Remembering Dolly: Six Lessons From the Life of America’s Grandma

Here’s a fun fact you may not know about me: I freaking adore country music. When I was really little, it was my favorite genre. And why wouldn’t it be? I grew up in a family of crazy hillbillies who migrated to Michigan and brought their rich Appalachian culture with them. Country was nearly ubiquitous in every facet of my life for the first chunk of it. Shania Twain was my idol as a toddler. I have fond memories of listening to Brooks and Dunn in my dad’s old truck and going through my grandma’s dusty Alan Jackson cassettes. And of course, we had Queen Dolly.

I never dove as deep into Dolly Parton’s discography as I should have, but a part of me has always been fascinated by her. I recall going to Dixie Stampede when my family travelled to Tennessee on vacation. I remember my first amusement park experience was Dollywood. My parents kicked themselves for not getting tickets for a day later, when Miss Dolly herself would make an appearance at the park. It’s sad that I came so close to crossing paths with her as a child, and yet I missed it by a hair.

Now, I’ll never get that opportunity again. As I’m certain you’ve heard by now, Dolly Parton passed away a few days back at the age of 80. The closest thing I’ve seen to monoculture in a post-social media world has been the enormous outpouring of love for her and what she has come to represent. I have even seen multiple pushes to make her a literal saint. To say Dolly was beloved would be the understatement of the century. She was more than just beloved. She was America’s grandma.

I’ve learned so much more about the life of this incredible woman in the past few days, and it has been inspiring me to seek out little ways to honor her memory. Now that she is no longer with us, we all need to carry on the work she began. These are just a few lessons I’ve gleaned from Dolly’s illustrious legacy.

1. Reading is knowledge, and knowledge is power.

We as a nation are experiencing a literacy crisis. There are more illiterate adults today than there were in 1870. This is a significant decline since the 1970s, when less than one percent of the population was illiterate. I can see correlations between this slow drop in literacy and the increasing animosity in our society. Reading allows you to understand different perspectives. Reading encourages critical thinking. Reading is how people learn new things. Is it a coincidence that as we’ve decentered reading as an American pastime, we’ve also seen an increase in division and conflict?

Dolly saw a need, and she had the power to do something. So she started the Imagination Library, a service that sends books to kids for free. The decision was prompted by her own father’s inability to read. In a statement on the website, she said:

“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer…The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”

She always had a heart for kids who grew up in similar situations to her. Dolly didn’t grow up in a gilded castle. She was once a little girl in a destitute part of Appalachia — much like my own grandmother was, many years ago. She may have gone on to become a household name, but her heart was always with families like mine. Which leads me to the next lesson Dolly taught me…

2. Stand up for the working class.

When Dolly wrote “9 to 5,” it was a statement. Like I mentioned before, she was not born into a wealthy family by any means. The nepo babies taking over the charts today will never know the struggle she had to endure to get to where she is. The woman fought tooth and acrylic nail for the respect she deserved. And all the while, she never forgot where she came from. In a recent conversation I had on Reddit, another commenter lamented the fact that there were no femme Springsteens championing the working class. Enter Dolly.

Like my own daddy, Dolly was a supporter of unions, being part of the American Federation of Musicians Local 257 and making it a point to get her band the wages they deserved. She supported migrant workers the rest of the country turned their nose at, covering Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” dedicated to the memory of 28 Mexican farmhands whose deaths were largely ignored. She even stood up for ladies who wound up in the world’s oldest profession, with the understanding that many sex workers were simply sweet girls with broken dreams and no other options. In fact, this leads to my next point that…

3. You can dress scandalously and still be a good person.

Dolly was the poster girl for not judging a book by its cover. On the surface, she had the outward appearance of the traditional “bimbo”: blonde, thin waist, big boobs, lots of makeup, and little clothing. This was not an accident. Dolly herself had said that she styled her own signature look around “the town tramp” whom everyone looked down upon. But young Dolly saw the beauty in her and wanted to be her nonetheless. That was one of her most underrated gifts. She realized beauty in places — and in people — you wouldn’t think to look.

I think a lot about the ways women are judged for owning their sexualities and bodies. I’ve experienced it myself. I recognize that my own signature look is somewhere between a drag queen, a Bratz doll, and probably the town tramp as well. But as Dolly showed us, wearing skimpy costumes and lots of sparkles doesn’t make you less of a person. This is a woman who posed for Playboy of all publications. She didn’t practice modesty the way American Christianity pushes. She had the understanding that modesty is a mindset, not a certain look. I’d guarantee Dolly is closer to the heart of God than any of these tradwife influencers with their prairie dresses that could double as a tent, and all while wearing a sequined unitard.

4. You can be a Christian and not a bigot.

Speaking of American Christianity, it’s no secret that many folks who claim the title of “Christian” in this country are not the ambassadors we want for the faith. “Christian values” has become shorthand for “defending the (relatively new) concept of the nuclear family to the detriment of anyone who doesn’t fit that box.” If you’re a man, you gotta be a big strong dude and marry a woman and make her submit to you. If you’re a woman, better give up all your dreams to a man who doesn’t know how to do his own laundry and pop out his babies for the Lord. That’s the dream we’ve been sold. But Dolly taught us there is a better way.

Dolly was a proper Christian, if a bit of an outlaw Christian. She understood the true tenets of the faith. Like me, she cut her teeth playing in churches and built up a strong foundation for her spiritual beliefs. In her prayer life, she regularly asked God “How can you use me?” and “What can I do today?” I can imagine her saying as Isaiah 6:8 says: “Here am I. Send me!” She knew she had a mission here on this planet to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a very tangible way. Unlike many others who have co-opted the name of Christ, Dolly refused to engage with the widespread bigotry that permeates the religion as it stands. She spent her life proving to the world that being a strong ally to the queer community and being a steadfast Christian is not an oxymoron. In fact, standing up for the oppressed and downtrodden is exactly what we’re supposed to do. She was a true example of the faith. In a world of Donald Christians, be a Dolly Christian.

5. You don’t have to be a literal mother to be a “Mom.”

This one hit home for me as someone who desperately wants to be a mother but is afraid that ship has sailed. Dolly also longed for motherhood, but for a variety of health reasons, her dreams were never able to come to fruition either. But she realized God had another plan for her, a plan she embraced wholeheartedly. She wasn’t supposed to be the mother of a person. She was to be the mother of a movement. She started viewing herself as a “Fairy Godmother” or “Mother Goose” of sorts, with her book program introducing her to an entirely new crop of kids. In a way, Dolly became America’s mother and grandmother.

Dolly proved that you don’t have to squeeze out a biological child to have an impact on the next generation. Going back to the spiritual side of things, I often think about how our society’s current understanding of the Bible presses people to “go forth and multiply.” There are entire “quiverfull” sects that emphasize reproducing as much as humanly possible to “raise up more soldiers for the Lord.” It’s easy to forget that the Gospel has never been about passing down your own bloodline. It’s about the blood of Christ and passing down His legacy of love. Dolly demonstrated this in action. Through her work on Earth, she has done more to further the Kingdom of God than any of those quiverfull weirdos.

6. Stay humble and remember your roots.

Dolly was a superstar. Dolly was an icon. But most importantly, Dolly was a little old Appalachian lady just like my own grandmother. She saw the world and everything it had to offer, but she never lost sight of where she came from. At the end of the day, her heart remained in those storied mountains, with the honest, hard-working folks she’d grown up around. She had a soft spot for the land that gave her life, writing these words in her 1972 song “My Tennessee Mountain Home”:

“Sittin’ on the front porch on a summer afternoon

In a straight back chair on two legs leaned against the wall

As I watch the kids a-playin’ with their June bugs on a string

And chase the glowin’ fireflies when evenin’ shadows fall

In my Tennessee mountain home

Life is as peaceful as a baby’s sigh

In my Tennessee mountain home

Crickets are singing in the fields near by…”

In the 90s, Dolly promised to give $500 to every kid who went on to graduate from high school in her home county, essentially causing the drop-out rate to plummet. She has donated a good chunk of her fortune to disaster relief and other initiatives in East Tennessee. Through it all, she never forgot where she came from. I’ll leave you with this quote from The Christian Post in 2019 that I feel embodies her life and legacy:

“Every day I pray for God to lead me and to take out all the wrong things, wrong people in my life, and bring all the right things, right people, and to let me glorify Him and uplift mankind, to do something in this world to make it a little better than it was. And let me be a light and a vessel to be used.”

That’s what it’s all about, y’all. In a world of insincerity that rewards braggarts and egotism, let us all be more like Dolly. Bring a little music and sparkle to this dark world, and leave it brighter than you found it. Together, we can continue the work she started.

Finding Joy and Embracing Whimsy in the Face of Terror

Sometimes I seriously wonder why I subject myself to the internet.

If I’m honest, my fears regarding technology are nothing new. In fact, in college, my tech aversion got so bad, I’d have to ask my mom to check my email for me at times, and this was when I ran a freaking newspaper. I was never as bad as my dear late father, who died without ever having an email address. Don’t assume I’m a total troglodyte — I have fond memories of painstakingly editing my MySpace profile to reflect my perfect mix of prep and scene, with a touch of emo.

These days, I still loathe the World Wide Web of Lies and Secrets, but it’s a slightly more manageable loathing. I guess I’ve come to accept that most of the planet is only accessible through it, and by shutting myself off from it, I’m limiting my opportunities. That being said, it feels like a very necessary evil. There’s a lot of dark and shit that happens online, and much like the Grinch, I would not like to touch any of it with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole. People feel tempted to drop their masks on here, and it gets ugly. Take, for example, this exchange of pleasantries on the slightly better X Twitter, Threads.

I was tempted to leave the dude’s name uncensored, since he clearly wanted attention.

I’m not upset at the guy, but like, bro, why? It was just unnecessarily mean for no reason. This was not on any of my numerous political or religious posts, mind you, which left me extra confused. I give right-wingers a lot of material to work with, being a mentally ill polyamorous pansexual, so you’d assume I’d be getting a lot more hate for that. Nope, just a stupid video of me fucking up on mandolin.

I initially brushed off his dumbassery. Trolls are gonna troll, and feeding them only screws you over in the end. After a while, though, part of me wondered why I still subject myself to this. Why do I open myself up to be hated on a platform that is openly hostile to women, queer people, and — let’s be honest — anyone who wouldn’t look out of place in His Orange Highness’s golf buddy group? Was I just doing this all for “content,” whatever the hell that even means? Why do I make anything I make? Why do I even write this stupid blog? (I already answered that question, but bear with me.)

Sometimes I feel like I am screaming into a void. But then I remember that if I’m screaming, it means I still have a voice. And much like how Anne Frank immortalized and humanized herself through her work, I hope the things I’m putting into the world do the same for me and my loved ones. It’s not a secret that the world is a very twisted and dangerous place right now, and the future looks bleak at times. Sometimes I feel like posting little whimsical whatnots like making up dumb songs or silly attempts at playing the mandolin aren’t consequential at all in a world that wants to crush all whimsy and creativity. I’ve realized this world is full of joy terrorists, and terrorists are called terrorists for a reason: they want you to live in terror. But in a way, spreading joy and whimsy and art and fun is a quiet act of rebellion. They want us to live in fear. They want us to be quiet. Don’t let them win.

Back in January, I had the incredible opportunity to go on an emo cruise (which I will never financially recover from). There was adventure. There was romance. There was music. There was me meeting the frontman of Dance Gavin Dance and not realizing who the fuck he was. (In my defense, I am faceblind.) I will never forget the amazing experiences I had and the friends I made along the way.

And meanwhile, back home in the Midwest, another white queer woman just like me was murdered by the government.

The entire time, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I felt so guilty, this horrible, grating sense of survivors guilt, of “it should have been me, not her,” of “what if it is me next?” I was experiencing this strange cognitive dissonance of everything being amazing immediately around me, but on fire everywhere else. And there was a part of me that just wanted to refuse the fun that was being served to me out of principle. How could I, Jessa, have fun, when people are dying? It felt wildly insensitive.

But joy has a way of finding you even in the midst of darkness. Funnily enough, the ship’s freakin’ name was Joy. And it hit me that I don’t need to take on all of the pain of the earth at once. I can lighten up and enjoy the good things I have while I still have them, because tomorrow isn’t promised. Renee didn’t know it was her last day when she dropped her child off at school that morning. Everything I have can be taken from me at any moment, so I’m going to live it up while I can. Even my favorite book of emo poetry, Ecclesiastes, has this to say:

“So I say a man should enjoy himself. For there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and drink and be happy.”

Life is hard, but life is good. Two things can be true, and I’m learning every day to wrestle with that. I don’t know how much longer I will have on this little planet, but while still have a voice, I will use it to spread joy, and I will revel in that joy myself. That’s what it means to be alive. That’s what it means to be human.

The Quietest Genocide: How Everyday Folks Are Getting Priced Out of Existence

I want to be a mom. Perhaps more than anything else. I’ve written about my maternal dreams on this blog before. I’ve taken great care to select names for my would-be children, and I’ve often imagined what they’d be like, these tiny versions of me and whoever I ended up procreating with. But I’ve always imagined I’d be in a much different place whenever I eventually had these kids.

And the older I get, the more I don’t think I’ll ever get there.

It’s not a secret that our government and the elites are trying to push a pro-natalist agenda. Elon, Trump, and their cronies are all about popping out as many babies as possible — or that’s what they’d like you to believe. After all, aren’t the Republicans and the conservatives the “family” party? Certainly all those godless leftists don’t give a damn about families. They’re too busy dyeing their hair blue and owning cats and doing a communism, whatever that means.

Here’s what they don’t tell you. They only want a very specific demographic to reproduce. And it’s not me. Or you.

If you weren’t born into wealth, it’s almost impossible at this point to start a family. Without insurance, the cost to just have the baby is $20,416. With insurance, it’s still well over two grand, which is more than most people’s rent, and then you factor in that most folks my age are living paycheck to paycheck. Add on the costs of actually raising the child, and it turns out parenthood is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people.

I hate that we’re being priced out of what should be a human birthright, along with several other things that should be a given. Why is it so fucking hard to find affordable housing? Why does one company keep buying and hoarding family homes? Why do the tech bros insist on building data centers that bork the entire water supply for regular folks who happen to live nearby? It’s like they’re trying to make literally everywhere uninhabitable for anyone whose bank account is less than six, maybe even seven figures. In a way, we’re being priced out of simply existing.

Not to be alarmist, but it kinda seems like they want us all to die.

I want a child more than anything, but I don’t want her to grow up in a world where she’s not allowed to own anything herself. We don’t own our homes anymore, and we’re starting to not be able to own our media and tools and art either. Everything is a subscription service these days. How long until they own us? It’s a terrifying thought, but we’re so indebted to our corporate and political overlords at this point, I feel like it’s a matter of time before they declare we don’t even belong to us anymore.

I hate this existence. I hate that we created this stupid concept of money just so people can use it as an excuse to be shitty to one another. We deserve better than renting and subscription services and having to settle for a nice dog or something because actually having a child feels out of reach. We deserve better than dying because the technocrats decided robots and filthy lucre are cooler than sharing this earth with other humans.

I know this seems like a hopeless post, but I want to end it on a positive note. While I was writing this, my roommate asked me what the point even was. Why do I even write blog posts like this? And the answer is simple — because my words have power. Maybe I can’t change the world, but I can use my words to inspire those who can. I want to give a voice to people like me and my loved ones. I want to tell my story and the stories of other good working class folks who just want to live and thrive in peace. Stories are what humanize us to outsiders. Stories are what make us human.

I pray that someday, I will be the mother of more than just this blog, but until then, I’ll nurture my little corner of the internet and the words I put into it. That will be my mark on this planet.

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.