Celebrating a Pride Summer

You heard it here first folks. Even as another sunny June comes to a close, it is and will always be… a pride summer. From vacuums as a metaphor for coming out to wistful homages to our past loves, our writers powerfully shared what their identities mean to them — to us.

We take this month, and every month before and after, to advocate for a world where love must be the norm rather than the exception. Our individual voices, while separate and wholly unique, will always be profoundly intertwined under one collective.

We are here. We are queer. We are proud. Here’s what that means to us:

~~~~~~

Jeslyn Wang – god sends me back to earth

Arami Chang – The Heartbreaking Beauty of of “How To Watch a Game”

Chloe Gonzales – letter from a contrite heart

Brooke Ortiz – Dispatch from the Sickbed

Grace Bashawaty – Queering the Map

Candace Fernandez – Pyroclastic Flow

Jordyn Feenberg – Could go to hell but we’ll probably be fine

Dylan Simmons – supercut

Arami Chang – The Existential Horror of “I Saw the TV Glow“

~~~~~~

God sends me back to earth, and I don’t hide in my room. 

Instead, I leave the back door unlocked, throwing pillows in my friend’s car. We ignore the fear of our parents finding out, abandoning it by the no trespassing signs now miles behind. Three hours north, we let silence become comfortable as the moonlight blankets us. Watching as shooting stars turn into sunrise, I forget how I ever let myself be so scared of living. 

Driving back, I buy a bag of chocolates and finish most of it before the day ends. I leave the rest for every friend who has ever listened and thank them for caring. Melted sugar for gratitude, I think back to the first person who ever found me, heavy heart in hand. Sitting down next to me, they waited until I made room for their acceptance, until there was no space left for my denial. I learned then that coming out didn’t have to feel like war. Is this what love means? I thank them for that.

Afterwards, I go to the park where I spent most of my high school summers. I pick the yellow flowers next to the lakeshore and leave them under the tree where I first said I love you. I remember the freedom I felt that summer before college, the joy of not biting my tongue and the cost of a broken teenage heart. Two girls gifting marigolds in front of the world, and a love that just discovered how to live. Everything else became inconsequential. For the first time, I stopped looking back to see what my parents would think. I thank her for that.

Brushing the grass off my knees, I call my twin sister to apologize. We were so young when we discovered how families can change, and I was too little to pick up our two halves. On the phone, I don’t think about the missed holidays or the knives we threw out of self-defense. Instead, I think about time, and how much of it needs to pass in order to make us whole. Even between the spaces we left, she’s the only family that has ever made living feel less lonely. Is this not healing? I thank us for that. 

God sends me back to earth, and I finally stop running. 

I remember how colorful everything is, and I stop gasping for air. I realize I can’t exist only within the second before every breath nor live if I don’t accept the love that is unapologetically mine. Watching the sunset turn into another sunrise, I forget how I ever let myself be so scared of living.

One of my all time favorite episodes of television comes from How To with John Wilson. In “How to Watch the Game,” John tries to understand the hype behind sports and the hive mind of sports fanaticism. Watching the game with your friends always seems to be some sort of rite of passage for the typical American, but John just never quite understood how to engage in the activity. Luckily, he’s here to teach us just what the hell “3rd & 10” even means.

But in true John Wilson fashion, the episode is never just about watching the game. Even after watching a recording of a historic 1986 Mets game or attending a Buffalo Bills tailgate outside Highmark Stadium, John still doesn’t get the hype. Really, his interest begins to pique when he encounters a different sort of sport: competitive vacuum cleaning. It’s a sport John coincidentally comes across while attending a vacuum cleaner collector’s convention in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and it’s only when John sees a 6-foot tall vacuum cleaner waiting in the hotel conference room that you sense his genuine astonishment for the first time. As the viewer, the feeling is mutual.

Naturally, John grows curious about their obsession. He wonders how the collectors even got into vacuum cleaners in the first place, and one of them throws a deceptively simple reason: most guys wanted to play with a baseball bat when they were younger; some just wanted to play with your mom’s vacuum cleaner. Despite or because of how simple the philosophy is, it seems to profoundly move John all the same, and he begins to share his own story.

As a middle schooler, John was regularly handed issues of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit magazines so that, in his own words, his parents made sure that he was straight. But if anything, seeing all these hot women in bikinis actually made him so horny that he ended up regularly “messing around” with one of his best friends. As an adult, John slowly comes to learn that he probably isn’t straight and tries coming out to the people he loves. All that really manifests though are stifled conversations, a large helping of shame, and an even larger helping of regret when those same people are no longer a part of his life.

John continues to interview other collectors at the convention, and one of them recalls the time he “came out” to his dad (“How old were you when you came out?” “You mean vacuuming?”). After hiding his vacuum obsession from his dad for over 50 years, he finally came out. His dad’s response? Nothing but support. For a moment, it’s incredibly heartwarming to hear about but the mood quickly sours when John later learns that the collector had buried his dad just a few days before the convention. The collector shares a piece of advice he was once told: “You cry because you miss him, not because you have anything to regret with your father.”

It’s a sweet sentiment, but the truth is not everyone can relate. What do you do if the person you want to come out to is no longer with you? This thought seems to consume John throughout the episode, undulating between grief and regret every time he thinks of the dearly departed. I think the reason why John is particularly enamored by the collectors’ philosophy of simply liking something is because for a moment, everyone can act like there’s no shame in liking vacuums over baseball bats. If John too didn’t feel so much shame for liking the wrong kinds of sports or people, maybe he could’ve had that conversation with his loved ones. He seems particularly regretful about not telling his late grandma, one of his most avid supporters. An aphorism that gets frequently thrown around in the queer community is that it’s never too late for someone to come out. But whenever John thinks about his grandma, he reckons with the possibility that that might not be the case for him.

Luckily for John, there are still a few people that are willing to hear him out. I think that, in his urgency to redeem himself and come out to the right people at the right time, John is quick to open up to the vacuum collectors (and by extension us viewers). In their mutual sorrow over liking the wrong sports and being ostracized for it, the fraternity that John and the vacuum collectors have built only grows tighter as a result. With that in mind, John now has faith that his viewers will be receptive to his story as well. How To is a show about many things, but rarely is it about John’s own personal history. A lot of what we learn about John is usually incidental, almost never a major plot device. So for him to craft “How to Watch the Game” in this manner feels particularly special. It’s a nice reminder that the community he’s built with his films includes not just himself and his subjects, but us too.

Motivated by his newfound community, John visits his late grandma’s house one more time to rummage through her belongings. He eventually finds her old Hoover hiding in a closet. He pulls it out and vacuums the carpet floors for her. As long as everyone else also has a vacuum cleaner, John knows it won’t be so bad.

my cheeks are red hot, burning flesh

summer day on the plastic swings

eating sugary mandarin oranges with our fingers

feeling like sappy honeysuckles, never enough for satisfaction

but enough to sweeten our stomachs

you’re above me on the swings as i watch below

sitting, kneeling out of exhaustion from how our

feet hit the pavement, hit the dirt, hit the tire

soles blackened as if we have walked for days

it’s an eternal state

the golden sun is looking down on us

but i wish the moon was here

so that i could get closer to you

almost breathing, my eyelash on your cheek it’s a 

stolen wish that i can’t take back

i am every possibility God springs upon us and you’re

just everything

but i get sick when the hot wind blows

humidity sticking to my body and my hair

peeling and picking off burnt skin onto the green grass

i am dripping into the nearest pail 

mouth becomes crooked, i’ll start pleading to go

so we run back inside

frantic, turning the AC on full blast

an artificial state of being

you say you’re starting to turn a little blue now but

i’m already purple.

Dear Reader,

As I write to you now, my face is swollen and numbed, and my head is wrapped in a tight chin strap. When I speak, I lisp puffily, and when I walk, I hobble awkwardly. I abide by a very loose sleep schedule and a very tight regimen of prescribed painkillers. Stitches in my mouth and on my abdomen have rendered me virtually unshowerable. Food options that require more than rudimentary soft chewing are infeasible. Generally speaking, I am tired, grumpy, and hungry.

This past Monday, I had a gender-affirming plastic surgery operation that falls under a category known as FFS (Facial Feminization Surgery). My procedure wasn’t the most comprehensive or invasive compared against the selection of upgrades in surgeon Dr. Lee’s repertoire, but the 90-minute procedure I received less than a week ago was still enough to keep me bedroom-bound for the foreseeable. What a way to round out my July: this agoraphobic recovery period doesn’t quite evoke the brash out-and-proudness that Pride Month traditionally suggests.

Pride, as a practice, has always been dicey for me. I am and have basically always been bisexual, and I have never thought or cared much one way or the other about it. The social mechanics of transitioning, however, clashes with Pride awkwardly. Being a trans person has an inbuilt fraught relationship with the ‘outness’ that pride asks of an LGBT person. To be proud is to be unapologetic and loud, insisting upon your right to exist because you know it to be inalienable. To be trans is a performance that requires incredible tact and discretion: for the sake of the bodily and/or social safety of trans people its goal is the successful concealment of a biological fact.

Every trans person has their own unique way of reckoning with these two irreconcilable goals, the insistent overtness and the desired inconspicuousness. Every trans person learns, through trial by fire, their own methodology of survival. See, you can go far in social situations without really clarifying what a person’s gender is. Eye contact, gesture, and second person pronouns do the trick and one ends up not really having to claim a gender most of the time.

I only ever came out, with that ritual’s whole procedure – the assumed vulnerability of the I-have-something-to-tell-you and then the sappy embrace, to like three people. That’s friends plus family. Everyone else pretty effectively just told each other, or independently and invisibly took the hint. Once lockdown ended, to people I’d been in school with since Kindergarten I was just Brooke now, and that was that. The predominant hometown San Diegan social laxness prevailed and I more or less managed to keep to my friends and stay unbothered. This all made me feel, very strangely, un-trans.

I’ve been transgender for some six, seven years now, and I’ve never attended any Pride Parade. Early on, I really wanted to, but every year for different reasons the festivities eluded me: lockdown some years, time conflict, forgetfulness, plans for such an outing passing by in the way that you half allow, and half just happens. 

I have found that things go smoothest when I don’t look gender in the eyes. It’s a social phenomenon, and for that it doesn’t exist when I’m alone. One’s gender is an amalgamation of others’ perception of them, one’s perception of others’ perception of them, and one’s perception of others’ perception of gender. All of these are spooks and they evaporate at room temperature. When I engage with gender, it’s only a matter of how I relate with others. And that’s exactly as beautiful as it is stifling.

The admittedly transphobic notion of the trans woman as an invader of female spaces has been injected into my perception of myself and codified an entire rule system of prohibition in my behaviors and the way I interact with other people. I gravitate towards coed friend groups where I’m one of few trans people. I’ve learned to dress well, but still I prefer androgynous and long-sleeved clothing; it feels prudent to me to wear something no one would question rather than a dress or skirt that might fit poorly on my frame. I try to avoid embodying the common stereotypes about trans women like plague. I avoid public bathrooms like plague. I understand how I became what I am, and carry no superstition: in other lives just as probable as this one, I could have remained happily cisgender, and part of that embitters me. Being trans is a liability and a nuisance.

&

Being trans is a blessing and an invaluable lesson. Autogenesis is a privilege few others are granted so wholly, and few others get so bare of an insight into their own selves. You step beyond the pale, you see from a vantage point that reveals some walls to be illusory, and also reveals invisible walls heretofore unbumped into. Rare privileges, uncommon restrictions.

I don’t like to talk about why I decided I wanted to transition, or what exactly I want out of gender, those are the kinds of things one tells themself to justify their choice to make a choice as vast as transitioning. But I know that I don’t need to justify myself to you.

Being this person helps me learn. Interesting things. Anthropology field research conducted with a methodology of subversive intervention, and I’ve gained insights into our flawed and fantastic social fabric, and gleaned rare truths about the flighty thing that we’ve chosen to call gender. The things that I have given myself and the things that I have taken are novel and precious loot. I’m really this person.

What I will allow myself to say about myself is that right now, my face bears the undeniable cosmetic surgery scarring that is a direct and intentional product of my transness. My face shows the markings of a generative process that I have opted into, and which despite all of the pain is something that I chose to proceed with. This dopey Amazon chin strap is an unretractable statement about who I am and who I’d like to be, where I’ve otherwise learned to apologize or qualify.

In truth, reader, I don’t want to be a cisgender woman. I’m pragmatic. I want to live an honest and fulfilling life as a transgender woman. I wish for many things, and I regret many things, but I do not regret that I lived the life that I have, nor do I entertain any fantasies.

My Pride is not the showy kind. You may catch my Pride at Pride, but not too often. My Pride contains my unlearning how I internalize transphobia and enact cruelty upon myself under guise of considerateness. My Pride involves learning how to live despite disapproval, real or imagined, spoken or unspoken. My Pride insists on itself, firmly but not arrogantly. My Pride is that I’ve chosen to undergo a surgery like this, despite everything, and being sincerely proud of myself. My Pride is the life I want for myself: I want freedom from fear. I want redeeming love. I want the respect of my peers. I want to age with dignity.

If you’re reading this, I love you. Happy Pride.

Signing off from the sickbed,

Brooke Ortiz | @godsintrees

“I’ve always imagined you and me sitting out in the sun, hand in hand, free at last. We spoke of all the places we could go if we could. Yet you are gone now. If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything. I’m sorry I was a coward.”

The words shared on this post from “Queering the Map,” an anonymous geotagged platform, have echoed in my mind for months. I’ve thought deeply about the loneliness this user must feel, hidden from their family and fearing for their survival. Yet, there’s so much love embedded in their words—for their country, their lover, and their life.

For Pride Month this year, I want to honor the queer Palestinians who endure multiple forms of violence yet continue to hold spaces in their hearts to love and support, sometimes against overwhelming circumstances and at odds with their very existence. The beauty, struggle, joy, and adversities of being queer and Palestinian embody an active form of resistance against manifold oppressions. The ability to persist, to live in a time where this kind of queer resistance exists, fills me with immense pride.

Above all, Pride is for everyone. The Western World has made it easy to mold a standard of queerness that removes queer Palestinians from political dialogue, often as a tool to pinkwash the occupation. The techniques of white saviorism implemented on the people of Palestine closely resemble the revisionist history of queer people in America. Queer and trans people of color have always been at the forefront of progressive conversations around liberation movements. And, as we’ve seen on UCLA campus, different liberation movements are deeply intertwined with others. One of the biggest threats to marginalized communities everywhere is the white saviorism that oppression is disguised as. In celebrating pride this year, I feel compelled to encourage this dialogue; one that recognizes the unique struggle of the queer Palestinian and the similarity their roots have with America’s queer history.

Cracking open. No longer feel 

myself running towards 

you. I bleed pink because you let 

me. Dirtied fingers clutch for 

branches, turning breaks at 

different heights. Nocturnal 

awareness isn’t something I’m used 

to. By the sand I’m still looking 

for us. I trimmed you’re curls by 

the water the tuesday you didn’t 

want for him. Found each other 

in shells. We are occluding 

in suspension, more located than the 

roots that bore this wood. Cinder 

perpetual is how I know where
to walk now. Breaking pink where 

it can’t be found. I lodge 

the copy and cough beyond 

clocks. This heavyweight 

won’t hold. Let myself walk to 

watch us powder. In
detritus, our horizons still blur. 

Before attending this year’s Coachella, whenever people asked who I was most excited to see, my answer was always Chappell Roan. After the festival, when asked about my favorite performance, I didn’t hesitate: Chappell Roan.

I first heard the 26-year-old musician and self-proclaimed “Midwest Princess,” on New Year’s Day when my best friend played me her song “Femininomenon” while we were driving around my hometown. Instantly enthralled, I began following Chappell’s music and her journey.

This Pride Month, as her debut album title suggests, we are witnessing the rise of a Midwest Princess. Chappell Roan is conquering the world and my aux cord. Her meteoric rise to fame was recently displayed at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, where she moved up the lineup from the smallest stage to the main stage to accommodate her skyrocketing audience. Try googling her—you’ll be autocorrected to: Did you mean: your favorite artist’s favorite artist. This iconic line was how Chappell introduced “My Kink is Karma” during her Coachella set, an ode to Sasha Colby, who once said, “I’m your drag queen’s favorite drag queen.” When Chappell later appeared on stage in head-to-toe green body paint as the Statue of Liberty for her performance at Governors Ball, she introduced the same song by refusing an invitation from the White House to perform at this year’s Pride event. She declined the offer until Liberty and Justice are truly for ALL. 

Chappell Roan is my IT GIRL. During her Midwest Princess Tour, she established a platform for local drag scenes, hosting and supporting drag queens as openers for her shows. Defying Tennessee’s recent drag ban, Chappell performed in her signature over-the-top, campy style, making me wholeheartedly believe that being queer is cool. Known for her iconic painted white face (a playful jab at people in her hometown who often referred to gay people as clowns) she never takes things too seriously. Whether her songs accompany a night out or act as comfort for my tears, Chappell’s discography leaves me feeling affirmed. 

 Is this what it felt like when Lady Gaga rose to fame? My fascination with Chappell has shown me that there’s no better time to be queer. Representation in music keeps me comfortable in my identity. Last year, at a Boygenius concert, I experienced a new and profound emotion: queer joy. This feeling resurfaced while I was in Chappell’s crowd at Coachella, a career-defining moment for her and what many have deemed the festival’s best crowd. Witnessing musicians who share my identity gain recognition has deepened my appreciation for who I am, proving that queerness is not just accepted but celebrated. 

When things weren’t going in Chappells’ favor, she decided to give music a final shot, setting a one-year deadline. Operating fully independently, she created art in its most authentic form and actualized her dream by entering the spotlight. Chappell’s growth mirrors my own. Each June, I find myself reflecting on where I was the previous Pride Month. June has become my personal marker, a time to measure my growth year by year. My journey speaks for itself, demonstrating that, like Chappell, my capacity for growth is limitless and a lot can happen in a year.

hair can be something so integral to the queer experience. as a child though, i didn’t care much for my hair, and was generally unconcerned with my appearance. it only served as proof of my femininity, as i resented my boyish name and the fact that i was already taller than some of my elementary school teachers. i clung to my long hair and what it represented as i fought to belong with the girls around me who gushed over boys at our school, and struggled to attract any of said boys. i didn’t know what to say or how to dress or who i was, and i wouldn’t find out for a while.

in eighth grade, i chopped off nearly a foot of my hair on a whim. i wish i could say i pulled off the subsequent straight, blunt bob, but it was just another lesson learned the hard way. i’m still not sure what exactly pushed me to do it. my life was changing rapidly; i was on the brink of high school, i became a teenager, i stopped praying, i realized i was gay. fourteen is a year of life-defining change, confrontation, and uncertainty, and i was beginning to feel out of control. the one thing i could control, however, was my appearance. in initiating such a drastic change, maybe i convinced myself that i was really the one in control, welcoming the changes happening within me. i wonder, when i had my first kiss that year, if it was also easier for her to cope with kissing a girl who’s tall, short-haired, and flat-chested, so she didn’t have to fixate on the fact that i was, still, a girl. with my hands on her waist, she could simply close her eyes and deny my reality, seemingly more easily than i was able to. 

years after my first crush, i fell in love for the first time. no longer yearning for male validation, i grew into my own androgyny with a girl who loved me for it. and just before my eighteenth birthday, i cut my hair again. another foot chopped clean off, sent away to locks of love to live on someone else’s head whom i will never know, giving us both a fresh start.

i ditched the blunt bob and opted this time for a queer, shaggy haircut, finally feeling as though my hair reflected who i’d always been on the inside. i liked how it bounced as i walked, how it felt like a weight lifted off of me, how my lover could run her fingers through it without meeting a mess of tangles. this cut, too, accompanied a flurry of changes: becoming an adult, falling in love, leaving home for the first time. i was becoming a new person, both inside and out. 

my hair is long again now. i usually don’t notice it, except for when i undress and feel my split ends tickle my lower back. at times i relish in its femininity, other times i resent it. i know i will cut it soon, any day now, and some life-altering change will accompany it. i will cleanse myself of my broken ends, the red tint lingering from my last dye job, and anyone who got close enough to touch it. i will rid myself of the bad memories that cling to my hair like smoke from a bonfire, dead ends the ashes of past bridges burnt. i will shed the beginning of adulthood, and the end of being a teenager; my first love, and my first heartbreak.

i look forward to washing it, feeling the bareness of my back and the weightlessness of my scalp. i look forward to the money saved on hair products, to the confidence boosted and attention briefly gained, to the fresh look i will don as i face my twenties. to the new lovers who will touch it, who will bless and taint it. to the woman i will become as i grow and cut and grow and cut my hair.

My childhood spent as a screenager meant that I’ve had the unique luxury of discovering all my favorite media simply at the touch of a button. I can always rely on YouTube’s algorithm or RateYourMusic’s relentless rollouts of featured albums lists to show me what kinds of shows, music, and movies I would enjoy. And more often than not, their recommendations are right on the money. It’s been pretty easy to grow a list of comfort media that I could always return to, but lately I’ve been feeling a little ashamed about the fact that so much of the media I find “relatable” have been authored by straight white men. As much as I believe that my favorite pieces of media are objectively good, the truth is I’m no David Berman or Charlie Kaufman. What does it say about me that I relate so deeply to a piece of media where I’m not the target audience? Am I being queer in all the wrong ways for enjoying this kind of media? And most importantly, why does this all feel so unbelievably isolating?

But unlike most creators, director Jane Schoenbrun just gets it, and their sophomore film I Saw the TV Glow is proof of just that. In TV Glow, the chronically antsy protagonist Owen (portrayed by Justice Smith) gets introduced to a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-type late-night show called “The Pink Opaque.” Much like “Buffy”, “The Pink Opaque” features best friends Tara and Isabel who use their psychic powers to defeat all the monsters-of-the-week and to reign victorious against the big bad Mr. Melancholy. In Owen’s dad’s own words, it’s supposed to be a show for girls. It still captivates Owen all the same.

Owen gets introduced to “The Pink Opaque” by an older student named Maddy (portrayed by Brigette Lundy-Paine), who acts as a sort of foil to Owen’s character. In many ways, Owen and Maddy are meant to portray two different extremes of what it’s like being a queer kid stuck in the suburbs. On the one hand, Maddy is exasperated at the thought of no one else in town being openly gay like her. Meanwhile, Owen doesn’t know if he likes boys or girls; he just thinks he likes TV shows. During a “Pink Opaque” watching session, Maddy grows increasingly upset at the thought of staying and ultimately leaves town without a single trace. Owen on the other hand is too afraid to leave with her and stays put in the comfort of his own home, only wondering where Maddy could have gone and learning that “The Pink Opaque” got canceled that same month. Years later, when the two reunite, a reticent Maddy pitches to Owen that they are in fact Tara and Isabel from “The Pink Opaque.” And in order for “The Pink Opaque” to continue airing, they need to both bury themselves alive and defeat Mr. Melancholy. Owen initially relents but ultimately rebuffs the idea that he’s Isabel and runs away from the burial site.

For the rest of the movie, Owen tries reassuring himself that he made the right choice, that surely he can’t be Isabel. But the more he thinks about how different his life could have been had he left town or buried himself or acknowledged his own gender dysphoria, the more it suffocates him. At one point the shame and the emptiness grow so cosmically large that he self-destructs, shoving his face into the TV screen and vomiting static glitter. He just can’t bear living in his human skin anymore. When Owen rewatches the series finale of “The Pink Opaque” and watches Isabel die on-screen, to him it’s as if he’s the one suffocating behind the phosphor screen.

Owen reassures the viewer that his life actually isn’t as terrible as it seems and returns to the show one more time, but it’s just not the same anymore. Whatever hole in his heart he tries to fill can’t simply be satisfied by nostalgia. The media that’s shaped our formative years can hold the power to heal. But sometimes, it can also become a reminder of how little’s actually changed, how miserable your life was and still is now, how all these years of melancholy have amounted to nothing, and how little growing up you’ve really done. When Owen cuts his chest open, there’s no blood, no beating heart, no connective tissue. All that plays is static. The most he can do now is apologize in between each asthmatic breath for being the way he is.