciate while it was happening. Why was I being shipped off to the other side of the world every summer to be with people I hardly knew or understood? Why did I have to leave my home, my friends, my language, and everything that was familiar to me? Weirdly enough, these are some of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood and adolescence. They say you can’t remember an actual emotion, only the memory that feeling left behind. Maybe that is why summers in Vancouver are so bright, painted in colorful emotions, happy, sad, and angry. Because there was a lot of anger. There were a lot of tears. But at times, I was also happy.

I had a lot of firsts here:
This is where, as an angry tween in the middle of summer, I watched my first pride parade. Right on Robson Street. I did not know what was happening; I just remember it being loud and bright and colorful.
When I was a little bit older, Vancouver is where I had first dates, best dates. Most memorably the girl who planned a walking date to visit the best independent bookstores in the downtown area. For someone with a literature degree, that’s about as hot as it gets.
I spontaneously booked a walking tour called “The Really Gay History Tour,” diving into the queer history of this city. And I felt it. A hum, a buzz, whatever you want to call it. Something small, brave, vulnerable sitting in my chest, making its presence known. This place felt good, right.

Deciding to move here was not intentionally something I chose to do for myself. It made sense for a bunch of boring legal reasons and like many, I was a bit adrift after finishing university. What do you mean there isn’t anything I’m working towards over the next 4 years? I made the choice, initially for a year, to be closer to my sister, who had been living here for years. Probably the least problematic relationship I have in my life, the person who I have leaned on (sometimes a little too much) since we were 2 lost kids in this city. It was a risk. Once again, I was leaving my home, my friends, everything I knew, but this time it was my own choice, and it was for longer. But even though I was comfortable there, I was still clenching. I was myself, but I could still feel myself purposely not taking up space at times.

So. Since I recently passed my 1-year anniversary of moving here (or my Vaniversary, as I like to call it), I thought it made sense to do a little performance review.

After many many, many job applications, I started working at what I am convinced is the queerest workplace in the greater Vancouver area. If our queer staff members were given the day off for Pride, there would be no one left to keep the place running. The people I have met there, dare I say the friends I have made there, mean more to my little gay heart than I can express.
I have also joined a queer fitness class (yes, that is a thing, and I could not recommend it more). After a fun night out dancing at The Birdhouse, I woke up the next day not with a hangover, but with a hangover and my lower back in spasm. This queer cardio class, pitched to me as “gay line dancing,” seemed like a smart solution and has led to another first. My first time actively, loudly, proudly participating in a pride event earlier this summer.
It definitely hasn’t always been easy, though. In the past year, I have experienced more than one type of heartbreak here. The distance and space have given me a lot, but they have also taken things from me. Missing out on friends’ important life events, not getting the chance to say a final goodbye. Sometimes I feel like I am living a parallel life. It is so hard to fight the urge to regress into who I used to be when my old life comes knocking.

But. There is one memory that I keep going back to. It was August 2024, right after I moved. I packed my book and towel and biked on one of the crappy Mobi bikes to sit at English Bay Beach. The pride parade was going by. I watched the colours. The sun was shining. I could hear the waves on the beach and felt the wind on my face. This memory is so warm and bright in my mind, because I felt so… peaceful. And even though I had no idea what was coming in the year ahead, I felt I could finally, truly exhale.

Summer Loving: Luis’ Story

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This is a story about my on-and-off love affair with, metaphorically, the beach, open waters, and the sea. 

My first ever date was in the first post COVID summer, in coastal Victoria.
I ventured out to meet a guy I met online. Through text, he was emotionally available and aware he was avoidant. The hot beach day was the perfect environment to bring any incompatibilities to the surface; looking back, I realize how the sound of crashing waves was a beautiful, soothing sound, but being caught underwater as the currents break was not. Almost immediately, we were in an anxious-avoidant trap, and it would take me two years’ worth of poems, and counting, to learn how to love myself enough to not go into steep shorelines unprepared.

After that, my longest ever relationship, although it is best defined as a situationship, was here in Vancouver with a guy I used to say was the sea, Poseidon himself. If I went with the flow, I had a wonderful time; the best dates, though technically  hangouts, were trips to the beach. Blissful sunny happiness quickly clouded by my capacity to receive love that did not come with any strings attached, and unfortunately, without this clarity of what I needed, intention, I was once again in an anxious trap. A strong cycle manifesting itself like a lunar calendar. Fortunately, through poetry I was able to capture and reflect on the push and pull of the tide through this period of my life, and wonder where and why I was repeating it. Similar to the erred myth that the Aztec calendar was believed to foretell the end of the world, and not that the Aztecs were resetting their seasons, this loop of breakups and reconciliations revealed itself at the beach on January 1st: 

In 2012, my cousins and I went into the sea. 
Before we realized, the high tide took us away. 
We tried to swim as we screamed mayday,
I split from my cousins and tried to get help, 
We all got away, but not the fear that I felt.

I don’t trust the sea like before, 
my sandcastle falls when a wave knocks on the door. 
My comfort zone lays in more stable terrains
I even ask friends to play the water levels in videogames. 
So you could say I am afraid of the sea,
Because I wouldn’t be able to blame it for drowning me. 

The sea did not try to kill us, we ventured too far. 
The sea does not have a memory, we remember the scar. 
The sea will drown you if you let it be guide, 
The sea behaves in a pull and push of the tide. 
I compared you and the sea, and now I don’t know what to do with this commentary. 

Let me offer my hand and help you down from the pedestal, 
Take a hammer to the columns and pipes and let the water flood my skeletal. 
I lean towards the synchronicity:
It’s the color blue that beacons to me. 
The blue in your eyes, or the blue in your name, 
Or the blue in the way you move. 

I want to get out of the water, but I don’t know how.
Question the trail dripping from my body, 
Wonder:
If it was an emotionally aggressive father, no, 
If it’s how I process emotion and choose a path to follow, no, 
If it’s how my Mexican blood reacts like oil to Canadian waters, no,
else trying to heal every other part of me when the pipes in my sandcastle are spilling water, yes.

This life isn’t sustainable. 
You can’t heal personality. 
I’m never in reach of the perfect standard of healing every single part of me.
How many rooms do I split myself into before I forget where every part went initially? 

In this new layout of my castle, where do I fit your memory?
The thought makes the tide in my mind go red, I’ve ventured too far. 
I can reason the sea’s behaviour but not a man’s vocabulary.
For that ethical ambiguity, I have no vacancy.
Not for the men I am unsure if I even “dated”, 
or whatever definition fits from your dictionary.
Not for those whose banter belittle me, 
Make a joke out of me and try to convince me it’s funny. 
Not for the men who cross my boundary, 
And dare to say the walls of my castle are imaginary. 

It’s through time, in each wave that hits the sand. 
That the sea and sand bank resemble each other’s hand.
I lose sight of what works for me and start becoming part of a narrative
That exists only in your mind and what I twist into poetry. 

Only when I focus on what I felt
not what you said does the tide relax.
I know I’ll put the memories, the good ones left,
Not in the sea or the places we spent time in, 
But in a brand new room.
Of people I rode the bus with, whom 
I flirted like we were strangers, 
driving away from Wreck beach, away from the currents and dangers.

Destined to get at different stops.
Dead calm waves, the high tide drops.

The idea that a place can have revealing properties is not a new one. In The Exterminating Angel, by Luis Bunuel, dinner party attendees become trapped in a sociological limbo that eventually reveals all their secrets and unravels their relationships. Robert Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, Prime Video’s Yellowjackets, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, break and rebuild social hierarchies after crew and travellers are castawayed. 

I’ve gone to the beach alone, with friends, family too, and have found similar results: an exposition of ideals and compatibility. Do you go to the beach with people who leave trash behind? Do you? How comfortable are they seeing their and other people’s bodies? How comfortable are you? Is their job really “beach” and are they qualified for it? Are you? Do they go to the beach only during summer? Do you?

I love that poetry, like the sandy coast, is as much an external as an internal space. Privacy shared publicly coexists with the secret agenda of knowing, being “in” on personal intimacy of a shared story. Being caught naked or seen in your underwear has a different moral weight than being seen at a beach wearing a range of birthday or bathing suits.

After spending the last day of Vancouver Pride weekend at Oasis in Wreck Beach with a diverse, safe, stable group of friends, I wrote about these conclusions in a poem called The beach:

I love the smell of sunscreen, sand, coconut oil;
Touch hungry, I’m picky as to who I ask for help. 
At a shy distance from the ocean, water, turmoil,
I’ve learnt going to the beach’s Reckoning itself,

Of what is not said but felt: interpersonal health.
Here, where there’s not much to do but connect
We watch, talk, listen, or that’s what I’d expect,
We wear our comfort levels, habits, our neglect:

Wreck/Jurassic/Oasis, SPF, over, under dressed.
By the coastline, waves flirt with the sandbank. 
A touch, a kiss here and there, a look at a chest,
A drift, a rip current wipes the shore prints blank,

Washed it away. Replaced by beautiful patterns.
The tide’s intention revealed in the rill and ripple:
It is Nature, to mix below the surface, “we” aren’t
But an undertow of elements chasing currents is.

As in, not ideal, life at the beach. I’m sunburnt
From a Sun’s hand, the Moon takes over control,
Rising and setting the pace of the ebb and soul.
I head home to myself, entirely made up of sand.

Today, as I visit familiar or new beaches, I am more aware of my qualities and needs, because I’ve been to the beach and continuously see how anxious, shy, body-dysmorphic, sexy, creative, secure I and others can be. 
Today, firstly, I know myself and get a life jacket for open waters, wear a speedo and SPF 50, and trust I am capable of swimming… for survival, probably not for recreation. 
Today, if I am curious about the health of my relationships, with myself or with somebody else, I go to the beach.