Patti Smith Defined Cool in Lesbian Bars of the ’80s
I pinballed between circles of lesbians but settled nowhere. Gorgeous women were everywhere but always out of reach in San Francisco’s mesmerizing haze.
I pinballed between circles of lesbians but settled nowhere. Gorgeous women were everywhere but always out of reach in San Francisco’s mesmerizing haze.
Maybe I was tired of hiding and being afraid. Maybe I was just overheating and my nipples were starting to chafe. Maybe it was all or none of the above.
David Wojnarowicz captured the chaos of living as a gay man in the 1980s and early 1990s with HIV overshadowing everything we did and felt.
Before testosterone, few people ever saw me cry. Now tears come in hot floods, as though some tender, unlanguaged creature has surfaced inside me.
Madison Montgomery never stops performing. She is at once person and persona.
The land that was previously seen as harsh and brutal by colonial forces was actually a site of survival, new life, and renewal.
The taste of silence and salt heavy on my tongue.
I knew about Matt’s legacy, but I didn’t know much about his life.
Can you still hear us? We’re drowning the state in our chirps tonight if you’d care to sing along.
The years I suppressed my queerness are a loss that I'm exploring and grieving—if only through fiction.
Obviously, I cannot be the old woman. Obviously, I cannot be the woman.
Why does my assigned sex have to limit me at all?
They told me, “Gay people are all in WeHo. There are no gay people in Inglewood.” To be gay was not only to be Other, but to be white.
But I’m a Cheerleader gave me something to hold onto: for the first time, I had seen queer love and community.
Extreme heterozygotes are everywhere in this world. Everyone could be one.
I cannot explain queerness any longer in ways that don’t involve ghosts.
Look like “a boy,” they call you “a boy.” Everyone believed my mother got her answer to her prayer, and for a while it seemed to be so.
Leaving my cishet marriage was hard, but it set us both free to find more satisfying relationships.
When I look at my personal aesthetic (if I could call it that), I see something that gives me room to move through binaries.