I Wanna Be Queen!

When I moved to Fort Wayne, IN, AKA the City Where Dreams Go to Die, I began attending karaoke nights at the legendary gay bar After Dark with my wife, and I remember being captivated by the queens I saw at the shows we caught there. Their self-expression and whimsy gave me so much hope at a time when I wanted to drive my car into the motherfucking river after every awful day at my music therapy internship.

I wanted to be them, I thought to myself. I wished I could be. I knew logically that cis women could be drag queens, but something always kept me from trying my hand at it. I did do a brief stint as a king, since I’m technically genderfluid (surprise!), but it never really occurred to me that I could be queen. Something always stopped me.

Spoiler alert, it was fear the entire time. The thing that had kept me from doing damn near anything whimsical and self-expressive my whole life. I should have been a rock star. I should have been an author. I should have been SO MANY FUCKING THINGS.

But then, something recently happened. I lost everything, almost including my wife. But something bizarre happened after my big girl job let me go. I felt a chain was lifted. And it hit me.

I need to take a risk for once in my life. It’s time for me to take the crown for myself, one way or another.

There’s no stupid degree or entrance fee into the world of drag. All you gotta do is be queer or queer-adjacent (check!), be absolutely fabulous and extravagant at everything (check!), have a fun stage name (check!), lip synch to sassy songs and be funny and dance around like a silly goose (check!!), and dress like Gaga (monster since high school haha). Honestly, the only thing stopping me from being a queen is…just calling myself a queen.

I’ve always separated myself into Jess and Jessa Joyce when it comes to my music shit. Jess is what friends call me, but like how Stefani Germanotta became Lady Gaga when she slapped on a meat dress and stepped into the spotlight, Jessa Joyce became my “rock star”-sona, so to speak.

But after a sobering talk with a good friend who’s close to the music industry, pursuing steady work in music is a lost cause at this point in time. I love music. I love making people happy. I love bringing whimsy into this dumb dark fucked-up world. But it was clear I needed to pivot.

I drove my wife to Indiana to stay with a good friend for a month while we figure out our housing situation (mold poisoning is a bitch), and I went back to the gay bar that was the genesis of both my experiences with drag and karaoke, another field that’s close to my heart as a KJ by trade. And something about being back in that place again made me realize, the only thing stopping me is me. Like, I can do this stuff too!

So before I was called up to sing the song I put in (Bon Jovi, natch), I ran to the bathroom (where I do my best thinking, and also because ya girl got the poopoo parasite and also Hot Girls Have IBS ™), and typed up this manifesto. This…drag-ifesto, if you will. It’s funny, back when I was with my old band, Wake Up Jamie, I wrote a song called “Queen.” My wife had bullied me into writing something fierce, so I wrote this bad bitch anthem where the entire chorus is just “I wanna be Queen!” It’s poetic in a way, I guess

So, there you have it. The woman who was “supposed” to be Jess J. Salisbury, MT-BC, is long gone. Meet Jessa Joyce, Queen of Whimsy.

The fierce-ass pic I took in the mirror after having the revelation that spurred this drag-ifesto.

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.

A Mother’s Love (Fiction)

“I think you’re going to be just fine.”

Those were the words that made Liam’s eyes well up as the light of the computer bounced off his horn-rimmed glasses. His pink face turned into a puffy hot blimp as the tears streamed down in twisty little trails, leaving dark splotches on the collar of his shirt.

You see, those were exactly the words Liam needed to hear after the fight that led up to where he was now.

He’d been agonizing over what to tell his mother for months — no, years. He’d always kind of known. He never did fit in with the girls his age, and he felt drawn to this different, alternate version of himself, a version he was actually comfortable with. He’d made a clandestine ritual of throwing out his femme clothes and began seeing a doctor in secret for testosterone.

After several months, though, the changes were impossible to hide. His flute-like voice had started deepening into a warm tenor. His peach fuzz had begun turning into a proper smattering of patchy teen boy facial hair. He’d been concealing his already-small breasts with a binder. He even started smelling like your average 18-year-old guy (well, part of that was admittedly the Axe).

He had to say something. Anything.

“Mom,” he started, appearing in the doorway of the living room where his mother was seated watching Jeopardy. “I need to tell you something. I’m a boy. My name is Liam.”

“Leah—“

“Liam, Mom.”

His mother snatched the remote and made a show of muting the television. “Leah, this isn’t you. You’re my little girl.”

Liam crossed his arms. “Mom, I’ve never felt like a girl. I don’t want to be a girl. That’s not who I am.”

“Who put these ideas in your head?” she hissed indignantly.

“No one, I promise! I’ve always felt like I was different! I just have a word for it now, Mom. I’m trans.”

The remote flew across the room. “No child of mine is going to fall for that transsexual nonsense. Leah, go say your goodbyes to your internet friends, because starting tomorrow, I’m going to be monitoring everything you do online.”

Liam’s bright blue eyes went wide. “You can’t do that! I’m eighteen!”

“And you live under my roof until you graduate, Leah. I’m not entertaining any of this. You are a girl and you always will be. I named you Leah and you will die a Leah.”

Silence.

“I just wanted you to understand me,” Liam muttered, thankful the darkness of the dimmed living room concealed his tears. He turned away from his mother and bolted up the stairs to his room.

“‘Say goodbye to my internet friends,’” Liam repeated under his breath. “Like I have any.”

Desperate for advice, he booted up the search engine on his laptop and frantically searched “FTM forums.” FTM, of course, being the widely used abbreviation for “female-to-male,” or more precisely, trans dudes.

What Liam didn’t know is that “FTM” had another meaning he wasn’t aware of, one he’d not considered when he received a DM from a certain stranger.

WildHeart39: I see you’re looking for some advice?

LonelySloth2007: hi, I’m 18 and really scared

WildHeart39: Yeah, I was there too not too long ago.

LonelySloth2007: really? how did you tell your mom??

WildHeart39: It just got really obvious after a while and I had to say something.

LonelySloth2007: that’s exactly what happened to me

WildHeart39: How did she take it?

LonelySloth2007: not great lol

WildHeart39: That’s a shame. It should be a happy occasion, you know?

LonelySloth2007: exactly, and it’s like she doesn’t even know who I am anymore

WildHeart39: Were you close before?

LonelySloth2007: we were always really close but she can’t accept me like this

WildHeart39: That’s a real shame. You seem like a really sweet person.

LonelySloth2007: I needed to hear that, thank you 🙂

WildHeart39: I won’t lie, I’m a little scared myself. No one gives you a how-to guide!

LonelySloth2007: yeah, like the body changes are exciting but scary

WildHeart39: It’s almost like going through puberty again! Like what the hell are my titties doing?

LonelySloth2007: I heard all the fat gets redistributed though with all the hormones and shit lol

WildHeart39: Don’t get me started on the hormones! I feel like I’m going crazy all the time!

LonelySloth2007: is that normal?

WildHeart39: I think it is, but I think you get used to it eventually.

LonelySloth2007: how long did it take everyone to be accepting?

WildHeart39: I’ll be honest, a lot of people weren’t accepting. I come from a very religious family.

LonelySloth2007: my mom’s not religious, she’s just mean sometimes

WildHeart39: Sadly some people are just that. I always say that if religion never existed, people would find some other excuse to be a dick.

LonelySloth2007: that’s so true tho

WildHeart39: I don’t know a lot about being a parent yet, but I know that you’re supposed to love your child unconditionally, you know? I already love mine.

LonelySloth2007: you seem really kind

WildHeart39: I’m just trying to be a light, you know? The way they always taught us in Sunday school. Be a light unto the world, or whatever. At least I’m living out that part of Jesus’s message. Even if I’m a filthy sinner to most people.

LonelySloth2007: you’re not a filthy sinner!

WildHeart39: And neither are you.

LonelySloth2007: you really mean that?

WildHeart39: I know we’re just internet strangers, but I really appreciated talking to you tonight. I don’t think you’re a bad person or a sinner. I think you have a beautiful heart.

LonelySloth2007: …

WildHeart39: Did I say something wrong?

LonelySloth2007: no, just no one’s ever been this nice to me before

WildHeart39: I’m glad I could be that to you!

LonelySloth2007: I’m really scared things are gonna go wrong

WildHeart39: Listen, there’s a lot of uncertainty in this world, and to be honest, I’m worried for my little one. I hope I can give her the kind of life she deserves. And I hope if she ever comes to me with something that’s bothering her, that I can be there for her.

LonelySloth2007: you sound like a good dad

WildHeart39: *mom, but it looks like I’m going to be doing both duties anyways!

LonelySloth2007: fair enough haha

WildHeart39: Anyways, the cravings are hitting me hard tonight, so I’m gonna go DoorDash myself something. But keep your head up. I think you’re going to be just fine.

At that exact moment, a young woman logged off the first-time mom forum to order herself some cookies. She rested her hands on her swollen belly and smiled.

And somewhere on the other side of the nation, Liam smiled, too.