OutWrite 2020 - Metro Weekly - July 30, 2020

Contents

JULY 30, 2020

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Volume 27 Issue 12

DISARMING JOURNEY

The documentary Disarm Hate follows the emotional journey of nine LGBTQ activists on their way to an anti-gun rally.

By John Riley

VIRTUAL WORDPLAY

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OutWrite opens a new chapter to mark the LGBTQ literary festival’s 10th anniversary with an online-only event.

By Doug Rule

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FOLK CITY

Taylor Swift’s surprise quarantine release Folklore tries on an entirely new style for size.

By Sean Maunier

OUT ON THE TOWN p.5 SPOTLIGHT: TOP TO BOTTOM p.11 THE FEED: TOP TRUMP p.13 HOOKUP HANG-UPS p.14 POLICE HATE p.15 STOPPING STIGMA p.16 HATE SPEECH p.17 CRUEL CRITIQUE p.18 TROUBLESOME TEACHING p.19 INCLUSIVE STREAMING p.20 GALLERY: DEGAS AT THE OPÉRA p.40 FILM: SUMMERLAND p.43 RETROSCENE p.47 LAST WORD p.51 Washington, D.C.’s Best LGBTQ Magazine for 26 Years Editorial Editor-in-Chief Randy Shulman Art Director Todd Franson Online Editor at metroweekly.com Rhuaridh Marr Senior Editor John Riley Contributing Editors André Hereford, Doug Rule Senior Photographers Ward Morrison, Julian Vankim Contributing Illustrators David Amoroso, Scott G. Brooks Contributing Writers Sean Maunier, Kate Wingfield Webmaster David Uy Production Assistant Julian Vankim Sales & Marketing Publisher Randy Shulman National Advertising Representative Rivendell Media Co. 212-242-6863 Distribution Manager Dennis Havrilla Patron Saint Emily Dickinson & Marcel Proust Cover Illustration Stmool - Shutterstock During the pandemic please send all mail to: Metro Weekly PO Box 11559 - Washington, D.C. 20008 • 202-638-6830 All material appearing in Metro Weekly is protected by federal copyright law and may not be reproduced in whole or part without the permission of the publishers. Metro Weekly assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials submitted for publication. All such submissions are subject to editing and will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Metro Weekly is supported by many fine advertisers, but we cannot accept responsibility for claims made by advertisers, nor can we accept responsibility for materials provided by advertisers or their agents. Publication of the name or photograph of any person or organization in articles or advertising in Metro Weekly is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual orientation of such person or organization.

© 2020 Jansi LLC.

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Out On The Town

LP

Compiled by Doug Rule BROADWAY BARES: ZOOM IN

Founded by Tony Award-winning director Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots), Broadway Bares, the signature striptease show of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, has long been one of the annual highlights of every Broadway season. With the 30th anniversary celebration postponed until 2021, this year will instead usher in a first-ever online version of the event. The livestream will feature a mix of new material, including performances that promise “to make social distancing sexy” and appearances by special celebrity guests, as well as old favorite numbers from past editions. Although free to watch, donations are welcome, with collected funds supporting the organization and its work helping theater professionals across the country who have been affected

by HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and other critical illnesses. The past 29 shows have collectively raised more than $21.2 million. A portion of this year’s donations will also benefit organizations focused on social justice and anti-racism. Saturday, Aug. 1, starting at 9:30 p.m. Visit www.broadwaybares.com.

LP

Known by her initials, lesbian rocker Laura Pergolizzi will perform her brand-new single “The One That You Love” as part of a concert featuring other new tunes and fan favorites, all captured in a multi-camera HD video, 80-audio-channel recording to be livestreamed from The Beehive in L.A. Accompanied by her band, the show is expected to be the singer-songwriter’s only full-production concert in 2020 — a year in which LP was originally set to embark on an extensive tour of spring and summer shows, many in larger venues reflecting her growing profile and popularity — including a return to D.C. with a debut at The Anthem. LP sings in a snarled, full-throated voice that eerily echoes Gwen Stefani’s. Musically and lyrically, however, she is more rooted in the sincere and passionate style of argu-

John Cleese

Cuba Libre’s To-Go Cocktails and Paella

ably two of her greatest influences, Janis Joplin and Melissa Etheridge. LP’s repertoire is peppered with power ballads of a candidly honest autobiographical nature that generate real heat.

Ticketholders will have the opportunity to record how they sound cheering for LP, with all submitted audio files set to be mixed together to emulate a “global virtual crowd,” expected to be heard repeatedly throughout the livestream. Saturday, Aug. 1, at 4 p.m. Tickets are $20, while VIP packages range from $50 to $85. A percentage of proceeds will benefit the National Black Justice Coalition. Visit https://lp.veeps.com.

JOHN CLEESE: WHY THERE IS NO HOPE

John Cleese is co-founder of internationally acclaimed comedy troupe Monty Python, co-creator and star of popular British sitcom Fawlty Towers, and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and star of A Fish Called Wanda, to cite three of his best-known credits. Next up from the 80-year-old comedy legend is Why There Is No Hope, a one-man show promoted as “a hilarious and insightful show” in which Cleese shares his dire assessment about the state and future of our planet. Yet it’s hardly all doom and gloom, with Cleese teasing in the official press release, “I shall also be singing a short selection of Peruvian burial ditties.”

Described as part-lecture, part-stand-up comedy, the show will be livestreamed from a concert hall in Toronto and will conclude with a Q&A hosted by Cleese’s daughter and fellow comedian, Camilla Cleese. Sunday, Aug. 2, at 3 p.m. Tickets are $19.99, including the livestream and two-day access to the recording.

Visit www.johncleese-uniquelives.com.

CUBA LIBRE’S PATIO PARKLET

It opened 10 years ago offering an “escape to Havana,” if only for a couple of hours. Now D.C.’s Cuba Libre Restaurant & Rum Bar has reopened with an expanded mission that Barry Gutin, its principal and co-owner, describes as one also offering “an escape from the ongoing ‘stay-at-home’ routine.” The escape is possible JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Victura Park

in part due to the restaurant having expanded its outdoor footprint for the next few months through the conversion of a parking lane into a sizable open-air dining area reminiscent of what you might find in Havana or Little Havana, and in ways that go beyond the menu from Chef Guillermo Pernot, a two-time James Beard Award-winner. Think large shade umbrellas, lush tropical foliage, even sweltering, tropical-like humidity. The pop-up patio parklet expands the restaurant’s sidewalk patio, allowing room for 80 socially distanced guests to dine al fresco at any given time.

(Naturally, the restaurant has also enhanced its health and safety measures, from spacing out the tables in its main dining area, to a policy of enhanced cleaning and disinfecting handled by specially outfitted “desinfectators,” to radar-powered temperature checks of guests, employees, and delivery drivers upon arrival.)

The Cuban hotspot has further relaunched its popular weekend brunch offerings with the debut of new specials (all priced at $16 each), including Tortilla de Cangrejo, a three-egg omelette with lump crabmeat, asparagus, and manchego cheese and served with tomato hollandaise, baby spinach salad, and strawberries; Huevos a la Habanera, three eggs poached in a tomato and sweet pepper “Creole” sauce and sprinkled with goat cheese crumbles and served with a “media noche” sandwich of ham, pork loin, Swiss cheese, and pickles; and Torrija, vanilla custard-soaked brioche bread served with smoked bacon, poached egg, and panela-maple syrup hollandaise. Wash it all down with several featured cocktails ($6 to $9 each), such as a Tropical Mimosa with cava and your choice of tropical juice, and a Guava Caipirinha, a mix of Licor Beirão, guava purée, guarapo, and fresh lime juice.

Brunch is available for in-house and al fresco dining as well as curbside pickup every Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

Cuba Libre is at 801 9th St. NW Call 202-408-1600 or visit www. cubalibrerestaurant.com.

VICTURA PARK CAFE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER

While the main building and all theater spaces of the Kennedy Center remain closed, the institution is capitalizing on the expansive, gorgeously landscaped outdoor area overlooking the Potomac River unveiled last year to great fanfare. Specifically, the Kennedy Center has turned the area outside the River Pavilion in the REACH into a pop-up wine garden and café, complete with shade umbrellas and picnic and café tables spaced apart at appropriate social distances, plus the opportunity to spread out a blanket on the grass for a picnic. Named Victura Park, the pop-up is a partnership between the Hilton Brothers (Gibson, Brixton, El Rey) and chef Erik Bruner-Yang (Maketto, Brothers 6

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National Museum of Women in the Arts

and Sisters, ABC Pony) and features a limited, standard-priced selection of wine, beer, hard seltzer, and cocktails — with the exception of Gibson Punch, a mix of Bombay gin, Bulleit bourbon, and St. Germain liqueur topped with raspberry and lemon that is served for two and priced at $24. The lite fare-focused food menu offers a Charcuterie & Cheese Board, two kinds of subs, marinated olives, and Fattoush Salad, plus seasonal fruit and ice cream. Victura Park is open Fridays from 3 to 10 p.m., Saturdays from noon to 10 p.m., and Sundays noon to 8 p.m. through the remainder of summer. Visit www.victuraparkdc.com.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Another museum joining the re-opening ranks this weekend is one that bills itself as “the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts.” The National Museum of Women in the Arts will cap the number of daily visitors to its grand downtown edifice to 200, with timed-entry tickets available for purchase in advance. Once granted admission, mask-wearing guests will be able to see and explore all of the museum’s exhibitions, installations, and artworks on display — including the Spotlight Installation Return to Nature, a showcase of modern and contemporary photographs by women who played integral although often ignored roles in advancing the field of nature photography; Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico, a temporary exhibition extended to Aug. 23, featuring poetic and intensely beautiful photographs capturing the rich and varied cultures of the artist’s homeland; and the New York Avenue Sculpture Project’s display of four totemic structures made using rubber tires by Mexico City-based artist Betsabeé Romero, whose intricate sculptures also incorporate interior lighting, giving each piece an otherworldly glow after dark.

Re-opening day is Saturday, Aug. 1, at 10 a.m. The museum is located at 250 New York Ave. NW. Admission is $10. Call 202783-5000 or visit www.nmwa.org.

GLENSTONE MUSEUM REOPENS ITS PAVILIONS

A museum of modern and contemporary art integrated into nearly 300 acres of gently rolling pasture and woodland near Potomac in Maryland’s Montgomery County, the Glenstone Museum reopened a few weeks back, allowing guests to visit the outdoor sculptures set up throughout the property, including Jeff Koons’ Split-Rocker 2000 and Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s FOREST (for a thousand years…) 2012. But last week, the museum started letting visitors back into the exhibitions and indoor art spaces in the Pavilions, as well as the

Gallery Underground

Water Court in the center of the building. On display are single-artist installations by Lawrence Weiner, Ellsworth Kelly, On Kawara, Robert Gober, Michael Heizer, Shirin Neshat, Charles Ray, Roni Horn, Brice Marden, Cy Twombly, and Lorna Simpson. (Still closed are the Gallery, the Café, the Patio, and the Environmental Center.) Visits require advanced booking, generally three months in advance — with tickets in the month of October becoming available on a first-come, first-granted basis starting Saturday, Aug. 1. Hours are Thursdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Glenstone is located at 12002 Glen Road, Potomac, Md. Call 301-983-5001 or visit www.glenstone.org.

UNLEASHED AT GALLERY UNDERGROUND

A gallery in Northern Virginia has unleashed a new exhibition featuring works of art from all over the country and representing a variety of media — yet all touch, in some way — whether literally or figuratively — on the notion of something being “unleashed.” To participate in this National Juried Exhibition, overseen by Joseph Toole, artists were asked to submit works created with a specific definition of “unleashed” top of mind — “to free from or as if from a leash; let loose; or to throw, shoot, or set in motion forcefully.” Toole’s top picks among the many resulting works of art, expressed using painting, photography, glass, fiber art, and mixed media, feature in the latest monthlong exhibition at the Focus Gallery of Gallery Underground, the visual arts space for the Arlington Artists Alliance and part of Crystal City’s Art Underground. Opens on Saturday, Aug. 1.

On display through Aug. 31. Call 571-483-0652 or visit www. galleryunderground.org.

NATIONAL ZOO REOPENS

Because it offers a largely open-air experience, the National Zoo has become the first in the Smithsonian collection of museums to reopen in the wake of COVID-19. Yet unlike prior visits, you can’t just pop in to the urban getaway on a whim or wander around freely and at will. While access to the park remains free, timed-entry passes are required to visit during current limited daytime hours, with admittance capped at 5,000 guests per day — or a fraction of the 25,000 guests the zoo typically averages this time of year. While all the usual residents are present and accounted for, certain exhibits remain closed to the public, including the Small Mammal House, the Reptile Discovery Center, Amazonia, and, last but hardly least, the Giant Panda House — although the upper overlook and outdoor path is open, offering views of the bears if and when they decide to

Talking to Our Time: AA Bronson and Adrian Stimson

frolic outdoors (something most likely to happen before 10 a.m., according to zoo officials). Elephants, cheetahs, apes, and wild cats are among the animals most likely to be seen. Meanwhile, all human guests in the park above the age of six are required to wear face masks, follow safety guidelines indicated by signs and markers, and practice appropriate social distancing. Although kid-centric attractions from the playgrounds to the carousel are closed, the Visitor Center, outdoor gift shop kiosks, food stands and food trucks, and select bathrooms will be open and operating as usual, plus the addition of more frequent Enhanced Cleaning procedures and the placement of hand-sanitizing stations throughout the park as well. The National Zoo is currently open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and located at 3001 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free timed-entry pass, or $30 paid parking pass, required.

Call 202-633-4800 or visit www.nationalzoo.si.edu.

TALKING TO OUR TIME

The Hirshhorn National Museum of Modern Art has launched a series of free conversations with several of today’s leading artistic innovators exploring ideas shaping 2lst-century culture.

“Talking to Our Time” features a different creative each week in an online discussion with a Hirshhorn curator, styled as an expansion of the museum’s popular in-person artist talks with the potential for far greater reach and global impact. Upcoming highlights in the series, which continues every Wednesday through Labor Day, include “(At Home) On Art and Community: Artist Talk with Aliza Nisenbaum,” a Mexican-born artist known for community-based, intimate portraits, often of fellow immigrants, including Mis Cuatro Gracias (Brendan, Camilo, Carlos, Jorge)(“The Four Graces”),” a painting, recently added to the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection, exploring themes of body awareness, queerness, and social inclusion (Aug. 5, at 8 p.m.); “(At Home) On Art and Healing: AA Bronson and Adrian Stimson,” two LGBTQ-identified artists whose collaborative installations explore the role that art can play in conflict resolution, healing, and relationship building (Aug. 19, at 2 p.m.); and “(At Home) Artist Talk with Doug Aitken,” the multi-media artist whose genre-defying installations — including SONG 1, the acclaimed 2012 site-specific work that turned the Hirshhorn’s exterior into a 360-degree audiovisual spectacle — are generally rooted in the interchange between art and artistic expression with the world around us (Aug. 26, at 2 p.m.). Each discussion, taking place on Zoom and requiring advanced registration, will be recorded and posted to the Hirshhorn’s YouTube channel.

Through Sept. 2. Visit www.hirshhorn.si.edu.

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Spotlight

Disarming Journey

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The documentary Disarm Hate follows the emotional journey of nine LGBTQ activists on their way to an anti-gun rally.

WOULD LOVE TO TAKE CREDIT FOR WHAT HAP- neys of the traveling activists, who squabble, laugh, cry, and pened on the road to the Disarm Hate rally, but I can- even fall in love over the course of their trip. It also examines not,” says Julianna Brudek, the director of Disarm Hate. counterpoints to their calls for gun reform from a pro-gun Narrated by Harvey Fierstein, the documentary follows nine perspective, as they visit a shooting range and engage with a LGBTQ activists who embark on a cross-country road trip member of the Pink Pistols, a pro-gun LGBTQ group. from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. to attend a rally opposPerhaps most gripping are the stops at places where LGBTQ ing gun violence in the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub individuals fell victim to gun violence, from a campground massacre in Orlando. Travelling in an RV during a sweltering in the woods of Pennsylvania, to a deserted stretch of road in summer, the group engages in emotional, sometimes heated Memphis, to a gay bar in Roanoke, Virginia. discussions touching on identity, fractures “I would not tell them where we were going Click Here to within the LGBTQ community, and the trauuntil the moments before they had to exit the ma each has experienced as part of their Watch the Trailer RV,” Brudek says. “So what you’re seeing is coming out experience. The conversations them processing the weight and the gravity are raw, honest, and even, at times, confrontational, as the of the situation in live time. It was like, ‘Here we are. Tell us activists try to suss out their relationships with one another, what you’re thinking.’ And we’re getting the authenticity of their place within the LGBTQ community, and their feelings that pain.” around gun violence and firearms restrictions.

The experience of filming, and seeing the issues raised by “Being in that RV, I learned so much,” Brudek says. “I was her subjects, not only made Brudek a more passionate supportput into those situations with two other cameramen, and some- er of gun reform, but also a better, more dedicated, and more times we were smooshed together and nobody could breathe. informed LGBTQ activist.

It smelled like rotting kimchi because the refrigerator broke “The idea that we are ‘free’ as an LGBT community, and that the first day. Because we had nowhere else to go, we had to sit once we got gay marriage our activism is done, these are ideas in these uncomfortable feelings. But because of this feeling of we have to fight against. And after this film, the one takeaway claustrophobia, this forced intimacy, conversations happened.” for me is that I will be relentless and vigilant. We have to keep The documentary successfully probes the emotional jour- fighting. We cannot let our guard down.” —John Riley Disarm Hate is available on Amazon Prime Video, FandangoNOW, Vudu and other services. Visit www.ruggedentertainment.com.

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Spotlight

Top to Bottom Tim Zientek’s The First: A Web Series offers a sexy, soulful take on two men falling in love.

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TRUE ROMANTIC NEVER FORGETS THEIR debuted on YouTube in May, one of an exciting crop of first, and writer-director Tim Zientek remembers queer-themed web series — from the Emmy-nominated trans exactly the series that made him fall in love with drama King Ester to the upcoming sexually fluid romance television. “I was so obsessed with Buffy as a kid,” Zientek Platonic — that viewers can stream for free on the platform. recalls. “I'm sure my family could tell many a story of me Zientek, currently a writer on the much-anticipated upcomlocked in my bedroom or in the basement, being like, ‘No one ing Netflix animated comedy Q-Force, a spy adventure stardisturb me. I have to watch Buffy.’ It was like a sacred expe- ring Sean Hayes as a gay secret agent, wrote The First “from rience. I think as a younger gay man — or coming to terms, my own experience and from my friends' experiences — I because I wasn't out at that point — it just spoke to me on know what it's like for two men to fall in love for the first such a level and made me feel okay with who I was.” time, and all that comes with that.”

That inspiration helped propel Zientek from his bedroom In Will and Leo’s case, all that comes with love, sex, and in Lisle, Illinois to Boston’s Emerson College, where the commitment includes working out their respective positions main draw for him “was that you could major in specifically on... well, positions. “I think one of the things that's harder writing for TV,” he says. “It wasn't just a bigger, broader for us gays,” he says, “is that you could potentially fall in love thing, but you could get very specific. And since I knew what with someone, and you could both be bottoms or you could I wanted, I was like, that's exactly what I want.” both be tops.”

Knowing what you want and communicating that desire Zientek wanted to address the topic because he hadn’t clearly is a central theme of Zientek’s first seen it done, “except as an easy joke. But it Click Here to major creation, The First: A Web Series, a is something that can affect a relationship bold but sweet love story told in six episodes.

Watch “The First” entirely. And I wanted to delve into that. I Charles Curtis Sanders and Will Branske star was like, how has this not been made? I want as Leo and Will, an interracial couple of young, gay Angelenos to make it.” He’s not so sure about making a second season of who fall truly, madly, and deeply for each other, but still might The First. “I feel like this story, in my mind, is complete. It's not be able to solve their issues of sexual incompatibility. this circle of what I wanted to put out there. But you never say Offering a fresh look at a familiar subject, the series never.” —André Hereford The First: A Web Series is available for streaming on Youtube, or visit www.thefirstwebseries.com.

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MARY TRUMP: PETER SERLING FOR SIMON AND SCHUSTER / DONALD TRUMP: GAGE SKIDMORE

theFeed

Top Trump

caption

LGBTQ people make Donald Trump “uncomfortable” claims lesbian niece. By Rhuaridh Marr

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ONALD TRUMP’S LESBIAN NIECE CLAIMS THAT the president is “uncomfortable” around gay and transgender people and said he’s not an “ally” of the community, as some have claimed. Speaking to The Advocate, Mary Trump also slammed Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military, calling it “disgusting,” and said it was “absurd” that her uncle believed gay people liked him.

Trump tore apart any notion that Donald Trump is an ally to the LGBTQ community during the interview — something he has previously touted, including during the 2016 campaign, where he claimed he would be a better “friend” to LGBTQ people than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Asked about Donald Trump’s claims that gay people “love” him, Mary Trump told The Advocate that it was “absurd.”

“It’s just absurd,” Trump said. “What’s worse [is] that on some level, he’s actually convinced himself that that is true. Anyone who takes that seriously should be discounted out of hand.”

Trump also tore into White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who last week praised Donald Trump’s “great record” with the LGBTQ community while ignoring his ban on transgender service members.

“First of all, that woman hasn’t told the truth since her very first appearance,” Trump said, adding, “It’s grotesque to me that the American taxpayer pays her salary, and all she does is lie to them.”

She then claimed that her uncle is “uncomfortable” around LGBTQ people.

“I think gay people make him [Trump] uncomfortable with male homosexuality. He’s like guys with no self-awareness,” she said. “And trans people make him uncomfortable because he’s uncomfortable with anyone that’s different. And that includes differently-abled, different color of skin, and different beliefs.”

Pivoting back to McEnany’s assertion of a “great record,” Trump said, “I really don’t think gay issues occupy any of his attention, but how McEnany could say that with a straight face, knowing that one of the very first things he did, without consulting anybody, was to kick trans people out of the armed services.

It’s disgusting.

“He’s not [an] ally of the gay community, or really any community for that matter,” she continued. “Donald doesn’t have any concern or beliefs beyond his own self-interest. His enablers tell him to enact a certain policy, and he’ll do it. He doesn’t care.”

Trump also needled Log Cabin Republicans, saying she has “never understood” the conservative LGBTQ organization.

“There is a significant minority of people in this country who are comfortable voting against their own self-interest, whether it’s their sexuality, race, or economic status,” she said. “It’s really astonishing.”

Donald Trump has used his administration to repeatedly attack LGBTQ rights during his more than three years in office, JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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theFeed trans female athletes from competing in women’s sports, argued that foster care agencies should be allowed to discriminate against same-sex couples, argued that it should be legal to fire LGBTQ employees, rescinded Obama-era guidance protecting transgender students, attempted to forcibly discharge HIVpositive members of the military, and fought to revoke the citizenship of a gay couple’s child.

His administration’s actions have been so blatantly antiLGBTQ that in November last year, the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights declared that Trump had “blatantly and deliberately” targeted LGBTQ people during his presidency.

One member of the commission stated that Trump was “undoing decades of civil and human rights progress.”

CHRISTIAN BUEHNER

with GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project registering 161 attacks on LGBTQ people.

That includes the administration stripping discrimination protections for transgender people from the Affordable Care Act during a global pandemic, as well as pushing ahead with plans to allow shelters to deny access to trans people — as well as telling shelters how to identify trans people including advising them to look for “facial hair” and “the presence of an Adam’s apple.”

A State Department commission purporting to be examining “Unalienable Rights” in American foreign policy also branded same-sex marriage a “divisive” controversy and argued that religious freedom should be elevated about LGBTQ rights.

His administration has also defended an Idaho law that bars

Hookup Hang-ups Most gay and bi men hid COVID symptoms from sexual partners, study finds. By Rhuaridh Marr

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OST GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN WHO EXPERIenced COVID-19 symptoms or a positive coronavirus diagnosis during the initial phase of the pandemic refrained from telling their partners, a study has found.

Vanderbilt University examined the sexual behavior of gay and bisexual men in the United States after collecting survey responses between April 10 and May 10 — when most states had issued stay-at-home orders. In total, 1,968 LGBTQ Americans were surveyed, with researchers ultimately focusing on 750 gay and bisexual male respondents.

Researchers noted that many men had “made significant changes to their sexual behavior and partner selection,” with 9 out of 10 reporting either no sexual partners or only one partner in the 30 days prior to taking the survey — which researchers described as a “substantial decrease [for many] compared to just before the pandemic.”

Survey respondents reported a number of changes to the “kinds of partners they had and their sexual activities with 14

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partners (e.g., more virtual sex),” researchers said in the study abstract, noting that gay and bi men “engaged in new strategies to reduce their risks of infection from partners.”

“We expect these changes to be important not only for reducing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, but also for reducing new sexually transmitted infections,” they wrote, adding that the men surveyed reported “high levels of concern about how HIV may affect COVID-19 risk, treatment, and recovery.”

As part of those changes, during the first month of the pandemic more than half (59%) of respondents had no sexual partners in the month prior to taking the survey, while 78% of those who were sexually active opted for only one partner.

That represented a decrease for some, as one-fifth of respondents said they usually had more than one sexual partner in a month.

Researchers also found that gay and bisexual men were “avoiding crowded places for finding new romantic or sexual partners, limiting the spaces where they hooked up with new

theFeed quent positive COVID-19 diagnosis with partners.

Researchers also found that, while sexual activity was reduced at the time of the survey, “the strategies that men have adopted are being used less frequently as states have begun to reopen.”

They recommend “targeted messaging” to gay and bisexual men in order to encourage conversations regarding COVID-19 symptoms and safe sex practices.

Last month, Harvard University researchers offered advice to those considering sex during the pandemic, including advising potential sexual partners to avoid kissing, wear face masks, and stay away from any acts “with a risk for fecal-oral transmission or that involve semen or urine.”

Researchers recommended abstinence as the safest way to ensure a lack of COVID-19 transmission, but did give approval to self-pleasure during the pandemic, noting that masturbation “is an additional safe recommendation for patients to meet their sexual needs.”

COMMITTEE TO ELECT TERRY KING FOR SHERIFF

romantic or sexual partners, and avoiding certain kinds of partners or events like group sex parties.”

Many of those seeking new sexual partners also said it was “extremely important” that prospective partners be taking COVID-related precautions such as washing hands (69%) and informing of any symptoms such as fever or cough (75%).

Almost three-fifths (59%) also felt it was important that sexual partners tell them about their sexual activity, while 45% wanted to know what precautions their partners’ partners were taking.

However, while respondents were concerned about what potential sexual partners might be doing, a worryingly low number of gay and bisexual men said they would tell a sexual partner about COVID-19 symptoms or a positive test result.

Although 11% of gay and bi respondents said they had experienced a flu-like illness in the 30 days prior to the survey, only 39% subsequently shared either that information or a subse-

Police Hate

King and his texts

GOP sheriff candidate joked about shooting gay couple in leaked family texts. By Rhuaridh Marr

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REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR COUNTY SHERIFF in Michigan joked about shooting a gay couple after spotting them at a wedding. Terry King, who is running for the Republican nomination in Alpena County, sent texts in a family group chat joking about needing his gun after his daughter asked if he was in “Homoland.”

The texts were sent from King’s work phone in October 2013, while he was serving as undersheriff, and were published recently after a Freedom of Information request from a former member of his opponent’s campaign.

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theFeed “It paints a different picture because it makes you think, wait a minute, he’s so comfortable with his hatred, that he shares it with his immediate family,” Reid said.

Kieliszewski distanced himself from Reid after the information was published, with Reid stepping down from his position as Kieliszewski’s campaign chair.

However, Kieliszewski told Detroit Free Press that King’s texts were “horrible,” and that the sheriff should represent all residents, including LGBTQ people.

“It was just most concerning — most concerning and extremely disappointing,” Kieliszewski said. “[I was] shocked when I looked at that. It’s like — what the hell are you thinking? What are you doing? These are people, for God’s sakes.”

King indirectly responded to the controversy in a campaign video on Facebook, accusing Kieliszewski of “dirty” politics.

“We need a strong leader that will not hide behind others,” he said. “I will be a sheriff that will focus on change and what can be done to correct the ignorance in our community, including mine.”

TONY WEBSTER

daughter, Kimberley.

Kimberley replied by saying, “Where the heck are you???

Homoland???”

King responded with an image of the two men discreetly holding hands, writing, “THESE guys are holding hands, where is my fricken gun.”

“They kiss and stuff!” Kimberley responded. “Ew.” “Bang bang,” King replied.

The texts, which were sent from a county-owned phone, were obtained through a Freedom of Information request by Bob Reid, former campaign chair for King’s Republican opponent and current sheriff, Steve Kieliszewski.

Kieliszewski is also King’s former boss, with the Detroit Free Press reporting that King resigned last year after numerous allegations of impropriety. Kieliszewski reportedly told King to resign or be fired.

Reid published the text exchange on the website TheTruthAboutTerryKing.com, and told Fox affiliate WBKB that King sent the messages to both his wife and daughter.

Representatives from the Minnesota AIDS Project march in the Twin Cities Pride Parade against HIV stigma

Stopping Stigma

6 in 10 Americans wrongly believe that HIV can be spread through casual contact, survey says. By John Riley

A

NATIONAL SURVEY OF AMERICANS SEEKING TO examine the stigma around HIV finds that only half feel knowledgeable about the virus, and that 6 in 10 falsely believe that HIV can be spread through casual contact.

The inaugural State of HIV Stigma Study, conducted by research firm Cint and funded by pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences, Inc. in partnership with the LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD, polled 2,506 U.S. adults between 16

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November and December 2019 in order to American attitudes about HIV/AIDS and people living with the virus.

The survey’s findings underscore the relative ignorance of Americans about HIV, examining their beliefs about its transmission, how it is treated, and societal attitudes towards HIVpositive individuals.

For starters, only 51% of non-LGBTQ Americans, and only 55% of LGBTQ Americans say they “feel knowledgeable about

theFeed HIV.” Nearly 40% of non-LGBTQ Americans and 34% of LGBTQ Americans say they “know a little about HIV.” Only 60% of those surveyed agreed with the statement that “HIV is a medical condition that can be treated,” highlighting Americans’ lack of familiarity with antiretroviral drug treatments, as well as the long-lasting impact of decades-old media portrayals of HIV/AIDS as an untreatable disease resulting in painful death within a matter of months.

In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a person who takes HIV medication as prescribed and stays virally suppressed can stay healthy and has effectively no risk of transmitting HIV to HIV-negative partners.

Nearly 9 in 10 Americans believe there is still stigma around HIV and agree with the statement that “people are quick to judge those with HIV.” Perhaps even more concerning was that nearly 6 in 10 Americans, including 57% of LGBTQ people, agreed with the statement that “it is important to be careful around people living with HIV to avoid catching it,” suggesting they believe the virus can be contracted in the same way as the flu or the common cold.

Additionally, only 35% of Americans agreed that people living with HIV “shouldn’t have to tell others,” perhaps yet another reflection of their misguided belief that HIV can be transmitted through casual contact.

Survey respondents were presented with eight situations evaluating their level of comfort toward people living with HIV, including: a co-worker, a neighbor, a teacher, a family member, a partner or spouse, a person at their place of worship, a barber or hairstylist, and a doctor, dentist, or medical professional. Of those situations, Americans were least comfortable with a doctor, dentist, or medical professional living with HIV, with 54% saying they’d be “somewhat” or “strongly” uncomfortable with that situation.

Forty-nine percent of Americans said they’d be somewhat or strongly uncomfortable with a partner or spouse living with HIV, and 45% of Americans said similarly about a barber or hairstylist. In each situation, LGBTQ people expressed less discomfort than non-LGBTQ people, although about one-third of non-LGBTQ people and more than one-quarter of LGBTQ people expressed significant discomfort in all eight situations.

There was, however, some positive news, with 54% of Americans reporting they’d seen stories in the media about people living with HIV. Additionally, Americans appeared hopeful

about prospects for treating and combating the disease. Over 90% of Americans surveyed agreed with statements such as “information should be readily available” about HIV, that “promoting prevention should be a high priority,” and that “schools should provide prevention information.”

More than 90% of non-LGBTQ Americans also agreed with statements that people with HIV “can live productive or happy lives” and that “great strides have been made in treatment” of HIV. Along with the survey results, GLAAD released a video of celebrities talking about the results of the survey and HIV stigma. Among those in the video are: Peppermint, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Michelle Visage, Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black fame, Jonathan Fernandez of Love & Hip Hop, actor Daniel Franzese, singer Parson James, Selenis Leyva of Orange is the New Black, and singer Asiahn.

In addition to the video, GLAAD announced its “Accelerate Compassion” and “Accelerate Impact” programs, which include media trainings for hundreds of HIV and LGBTQ advocates in the American South and among communities of color, regional media work to improve the accuracy of coverage of across local news outlets, and recent staff hires to support that work.

The programs are funded through a $9 million multi-year grant from Gilead Sciences as part of Gilead’s COMPASS Initiative. The GLAAD Media Institute is also working in Hollywood to encourage writers and producers to tell new and diverse-scripted storylines related to HIV. “People living with HIV today are leading long, healthy lives and cannot transmit HIV when they receive proper treatment, but the stigma that they face has persisted for far too long and leads to harmful discrimination,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.

“HIV issues have flown under the radar, but with advances in treatment and prevention, we urgently need to educate the public on the facts about HIV today. GLAAD’s new programs will ensure that local HIV advocates are front and center throughout national and local media in an effort to educate the public and uplift stories about people living with HIV.” “This new survey gives us valuable insight into the role stigma plays as a barrier to care,” Amy Flood, the senior vice president of Public Affairs at Gilead Sciences, said in a statement. “The solution will require collaboration between the entire community fighting this epidemic, from scientists, to doctors and community leaders — and Gilead is proud to be a part of this effort.”

Hate Speech

Trump supporter yells “kill transgenders” while protesting Black Lives Matter rally in Pennsylvania By Rhuaridh Marr

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SUPPORTER OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP yelled “kill transgenders” during a protest targeting a Black Lives Matter rally in Pennsylvania. The so-called “Back the Blue” rally was intended to show support for police, and gathered across the street from a Black Lives Matter rally in Shaler Township, Pa., on Saturday. Participants wore clothing with Trump-supportive symbols and waved “thin blue line” flags.

CBS affiliate KDKA reports that a few dozen people took part in the Back the Blue rally, while the Black Lives Matter rally was attended by more than 100 people.

Interactions were reportedly predominantly peaceful, with both sides chanting slogans — “Black Lives Matter” on one side, and “All Lives Matter” on the other — and staying away from one another.

Police attended, and blocked part of the street, but the only movement between groups was some Back the Blue attendees moving into the street towards the Black Lives Matter rally, KDKA reported.

However, things escalated when one member of the Back the Blue rally, wielding a bullhorn, started to yell “Kill transgenJULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

17

KDKA

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Back the Blue protesters

ders!” repeatedly at the Black Lives Matter protesters.

The Black Lives Matters protesters are heard reacting in shock to the chants, with one person yelling, “Fuck you!” in response.

As the shouts bounce back and forth between the opposing rallies, the video ends with the Trump supporter apparently yelling “kill faggots” — although the Pittsburgh City Paper reported it as “you’re a faggot.”

Attendees of the Black Lives Matter rally told KDKA that the Back the Blue protest was unexpected.

Sophia Kachur, an organizer of the rally, said, “We believe

in supporting Black and Brown people, so it’s like why would anyone think that’s a bad message?”

KDKA reported no further incidents and said both groups left the area that evening.

The outburst of anti-LGBTQ hate from the “Back the Blue” rally came just days after Neo-Nazis rallied in Williamsport, Pa., yelling racist and homophobic slurs.

And last month, a mob of white men attacked Black Lives Matter protesters in Pennsylvania and told them to take their “faggot energy” and leave the area.

Cruel Critique

Utah senator calls allowing transgender athletes to compete in their gender identity “offensive.” By John Riley

U

TAH REPUBLICAN SEN. MIKE LEE FIERCELY criticized the president of the NCAA at a Senate hearing last week over the collegiate athletic organization’s support for allowing transgender athletes to compete according to the gender with which they identify.

Lee took issue with the NCAA’s stated opposition to a new Idaho law that bars transgender females from competing in women’s sports. Current NCAA policy allows transgender females to compete according to their gender identity, provided that they have undergone hormone therapy for at least a year prior to competing.

“I am concerned about the NCAA’s track record of undermining women by pushing schools to allow individuals born biologically of one gender to participate in another gender’s sports,” Lee told NCAA President Mark Emmert during the hearing, according to Utah-based NBC affiliate KSL-TV. “It’s offensive to me and to millions of Americans that the great strides our society has taken to protect women’s rights and women’s sports are now at risk of being undone,” Lee added.

Lee asked Emmert if the NCAA stands by a statement it issued in June in response to the Idaho law calling it “harmful to transgender student athletes” and claiming it “conflicts with the NCAA’s core values of inclusivity, respect and the equitable treatment of all individuals.”

“Senator, I don’t,” Emmert responded. “I think it’s an 18

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extremely challenging issue, obviously.”

Emmert added that the NCAA has worked with the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee in order to align its own standards for transgender athletes to those used at higher levels of competition.

Lee’s comments mirror similar arguments employed by conservatives in recent months to argue that any action or legislation that expands transgender rights, specifically, or LGBTQ rights, more broadly, will threaten the ability of women to compete in sports and undermine Title IX’s guarantees of equal access to women.

Many Republicans in Congress who ultimately voted against the Equality Act when it was brought up for a vote last year used concerns about the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports to justify their vote against protections for LGBTQ people in employment, housing, and public accommodations like restaurants, theaters, and department stores.

Currently, there are two dueling lawsuits over the issue of transgender athletes. One, brought by Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of a group of cisgender athletes in Connecticut, claims that the state’s policy allowing transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity disadvantages cisgender women by preventing them from excelling at sports, potentially denying them opportunities to compete at

GAGE SKIDMORE

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Lee

higher levels or earn college scholarships.

The other lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Idaho, and Legal Voice, challenges Idaho’s ban on transgender athletes. One of the plaintiffs, Lindsay Hecox, a transgender woman, argues the law prevents her from competing in cross-country for Boise State University.

The other plaintiff, an anonymous cisgender athlete known

as Jane Doe, worries she will be subjected to invasive testing to prove her female identity if others mistakenly believe she is not appropriately feminine, does not conform to gender stereotypes, or — in a worst-case scenario — if athletic rivals or their coaches accuse her of being transgender in order to deliberately sideline her, albeit temporarily, from competition for the sake of gaining an unfair competitive advantage.

Troublesome Teaching Christian university rescinds nursing student’s admission because he’s gay and engaged to be married. By John Riley

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N EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY HAS rescinded an admissions offer to a graduate-level nursing student because of his sexual orientation, according to an official letter sent by the university. Alex Duron, 38, had been accepted to a three-year nursing program at Union University, a private school in Jackson, Tennessee.

But nine days before classes were scheduled to begin on July 27, Union withdrew its offer of admission.

According to the letter received by Duron, the university said that as a Christian institution, it is allowed to be selective in admitting only those who will uphold the university’s religious principles, as outlined in the Bible.

Union argued that Duron had agreed to abide by said principles when he signed the university’s value statement, according to the Jackson Sun. “As a Christ-centered educational institution, we welcome all academically-qualified students who seek the academically-rigorous and faith-informed education we offer and who are willing to uphold our community values,” the letter, a copy of which

Duron posted to his Facebook page, reads.

“As part of the application process, you agreed to adhere to and uphold the values and expectations set by the University….

Your request for graduate housing and your social media profile, including your intent to live with your partner, indicates your unwillingness to abide by the commitment you made in signing this statement.”

Union is one of a number of religious schools that are covered by a religious exemption to Title IX, granted by the Obama administration in 2015, due to the school’s affiliation with the Tennessee Baptist Convention.

Under Title IX, typically, institutions are not allowed to receive federal funds if they actively engage in sex-based discrimination — which liberals, including many who served in the Obama administration, have argued applies to instances where someone is discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

But the exemption is intended to accommodate religiously-affiliated schools without forcing them to violate their beliefs.

“This weekend I received very bad news regarding the JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

19

FACEBOOK

FACEBOOK

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Union University

Duron

institution I chose for my continued education,” Duron wrote on Facebook. “It turns out that a faith-informed education from Union University is not God’s plan for me, because Union University is not ‘informed’ enough to not recognized that bigotry masked as religion is not Christian at all.

“My God taught me to love they neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and not to judge as is told in the book of Matthew.”

He continued: “I am writing to let the public know that this is not ok…. What has happened to me is not the worst part. Did you know that this is 100% Legal? Did you know that Union University is not a fully private school and accepts federal funding? Did you know that your taxes are allowing them to discriminate against LGBTQ+ and their allies?”

Duron added: “Union University may not be right for me. I can accept that, but I cannot accept that our government is giving them the money to discriminate against me.”

According to Union University’s student handbook, students are required to refrain from “sexually impure relationships, including but not limited to “participation in or appearance of engaging in premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexual activities, or cohabitation.”

The handbook also discourages same-sex relationships, even among married partners, and encourages students who are not in heterosexual marriages but may “face all types of sexual temptation” to live “chaste, celibate lives.”

Duron admits he signed the values letter hastily after the university sent it to him, claiming he needed to sign it immediately.

But he says he was still caught off guard by the decision to rescind his acceptance, because he was never asked about his sexual orientation on any application or during his interview.

Additionally, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,

Duron had been planning to live on campus in a dorm with other graduate students, and his fiancé was not planning to move to Jackson with him, seemingly making their relationship irrelevant to his enrollment.

But Duron also acknowledged that a Union employee had asked him, when he was trying to arrange housing, if he was engaged or planned to be married, which would qualify him for the university’s family housing.

He did not mention his engagement, although his partner later mentioned that a private profile affiliated with the university had viewed his LinkedIn profile, reports BuzzFeed News.

The university has since issued a prepared statement defending its right to be selective in whom it admits.

“As a Christian institution, Union University has standards of behavior for its faculty, staff, and students that are consistent with biblical teaching and historic, orthodox Christian practice,” the statement reads.

“All students who apply to Union University sign a statement saying they will comply with the university’s values. Those students who fail to abide by those values — or who show no intention of attempting to do so — are subject to disciplinary measures that can include dismissal from the university.”

Duron has since told BuzzFeed News that he’s accepting what happened to him, and has been contacted by other nursing schools who are trying to find ways to grant him admission to their graduate-level programs in the fall.

“My initial plan was to warn away people in the nursing community from Union if they’re gay or transgender,” Duron said. “But it has totally changed now, people are taking it to the next level…. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know where I’m going to end up, but I’ve gotten so much support.”

Inclusive Streaming Netflix touts transgender-inclusive storyline in “The Baby-Sitters Club” series. By John Riley

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ETFLIX IS TOUTING A TRANSGENDER-INCLUSIVE storyline in its new series The Baby-Sitters Club, in which one of the main characters babysits a trans child. The live-action series is based on the popular Scholastic book series 20

JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

about middle-school girls who launch a babysitting business. The series is G-rated and is available on Netflix’s children’s profiles.

Rose Dommu, a writer and transgender woman, took over Netflix’s official Twitter account last Thursday to talk about a

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KAILEY SCHWERMAN FOR NETFLIX

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Kai Shappley as Bailey Delvecchio and Malia Baker as Mary Anne Spier in The Baby-Sitters Club

storyline from the show’s fourth episode, adding that the “depiction of a young trans girl made me cry happy tears.”

“The Baby-Sitters Club is a smart, sweet, and self-aware update of the beloved book series about preteen BFFs who start a childcare service — literal girlbosses! This generation’s BSC handle the same dramas as their original incarnations, with the circumstances updated for 2020,” Dommu tweeted.

In the storyline, Mary Anne, one of the main characters in the series, is asked to watch a young transgender girl, played by 9-yearold transgender actress Kai Shappley, whose mother, Kimberly, a Republican and an evangelical Christian, became an outspoken trans advocate after embracing her daughter’s gender identity.

Toward the end of the episode, Mary Anne defends Bailey’s gender identity to a doctor and a nurse who misgender her when she gets sick and is hospitalized.

“What this episode ultimately gives me is hope,” Dommu tweeted. “It illustrates what was articulated so perfectly in [Laverne Cox’s documentary Disclosure]: You can’t be what you can’t see. Imagine the young trans children who are going to watch this & see a version of themselves who is actualized, supported, and HAPPY.” “In the real world, trans people are in real danger,” Dommu added, linking to a “Frequently Asked Questions” section of the website for the LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD. “That’s why it is so important that we listen to and trust trans kids while also building a kinder world for them to grow up in.”

Dommu concluded: “So, we have no choice but to stan The Baby-Sitters Club, our unproblematic queens and queer allies.

And more importantly: stan Bailey and all the very real children like her who know who they are. THAT is tea.”

But some social conservatives are angry at Netflix’s decision to portray a transgender child, accusing the streaming service of trying to “indoctrinate” children and bringing up material that is inappropriate for young viewers.

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They particularly take offense at a scene where Dawn, one of Mary Anne’s friends, explains transgenderism as similar to someone being right-handed but being forced to do everything with their left hand.

“I’m very disappointed,” one Twitter user wrote. “The issue not only opens the door for young developing and vulnerable minds to be misled into incorrect thinking about themselves, but it is also a sexual issue, of which children do not need to be exposed. My children will not be watching this series.”

Another even accused Netflix of promoting “child abuse,” adding: “I didn’t know who or what I was at that age. I was Rapunzel with long hair one day and then a french waiter with a beret the next. Sweet Jesus, enough.”

Those criticizing Netflix’s decision to pursue the storyline, or, in some cases, directing ad hominem attacks at Dommu, have had their comments amplified through conservative media.

Tony Perkins, the president of the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, recently penned a column for the Daily Signal, a publication of the conservative Heritage Foundation, blasting the series for touching on controversial issues.

“There’s an entire generation of moms today who wouldn’t think twice about sitting their kids down in front of Netflix’s new “Baby-Sitters Club” show. And that, experts warn, is exactly the problem,” wrote Perkins. “Like so many other women, they’re expecting the same innocent storylines they came to love from Ann Martin’s books in the ’80s and ’90s. What they’re getting is anything but.

“Say goodbye to the regular cast of characters — and hello to 21st-century lessons in transgenderism, sex, dating apps, divorce, and feminism.”

But others praised the show for broaching the transgender issue.

“I LOVED THIS EPISODE SO MUCH and when I commenter on the Insta of the girl who plays Mary Anne, she liked it,” wrote another Twitter user. “And so did the little girl who plays Bailey.”

Virtual Wordplay R

IGHT NOW A LOT OF OUR CONVERSATIONS ARE very focused on our trauma,” says Tahirah Alexander Green. “But we can't have liberation without joy.” The queer Black literary artist is currently working to put together a journal titled We Got This: Black Writers on Imagination, Joy and Liberation. “This journal is an opportunity for folks to muse on that theme, and for Black queer writers and artists to share works that bring those things up. We really need to talk about joy just as much as we're talking about what we're fighting against.”

Green serves as journal editor for OutWrite, D.C.’s LGBTQ literary festival, which will publish We Got This in the fall. After attending OutWrite last year, Green decided to join the all-volunteer operation to help bolster local literary connections. Or, as Green puts it, “I love cultivating spaces for local writers to get together.”

And that, in a nutshell, is both OutWrite’s primary motivation as well as its lasting appeal. “The people who gather at Outwrite are a wildly creative and interesting group,” says Dave Ring, the festival’s chair. “[They’re] talking about what they're most passionate about, in a space where queer lives are the default.

And that lets them have conversations that they wouldn't have anywhere else. This year, in particular, being able to be part of OutWrite no matter the location offers a unique opportunity to be part of that.”

Once they decided to proceed with an all-virtual format for 2020, organizers set their sights on expanding the reach of the festival, which readies its livestream debut this weekend. “We’re 24

JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

taking advantage of the online format to get some folks part of the programming that normally wouldn't be able to because of schedule or distance,” Ring says. “We’ve got folks [from] both coasts and coming from some other countries, too, so it did widen the field a little bit.”

“The thing I love about it is that we're able to go global, just like with the monthly film series,” says Kimberley Bush, who, as director of arts and culture programs at the DC Center, oversees OutWrite along with Reel Affirmations and RA Xtra, the film festival’s now-online series. “We're able to reach people in parts of the world that may not have known about us [but] who will be able to benefit from this amazing event that Dave has put together.”

All told, this year’s OutWrite consists of 11 free events over one weekend — though that’s still a fraction of the three-day fare of years passed, when organizers juggled 30-plus events, a number of them scheduled simultaneously. This year, they’ve even factored in 30-minute breaks between events because, Ring explains, “you can't just sit down and watch [online events] for hours. You need to move around. We tried to be cognizant of what people's attention span and screen time really should look like.”

This year’s festival commences Friday, July 31, with a live recording of the popular podcast Lit!Pop!Bang! and an episode in which hosts Anthony and Cece lead a conversation “on Black queer joy” with Baltimore poet Saida Agostini as well as J Mase III and Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, co-editors of The Black Trans Prayer Book. Among an eclectic lineup of events, Ring singles out

STMOOL - SHUTTERSTOCK

OutWrite opens a new chapter to mark the the LGBTQ literary festival’s 10th anniversary with an online-only event. By Doug Rule

as particularly novel the reading that (gently) kicks off the day on Sunday, Aug. 2, Breath to Word: Poetry and Mindfulness, which “should be a soothing start to the day [and] probably a helpful moment for anyone who is feeling stressed out — it will be that kind of a reading.”

Beyond the schedule of events, organizers are also planning an “online exhibitor hall” modeled after the popular real-life version, although on a much smaller and more limited scale.

They’ve also decided not to make a huge fuss about this year’s 10th anniversary. “It's hard to really think about it, considering everything else going on,” Ring explains. “And this isn't what we had thought we would be doing. Our 10th year is a very different festival than we might have had otherwise.”

Still, all participants at this year’s festival — and everyone else who has participated at any level at any past OutWrite — are invited to contribute to a special 10-year edition of the festival journal. OutWrite is currently accepting submissions for the journal, and plans to publish it in the fall, along with We Got This. As the festival’s journal editor, Green says the retrospective is meant “to uplift the work of folks who have been part of OutWrite in the past, as well as linking towards OutWrite's future.”

What’s more, all works selected for publication in either journal will earn their creators between $15 to $50 apiece. “It's not as much as I would like,” Green says, “but the fact that we're not having folks just writing completely for free is something that I'm really happy about.” Compensating contributors, it turns out, is a benefit of the decision to move online. “Because it's virtual, we actually were able to allocate some of the [original] budget to this instead,” says Green.

Green is among a core group of volunteers whom Ring credits with giving him a much-needed boost this year. “It's been really exciting to have more creative partnerships with folks on the organizing side,” says Ring, citing Marlena Chertock for help with poetry, Marianne Kirby with fiction, and D. Nolan Jefferson with nonfiction. “It's been something that's brought a lot of purpose to my sense of community. So there's a lot of value there.

I'm hoping that, even in this sort of strange landscape now, being involved with it is something that brings meaning to them as well and that they'll want to do it in the future.”

As we have done over the past few years, Metro Weekly reached out to OutWrite participants and asked for examples of their works to showcase. On the pages that follow, you’ll find excerpts from 14 of OutWrite 2020’s finest authors and poets.

To register for OutWrite 2020 and for more information, visit www.thedccenter.org/outwrite.

Elatsoe

(Excerpt)

By Darcie Little Badger

S

OMETIMES, THE WORLD WAS TOO MYSTERIOUS for her liking; Ellie intended to change that someday.

In the kitchen, her father nursed a mug of coffee.

“You’re awake before noon?” he asked. “Did summer end while I was sleeping?” He smiled with his mouth, but his brown eyes seemed sad.

“Feels like it,” Ellie said. “Where’s Mom?” “She took a dawn flight to McAllen.”

“Is that because ...” Ellie trailed off. Every word about the tragedy felt like a psychic paper cut, and too many stings would make her cry. There was nothing shameful about tears, but Ellie hated the way her face ached when she wept. The pain felt like a head cold. “When did it happen?”

“Last night,” her father said. “Around two-thirty. He peacefully walked to the underworld. No struggle, no pain.”

“No pain? You can’t know that, Dad.” Although Ellie spoke softly, he heard her. Must have. He no longer pretended to smile.

“Lenore needs help with Baby Gregory. That’s why your mother left suddenly.” He put his coffee on the counter and hugged Ellie. His wool vest tickled her chin. Ellie’s father had to wear blue scrubs and a physician’s lab coat at work, but during off-days, he broke out the cable knit sweaters, tweed pants, and scratchy wool vests. “She has other duties. Your aunt and uncle are crushed with grief. They can’t handle the burial preparations alone.”

Oddly, thinking about Trevor’s widow, infant son, and parents helped Ellie push through her own sense of loss. She had a job to do: protect them from Abe Allerton. “Are the police investigating the crash?” she asked.

“I believe so.”

“Let me make it easier. Abe Allerton killed him. Abe Allerton

from a town called Willowbee.”

Her father stepped back, perturbed. “Why do you believe that?”

“Cuz spoke to me in a dream. Told me who killed him. Same way that drowned boy told Six-Great-Grandmother about the river monster.”

“I see.” Judging by his furrowed brow, that was an exaggeration, at best. “Wait. What river monster are you referring to?

Didn’t she fight a few?”

“The one with a human face and poison scales. That’s not important. Dad, I think Cuz reached out to me in-between phases, after his last exhale but before his spirit went Below.”

“It’s possible. You and Six-Great are so much alike.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“Sure. I never met the woman, obviously, but you’re both remarkable ghost trainers. Intelligent and brave, too.”

Ellie smiled faintly. “Thanks,” she said, taking a glass from the cupboard and pouring herself a cup of orange juice. She had no appetite for solid breakfast. “You know what this all means, though, right? Abe Allerton from Willowbee is a murderer, and he cannot hurt anybody else.”

“Hm.” “Should I doubt myself? Can we really take that risk? SixGreat trusted her dream, and the decision probably saved lives.”

“No. But …” Her father took a long sip of coffee. “As you slept, did Tre ... I mean ... did your cousin describe the murder?”

She shook her head. “We had so little time. Dad, he looked terrible. Bleeding and broken. It must have been torture. Can we call somebody? What about a sheriff?”

“Give the police a few days,” her father said. “Let them investigate.”

“Will they, though?” She thumped her glass on the counter. Pulpy juice spilled over its rim and pooled between tiles.

“Everyone thinks it was a car crash, right? Even Lenore!”

“Ah. Well. Not really. Nobody understands what happened.”

Her father adopted a dry tone, the kind he used to talk about clinical details from work. “Your cousin’s injuries are consistent JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

25

Anura

(Excerpt) with trauma from a high-speed collision, but

By Imani Sims his car was undamaged. Not a dent.”

“Uh? What? Was he in it?”

MAC “Yes. A farmer found him parked along 1. She stains her lips a wooded road. It was isolated. Not your Diva red and daydreams cousin’s usual route home. Another puzzling (Excerpt) About kissing ochre skin, detail.”

By Ruth Joffre A lip ring swings, “Obviously, Cuz was injured in a different car, and Abe Allerton moved him.” Yet that Tempts the body lean UR ANNIVERSARY IS COMING UP. wasn’t the obvious answer at all. Why would Forward, pucker up; mouth Seven years this November. We like Trevor park in the forest and enter a strangTaking mouth, what softness to count from our first date rather er’s vehicle? If there was a terrible crash, Can be found, when than our wedding day, because when I prowhere did it happen? Didn’t Trevor say that posed gay marriage wasn’t yet legal in New Abe murdered him? That required intent.

Shy eyes meet low York State. Aimee and I were one of the What was the motive?

Blink, flood body. "I first lesbian couples to get married at city “Right now,” Ellie’s father said, “everyWant you. Take me hall in July of 2011. Thanks to the reporters body is still wondering what happened, not In." present that morning, some of our wedding who did it.” photos are still floating around online. If you “The what and who are linked! So, let’s use 2. There's a poem her body happen to find a picture of us, I’m the one in the who to find the what!”

Wants to write across the white tuxedo beaming up at Aimee while “You aren’t wrong.” Ellie’s father moved His ribcage. Say thank she throws the bouquet at one of the photogto the dining nook, a table and three wicker You with lips so raphers. It’s a gentle toss — one she warned chairs. He unfolded a paper map of Texas Full body's organs almost him about and prepared him for. Her face is and spread it over the crumb-freckled hardBurst with brick red bright with happiness as she lets go, releasing wood tabletop. The map resembled a wrinSustenance. the flowers like a magician freeing a dove. I kled tablecloth, its surface webbed by roads, haven’t seen that expression in a long time. rivers, and county lines.

Grip chin, let teal About a year ago, Aimee and I started “What’s that for?” Ellie asked.

Blue nail part lips, talking about having children. “I just feel “Your mother needs a car, so we’ll drive Slide a finger in, like we put it off for all the wrong reasons,” to the burial. I can leave the van with her and Mouth housed tongue tasting. she said, citing our long wait to marry and take a plane home.”

A moan. Soft enough our inability to get pregnant on our own. It “Will Mom be gone a long time?” Ellie’s To send shiver. Splinter was time, we decided. We consulted a doctor mother, Vivian (Ms. Bride to her students), Thighs, and a lawyer, readied the papers we would taught high school math. The job might not need so I could adopt our child after it was be easy, but it came with one major perk: she Let strapped leather stiff born. Aimee wanted to carry it to term. She had two months of summer vacation. “I can Pink penetrate wet walled was twenty-eight then, two years younger help her!”

Worship his temple pulse, than I was, and in better shape. I had been “Are you sure? She wants to live with Arched back sweat, hips a smoker in my youth, and my family had a Lenore until things are settled. Might take Giving in. She winds history of heart disease. Aimee’s genes were weeks.”

Into him, "call me perfect, as were the sperm donor’s. His file “I’m sure.” She couldn’t protect Trevor’s God" said he graduated summa cum laude and family with an 800-mile gulf between them. played rugby in his spare time, but that mat“Thank you.” Her father traced a path She says, as his tered less than the fact that he looked like from north to South Texas. “This is our Body yields slick gold. me: brown hair, brown eyes, a round face that route.” would have been plain if not for the curve of “When do we leave?” Ellie asked.

Imani Sims is based in his cheekbones and the shapeliness of his “Two days.” He leaned closer to the map, California. Follow on Instagram mouth. Aimee called them that: shapely. His squinting, and pointed to a spot near the botat @irsims and Twitter at sperm arrived in an insulated container so we tom of Texas. “What’s that town name, Ellie? @thebarwitch. could handle the insemination ourselves, at I’m not wearing glasses.” home, where Aimee would be comfortable.

Ellie peered at the word above his fingerWe lit candles, played some relaxing music. tip. It was faint, as if printed incorrectly. “It Somehow, it never occurred to us to be afraid of a miscarriage. says Willowbee. Dad...”

It has been ten weeks. She doesn’t talk about it.

“I thought the name sounded familiar.” He checked the map Our life has continued much as it did before, with the pleasscale. “Willowbee is about thirty miles away from the elementaant weeks of June giving way to a predictably hot and stifling ry school, and ten miles away from the road.”

August. Heat always exacerbates Aimee’s insomnia. For a month “The road?” she asked.

“Where your cousin was found.” He looked up. “I believe now she has been slipping out of bed in the middle of the night and sitting in the darkened living room, listening to jazz radio at you, Ellie.” such a low volume that I can barely hear it. Sometimes, when I find her there at one or two in the morning, she turns to me with Darcie Little Badger is based in Connecticut. an expression I can’t bear to see, because I know she’s trying to Follow on Instagram at @Dr.LittleBadger and Twitter at find the right words for something unspeakable. @shiningcomic.

The Twilight Hotel

O

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COAL

Desperate to cheer her up, I surhoped-for narrative ended and anothFor Audre Lorde prised her with tickets to the Village er more painful one began. Once or

By Jewelle Gomez Vanguard last night. “Think of it as an twice, her head dipped dramatically, and early anniversary present.”

I feared she’d slipped of consciousness, I think of you as a diamond Aimee pulled her face into something but she always came back. emerging from the like a smile.

The waiter knew nothing of our troucompression of carbon, “Or we could just stay in,” I said. bles. He checked on us toward the end shining and sharp “Order Thai food.” Quickly, I rattled off of the meal and asked if Aimee would both dark and light. half a dozen movies in our queue, knowlike another bottle of wine, and because It’s a stone that has come to mean ing, all the while, that I was too late. he said this in an ugly way, seeing the both delight and death Aimee had already clicked into autopiglass in her hand and the dull hollow making it difficult to enjoy lot. I watched, disappointed, as she went of the bottle nearly spent, she hissed at the gift from the earth. through the motions of getting ready. him that the fish was dry. He scurried It’s not possible to see the “We can take our time. Our dinner into the kitchen and returned with apolgleam adorning soft skin reservations aren’t until seven thirty.” ogies from the chef and the house’s deswithout thinking of sweat She nodded. She’d just finished sert special: a bourbon caramel custard glistening on black backs applying lipstick and was staring miserwith almond shortbread and lavender scarred for someone else’s pleasure. ably at her mouth. whipped cream. He also brought a pair Apartheid and murder cling I hailed the taxi for us. of candles wrapped in glass so sinuous to the stones tightly as a necklace.

Our waiter was a young white man and thick that when the wax melted it Yet it is a transubstantiation, with pierced ears and an asymmetrical made the light float over the table. Our more important than that of myth. haircut. He smiled unpleasantly when wineglasses shimmered. Our unused Earth’s fiber wrapped tightly Aimee said, “I’d like a bottle of Riesling, cutlery collapsed into puddles, and outaround itself — friction and time please,” before we even properly sat side the orange line of the sunset bled until it shines down. down behind the city, then disappeared. like the sun.

Once he left, I said, “Aimee.”

I wondered aloud where the evening “What? I’m pretty happy with the had gone.

So too are words — simply letters decision.”

Idly, I asked myself, “What if there and sounds draped and packaged “There’s a one-drink minimum at the were a place where the sun was always around each other to unexpectedly Vanguard. You’re not going to make it.” setting?” emerge with meaning At this she merely raised her eyeAimee managed to hear this. “What often far beyond their size brows and took a sip of water. do you mean, always?” or taste in the mouth.

I waited until her second glass of “Always. That it would just keep setYour words are those diamonds wine to ask, “Did something happen at ting. It’d never reach the horizon.” from the earth, but you are the work?”

“That’s impossible. It doesn’t make one who toiled, sweat and shaped; “Did something happen,” Aimee sense,” she said, her hand flopping gifting them, wrapped in a prayer — repeated ruefully. Then it was just a severely in her lap. a plea that you’ll be heard. matter of sitting there and trying not I wished then that I’d never taken her You aim each like a scented spear to interrupt as she told me how one of to that restaurant, that we’d spent the meant to pry me open; her coworkers had just returned from night cuddling under a blanket, where make my earth fertile enough maternity leave and was so excited about I could stroke her face until she was to grow more words the baby and the pictures. She asked close enough for me to whisper, “Let’s Diamond bright Aimee, “So when are you due?” And then pretend, okay? We’re on an island in Diamond hard she immediately got this look on her the sky.”

Sweat drenched light face, because she realized it had been Let that be the story: us waking through a desperate time. four months already and Aimee wasn’t up early, taking a plane, landing in an showing. impossible place where the sun never Jewelle Gomez is based in California.

“She just caught me off guard — I stops setting. It would have to be flyFollow on Instagram and Twitter at thought I was done with all that.” The ing. How else could the island keep up @VampyreVamp. having to tell people, she meant, and with Earth’s rotation? How else can you seeing the pity in their faces. We’d made the mistake of telling figure it but as a fantastic dome supported by some impossible everyone we got pregnant — everyone, including our bosses and physics, costing some obscene amount of money, so that only the coworkers. But, unlike pregnancy, a miscarriage is a private very rich can afford the trip? If it hadn’t been my idea, Aimee and thing, and in its immediate aftermath it never occurred to us that I wouldn’t be able to swing it, but, since it was, we’re treated like there would be people we left behind, people we didn’t see that VIPs and given a luxury suite at the Twilight Hotel, where staff often, who would go on with their lives, assuming that it was greets us in shiny shoes and designer sunglasses. okay, that we were five weeks, ten weeks, sixteen weeks preg“It’s best not to stare,” the manager says when he sees me nant. Smile! You’re having a baby! That was our story. looking at the sunset, that red glare bleeding across the horizon.

She’d given up on dinner by then. Instead of eating, she flaked “It could disturb your circadian rhythms if you expose yourself the sole apart, easing the tines of her fork between the individual before lunch.” layers of flesh, separating them. Soon the fish was like a chain of uninhabited islands in a shimmering, translucent sea. I stopped Ruth Joffre is based in Washington state. Follow on Instagram at trying to talk to her and instead ate in silence, sitting vigil as one @realruthjoffre and Twitter at @ruth_joffre.

JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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Wall Women

BOY IF

Cheryl tells me about the dreams she has, and I’m not sure what kind she means at first — nighttime dreams or day. After a // while, though, I know she means Excerpt from Blue Talk and Love the better kind, the kind you can genderless void is only

By Mecca Jamilah Sullivan hold in your hand as long as you a part-time gig: stay asleep. The other dreams — the day kind — are far away, like “Women have sat indoors all these always hungry since planets or imaginary friends. To millions of years, so that by this “man cannot survive on bread alone” me, sleeping dreams are better; time, the very walls are permeated they are all the way real, right up by their creative force, which has, pero like——- I’m not even a man, until they’re not. indeed so overcharged the capacity and all i have are freezer-burned hot pockets.

Cheryl tells me that, when she of bricks and mortar that it must wakes up in the mornings, she needs harness itself to pens and genderless void is a kickass name does not know where she is, how brushes and business and politics.” for a band but things work. She thinks people —Virginia Woolf can move without touching the more appropriate for the “o” of your lips, ground, or that her mother is OMEN CURVE the air between my legs, holding her hand. She tells me she themselves around does not know what world is real the television screen, or any place on this body until she sees Obette beside her. whipping their hair against their where you touched me, see Then she settles into herself like backs, smacking it over bare bubbles into a pan of dishwater, shoulders, bending low and shakthat’s the problem with and they can begin the day. ing it at their knees. The beat is girls like you, Maria, you I listen and do not say anything. steady and they seem steady too, I catch words here and there and always the same, always the same, will colonize a body, will mix them in my juice glass. Pack, like identical parts in a moving burn down all the crops to hand, ground, mother. I wonder machine. But there is always one about the crayon woman, if she who catches my eye, throws the keep yourself warm and then speaks, what she does when she beat off, just a little. Today her refuse to love the ashes. is not dancing behind a screen. I hair is yellow. Not blonde, or gold. wonder if she has someone like Not a color I’ve seen on heads I don’t think you ever learned this Obette, someone who helps before. It is crayon-yellow, the how to be sorry, Maria, ah güey, her settle into herself. Sometimes, color of the sun in the pictures on I imagine myself dancing like her, the social workers’ offices, drawn Maria! our problems will not wash out a little out of step, my hair a neon by the younger foster children, if you clean my dusty chanclas shock on top of my head. But then taped to the walls you sit under I think about what other people while you wait to go from one life with Chanel No. 5 and would say about me — the social to the next. your processed hair extensions workers, the kids at the school, These same women are on my next mother, whenever my every television screen — not just Maria, how many more bodies will burn next life comes. So I sit by the at the social workers’ offices, but before you finally get licked by the flames? screen, I watch and I listen. at the homes, too, even the new \/ It never smells like food here, one where I am now. This home even though we eat fine every is different from all the others. I this is the last time i let you burn me. day. Mostly it smells like a woman have been to four by now, two per and yet this is not the last time you will burn me— working hard to build things — year since I turned ten the year smells like paint and metal and before last. Most of the houses Carlo Espudo is a poet based in California. wood and cinnamon tea. Every are loud with children and always Follow on Twitter at day, Cheryl talks and works on smell like food, but here there are @ALittleManly. the house, sawing things, bringing no children here besides me. The in pretty lighting fixtures that she woman here, my newest mothsays Obette will like. She tells me er, has never brought children in before. “I’m surprised we got you,” she tells me. “They never her plans for the house, how the two of them will sleep in the big room upstairs and my room will be the one right next door. I would’ve given you to me alone. Must be because of Obette.”

While the crayon woman dances on TV, the mother, Cheryl, don’t wonder why they would share a room until Cheryl asks if talks about Obette. She says Obette is the responsible one, the I’m wondering. I shake my head and say, “No, it makes sense to clear-headed one, the one with the good job and the plans. She me.” I think for a second what my past mothers would say about says Obette has taken care of her, and soon she will take care of it, but then I think, How much can they matter, if they aren’t here?

Cheryl tells me we’ll all play games and dance together in the us both. Cheryl stirs grits at the stove and says that Obette will come back soon. She says Obette will love me, that she’ll be so back room, but the front room will be just for Obette. “She’s like a man, but better,” Cheryl says. “Time alone is how she keeps glad I’m here, and the three of us will be a pack.

W

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(Excerpt)

By Carlito Espudo

her magic.”

I listen and watch the television, and then I go to the new school and I wait. Sometimes I’m waiting for someone to come — a police officer, a social worker — and take me to my next life.

Sometimes I’m just waiting for the day to end. One time I try to wait for Obette, like Cheryl has been doing since I came here, but I don’t know how. A new life usually comes, the day always ends, but people are harder to wait for.

Soon I figure out that Cheryl is nice, and sad. I don’t know how she takes my silence. Sometimes I think that she likes how I listen. The dead space between her talking gets shorter and shorter, and I think that if I wanted to I could leave the house and go dance on the corner while she talks, do all the dances the video women do, and then come back to find her right there, still talking, just fine. But in the end, I wouldn’t want to go outside.

I wouldn’t know anyone, and no one wants to know a girl who dances by herself.

Soon, I start to like Cheryl. I like the stories she tells me about all the places she and Obette have been, all the things they have done together, and the things we will do, the pack of us, when Obette comes back. Soon, I stop waiting to leave. I stay and make Obette up in my mind, mix her in with the video women, only the strange ones, the ones with sad faces or candy hair.

“She’ll be here tomorrow,” Cheryl says one day after she picks me up from the school. I am watching a video, but I turn to her and listen. “Or maybe sometime next week. Obette is afraid,” she says. “And fear slows people down. Do you understand?” But she doesn’t wait for my answer.

One day, in the summer, Cheryl’s dream is about ducks. They are half real and half fake, she tells me, with dirty feathers and ugly voices, but perfect orange feet. She tells me about their yellow color, how it’s bright but tinged with gray. She thinks they could fly, she says, because one of them, the biggest one, said something like that to her in the dream. “There were three of them, but then there were six,” she says, “and sometimes they were all just one. And when they were one they were Obette.

They smelled like soup, the way she smells when her body is working hard.” And this makes Cheryl feel she should never wake up from the dream.

While she tells me this, she is frying sausages in a pan. She waves the spatula around, and I wonder if it will drip grease into the fire. Then I notice that I am afraid, and Cheryl is not. She presses the sausages into the pan and smoke puffs up, thick and almost blue. The grease makes a smear on the white wall that Cheryl has just painted. I worry that the house will burn down, that me and Cheryl and all the dreams will float away into ash.

The smoke alarm goes off, but Cheryl just looks at me. I decide that I will cook from now on.

Later in the summer it gets hot and there is too much time to spend it all just waiting. Most summers, there is something new — a new mother or another child in the house, or some kind of problem. But this summer there is just me and Cheryl, going grocery shopping and making trips to the hardware store. Cheryl does all kinds of things to the house. She makes new banisters with ends that curl like thick wooden snakes and stains them in what she says is the color of Obette’s palms. She buys putty and scrapes it along the bottoms of the walls, then presses long cylinders of wood into it so the cracks between the wall and the floor disappear. “Obette likes things to be seamless,” she says, and I don’t think I know what she means, but I nod.

On the day she paints the front room — Obette’s room — Cheryl spends an hour standing in the middle of the floor, frowning. “It’s not right,” she says. “The walls are too flat for her.”

Again, I’m not sure I know what she means.

While she works I watch the video women dance behind the glass, and I make a game of counting the ones I will like. I follow the rhythm while I wait for Kool-Aid hair, a set of green fingernails, or a pair of talking eyes to flash across the screen. There is always noise outside the house. Children from the school are listening to music, doing all the dances, rapping and singing and tagging the stoops. I would not say this to anyone, but sometimes I do imagine myself with them. Sometimes, when Cheryl talks about Obette — all the thing she has done and the things we will do, the three of us — I get a feeling that I could dance with the kids, that they might not bother me for not talking, that I might not have to fight girls to tell them who I am, to prove I belong here, in this life. Other times, when Cheryl talks, I am afraid I am like her, and then I want to run hard and fast, through the plaster and the brick, to get out. But I don’t want to leave Cheryl talking alone to the walls. And, also, I like her dreams. If I left, I would be alone, too, and I would miss them.

Mecca Jamila Sullivan is based in California. Follow on Instagram at @meccajamilah and Twitter at @mecca_jamilah.

Imitation

By Dena Rod

M

Y SIX-YEAR-OLD BODY WAS CONSUMED WITH desires I didn’t have language for yet. I was obsessed with mirrors, which I viewed as portals to another world. You see, there was always a huge chasm from how I saw myself to the truth reflected back at me in the cool silver panes that always beckoned. However, it wasn’t just mirrored closet doors I sought or the bathroom cabinet; any reflective surface would catch my eye.

I swiftly learned how bodies of water could serve me; puddles after the rain, the short-lived Jacuzzi that was in our backyard, the baby blue chlorinated water of the swimming pools where I took my swim lessons. I would examine the way my eyebrows curved and connected in the middle, the soft creased lines under my eyes, push my nose up so I could see the distinct hairs clustered inside. There was a foreignness to my body and appearance that I was seeking to understand. By foreign, I mean that inhabiting my body, this vessel of flesh, felt ill-fitting, untailored like I had unhemmed edges and broken zippers.

I didn’t look like how I saw myself. We were the first immigrant family in our white suburban neighborhood. I didn’t look like most of our neighbors. At six years old, the way I posed in the mirror was inspired by Kelly Bundy from Married with Children and I viewed her as the peak example of a woman and femininity. I felt so far away from her bright red lipstick, tight short skirt wearing self. I remember rolling up my denim skirt higher so that it would be shorter and tucking in the bottom third of my t-shirt inward to reveal my midriff. Later in life, I would note this experience as gender dysphoria, dressing in a feminity that didn’t feel earned or that belonged to me. My budding self only liked my appearance when I would have free reign to dress myself, with oversized flannel t-shirts pulled from the men’s section at Costco with large overalls that engulfed my body.

Windows especially enticed me. If the sunlight hit the whitehot concrete of our backyard just right, you could see yourself JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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reflected back in the window outside. After the sun had set, our indoor lights provided enough illumination for me to stare at myself in our sliding glass doors.

The clamshell compacts in my Maman’s vanity felt even more magical, gilded halves that would satisfyingly click together between my hands after I would attempt to fine-tune my cheeks with blusher.

What perturbed me about my appearance was how everyone other than yourself could see you, how you looked, if there were stray hairs out of place, if your tongue turned red after a savored lollipop. The fact that you couldn’t look at your own visage if you didn’t have one of these magical objects seemed unfair. Why would humanity be cursed like this, where everyone can see you clearly but yourself? I tried to correct this by always staring at my reflection whenever I saw it, no matter what, a child Narcissus forever leaning towards themselves. Whenever I would come home from school, the first thing I would do is run to the mirror in my bedroom and see how I looked. My unkempt hair would puff up, made frizzy as I carelessly wound my fingers through it as the day passed. After all, Peter Pan lost his shadow and needed Wendy to sew it back to his feet to leave for Neverland. Who was I if I lost my reflection?

Ultimately, this obsession with my reflection was stamped out by my Baba who vehemently despised the way I would be distracted with myself. By dinner, I would pose in a presumably attractive manner, attempting to eat that evening’s meal in the ways I would see models and actresses eat in commercials. Of course, I understood this wasn’t practical but I was willing to make sacrifices to imitate the femininity presented to me. By age six, I knew how important it was to the world that I looked good. Otherwise, I would be relegated to a punchline, a joke that would cue the laugh track at my mishaps. Looking back, I realize this was one of my first attempts at assimilation, to blend in inconspicuously as to not attract any more undue attention to myself that my already hairy, brown body attracted in our white suburb. Yet, my Baba only saw his child growing up to be vain.

My Baba thought that vanity was unvirtuous as evidenced by the way he would exalt my Maman who didn’t wear a lick of makeup on their wedding day. Clearly he didn’t see my Maman on her days off, furiously plucking the black hairs sprouting from her face in her magnified mirror. Vanity only existed if it was witnessed.

As I would sway and flip my hair in the reflection of the sliding glass doors in front of our dining table, my Baba would command me to stop. Harshly. His own eyebrows arched and connected in the middle like mine but not in an experiment of expression, but disconcerting discipline. But each and every time I dared to look above the rim of my dinner plate, I would see my fork sparkle, twinkling at me shifting under the light of the chandelier. I was happy to lose this battle of wills to my reflection and honestly, I would feel relief in the way that my reflection would dance to match the shimmy of my own shoulders. I was real because I could see myself.

My Baba had seen enough and was completely fed up with me and my defiance. Good little Persian girls didn’t disobey their fathers. If only he knew I wasn’t a girl this whole time, how I was trying to reconcile the image of what I saw of myself and how I felt inside. If only he knew that what I really was trying to do is find some trace of femininity that felt right and good and not like a costume that was bought for me off the rack. He commanded my Maman to pull the blinds over the sliding glass doors and the dull plastic didn’t reflect any light back at me, much less myself.

Deflated and wounded, a tear snuck its way out of my eyes. As an 30

JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

only child, my reflection was the only constant companion I had, not including stuffed animals or dolls.

My relationships with mirrors evolved to be something more parasitic as I grew older. The mirror could be a friend, a confidant who would never lie to your face. But I soon learned how the mirror could also worm its way into my psyche and whisper all the ways in which I wasn’t enough of a woman. My shoulders were too broad to be a woman’s, as the delicate shoulders that a bra strap would slip down in an Oil of Olay commercial showed me. My shoulders sprouted the same black hairs that appeared under my arms and dusted the top of my thighs. These hairs made their way in between my upper lip and nose, crawled up to my navel from the waistband of my shorts. I didn’t want to bare my midriff any longer or roll those skirts up short like Kelly Bundy. The shame crawled in and I wanted to hide from mirrors, so I couldn’t see what I was turning into with these lumps on my chest and blood running in between my legs. I wasn’t enough woman and too much woman at the same time. Who did I think I was, playing at this game when I had barely figured out the rules?

I know who I am now, not man or woman, but a blend of both and neither at the same time. My relationship is fraught with mirrors as they don’t reflect who I am, but instead what the world sees when they see the expertly applied eyeliner and lipstick that I’ve mastered for camouflage. There’s safety in blending in but also danger in being in a body that is perceived to be woman. As I’ve grown rounder, the attention is lessened and tempered by the wedding ring on my finger but it only takes one full face of make-up to attract the heat of predatory eyes again.

If only they knew that I was an imitation.

Dena Rod is based in California. Follow on Instagram and Twitter at @alightningrod.

The Far Side Mines

An excerpt from When We’re Done Here: Stories at the Edge of the World

By Paula Molina Acosta

T

HEY LAY IN BED, TANGLED TOGETHER. OUTSIDE, the clouds rolled over and into one another. The sun had long since faded behind the horizon, but the gray of the sky still shone through the window. The lock on the door was broken, so they had wedged the set of drawers against it, sealing them in for the evening. It had been months since anyone had tried to force their way in, but neither of them were taking chances tonight.

The world was a rare quiet. Beyond the comfort of the blankets and each other’s body heat, the room was cold. May played with Billie’s hair, her fingers warm and gentle.

“I want to give you something,” May said.

“Oh?” asked Billie.

May reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box.

Though a little battered, and plainly reused, it opened easily.

Inside rested a fine silver chain.

“For your ring,” May explained. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, and Billie, laying against her stomach, rose and fell in tandem.

“I thought you wanted it back,” Billie said, looking up at her.

It was almost a question.

May shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

Billie raised her eyebrows. “I thought you said I was leaving you for a man.”

“That’s impossible,” May teased, running her fingers through Billie’s hair. Her hands were soft and sure, her touch gentle. “What man would take you?”

“This one, apparently,” Billie chuckled. May bit her lip.

“Well, women are in short supply on the moon,” she suggested.

Billie peered at the chain, tilting the boxt to see how it caught the light. It was delicate and fine, the kind of well-made chain that would drape like fabric across her collarbones. For a moment she dreamed of wearing it with a gown, entering a ballroom on May’s arm — May’s hair slicked back, Billie’s hanging loose around her shoulders, the two of them laughing somewhere clean and elegant with a glass of something sweet in hand. Someday, she told herself. One day. “Are you sure you don’t want it back?” She craned her neck back to look at the other woman. “I wouldn’t be upset if you did.”

“Yes you would,” May said. She shook her head “But it’s yours. Forever.” She drew the chain out of its box and reached for Billie’s hand. Their skin was warm where their hands met, holding each other a little too tight. May slipped the ring off Billie’s finger and strung the chain through it. It slipped, with a musical clinging, to rest in the center of the chain. May fastened it around Billie’s neck. It glistened, as if murmuring to them. Outside, the night sky was darkening, and the stars were appearing one by one, beckoning Billie out. *** She was stumbling blind through the street. The blackened clouds had blocked out the sky and plunged the world into night. The smoke settled into her eyes, poisoning them with tears, until she could hardly even see the great leaping flames that danced across the city ahead. People ran past her, hazy figures screaming. She heard a crash, a surge of heat sending her reeling as a house collapsed into itself. Someone cried out for their mother. Her feet moved without being told to run; her arms outstretched flailed this way and that, seeking answers. A child nearby was crying. Someone shoved past her, throwing her to the ground. The world spun. The pavement burned through her pants, sliced up her knees and the palms of her hands. Welts on her skin crinkled and hissed like a steak on a grill. She cried out. The road was cooking her alive. She scrambled back to her feet. Somewhere, May was screaming her name. She couldn’t answer. May’s voice rattled. She heard fists meeting flesh.

“Billie!”

Billie woke, drenched in sweat, and the bed was empty beside her. Her hands flew out, seeking May. On the nightstand, the little clock told her it was still early morning. The light outside the window was the same as it had been all day and night — the black-and-blue of space, the gray moonscape lit up with the unwavering light of a movie set. She shut her eyes, and willed her heart — buzzing in her throat — to calm.

She laid in bed for a few moments. The generator hummed in the other room. Officers’ boots clunked distantly in the corridor outside the pod. Beside her on the bed, crooked and faded in the way that all handmade things were, was the quilt her husband liked to wrap around his shoulders while he read before bed — she could see where it had been mended several times over in blue thread. Always in the same stitch,

the same hand.

Hugo was waiting for her in the kitchen, dressed in his miner’s uniform — a standard-issue jumpsuit in undyed white. Over his heart, a printed label detailed his name and identification number in crisp letters beneath the American flag and the crest of the corporation tasked with the helium mining in this sector. The jumpsuit always made him look taller than he was. He sat at the table, staring across the room at the television, which was lit up with the news from Earth.

The time in the corner of the screen was a minute behind.

Hugo had made himself an oatmeal breakfast with dried fruit, and left the materials scattered on the counter.

“I’m heading out with Marcos tonight,” he said when she came in. “Don’t wait up.”

“Say hi for me,” she said, and checked the coffee pot. Hugo had only made enough for himself. She would have to make more. “You two going drinking?”

“Does it matter?” Hugo mumbled. “Can you do laundry today?” he asked through a full mouth. “I’m running out of clothes.”

“I was planning to,” she said, making coffee. “And I’m going grocery shopping.”

Hugo nodded. He examined the dried fruits, dousing the oatmeal with sugar. “I got the messaging bill yesterday,” he announced.

“Oh?” “I’m guessing you’re the one messaging Earth all day?” he said. He slurped his coffee.

Billie turned away from him to the counter, preparing her breakfast. “It’s my best friend,” she said. “May. Is that okay?”

“Just warn me,” he said. “That shit costs money. And money doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”

“If I can finish getting my license,” she ventured. “I can pay for it myself.”

Hugo looked at the clock on the wall and shoved the rest of his oatmeal into his mouth.

“We can talk about it later,” he said, sliding the empty bowl into the sink. “Maybe when you’re more settled we can figure out the time.” He grabbed his phone and made for the door.

“Have a good day,” she called after him. He waved in agreement, the door flying open. For a second she caught a glimpse of the hallway, where a tall, curly-haired man was waiting for him. She caught the man’s dark eyes and he caught hers. Then the door closed and he, and her husband, were gone. It was the third time this week Hugo had gone out all evening with Marcos and left her home alone. She grabbed her oatmeal and coffee and took a seat at the kitchen table, half missing the rush of scarfing down breakfast before work.

He’s probably just telling the guys all about you, May’s messages promised when Billie had told her all about it. It must be exciting to have a wife.

“Don’t be jealous,” Billie murmured back, though what she typed out and sent was that May should get some sleep.

She worked at one of the manufacturing plants outside of Chicago. Billie always worried about her around all that machinery.

I’ll be fine, May promised. I wanna talk. What are you up to now?

Missing you, Billie said. And laundry.

Paula Molina Acosta is based in Maryland. Follow on Twitter @paumolaco.

JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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“Monsters in the Closet // Scream” (Excerpt)

By Charles Jensen October 1996 Students gawked at the pedestrian bridge that crossed the Mississippi River between the East Bank and West Bank campuses of the university. In the night, a group of students wheatpasted 18” x 24” sheets of paper to the bridge, each one featuring the photo of a notable figure from history with three words describing their legacy: James Baldwin American novelist Activist Queer Straight students were outraged by the displays. Some stuck their chewed gum to the faces of the writers, actors, politicians. Some just blacked out the word “queer.” I walked and looked at each one, taking it in, each Xeroxed page washed gold in sunrise. Though I had to keep my queerness a secret from most of the people around me, I felt in that moment like I was plugged into something bigger — something unseen that was tired of living in shadows.

[SCREAM]

[SCREAM] In the moments leading up to the climax, Billy and Stu have revealed to Sydney they are the killers. They explain to Sydney that they’re going to ask her a series of questions and, no matter their answers, she’s going to die. Stu sidles up behind Billy and places his head on Billy’s shoulder. It’s intimate, capturing them in a two-shot in this tender pose, even as they are covered in blood.

They look like they could be in love.

Billy spends most of the first act of the film trying to have sex with Sydney. He’s perfected the toxically male performance of acting like he doesn’t want it too much, but making it clear that he does, in fact, really want it, but only if she’s ready — and if that turned out to be now, that would be great.

Billy pops up through her second-story window, like if Romeo were played by James Dean. In the end, Sydney flashes her breasts at him as if to show him she’s trying.

After they’ve had sex and Billy steps out as one of the two Ghostfaces, he tells Sydney she was bad in bed.

What he means is, You didn’t please me.

January 1997 My friend Lori encouraged me to join a group called SHADE sophomore year. Sexual Health Awareness and Disease Education was housed in the School of Public Health and led

by Dave, a tall guy with wild graying hair who radiated positivity and support. There were about 15 of us in the cohort. I was offered special permission to join the group in the second quarter even though I had not taken the required public health course on STDs, and I instead learned the scripts for various presentations we gave on campus and in the community, teaching consent, good sexual health practices, and providing the most up to date information to other students.

The AIDS epidemic continued to ravage the gay community in the mid-90s. My high school health class had mentioned AIDS exactly once when my teacher told us, “If you have gay sex, you will get AIDS and die.” Though I knew intellectually how to protect myself — condoms were then the most reliable method of prevention and also freely available almost everywhere, 32

especially on a college campus — the lack of research and public information made it a challenge to believe in any idea of safety.

It was rare in those years for someone to disclose their HIV status; the stigma was too strong, and there was too much at stake. They could be fired, they could lose their housing — any number of devastating actions could be taken against them, but it also meant facing stigma from within the queer community as well. As a public health crisis, those fighting to stop the spread of AIDS took drastic measures to change sexual behavior, sometimes seeming to echo the words of my health teacher. The Red Cross banned sexually active gay men from giving blood, a prohibition that continues to this day, even when we have much more reliable information about transmission, detectability, treatment, and prevention.

For me, and for some members of my microgeneration of gay men who came out after the crisis began but before good information was widely available, AIDS was terrifying. We knew of thousands of men died slow, difficult deaths in the 80s and 90s. We did not want to be among them. When I came out to my parents, they told me they were afraid I would die of the disease. SHADE marched in the Homecoming Parade the next year, and I wore the comical full-body condom costume for the event: a long, gauzy tube with a cut out for my face and a rubber hat shaped like a receptacle tip. I handed out condoms along the parade route as other members of the group marched with our banner and handed out handbills about our work.

SHADE undid a lot of the shame and discomfort I felt around sexuality. I was forced to talk about it, publicly, and to help people make safer choices. By extension, I made safer choices.

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What he suggests is, I couldn’t be pleased by you.

What he reveals is, I want something else.

October 1996 I stood against the wall in the basement of the campus’s gay fraternity, near the bar, nursing my cup of party punch and trying not to make eye contact with anyone even as I gazed longingly at any number of men who passed by me. What did I want? To be touched, loved. But not seen, acknowledged, known.

The fraternity was an anchor of the queer social scene.

Though I wasn’t a member, I was a fan of their parties. Their house stood at the end of fraternity row, tucked around a corner as if seeking just a bit more privacy than the other houses, as if they were more modest, more conservative. Inside the house, where the couches and side tables crouched along the walls and

the spinning strobes and colored lights flashed while insistent beats played, the opposite was true. Everyone was more themselves there, as though passing through the threshold meant taking off or putting on one’s public costume. I loved these parties in part because it was easy to get booze, and booze quieted my anxieties and insecurities.

My queerness felt like a train passing me in the night, cars I could look into as the windows flashed by, but something I didn’t occupy, something that wasn’t carrying me. I was afraid of having sex and I was afraid of never having sex. Afraid of being left alone and of being fully myself. My good friend Karen walked up and introduced me to a man whose name I can no longer remember. He had short dark hair with bangs swept away from his face, five o’clock shadow working overtime. He had a kind face. He wasn’t in school; he was older, midtwenties maybe. Karen hovered for a few minutes but then excused herself to let us talk.

I don’t remember what the man and I talked about, but I know he asked me if I wanted to go home with him. I was outside my body talking to him. I heard myself say, Sure. I was drunk, or at least drunk enough, which was my goal. In the car to his place, it took five minutes for me to lose our location. I vanished into the city with him. I was nineteen.

I fumbled out of my clothes at his apartment. I kissed him.

I felt his body over me. He asked if he could fuck me but I demurred. Then he fell asleep.

In the morning, he offered me breakfast. I said no, I wanted to go home. Was I sure? He could whip something up, or we could go out. No, I said. I pulled myself into my coat to armor me. He tried to make conversation on the way home, but I couldn’t. I must have seemed like a miserable person. He dropped me at the door of my dorm and I never saw him again.

“Good thing he didn’t murder you,” my friend said at breakfast when I told her what happened. She was half-joking. I hadn’t considered my safety in all of this — a privilege of being born white and male. The next summer, a young gay man launched a killing spree from Minneapolis, traveling down the continent to Miami where he shot Versace on the front steps of his mansion. I watched it unfold on the news. I considered myself, somehow, lucky.

Charles Jensen is based in California. Follow on Instagram at @charlesjensen and Twitter at @charles_jensen.

That Version of You

By Christopher Gonzalez

I

’VE BEEN TRYING TO FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE IN my skin. Let go, man. Don’t think it, do it. That’s what everyone’s been telling me. Not you, but everyone else.

The club is thumping with Britney, Carly Rae, and Sia, and they all got my body loose. To feel this good on the dance floor requires space in my stomach. The last meal I ate: a bowl of Raisin Bran, a cup of oat milk. Lapped up every drop so I’d have enough to hold onto without feeling weighed down. I’m starving, but this way I can keep up with you. Except — you’re doing the Straight Guy thing. Again. You’re bumping against any woman who gives you an opening, and some who don’t. I’m not intervening; I watched you take several large pulls from a vodka Gatorade on the train into Manhattan, on an empty stomach, and

the last time I got involved my nose made friends with the back of your hand.

A guy approaches me to dance when Whitney comes on and I will myself to stay cool about it. When he leads me to the dance floor, I spot a touch of gel on his eyebrows. I’m guessing it’s meant to keep them in place, which I get on a practical level: we’re all trying to tame the untamable. I smile, which elicits one from him that makes his face look like sculpted wax when we step into the wrong lighting. And tonight there’s a lot of wrong lighting.

There’s a good chance you’re hooking up somewhere. I assumed before leaving the apartment that I’d end my night abandoned, cooling off in the backseat of a Lyft, that I’d fantasize about taking your clippers and shaving a clean stripe down the center of your head while you’re sleeping. We’ve joked in the past about you hating my guts and my wanting you dead. Some nights this cuts closer to the truth.

I dance a few songs with Gelled Eyebrows until La Roux starts up, then he asks if I’d like a drink, which I do, but you’re disappearing through the side door and I know I should check on you.

In the alley, you’re kicking a dumpster, really laying into it.

And now tonight is more like that time in college when I found you on the floor of our common room, in your boxers, hours after ditching me at a house party. You were eating cheesy bread from Domino’s, which you had told me I should stop eating because of the cholesterol, but when I knelt down to touch your shoulder and connected with your eyes, pink and glazed over from Everclear, you offered me a warm piece, the white cheese stretching away from the box like taffy. Tonight, I’m dealing with that version of you.

You start going on about how women don’t like shorter dudes, as if it’s a fact, how it’s all about your height, how your dance partner took off with a six-foot tall guy, maybe taller, with good hair and nice jeans, and how could you ever expect to compete with someone like that? I’ve been hearing the same tale since we were both nineteen and held toxic beliefs about what we thought women owed us.

Anyway, you say, wanna get some food?

Gelled Eyebrows is behind me, waiting to be introduced.

Before I can ask him his name, you kick the dumpster one more time and say, Fuck it, there’s a bodega a few blocks away from here. Gelled Eyebrows and I exchange a glance, his eyebrows in full slants of confusion. I clear my throat and think maybe I should take pity and let him go, but then I nod your way, and soon he’s following me following you. *** We stand in line at the bodega, our faces lobster red, hair soaked, our shirts damp and yellowed under the low-wattage fluorescent lights. Gloria Estefan’s voice hovers around us. And I think maybe the rhythm is going to get us.

We approach the front of the line and I can almost taste the grease hissing on the griddle. I’m drooling, starved. I got my mind on bacon and globs of cream cheese doused in hot sauce.

Gelled Eyebrows is squinting at the menu. I guess this is a bad time to tell you I’m vegan, he says, and you roll your eyes.

I’m thinking about a salad, you say. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Your eyes are bloodshot now and you’re wavering with the rest of the crowd. I think about shoving your face down onto the hot griddle, create a beautiful sizzle. But no dressing, you add, though we didn’t ask. I stopped messing with that shit like a JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

33

month ago.

More people pack in and our noses almost touch the deli case. I’m keeping centered with my palm on the glass; its grimy surface feels like our entire world.

We pay for our food and step back outside. The air is cooler.

Gelled Eyebrows slows behind us. He says, This has been, well, something, but I’m heading home.

Are you sure? I ask, though I lose interest before he answers.

He shoves both hands in his pockets and the two of us are caught in a stalemate, which you break by holding out your salad container, saying, Actually do you want this? There’s no cheese or anything and I’m not hungry anymore.

No, not really, Gelled Eyebrows says. He pulls out his phone to request an Uber. I’m OK. Get home safe, he says, then he leans in for a hug, and I’m so surprised by his kindness I don’t wrap my arms around him. He pulls away, offers a pathetic wave as he crosses the street. I feel a pang in my chest watching him go.

I had derailed his entire night, dragged him out to this bodega all so I could put off the inevitable: when the night loops back to you and me.

When it’s just you and me, I don’t think about our differences. We’re two short kings. And that scares the shit out of me.

How easily I can fall in step with you. How safe this friendship feels when it’s just us, until we’re in a room with other people, surrounded by more interesting narratives, and I begin to pick myself apart. I get too caught up on everything about me that doesn’t match up with you that I can’t fully be.

The street is emptying out. I consider my sandwich. I rip open the aluminum and stare at two beautiful halves, the layers so delicate and perfect: white cream cheese, chewy bacon, a ripple of red hot sauce. Life is rarely this beautiful. The steam rolls up, tickles the inside of my nose and I drink it in, let it work like sage on my spirits.

You gonna eat it or make out with it, you say. You’re standing closer now. I imagine smashing the sandwich into your face, can taste the satisfaction of smearing cream cheese into your hair and burning your nose with hot bacon. But I offer you one half of the sandwich instead. And without another word you receive the offering, raise it to your mouth, and bite.

Christopher Gonzalez is based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow on Twitter at @livesinpages.

"FRIENDS NEVER REALLY ASK ABOUT FATHERS" From the collection WHO’S YOUR DADDY

By Arisa White

FRIENDS NEVER REALLY ASK ABOUT FATHERS. To ask is to sometimes signal a personal failure.

But when we feel triumphant from figuring out how to play handball with all three of us, it comes up.

Nicole with her round cheeks, dimples dipping into them, undoes and then meticulously fastens the Velcro straps on her Reebok classics, “I often wonder I wonder but I wonder most I become a homing signal, an umbilical cord My father, a rum zero, will never add my expectations my deepest needs and the years divide us” She pauses and turns and looks at me and Safiya, our backs against the handball wall. I am watching for that ultramarine sky that marks when I need to be home. Nicole’s eyes are asking, “Is my father some kind of dream reeking of crazy and Old Spice— simply a distance in everything?”

Maybe we nod. We nod soft so she knows it’s not her fault he never came back home from the liquor store.

Safiya, whose father lives with his other family

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in Harlem, rolls her eyes, neck, sucks her teeth, inspects her hot-pink polish, bites off a hangnail, then spits, “He’s nothing but a warm brown set of limbs never thinking never knowing the appropriate measuring tool to sift his love from them to me” They clock me for my story, with a silent impatience of thirteen-year-olds feeling fresh from sharing, and the sky is telling me to go.

I rise up, dust the street off me, and the blood flows to the pin-and-needles, “What?!

I never had a father I figured you might know” We laugh something purple from our throats: it rushes forward with many rivers, freely and deep, muddy, and ready for the open.

Arisa White is based in Maine. Follow on Instagram at @arisaawhite and on Twitter at @arisaw.

Stone and Steel

By Eboni Dunbar Chapter One

A

ALIYAH’S ARMY STOOD ON THE PRECIPICE OF home. Soldiers and mages in nearly equal numbers, all of them trained to bring glory to the kingdom of Titus.

To Odessa. They were tired, they were hungry, and many of them were injured. They had gathered just around the moun-

tain bend, before they could glimpse the capital city. While they awaited, the river captivated them, the bright blue of the blessed waters amid the forest of green trees, like thousands of emerald clad warriors themselves, as they waited for their general to tell them they could finally go home.

When the ground shifted beneath their feet, making some of the horses jump nervously, General Aaliyah knew that her runner had reached the city. Aaliyah closed her eyes, imagining the way the wall of rock would disappear into the ground, the power it would take to do it. It took great magical strength, tens of her stone mages, but still they made it look so easy. And it was the sign that General Aaliyah had been waiting for.

"Let's get this shit over with," Aaliyah muttered to herself, stretching. Her body still ached from the final battle in the southern isles, and three weeks of riding hadn't helped. She shouldered her spear and prayed for a moment of peace so she could rest her weary body. "Let's get moving, people."

The air mage at her side nodded, lifting her hands and sending the message down the line. The golden symbol for air, three straight lines across her chest, glistened in the evening light as the white arms of her tunic ruffled in the wind.

Aaliyah could hear the crowd even before they passed the sheared stone mountain that led into the capital. With the walls down, all of Titus waited for them, thousands of people, hundreds of thousands if she was honest with herself. Cheering. For her. Her stomach roiled even as she sat up straighter on Hassim, her beautiful horse. She pulled her spear tight to her chest and wished that they had taken more time on the road, enjoyed the slow journey back.

It wasn't that she didn't want to be home. She wanted her warm bed and her warmer woman. She wanted her people, and the people of the army she led, to have whatever or whoever they wanted as well. But she hated the fanfare her sister insisted upon — Odessa was all drama.

They took the curve and the smiling, yelling faces of the capital came into view. Despite the masses, she was grateful to finally glimpse the domes and obsidian spires of the palace Lockheart. As children, she and Odessa had always thought of it as their temple and now she called it home. She still couldn't stop the butterflies from dancing in her chest at the sight of it.

To Aaliyah’s left, Sherrod, her third, was already smiling.

He loved this part, and she was grateful that he did because someone should. Sherrod had spent much of their last down time re-pressing his hair, trying to tame his naturally soft curls to something even softer. He'd let one of his lovers dye it red a few days earlier, and Aaliyah had to admit the color suited his light brown skin. He ran a hand through his hair once more and Aaliyah rolled her eyes.

She looked to her right and caught Helima's eye. The other woman rolled her eyes but the rest of her face remained blank.

Aaliyah could count on her second to agree that all this parading around was stupid. Helima’s locs needed some attention but it would never have occurred to her to make sure they were done for this parade. Aaliyah cleared her throat and mimed a smile.

The younger woman let her face relax into something just passable enough to be a smile.

Aaliyah sighed and returned her gaze to the people. She might not be happy to be on display but she was certainly happy to see them. The black and brown faces of the people of Titus blurred together for her as she did her best to smile and wave at them. The sound of her name on their lips was deafening. She tried to make eye contact with a few people as they went but found that nearly everyone lowered their JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

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gaze. It hadn't been that way two years ago, when she'd left to conquer the last of the southern realms for Odessa. She had seen their confidence in her, in the pledge that Odessa had made, and which Aaliyah had carried out. It troubled her, but maybe she wasn’t the only one who didn't like the fanfare.

"Mistress Aaliyah! Mistress Aaliyah!"

A chorus of tiny voices made Aaliyah stop her horse in front of four children along the edge of the crowd. Hassim went still as she balanced her spear and climbed down.

"General," Helima called out, but Aaliyah waved her away. "Don't come talking to me when your sister has you by the balls for being late."

The children’s awed expressions made her smile. They stared at her black ceremonial armor, made of finely woven leather and coated in obsidian for strength and beauty. It shone in the afternoon light.

Aaliyah could remember being their age and seeing the old king's guard wearing it, thinking how beautiful it was. How wonderful it would be to wear it.

Odessa had always been more interested in the crown.

"Wassup?" Aaliyah said, dropping down to her knees.

"You got food?" The littlest one asked, a boy no one more than four. His nappy curls looked uncombed and unwashed enough that Aaliyah surveyed the other three. Too thin. Their clothes threadbare.

She remembered that too.

Aaliyah stood up and turned back to Hassim. She gathered what remained of her rations from her case, then went to Sherrod and took his. Helima had already climbed down and carried hers over to the children. Together, they handed off the food, the kids’ faces lit up like fire in the night. The littlest one hugged Aaliyah round the knees. She closed her eyes but she couldn't stop the tears from welling. She'd been a child who was this hungry, praying for someone to be kind.

Odessa had promised to be kind to the people of Titus when she became Queen.

Aaliyah mounted Hassim and waited patiently for Helima to climb back on her own mount. It took all of her strength to remain calm while she was seething. Odessa had better have answers for why there were hungry children on their streets.

Eboni Dunbar is based in California.

Follow on Twitter at @sugoionna.

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Coconut Smoothie A Collection of Poems written During The Pandemic (Excerpt)

By Regie Cabico

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED YOU PERSONALLY? I dream in smoke. I dream in paisley. I dream in camouflage.

I dream I am the sidekick boyfriend of Will from Land of the Lost.

In a virus-infested world, squids have mutated into a proprietary alien intelligence.

We destroy them with sanitizers of vodka and coconut milk.

I move as if an invisible harpoon is lodged inside my lungs.

I talk to avocado pits as if they were potential Tinder dates.

I regrow scallions in egg drop soup containers.

Every seed is a jewel.

I label toilet paper. I can wipe my butt thru July.

My recyclables are used to build an alternative power source: a hypersexed cage to store my pent up libido.

I worship the sun.

I use a sundial that breaks. I can’t get technical support.

I am The Little Prince in a mid-life crisis.

I open my mouth and doves cry.

My trip to Paris is canceled..

I astral project to ancient Rome and find myself naked in a 3 way

JULY 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM

moving. with Time & Time.

THIS IS BEYOND CABIN FEVER

I am a pastoral sunset of bushes that blossom and burning bunnies.

I raise a glass to the pessimistic foosball table

I am the lusty destination of your confetti funeral or ash wedding.

to the jaded comedian, the sexy janitor

Toast me now with gummy bear shots & girl scout cookies dunked in tequila.

& the owl who dropped out of high school.

A toast to Trader Joe’s employees sporting unicorn masks at the chili mango, freeze-dried hibiscus chip, cilantro ube smoothie aisle.

Cheers to the ones who place blue tape 6 feet apart on the sidewalks & one way signs in the narrow aisles of whole wheat buns and bran cereal.

Let’s pop a cork & splash champagne on our crotches for the very specific words I have yet to learn & to the socially distancing practices of Wakanda greetings & high 5s that are 9 time zones away.

Let’s toast pitchers to the warrior hedgehogs training for Iron Hog on Facebook live.

Let’s snort several perpendicular lines of coke for the sloping hill that I am lying naked as a glacier on a black leather sofa staying in one place for hours, months, centuries, without

Let us orgy ourselves into the next species of human evolution, the cabinet of life!

FORGIVE ME FOR THOSE I HAVE SCORNED from whom I ran away like a banshee through the stormy marshes of commitment for I know now in isolation that my heart would stop churning dreams without the human machinery of a hug.

I’ll swoon the moon for you to get us through this mist.

I’ll wait for you season upon season as the sepia bed sheets toss like ocean waves in my sleep and when I find the sun I’ll sit there solstice after solstice on a hill composing you lyrics of cotton birds perched on starry dippers till you stealthily pluck the crisp orange leaves from my hair but until then I’ll sit silently still among a fortress of pine trees, translating the chatter of stars.

Regie Cabico is based in Washington, D.C. Follow on Instagram at @regieguy and on Twitter at @bambooguy.

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Bad Behavior: Queer Women and Short Fiction Moderated by SJ Sindu Featuring Kristen Arnett, Ruth Joffre, Malka Older & Mecca Jamilah Sullivan 5 p.m.

The Most Dangerous Fish

By Lannie Stabile When temper swims through a man’s hands, he becomes a contaminated stream, growing scales thick as convenience store bricks. When I was 12, the most dangerous fish was a bottle of cheap wallop. Two bucks for 40 ounces of menace. We young minnows thrash our tails against the current, feeling for the dry bank in our mothers’ river. With gaping lips, we ask, Why must we remain belly up? And our mothers answer, Because we are hooked on weakness. It’s true what they say: The last thing a fish notices is water.

Lannie Stabile is based in Michigan. Follow on Twitter at @LannieStabile.

Schedule of Events FRIDAY, JULY 31 Lit!Pop!Bang! Podcast: Live Recording Hosted by Anthony and Cece Guests: Saida Agostini, J Mase III & Lady Dane Edidi 7:30 p.m.

Claiming Space: Decentering Poetic Narratives Moderated by Regie Cabico Featuring K-ming Chang, Faylita Hicks, Nicole Shawan Junior & Imani Sims 6:30 p.m.

SUNDAY, AUG. 2 Breath to Word: Poetry and Mindfulness Moderated by Rasha Abdulhadi Featuring Carlito Espudo, Malik Thompson, Arisa White, Aaminah Shakur 12:30 p.m.

Workshop: How Do I Know When It’s Done?

Revising, Submitting, and Necessary Patience Led by Chris Gonzalez In conjunction with Moonlit DC 2 p.m.

Queer Community in Speculative Fiction Moderated by Ruthanna Emrys Featuring Eboni Dunbar, Craig L. Gidney, Jewelle Gomez & Darcie Little Badger 3:30 p.m.

SATURDAY, AUG. 1

Deconstructing Creative Nonfiction Moderated by Randi Foor Dalton Featuring E. Patrick Johnson, Marcos Gonsalez, Miguel Morales, and Sabrina Sarro 5 p.m.

New Narratives: Exploring Literary Journalism Moderated by Dena Rod Featuring Joseph Osmundson, DoctorJonPaul, Vanessa Mártir & Jen Deerinwater 12:30 p.m.

OutWrite Chapbook Competition Showcase Moderated by Tyrese Coleman Featuring Paula Molina Acosta, Charles Jensen & Lannie Stabile 6:30 p.m.

Workshop: Queering the Disabled Body Led by Natalie Illum In conjunction with Moonlit DC 2 p.m.

Our Opinions Are Correct Podcast: Live Recording Hosted by Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz Guest: Na’amen Tilahun 3:30 p.m.

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To register for OutWrite 2020 and for more information, visit www.thedccenter.org/outwrite.

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Gallery

Portrait of Eugénie Fiocre a propos of the Ballet "La Source", 1867–1868

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Degas at the Opéra

PPROXIMATELY 100 OF EDGAR DEGAS’S BESTknown and beloved works are on display in a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Art which, last week, became the first major cultural institution in Washington to reopen since March. The reopening is still limited, with access only to select galleries on the ground floor of the West Building — and only to those who obtain free timed passes, released every Monday at 10 a.m. for the following week. (Passes are not required to explore the museum’s Sculpture Garden.)

The passes, most of which get snatched up within hours of release, limit the flow and number of visitors, allowing ample

social distancing space to take in displays of Impressionist stilllife paintings, modern sculpture, decorative arts, American furniture, plus the temporary exhibition True to Nature: OpenAir Painting in Europe, 1780-1870.

The true star attraction is a different temporary show, Degas at the Opéra, touted as the first exhibition to focus on the artist’s fascination with opera (rather than the far more common love of ballet). Organized in partnership with Paris’s Musées d'Orsay, the exhibit features many renowned works, ranging from paintings to pastels, prints to sculpture, all associated with the Paris Opéra and presented to commemorate the 350th anniversary of its founding. —Doug Rule

On display through Oct. 12. Outer Tier of the Ground Floor Galleries in the West Building, 6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. Call or visit www.nga.gov.

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Ludovic Halévy Encounters Madame Cardinal in the Wings, c. 1876–1877

The Ballet from "Robert Le Diable", 1871–1872

Study of a Theater Box, 1880

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Movies

Summer Solace

to avoid exactly that outcome. They make a cozy pair, and, indeed, Bond and Arterton work fabulously well together as the handsomely shot film marks Alice and Frank’s growing familial attachment to Gemma Arterton’s dynamic performance as a lovelorn lesbian writer one another. Their bond will be tested dramakes the trip to Summerland worthwhile. By André Hereford matically, which brings out great moments from both actors.

ESIDING ALONE IN A COUNTRY COTTAGE OVERLOOKING THE WHITE Opening her heart to Frank also leads Cliffs of Dover, Alice Lamb, the romantic heroine of Summerland (HHHHH), is Alice on a path of remembrance, recalling the movie epitome of a reclusive writer. All well-worn sweaters and cigarettes when she opened her heart to romance as she downs mugs of tea and pounds away at her typewriter, Alice eagerly lives up to with the scintillating Vera, played with her reputation as the village eccentric among her neighbors in 1940s Kent. Played in fierce joie de vivre by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. her cantankerous later years by Downton Abbey’s Penelope Wilton, the character is Unfortunately, Mbatha-Raw’s perforembodied for most of Summerland by Gemma Arterton, who radiates powerful and mance, and the film’s romantic storyline, genuine enough emotion that Alice resonates beyond what could have been a dull type. are reduced to snippets of scenes, fragIn last year’s Vita & Virginia, Arterton similarly revealed intriguing facets of love ments of memory meant to tug Alice back and regret portraying real-life writer Vita Sackville-West in the throes of star-crossed to a past she must reckon with to move passion with Virginia Woolf. Here, Arterton captures a writer who, whether she’ll forward. The movie ripples with jolts of admit it or not, has been wrecked by an affair that ended painfully. Alice now keeps the memory and extended flashbacks, and world at a distance, while pouring herself into completing her life’s work: an academic flashbacks within flashbacks to a love analysis of folklore — witches, myths, and magic. Alice’s single-minded devotion to her story between Alice and Vera that feels mythological pursuits, added to her obstinately antisocial behavior, explains why the vaguely sketched at best. local children have branded her a witch, with some of the adults comAlice’s attempts to ing up with even worse names for her.

Click Here to explain her vision of a Really, she’s just misunderstood, as the film — the feature filmmakWatch the Trailer place called Summerland ing debut of acclaimed English playwright Jessica Swale — sets out to — a myth, a metaphor, or a prove in the time-honored tradition of dropping a moppet in need on Alice’s doorstep. concept of the afterlife — are equally mud“It’s wartime and everyone’s got to do their bit,” Alice is reminded by school headmas- dled. But piercing through those layers of ter Mr. Sullivan (Tom Courtenay). So she very reluctantly takes in a young evacuee meaning and pretense, the performances, from London named Frank (Lucas Bond). particularly Arterton’s, strike a chord of An innocent kid but an old soul, Frank bonds easily with Alice, despite her attempts something deeply felt and true.

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Summerland is available on Friday, July 31 on VOD. Visit www.summerlandmovie.com.

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Music

Swift is anxious to remind us that this is a folk album, wrapping it in a version of mid-2010s indie-chic, complete with a tracklist rendered all in lower-case.

“Cardigan” and its accompanying video evokes that intimate, woodsy aesthetic Taylor Swift’s surprise quarantine release tries on an entirely that comes in and out of vogue and is new style for size. By Sean Maunier once again having a pandemic-inspired moment. Call it hygge or call it cottagecore, NCE YOU GET OVER ITS LIGHTNING-FAST TURNAROUND AND THE the comfy blandness of the exposed wood, ironclad secrecy surrounding its release, the most immediately striking feature sweaters and throw pillows provides a of Taylor Swift’s latest album is her choice to largely abandon the pop sound of fitting background for a song that opens her previous work in favour of a soft, folksy indie chamber pop. Less immediately obvi- by evoking the material touchpoints of ous but even more interesting stylistically is her deliberate shift away from her usual indie folk with a “vintage tee, brand new pop confessionals into a more indie folk sensibility. Folklore (HHHHH) presents Swift phone,” and of course the titular cardigan. as a storyteller of sorts, leaning hard into third-person narratives, more self-aware and Its saving grace is Dessner’s gorgeously layered instrumentals, which provide poetic than we have ever seen her before.

The album is at its strongest when she tells stories outside herself. Paying tribute Folklore with an atmospheric richness that to midcentury socialite Rebekah Harkness on “the last great American dynasty,” Swift complements its lost-in-the-forest mood.

Despite looking a little dated, the indie gives us one of the most evocative and entertaining tracks on the album, painting a picture of a woman who “had a marvellous time ruining everything.” Still, having been signifiers provide a coherent background created during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Folklore is the product of isolation, for Swift’s pivot to a melancholy singand it shows. Swift can’t help defaulting back to an introspective, nostalgic state of er-songwriter. In fairness, she manages to pull it off reasonably well, mind, fixated on past loves and hazy memories of past summers. especially for having set herDespite the sense of loneliness that pervades Folklore, Swift’s choice Click to Watch self a goal so far outside her of collaborators is one of its great strengths. The National guitarist the Video for usual wheelhouse. Folklore Aaron Dessner, who collaborated remotely with Swift and provided is certainly an interesting “Cardigan” orchestration for many of the songs, has left his fingerprints all over departure and represents the album, lending it a glitchy moodiness. Sometime collaborator Jack Antonoff also returns with writing and production credits on several songs and, unsur- some of both Swift and Dessner’s best prisingly, it bears some stylistic similarities to 1989. “Exile” is front-loaded with Bon work, but on its own merits it fails to Iver’s unmistakable crooning and atmospheric sound, but as Swift comes in, she more impress beyond a few standout moments than holds her own alongside him, and their duet stands out as one of the most memo- and ultimately comes off as somewhat toothless. rable and haunting moments of the entire album.

Folk City

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Folklore is available on most streaming services, including Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music.

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RetroScene

Cherry Jubilee, 1997. Photography by Todd Franson & Randy Shulman To see more photos from this event online, click on the photos below.

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LastWord.

People say the queerest things

“Something about trans people not being honoured on a show about trans people who created a culture to honour ourselves because the world doesn’t. ” —Pose star INDYA MOORE, in a tweet commenting on the lack of Emmy nominations for the critically acclaimed FX show’s trans cast members. Cisgender star Billy Porter, who is gay, was the only person to be nominated, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series — which he won last year, becoming the first out gay black man to do so.

“You cannot imagine the guilt I feel, knowing that I hosted the gathering that led to so much suffering.”

—TONY GREEN, a gay conservative, in a column for the Dallas Voice revealing that he thought the COVID-19 pandemic was a “hoax” created

by Democrats to “create panic, crash the economy, and destroy Trump’s chances at re-election.” Green repeatedly hosted family gatherings, which ultimately led to him and multiple members of his family becoming infected, and the death of his father-in-law’s mother.

“It doesn’t feel real but the beautiful light that was Lady Red is gone.

I love you baby. I will miss you every day. ” —JONNY MCGOVERN, host of Hey Qween, in a tweet announcing the death of his co-star and L.A. drag icon Lady Red Couture. Lady Red was hospitalized earlier this month due to complications from cyclic vomiting syndrome. In one of the last videos posted to her Instagram, she said, “I am a Black, American trans woman who is making a difference in this world and all I’m asking is that you love me like I love you.”

“They checked our phones and told us, ‘You are not only against what is right; but you are also faggots.’”

—“YOUSEF,” a 28-year-old Syrian man, speaking to Human Rights Watch about the persecution of LGBTQ people in the country during its ongoing civil war. He was arrested for protesting the government in 2012, and his treatment worsened when prison guards learned of his sexuality. “All the aggression was multiplied by 10, I would say. They were happily doing it. They were of course raping us with sticks.

They rape you just to see you suffering, shouting. To see you are humiliated. This is what they like to see.”

“Many LGBT practices are unhealthy and dangerous, sometimes endangering or shortening life and sometimes infecting society at large. ” —The official extended policy platform of the Republican Party of North Dakota, which attacks LGBTQ people and claims they “recruit children” and “prey” on women. The platform states “[t]he Republican Party of North Dakota opposes the passage of legislation which adds sexual orientation and gender identity to our century code as protected classes.”

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