America the Broken, America the Beautiful

When I was just a wee whippersnapper, I was The Voice of Summit Academy High School.

If the jazz band was performing a tune that required vocals, I was a shoo-in for the position. The year the choir performed “Single Ladies,” they put my scrawny pasty ass in a leotard and made me the designated Beyoncé. I was commissioned to write theme songs for the drama club’s productions. The one and only year I got to be in drama, the teacher even wrote a musical number into my role. Of course, I was typecast as the blonde bimbo (which is probably at least a solid 20 percent of the reason why I dye my hair black these days), but she could sing.

The ruby red cherry on my all-American existence as the golden-haired, golden-voiced Siren of Summit Academy was my role on Friday nights. I was the official national anthem singer for my school’s athletic events.

It was an awesome gig. I loved getting a chance to shine, especially after being ostracized for most of my life. I was no longer the class pariah. I was the class Mariah. The parents would occasionally come up and compliment my singing, and every now and then one would come forward as a veteran of some sort and really drive home the importance of the words I was giving life.

And the rockets’ red glare
The bombs bursting in air

The brave men and women who shared their military testimonies made it clear that the anthem was more than just an anthem. It was a capital-A Anthem. Like, the dudebros at Warped who’d wear little neon tank tops with rifles and the words DEFEND POP-PUNK were total posers. Those guys would never die for Good Charlotte’s seminal hit “The Anthem” off their breakthrough album The Young and the Hopeless (2002). But something about this anthem inspired these folks to quite literally risk life and limb for it. Or rather, for what it represented. You know, the good ol’ American Dream.

And for a young goody-two-shoes who finished third in her class and dated the football player and went to church for fun and wasn’t yet jaded by the weight of the world, the American Dream seemed like something that was promised to me. It was my very birthright. It was everyone’s birthright, right? We believed in life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness after all. The Statue of Liberty was built to welcome weary travelers and invite them to nestle into her warm copper bosom. And probably bake them some sweet, sweet apple pie too, because dammit, this is America!

I guess I always knew in my heart of hearts that the country I was brought up to love and respect had a seedy underbelly. My dear late father swore up and down he was part indigenous, having grown up in the hollers of Kentucky before the days of 23&Me. While the jury is still out on that little factoid, his “connection” to his “Native American heritage” inspired him to curse the Custer statue in our hometown under his breath whenever we passed it. And he didn’t shy away from the grisly backstory of the man behind the statue. He and his men slaughtered a bunch of indigenous folks, but he ultimately got his comeuppance when they retaliated and fucked his shit up. My father made it clear he sided with the Native tribes, who were unequivocally the good guys in his retelling of the story. In school, they (kinda) taught us about stuff like “Manifest Destiny” and Trail of Tears, so I assumed there wasn’t exactly a happy ending to the saga in the end. But it never really hit me just how much history has been rewritten by the victors — that is to say, the Americans.

We gloss over a lot of sketchy shit in our social studies classes. When you’re a kid in school, you’re inundated with constant messaging about how great this country is. A lot of the messaging revolved around this esoteric idea of “freedom.” You were free to do things over here that you weren’t free to do in other nations. Mind you, they never actually told us what cool things you were free to do over here that you couldn’t do in like, Switzerland. But FREEDOM!

I think there’s a reason the US keeps its propaganda so vague. By getting the population to make the word association of “America” with “freedom,” it becomes a lot harder to contend with the fact that many Americans were never truly “free” at all. For the majority of its existence, the US has been a great place of hope and opportunity — if you’re a white, cishet, able-bodied, Christian dude. Missed out on even one of those categories? Tough luck. Your America experience is going to be on Hard Mode.

That’s what makes it so hard for us to separate America the Beautiful from America the Broken. We’re raised from birth to embrace blind patriotism as a noble virtue. “Loves America” used to be a descriptor that instantly denoted somebody as a good person. Like, one of Tom Petty’s most famous songs uses that exact quality to paint the love interest as a salt-of-the-earth “good girl. But nowadays, I find myself side-eyeing anyone who proudly proclaims the American label, at least not without a hearty “but” after it. It’s the same way I’ve come to feel about other Christians, despite me being one myself, technically. I will only trust someone who introduces themself as a Christian if the statement is immediately followed by “but not one of the awful homophobic asshole ones.” Similarly, if you tell me “I’m proud to be an American,” I’m sincerely hoping your next words will be “but we need some serious fixing as a country.”

And I don’t want to think that way. I want to look at the flag blowing in the wind in front of my family’s home with pride. I want to wear cheesy star-spangled bikinis and rock out to “Party in the U.S.A.” and indulge in all of the trappings of Americana. Patriotism shouldn’t be an inherently bad thing, but like any fandom, America’s stans can take on parasocial, toxic qualities. Any time your object of affection reaches untouchable status, you’ve crossed into dangerous territory. I love Taylor Swift and think the world of her as a songwriter and storyteller. Do I think she’s above criticism? Absolutely not, but tell that to a certain subset of Swifties and they’ll crucify me for considering their beloved queen a flawed human. I love this big dumb country. I love the people here. I love how we have so many cultures and so much diversity. I love our rich history of art and music and innovation. But god damn, this administration is America’s biggest Trainwreckord, and I wouldn’t blame the “fandom” for turning on it. People need to realize that loving something shouldn’t keep you from critiquing its problematic elements.

I would love to be proud of my homeland, but I’m increasingly concerned about the direction it’s headed in. Even just a few years ago, I didn’t feel unsafe as a queer disabled woman in this nation. Now, my wife and I are even beginning to search for exit ramps from this country’s highway to hell, because at the end of the day, we don’t want to go down with this ship if we can help it. We’ve looked into Canada, the UK, Germany, even Thailand, searching for options to escape from here. We don’t have health insurance. If something were to happen to us, welp, we had a good three decades or so. We’re essentially thirty-somethings with DNR orders. That’s how a lot of folks my age feel. And holy shit, how are we fucking okay with that mentality as a people? You realize that if you were to get a broken bone as a Canadian citizen, you could literally just…go get it treated? Not play this stupid game of “Well, the prognosis without treatment isn’t great, but I gotta eat and pay rent.”

I don’t want to leave the land that I love. Michigan especially has a hold on my heart. I adore my precious Mitten, my little pristine corner of the universe with her array of lakes, both beautiful and mighty. I also think about the ancestral homeland of some of my more recent forebears, who settled in the storied misty mountains of Appalachia. I think about Florida, where I lived briefly after college, and exploring its vast wetlands and sparkling coast. I remember how I audibly gasped the first time I drove out to Denver when the Rockies first appeared on the horizon. In a few short weeks, my company will be sending me out to Arizona, the furthest I will have ever travelled from home, and I’m excited to experience an entirely different side of the country that I’ve never seen before. My point is, we as Americans have a lot to be proud of.

That’s why it hurts my heart to see her — America — in shambles.

I realize I never wrote a “Pride” post this year, when I typically have a lot to say about the subject every June. I guess I just don’t feel a lot of pride in much of anything these days. I’m not allowed to be proud to be queer in this day and age because it’s literally not safe, and I can’t be proud of my country when it’s become a parody of itself. I don’t have a flag I feel comfortable waving outside my home anymore.

But I also don’t want to raise the white one just yet.

As of writing, I’m figuring out what my role is in this great story of humanity. We often romanticize the role of freedom fighter or rebel leader. We all want to be a Katniss Everdeen or a Luke Skywalker without realizing what that life entails. I’m not a fighter, but I want to fight for my country. And my weapon is much mightier than any sword, or gun, or bomb. My weapon is the pen, and as long as I have fingers to type or a voice to speak, I will continue to use my words to shed light on the stories and lives of everyday people. Everyday Americans. I write because I want to humanize myself and the folks in my life who may not look or act or believe exactly like what the asshats in charge want from its denizens. The government officials want to dehumanize, demonize, and erase us, but We the People won’t be lost to the ethers of history. We are America, whether they like it or not, and our stories are ours to tell.

That’s something to be proud of.

Living Out Loud: The Power of Being Yourself

As a burgeoning bisexual, I didn’t really have any bicons to look up to.

Like, I loved Freddie Mercury, but growing up, his story was so sanitized, I really didn’t have a clear idea of his queerness. The most any of the adults would tell me was that he was “a little fruity.”

“Yeah, I can totally see him rocking that hat. What’s the issue?”

Needless to say, having roots in the evangelical church, I didn’t embrace my own identity for a long time. I realized I was bi when I got weird feelings from both the covers of Heart’s Dreamboat Annie and Peter Frampton’s I’m in You (yes, I’m probably the only Millennial who can credit classic rock with her sexual awakening). And I’d publicly come out after the conversion therapy controversy at my old church. Still, it was only after watching the biographical film Bohemian Rhapsody did I get the full picture, and it changed everything.

Freddie loved men. He very much enjoyed the company of men. He really liked banging men. He even fell for a man. Hard.

But he was also madly in love with a woman.

At the time, bisexuality was not really understood, so his female lover was essentially like “Dude, you’re gay, what are you doing?”

But he absolutely, one hundred percent, without a doubt loved her too.

Watching the way Freddie owned his sexuality even in a time when it was widely frowned upon lit something up inside me.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can be is yourself.

It’s a scary time to be queer. Politicians are making laws at breakneck speed trying to outlaw our very existence. I’d link to all the recent developments, but it’s honestly too depressing to even search right now. I’ll just let this terrifying map speak for itself. Everything the blue touches is our kingdom. But that shadowy red place? Don’t fucking go there, Simba.

Maybe ten years ago, it was fun and trendy and “yay rainbows!” to be queer, but the time for merriment has passed. We have more battles to fight. And if they’re going to try to silence us, that just means we have to be louder. Silence is letting them win.

Now is the time to live out loud.

When you live authentically, it gives the people around you a pass to be themselves, and from there, it just envelopes more and more folks. Once that first match is lit, everything around it catches fire. And that fire has the power to make real, tangible change in our world. What if Marsha P. Johnson hadn’t had the courage to be herself or stand up to her oppressors? We owe it to our queer forefathers (and mothers, and nonbinary parents) to stand in the freedom they bought for us with their bravery, and in some cases, their lives. Never forget the tragedy that was Alan Turing’s story. A celebrated scientist who set the foundations for modern computing and helped the good guys win WWII, he took his own life after the humiliating and inhumane way he was treated by the British government. All for the terrible sin of loving another man. Like, we fought like hell so that shit never happens again, and in the year 2026, I feel like we often take for granted how far we’ve come as a community.

And we better not lose sight of that, because now more than ever, we risk losing all of the progress we’ve made as a society.

I’ll end this with a story from about a week ago. I was in South Bend with my beautiful girlfriend, Olivia, and we were itching to do some karaoke. My schedule is wonky, so I had to come down on a weird night, and the only bar offering karaoke was a sketchy little dive bar on the decidedly less-gay side of town. My girlfriend is a trans woman, although you wouldn’t automatically assume this when meeting her. I hate the whole “passing” thing and I know a lot of my trans friends understandably do too — you don’t “owe” it to anyone to look “girly” enough to pass as cis, and there’s no right or wrong way to be a woman anyways.

Well, I can think of a *few* wrong ways to be a woman.

But still, I get why passing is a concern, especially in a red state like Indiana. It comes down to safety, and if some bigoted fucker deems her just a little too tall to be a cis girl, it becomes a very real threat. She didn’t want to bring too much attention to herself, lest the wrong transphobic fuckwad be there.

In short, she was not performing.

So, content to settle into her seat for the night and just watch me sing, we went to this little bar together. We get there, dude starts singing Kid Rock, all around not good vibes. I have it in my mind to sing one song, finish my nonalcoholic beer I’d already committed to, then get the Chicken McFuck outta there before anybody noticed the awkward lesbos in the corner.

I get offstage after a half-assed Bonnie Raitt tune and this gray-haired man with kind eyes approaches me, hand extended, telling me I did wonderful. I smile, say thanks, and start heading back over to where Olivia was seated. Then, he says something else:

“My name’s Randy, and this is my husband.”

With that one simple sentence, the floodgates opened. I smiled and introduced myself and my girlfriend, no longer worried we’d get hate-crimed in this bar, because now, we had friends. We had folks we knew were on our side. They assured us they had a “rainbow family” — many of their close relatives were also members of the LGBTQ community, and they’d cultivated a loving and supportive environment. They also mentioned that it hadn’t always been that way, and that when they’d first come out, some of the older kinfolk weren’t as accepting. But through living and loving authentically, they were able to change the entire vibe of their family.

I signed up for a selection from Rent with Randy, and Olivia finally felt the courage to sign up for one of the like two Caroline Polachek songs Karafun actually has. What started as a night of uncertainty became a night of celebration. That’s the power of living your truth. That’s the power of living out loud.

CANCELLED! (Or, Why Society Needs to Embrace Grace)

Chappell Roan is simultaneously living my dream and my nightmare. Imagine being some random ass girl from the Midwest one minute, and in the next, the eyes of the entire world are on you as if you’re Lesbian Jesus. On paper, she has the exact life I’ve fantasized about for decades. She wrote that one hit song (or two…or three) that will immortalize her for generations to come. She gets to wear some of the most extravagant outfits I’ve ever seen on a performer, stuff I’d die for a chance to wear.

Imagine getting to wear *this* in public.

And her infinite coolness has even been acknowledged by my own childhood heroes, the Wilson sisters of Heart. Nancy Wilson accompanied her onstage for a cover of “Barracuda,” and she even got to sit down and talk with Ann Wilson on her podcast. Needless to say, when I wished upon a star all those years ago, I’m pretty sure the wires got crossed somewhere and my wish went to Chappell instead. And let’s be real, the girl deserves it. She does have talent. She’s an incredible performer, and her songs are catchier than anything anyone’s else has been doing in this boring-ass pop music landscape. But there’s one aspect of Chappell’s life I’m so glad I don’t have going for me:

The scrutiny. God, the scrutiny.

So Brigitte Bardot died recently. Don’t reach for your tissues just yet, because she wasn’t really someone worth mourning. She actually kind of sucked. Like, a lot. She was literally so racist that the government of France fined her over it. She basically called the entire #MeToo movement bullshit. She called queer folks “fairground freaks” and blamed the destruction of French culture on the gays (as if French culture isn’t already, by definition, pretty gay). That last point is probably the most important to note, as Ms. Bardot has become something of an unwilling lesbian icon thanks to the aforementioned Chappell Roan.

In the opening lines of her song “Red Wine Supernova,” Chappell croons “She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot,” paying homage to the cinema legend’s exquisite looks. Obviously, it’s a shallow reference that doesn’t address the fact that Brigitte would flick her nose at the kind of fairground freakiness Chappell gets up to. Nobody really took issue with the throwaway line initially — it was understood that Brigitte’s name was simply used as shorthand for the kind of glamour that only existed in a bygone era. She could easily have used Marilyn Monroe, or Greta Garbo, or Jayne Mansfield, or even Elizabeth Taylor, as a certain other frequently sequined starlet recently did. But “Brigitte Bardot” just fit the rhyme scheme better, and as a bonus, Chappell gets to put on a sexy lil French accent when she says it. Everybody wins!

But then, this happened.

To be fair, Brigitte would *hate* this for herself.

If my Threads and Reddit feeds were anything to judge by, the Pink Ponies (Is that what we’re calling Chappell Roan fans?) were livid at the sight of the tribute, which entirely glossed over Brigitte Bardot’s checkered legacy. To be fair, a little while later, she’d post this:

To a lot of folks I encountered online, though, the damage had been done. Her reputation had already recently taken a hit from partnering with MAC Cosmetics, a company that notably supports Israel, after she famously passed on a White House performance over Palestine. But eulogizing a certifiable asshole was a step too far, and Chappell had been officially…cancelled.

We cancel a lot of people. Taylor Swift, who I alluded to earlier, even wrote a catchy ass villain song about it. Sometimes, the cancellation is justified. For example, Bill Cosby? Pretty fucking justified if you ask me — I can’t see a situation in which it would ever be acceptable to name-drop him as anything other than a predator and creep. Same with guys like Diddy and the absolute monster from Lostprophets. As the intro to that one Law and Order spinoff says, sexually charged crimes are especially heinous and should be weighed as such when considering uncancelling someone. But take, for example, Snoop Dogg, who recently came under fire for some questionable remarks regarding same-sex relationships in media. Is it time we retire “Gin and Juice” as a feel-good anthem forever?

We still got this bluegrass cover!

But here’s the thing — Snoop apologized. And he acknowledged he is still learning. In fact, I’d say his apology was damn near spot-on: “Teach me how to learn,” he said in his statement. “I’m not perfect.”

There’s the difference. That’s what separates the rightfully cancelled from the flawed human beings who sincerely want to do better. It’s right there — that self-awareness that you are imperfect, and that willingness to improve. That the secret. It’s completely understandable to want to hold people accountable. That’s the only way advancements will happen in society. But we can’t keep pushing away potential allies for every transgression. We’ll always stay divided.

I think very few people are beyond redemption. Honestly, if Kanye and Nicki wanted to have a massive heel-face turn and walk away from the right-wing grift, I’d welcome them back with open arms, and not just because I want to listen to the indisputable banger that is “Monster” guilt-free again. But they’d need to show some remorse. Grace should be given freely and abundantly, but the person receiving that grace needs to be legitimately sorry for what they did too. It’s a two-way street.

I think the folks trying to cancel Chappell for her Bardot post don’t realize they’re shooting us in the foot by dividing us further. We already don’t trust each other as a society and we’re falling deeper and deeper into isolation. Community is scarce, and there really is an epidemic of loneliness wreaking havoc on our society. What we need now isn’t some puritanical litmus test. We don’t need a “perfect ally” — we just need folks who are willing to stand up for us, and sometimes those folks aren’t perfect.

It’s funny, just this evening I got into a verbal tussle on that godforsaken social media site we all know and hate over whether or not “rest in power” was an appropriate phrase to say in remembrance of a white person. Never mind that said white person, Renee Good, was oppressed in other ways (being queer and a woman, for example) and was literally killed by her oppressor. This person, who I imagine had good intentions, maintained that the phrase can only be used for people of color. That is the kind of over-the-top policing that hardens hearts. How does that black-and-white mentality make us any different from the conservative evangelicals who dictate that we have to do x, y, and z to be saved?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t call people out for egregious screw-ups, or even smaller transgressions that maybe came across wrong (Chappell’s memorial post is a great example), but there needs to be some grace delivered alongside the message. Otherwise, we’re going to cancel each other into the fucking ground. We need to begin viewing each other as people again — beautiful, deeply flawed, and capable of change.

Between Sorrow and Schadenfreude: A Progressive Christian’s Response to the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

I am so fucking sick of living through major world events.

If you’ve been on some remote retreat in the Himalayan wilderness and haven’t had access to literally any media anywhere, alt-right influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a college event in Utah. I saw the infamous video. It was pretty wild to witness. I’ll confess, a lot of emotions washed over me in that moment, some I’m not proud of. Did I feel a twinge of schadenfreude at the death of man who advocated for me to be put to death for being queer? I’ll admit, maybe a little. Did I feel a bit of relief that he can’t spew any more hateful rhetoric. Absolutely. Let’s get one thing straight — Charlie Kirk was not a good person. If you don’t believe me, I dare you to click that little link up there. He is not someone to idolize or even eulogize, the same way you wouldn’t write a sweet memorial piece for Scar.

“He was a loving uncle and fierce leader for his people.”

All of that being said, I want to make another thing clear: I consider myself a follower of Christ. I feel uneasy using the word “Christian” as of late because of how horrifically perverted American Christianity has become, but my theological beliefs line up most readily with Jesus’s teachings. The real Jesus, not the evangelical one. You know, the wildly subversive pacifistic brown-skinned Palestinian Jewish man who repeatedly preached against tyranny and the wealthy? I’ve always been fascinated by His life and ways, and while some of my personal theology contradicts the established dogma of most denominations, I consider Him to be my spiritual guide and savior.

And that’s what’s making this hard for me. The part of me that’s human wants to dance on the dude’s grave. Yet the part of me that has been redeemed by Christ, that divine inner voice, wants to honor the fact that he was still a person, and he was a child of God too.

Two things can be true at once. Charlie Kirk can be a truly despicable person and the world can be better off without him, and we can also mourn the fact that humanity has devolved to this point. We can mourn the humanity in him, the part he willingly killed in himself years ago for the sake of extremist politics. We can mourn for his kids, who didn’t ask to have him as a father and now have a disturbing core memory to contend with. We can mourn for our trans brothers and sisters, who will inevitably be scapegoated for this. And we can mourn the fact that we’re heading to a very dark place if something doesn’t change quick.

I recently read a post that said that the true test of a Christian isn’t whether or not they love Jesus. It’s whether or not they love Judas. Jesus is easy to love. Judas is much more challenging. And in a lot of ways, Charlie is my Judas. He is proving very, very difficult to show compassion toward. The man got what he had coming to him. To paraphrase the Good Book itself, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. But there’s another relevant verse:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

Matthew 5:43-44

We can’t fall into senseless hate. That’s what Charlie would have wanted. The best way to “honor” his memory is to fight back against everything he stood for, including violence and hatred. This isn’t to say there’s never a time when violence is the answer — we had to kill a lot of Nazis in the 1940s to ultimately save a lot of innocent folks, and even Martin Luther King, Jr. understood why folks lash out violently at times — but we also can’t become desensitized to this shit. This can’t be our new normal.

I’ve been worried about the state of the world all day, and I’m praying this won’t be a Franz Ferdinand situation and WWIII doesn’t spring from it. But I’m scared it’s too late. People have become so brainwashed already. I called out my first boyfriend on Facebook for waxing poetic about the man as if he were a saint, and he responded with some of the most vile, vitriolic, hurtful bullshit I’ve ever had directed at me. It was bizarre. He was such a sweet kid, but it goes to show you how effective these conservative influencers are in manipulating young men. We’re dealing with a lot of propaganda and disturbing messaging in the media.

My heart hurts for the state of the world and for the future. I always dreamed I’d become a rock star and have children and live to be a little old lady like the ones I work with. I don’t want to go to war. I’m a lover, not a fighter. This isn’t the future I want for me, and I hope it’s not the future you want either. I sincerely hope with every fiber of my being that we can turn this around. In the words of the late great Ozzy, maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.

Maybe the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of Peace had more in common than you’d think.

All I know is I can’t handle much more of this. I was simply not made for times like these.

The Life of a Showgirl: Why the Arts Matter in a World on Fire

So Taylor Swift announced a new album.

And I am announcing that I am *very gay for this woman.*

The world came to a crashing halt, all because the biggest pop star on the planet teased some new music. Fans, celebrities, corporations, and motherfucking Elmo paid homage to Swift in their own ways. Even one of my personal heroes, Nancy Wilson of Heart, got in on the Tay love, posting this picture with the caption “life of a showgirl.”

To be clear, Nancy is the woman in the mirror, not the tiny adorable pupper.

With the announcement of the new album casting an orange glow over the world, it’s easy to miss the fires that have been raging the entire time. Trump’s Big Bonkers Bill is gutting healthcare for millions of Americans who rely on it. Public radio and television, one of the last bastions of true journalism and free speech, is also being gutted. And you have that quadruple-divorced fucko who swears she knows so much about the “sanctity of marriage” trying to take away my right to have a wife and family, so I mean, it’s fucking personal now. Then you throw on everything happening in Ukraine and Palestine and it’s fucking exhausting. The world’s on fire. Innocent folks are dying, and everyone’s freaking out over a Taylor Swift album?!

But — and hear me out, here — that might not be a bad thing.

I’ve written on this site about the concept of “glimmers,” which are functionally the opposite of triggers. While a trigger is an event that causes you to feel uncomfortable or afraid, a glimmer is an event that brings intense joy. They’re the tiny moments that make life worth living. A lot of glimmers come through art. Think about the last time a song gave you chills or the plot of a film or book moved you. Those are glimmers in action.

It’s easy to write off the creative and performing arts as vapid and unimportant, but art is a rebellion against a world that tries to quash any anti-conformity and critical thinking. Art is an invitation to think deeper — something the oligarchs don’t want us to be doing. Even mainstream art like Taylor’s is punk as hell in times like these, as it unites folks together. Music gives people hope. It inspires. It galvanizes. I think that’s part of why the elites are keen on eliminating things like arts education and pushing AI to make things instead of training up human artists. Art is dangerous. Creativity is dangerous. Hope is dangerous.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this image popped up on my feed while I was doing research for this post:

This is a simple but true statement, and I’d apply it to both your own work and other people’s works. If an artist’s music helped you in any capacity to enjoy your time on this planet, if even one song paints the planet just a little brighter for a moment, it served its purpose. And that purpose is to be a sort of analgesic to the pain of everyday life. That’s what I believe Taylor understands so deeply, and that’s what I hope to embody in my own creative endeavors. The life of a showgirl is to serve glimmers and bring hope.

In a world that is intent on snuffing out anything whimsical, beautiful, or different, embrace that spark that makes life worth living.

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America the Broken: A Fourth of July Rant

I am an American, and I’m fucking tired.

Of course our dick-tater-in-chief and the lovely folks who are SUPPOSED to represent the people had to pass the Big Bonkers Bill the day before Independence Day (and no, I’m not calling it “beautiful” — absolutely fuck that). Now, Medicaid is going to be gutted, affecting millions of people who rely on it for healthcare, including yours truly. Like, am I paranoid for thinking that they want us to die?

So yeah, America. I don’t think you deserve a birthday party this year. In fact, finding some way out of this godforsaken country is sounding more and more enticing as this presidency goes on. My wife has brought up moving to Germany, and the rest of our polycule is on board if we can swing it somehow.

But believe it or not, I’ll miss this fucked-up place. Because America is still my home, and as odd as it might seem, I still have a lot of love for her.

You might even call me…*gasp* a patriot.

Cue eagle screech (that’s actually a hawk).

In fact, when I was a teenager, I was the official national anthem singer for my high school’s sports teams. It was a great gig, and it was great performance experience, and I got to ogle the cute basketball players, but the coolest part was how it felt like what I was doing was important. I was serving my country with my voice, dammit!

As I got older, I remained loyal to my homeland, even as the cracks began to show. I realized how messed up it was that we don’t have universal healthcare while like, every other developed country does. But that didn’t make me hate it here as much as it made me want to change it here. And at the time, it felt like change was possible. Obama was in office and gay marriage got legalized and everything seemed to be progressing and going in the right direction.

Then of course, 2016 happened.

At the time I wasn’t out yet and was (unhappily) married to a man, so I wasn’t in full panic mode yet. But here, almost a decade later, I’m openly queer with a black nonbinary partner and a neurodivergent trans partner and honestly, I’m scared to death. Because I’ve seen what the people in charge want to happen to them for being those things, and it looks a little like this:

There is no writing a witty caption for this picture.

I don’t want to imagine my country ever stooping to the level of Nazi Germany, but things are getting scary. Even some Holocaust survivors are seeing unsettling resemblances to their experiences. I didn’t think anything like this could ever happen here. We have representatives. We have a Supreme Court. We have votes and the first amendment. And yet…

Yeah, I think we’re done with witty captions.

I love my country. I love my state with its beautiful lakes and my little city with a silly name. I don’t want to leave this place behind. But if I’m honest, I’m afraid. I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been. I don’t know what’s going to happen, if my friends and family are going to lose their healthcare or get imprisoned or die. This is why I write. I write to draw attention to things that need attention. I write to humanize my experience and my loved ones’ experiences. I write because I do love my country and want the best for it. In a way, I’m still using my voice to serve my country.

I just want the nation I grew up loving to be back again. I realize the US was never truly free. Our past was built on the backs of slaves and the indigenous folks we steamrolled to get this place. But I’d like to build a better future for us, one where all people are free, equal, and happy.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Grandkids and the GOP: How the Drive to Live Forever Fuels Conservativism

I think I cracked the code.

Like, I know why the other half of the population just doesn’t seem to get it.

It’s babies. It’s always been babies.

Of course, just look at that shit-eating grin.

Well, and death. Just follow me for a second.

I was recently reading about a fellow named Ernest Becker, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 book on death. In this book, he asserts that humans are driven by their primal fear of death and no longer existing in the mortal realm. Because of this, we unknowingly take on “immortality projects” meant to carve our name into history in some fashion. For some, including myself, this looks like creating art or music or stories that will last long after we’re gone. For others, this may look like accumulating lots of wealth, then dumping it into a cool institution or organization you believe in to get something named after you. And for many, many folks, their immortality projects are their progeny.

And that’s where things get sticky — because a lot of older folks are realizing their children and grandchildren don’t want kids of their own.

And if your kids don’t have kids, your bloodline is essentially over, you’ll be forgotten, and nothing you ever did amounted to anything.

Seriously, this fear explains so much about the psyche of older conservatives. It explains the anti-gay stance, as one could traditionally only reproduce with someone of the opposite birth sex. It explains the anti-trans stance, as HRT typically borks your reproductive system (and a lot of people don’t know about options like sperm banks for preserving fertility after transition). It explains the anti-abortion stance, since you don’t want your daughter to go off and abort your grandchild. I’d argue much of the conservative worldview stems from just three little words — “I want grandkids.”

And the wild thing here is that I actually get it.

I mean, I wanted to be a grandma someday. But mostly so I could nap and watch game shows all day.

That ever-present fear that I’ll just die and eventually be forgotten without accomplishing anything great is one of my biggest fears too. I’ve actually written about it extensively on this blog. I understand where these people are coming from, even if our ways of handling that fear lead us to vastly different belief systems.

A while back, I had this conversation with one of my coworkers at the caregiving gig I picked up recently. We got on the ill-advised topic of politics, and she told me she voted for our current administration “because of her family.” And I told her I had voted against it for my family. My wife is black. My girlfriend is trans. Our future children will likely be neurodivergent. This isn’t the world I want for them. I don’t want them to live in fear.

And so I keep finding myself going back to the same question — what makes my coworker’s family more important than mine? The fact that she’s straight and white and neurotypical? And yet, we’re really not all that different. She, like me, just wants to leave a legacy. Maybe her legacy will look different than mine, but that’s the beauty of the human experience. We each get to choose what our legacy will be.

That’s why these pushes to put as many babies as possible in as many wombs as possible will inevitably fall flat. People usually have a good idea of what they want out of life, and if that’s not children, that should be the end of the story. Family planning, birth control, and issues relating to fertility are personal and private. It’s no one’s place to tell anyone they should bring kids into this world. And that includes parents pestering their own children for grandkids.

But I do get it. I hate the thought that I might someday be forgotten. That’s part of the reason I write this blog — so there’s some record I actually existed one day after I’ve left this mortal realm. I always think back to that scene in Coco, a film I absolutely adore but can only watch very seldom due to the heavy themes. Like, a whole man evaporates as the last person alive who remembers him dies. And that fucked me up.

I write this because I feel in order to defeat the rise of fascism in this country, we need to understand why people voted the way they did. We need to know how we got in this position. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending the opposition are all irredeemable monsters is not how we win people to our side. Seeing people as fully human and acknowledging their dreams and fears is.

Because at the end of the day, when you set aside all of our differences, every person just wants to carve out a permanent place in the story of humanity.

Music, Failure, and the Weight of the World: A Small Rant

So I was let go at Guitar Center.

It was the professional equivalent of a relatively amicable breakup — my boss saw me struggling to even make it in on time due to my insane work schedule, and so she mercifully allowed me to quit with no hard feelings. I’ve never been fired, and this doesn’t even really count as a firing since I left on my own terms, but it still stings.

I’m not a stranger to failure, despite it rivaling death and abandonment as one of my biggest fears. Leaving the internship in Fort Wayne felt like a huge failure after everything I’d put myself and my wife through in order to finish my music therapy degree. I wasted so many years in school and have absolutely nothing to show for it. That was a rough moment in my history, but I managed to claw my way out of the dark depression it sent me into.

I don’t know how much clawing I have left in me, though. My fingertips are bloodied and raw. I’ve struggled enough.

This is all on top of the weight of the world, which has been crushing me with every disheartening story that passes through the news cycle. We live in a truly evil world where people get their kicks by literally kicking others down. Some bitch got hundreds of thousands of dollars for calling a child the n-word. How is it that terrible people get rewarded, but actual good people get fucked over? There’s still a whole bunch of bullshit happening in Israel and Palestine to folks whose only sin was being born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and don’t even get me started on the mess that is my own country at the moment. I wish I could just leave, but it’s not that simple. I can’t leave my family and friends and partners behind, so my only choice is to stay and fight the good fight, wherever that leads me.

But like I said, I’m don’t know how much fight I’ve got left. I’m fucking exhausted. The one thing that’s kept my spirits up at all is music and the prospect of someday becoming a successful musician in some form, but I’m afraid of becoming obsolete. I’ve already mentioned on my blog how dabbling with AI software started to bork my creativity, but like, what’s the point of writing songs when I can push a button and make the robots write one for me? And that’s the future we have to contend with. I’m not a vehemently anti-AI Neanderthal — I think there are legitimate uses, even in the art and music fields, and I’d be a hypocrite if I said I’ve never used it. Like, sometimes I’ll use AI to test out acoustic demos with a full band so I know whether or not the song is even strong enough to work with. But I’d never, ever release something to the public that I didn’t create myself. And I’m realizing most people don’t operate with those kinds of creative ethics. So as AI music becomes more prominent, I’m going to have to compete with a torrential onslaught of “creators” cranking out slop. Like, how long until we have an AI popstar?

But even if I didn’t have robots to compete with, I’m still racing against time. I’m 32. No one wants to listen to grandma sing her little songs, and I’m practically a grandma already to the suits who run the music industry. I remember when I was a freshman in college, it was a big fucking deal that Carly Rae Jepsen, who was at the height of her “Call Me Maybe” era, was 26. I’m six years older than that, and I have yet to make any significant waves in the industry. The music video for “Sweet Honey” sits just below 100 views, which is next to nothing. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had I moved to Nashville or LA in my youth, but it’s too late now.

And even if I was still a hot twentysomething ready to take on the music industry, you have to remember, the music industry has changed. A lot. It’s damn near impossible to make money with streaming. And there’s no such thing as rock stardom anymore. Unless you’re Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, or Beyoncé, no one knows who you are, and no one cares. Monoculture is dead. Back when you had to listen to music on the radio, people could bond over hearing their favorite songs together. Now, everything is so fragmented. If you want to listen to nothing but progressive zydeco pirate metal, you can just search for bands that fit that perfectly in that very niche and never bother putting on anything else again. Vinyl sales are up, but that’s not gonna help your up-and-coming local band that’s still getting off the ground and doesn’t have thousands of dollars to drop on printing physical records. Which leads me to the biggest problem.

It costs too damn much to “make it” in the creative fields.

I could have moved to Nashville had it not been prohibitively expensive. I could sink all of my time and energy into recording quality music if I didn’t have to work three jobs for the privilege of breathing air. The famous folks you know and love are largely only there because they were born into money and had multiple safety nets to catch them in case of failure. Taylor Swift’s wealthy upbringing has been the subject of much scrutiny, but even one of my personal favorites, the aforementioned Chappell Roan, had a charmed life, growing up in a sprawling gated home that looked like this. I’m livid that the music industry and this entire country as a whole demands you be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or else what you have to say or contribute isn’t important and you should just fuck off and die. It makes me viscerally angry, the amount of talent we’ve lost to poverty. The next Jimi Hendrix could be just around the bend, but if that kid’s parents can’t afford to get him a guitar and lessons, too fucking bad.

It’s a cultural crisis. And I’m scared I’m becoming one of its casualties.

I want to make it in music more than anything, but I’m so disillusioned at this point. I’ll never be a rock star. I’ll never be John Frusciante. I’ll never be Ann Wilson. The best I can hope for is some steady gig where I can make the music I want to make and earn a decent living, but there’s not a lot of jobs like that out there, especially not here in Kalamazoo.

I don’t want to end this post on a negative note, as many things in my life are going well. My dad was recently hospitalized, but he’s made a speedy recovery. My two primary partners have been incredibly loving and immensely supportive of me, and I might have a third partner who is also very sweet if I play my cards right. My dream pedalboard is finally finished, and since moving to Kalamazoo, I’ve got more friends than I can keep track of. I do have a lot going for me, but there’s always that part of me wondering when the other shoe is gonna drop. And a big black cloud hanging over me as of late is my frustration with, well, everything.

But I’m going to keep pressing on. With Guitar Center out of the way, perhaps I’ll have more time to work on the songs I want to get recorded and produced. Maybe I can sink more energy in the podcast I started with my best friend. Maybe I can even sleep a full eight hours like a normal person.

I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless. That’s all I can really do.

Putting on the Straight Jacket: Choosing Between Safety and Your Own Identity

Alright everyone, today we’re talkin’ trauma. But first, the daily prompt WordPress gave me tonight:

What sacrifices have you made in life?

It’s serendipitous that this was today’s prompt, because while this wasn’t necessarily the direction I was planning to go in with this topic, I feel there is another important angle to consider.

Living and being in the world authentically requires sacrifice. And it absolutely can cause trauma.

Up until a certain age, the trauma I experienced never really left the school hallways, so once I was done for the day, I could compartmentalize all that BS and, I don’t know, play Sims all day. My bullies didn’t really live rent-free in my mind since I was too busy thinking about all the stories I wanted to write, and to be entirely honest, I didn’t have much else to worry about as a child. You know, aside from my terrifying OCD-driven intrusive thoughts.

No brain, I *don’t* actually want to stab my mother, I literally just want to play dolls.

Here’s something I came to realize: things were so easy because I actually had a pretty privileged life growing up. I was white, relatively well-off (well, blue collar, but my family never hurt for food), and straight…right?

Oh.

In the immortal words of NSYNC, bi bi bi.

I think I always knew in my heart of hearts that I was bisexual. You see, speaking of Heart, I came to realize I was staring just as longingly at old photos of Ann Wilson as I was at Peter Frampton. Yes, I am a millennial. My mom gave me some of her vinyl collection when I was around 12, and the cover of Dreamboat Annie just like, awakened something in me.

Then, I went to the church I grew up in and that got beat out of me pretty quick. I learned what it was called when a girl thinks another girl is hot. It was called being a homosexual and it was bad because…they never really said aside from a couple of Bible verses that I’ve since discovered meant something else entirely. But the message was clear. If being gay was bad, then I was not gay, simply because I did not want to be bad.

And then I met my best friend in college. She was a lesbian. The closer we got, the more I realized I preferred being around her to any of the guys I dated. I even realized I preferred her company to that of the man I eventually married. No one made me laugh like her. No one understood me like her. And like, she was way cuter than most of the dudes too.

If you haven’t caught on yet, she’s my wife now.

But something changed when I just said “fuck it” and started living openly queer. Suddenly, religious and political discussions were a minefield and I’d be taken aback by how freely people would say the most dehumanizing bullshit about folks like me — especially if the person I was talking to didn’t immediately register that I wasn’t straight like them. I had to watch how I word things around strangers, as dropping a phrase containing the words “my wife” could potentially put me in danger. Driving through smaller towns felt especially unsettling now. I wasn’t sure if I was surrounded by people who’d want me dead if they knew the truth. I’m originally from a small town; I know how it is. These folks don’t often meet people who aren’t like them, and when you’re that insulated from the full range of human diversity, exposure to that diversity can feel threatening. And when people are threatened, all sense of reason falls to the wayside and it’s fight mode.

I don’t want to fight with these people. But they want to attack me. All for something I never chose for myself. All because I thought girls were pretty.

In the last few months since the current administration took over, I’ve been considering what I’d even do in the case that homosexuality is outlawed. I am bisexual, and I could put on the straight jacket if I really needed to. I had for all those years I exclusively dated men. But I realized I wasn’t truly happy in that arrangement. I wasn’t fully, openly myself.

That’s why the topic of sacrifice kind of hit me. I’m sacrificing a lot of comfort and privilege just by being who I really am for the first time. There’s a term for that constant sense of looking over your shoulder that comes with being a marginalized person. It’s called minority stress, and refers to the chronic stress that we experience from constant discrimination and not knowing if the next person we run into will be a crazed bigot who wants to murder us. The thing is, I never had to experience that as a kid. My wife may have, since she’s black and race is a lot harder to conceal than sexuality. But remember, I was a white kid in a white family in a 99 percent white town. The only source of trauma for me, like I mentioned at the start, was being bullied.

All of that being said, would I go back in the closet if it meant freeing myself from the stress and potential threats? Would I willingly live out the rest of my years playing the role of the traditional wife in a heterosexual marriage? Would I sacrifice my own identity for my safety? Honestly, I don’t think I would. It is hard adjusting to being a marginalized person when it’s not something I grew up experiencing, but after spending years running from myself, I’m not about to backtrack on work I’ve done to be who I really am. Because who I really am is finally here, and she’s ready to take on the world.

Those Four Words: What NOT to Say to Someone Who’s “Seen the Light”

A few nights ago, I saw this post on That Accursed Platform:

There was more to the post, but the gist was “I voted for the Leopards Eating Faces Party and was shocked that the leopards ate my face.” Which has been a pretty common occurrence, judging by the sheer size of the community that monitors such things on Reddit. And I have to admit, my first inclination is to gloat when someone who voted against my right to life, love, and the pursuit of happiness gets their shit wrecked by the policies they voted for. It feels like karma. And nothing — I mean, nothing — feels as good as saying “I told you so.” Apparently, this woman has been hearing a whole parade of “I told you so” from people on my side.

But “I told you so” isn’t going to win people over to our side. It’s not going to soften hearts.

And it’s certainly not going to save folks lost to the MAGA cult.

I’m the kind of person who learns best by fucking up. It’s just what I do. I need to make a few mistakes before I realize what I’m doing isn’t working. My mistakes are pretty well-documented in this blog, actually. Co-writing an album with AI before noticing my own songwriting abilities atrophying? Dragging my wife to another state to attempt an ill-fated music therapy internship? Those were pretty noteworthy mistakes of mine, and I’ll tell you what I didn’t want to hear upon realization of my fucking up:

I told you so.

Those are the four words people will bend over backwards to not hear. And there’s a reason for that. Let’s get philosophical.

Here is a photo of Socrates, so you know just how philosophical we’re getting.

The sunk cost fallacy is basically what happens when you go “all-in” on a bad decision. Your brain kind of thinks “Well, I’ve already committed — it would be silly to back down now.” And that’s why people double-down on choices that are obviously causing more harm than anything else. It’s one reason why we stay in relationships that suck, or invest in a job that sucks, or finish watching a particularly sucky movie, even though we already know it sucks. It might as well be called “the suck cost fallacy,” because it sucks. But we know if we leave the situation, everything will have been for naught and even worse, you look wrong. And no one likes being wrong.

So when people inevitably realize they chose the wrong candidate and things inevitably start going south for them because of it, they’re not going to be happy. And when they hear a cacophony of those dreaded four words upon that realization, they’re not going to go “Oh shit, you’re right,” and join our side. NO. They’re going to double-down on their original opinions, even though they see the cracks.

What do we do instead?

Love. The answer is always love.

Welcome them in. After all, it’s not their fault they were lied to and deceived by shady campaign promises. Make sure they know that. Make sure they don’t feel any of your ire — it’s okay to be mad that they voted against your best interests, but you’re on the same side now. Make sure they know they have a place in the movement. And for the love of God and all things good in the world, don’t say “I told you so.”

I’m sure you’ve heard the poem that begins “First they came for…” by now. What you might not know is that the author, German pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, was originally a staunch Hitler supporter. But he, like the woman whose story I shared above, felt the sting of his vote after he was imprisoned. Eventually, his heart softened and he felt deep remorse for what he’d done, and he began fighting for good. We could have a whole nation Martin Niemöllers who are fighting alongside us, but we can’t push them away before they’ve even been given a chance. We want to win people to our side. Don’t punish the behavior you want to see.

As the Carrot King continues to make this great nation his plaything, we’ll continue to see more and more people realizing he’s not everything he seems. That’s where we come in — not to say “I told you so,” but to be a soft place to land. When we realize we’re on the same side, there’s nothing we can’t do.

All of us. Together.